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Here on Equine Assisted World. We look at the cutting edge and the best practices currently being developed and, established in the equine assisted field. This can be psychological, this can be neuropsych, this can be physical, this can be all of the conditions that human beings have that these lovely equines, these beautiful horses that we work with, help us with.
Your Host is New York Times bestselling author Rupert Isaacson. Long time human rights activist, Rupert helped a group of Bushmen in the Kalahari fight for their ancestral lands. He's probably best known for his autism advocacy work following the publication of his bestselling book "The Horse Boy" and "The Long Ride Home" where he tells the story of finding healing for his autistic son. Subsequently he founded New Trails Learning Systems an approach for addressing neuro-psychiatric conditions through horses, movement and nature. The methods are now used around the world in therapeutic riding program, therapy offices and schools for special needs and neuro-typical children.
You can find details of all our programs and shows on www.RupertIsaacson.com.
Rupert Isaacson: Welcome
to Equine Assisted World.
I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson,
New York Times best selling
author of The Horse Boy, The Long
Ride Home, and The Healing Land.
Before I jump in with today's
guest, I just want to say a huge
thank you to you, our audience,
for helping to make this happen.
I have a request.
If you like what we do, please
like, subscribe, tell a friend.
It really helps us get this work done.
As you might know from my
books, I'm an autism dad.
And over the last 20 years,
we've developed several
equine assisted, neuroscience
backed certification programs.
If you'd like to find out more
about them, go to newtrailslearning.
com.
So without further ado,
let's meet today's guest.
Welcome back to Equine Assisted World.
I've got a legend with me, Mary Wandless.
Those of you who grew up with riding
through the 80s and into the 90s will
know her very well and her programs.
Those of you who came in more recently
may not, and if you don't, you should.
Because Mary's been at the forefront
of, I would say, the movement to
bring riding back into the humanities
and to humanize the whole process
and make it more accessible.
And moving away from the old models
of, you know, an instructor yelling
at a student and hoping that by
increasing the decibel level,
things will somehow get better.
And actually looking at biomechanics,
actually looking at what's going
on in the mind, actually looking
at equine and human well being and
so on and putting that together.
And it's, one can think these days
that that's, oh yeah, that's a no
brainer, of course we do all that.
But it wasn't always so.
And these conversations
were a bit taboo, actually.
Back in the day, and it was pioneering
people who were not afraid to be
snickered at and laughed at and perhaps
a little bit even looked down upon for
taking an alternative approach, who
of course are now the mentors that we
all look to, and Mary is one of them.
So let's find out about how she can
help us with us and our endeavors in
the equine assisted world to provide
wellbeing to humans and horses together.
So welcome Mary.
And can you tell us who
you are and what you do?
Mary Wanless: Gosh, well, I'm a riding
coach and I have had a big part in
creating the field of rider biomechanics,
largely because I grew up with instructors
that kind of shouted louder at the natives
and couldn't tell anybody how to do it.
You know, it was do it now,
do it again, do it more, do it
better, do it because I said so.
And clearly I had no talent
and that wasn't going to work.
So I was a passionate horse kid and
Begged for riding lessons for 10 years.
And eventually when I was 14, got
myself on the back of a horse and
it kind of went from there, but it
became apparent to me, well, early
on, I just thought like I was stupid
and incapable and not talented, which.
You know, I'm certainly not talented.
I'm not quite stupid.
And I, some fears, some spheres, I'm
pretty incapable, but I set out to try and
find out what talented riders were doing
that they didn't say they were doing, but
that only happened after I'd had a crisis
where I actually gave up riding in despair
and it required that giving up for me to.
Look at it from first principles and look
at it in a way with a physicist's brain.
I have a degree in physics
and go, what's going on here?
There have to be rules
of cause and effect.
How the heck does this work?
Rupert Isaacson: You sound like Elon
Mary Wanless: Musk.
Not quite.
No,
Rupert Isaacson: that's
apparently his things.
First principles, you know, let's go back.
But, but you're right.
First principles are very useful.
And I think a physicist's eye.
in this is really helpful because what
are we dealing with here, if not physics?
The natural world and how things
move through time and space.
Talk to us about that
despair and why did it come?
What did you do about it and how did
it lead you to your present work?
Mary Wanless: So I you know, I hadn't
done much more than hairy ponies
and muddy fields and a few riding
holidays before I went to university.
And arrived at Bristol and with
a friend, we, we sat about in our
second year, really trying to make the
riding club more open to other people.
And the riding club gave me much
more experience of different places,
different people, riding arenas.
And I did my AI during my first
summer vacation, so that's the
assistant instructor's exam as
it was then, for those of you who
aren't British and old enough to
know and I just about passed that.
And it was a sequence of
events that got me doing that.
Cause basically my mother
had died when I was 16.
My dad died when I was 18 during
my first term at university.
And so I actually had nowhere
to go for the summer vacation.
Rupert Isaacson: Wow.
And
Mary Wanless: when my friend said,
wow, well, why don't you go to the
place where I kept my pony and, and
work and see if you can get your AI.
So I had nothing better to do.
And I loved the idea
of being around horses.
So that was what I did.
And got to ride on some of the university
teams, but it tended to be that we had
three in a team and I was number four.
But we were fairly, we, we divvied
out these places in teams in
the unimportant competition.
So I did get to ride a bit.
And when I left university, I decided
to take a year out and play with horses.
And I thought I'd quote,
get it out of my system.
That was the plan.
And it didn't work.
I got a place to go back and
do post grad teacher training.
Sorry.
Rupert Isaacson: I seem to remember
saying that to myself once.
Yeah.
Mary Wanless: Yeah.
Get it out of my system.
So I took a year off after I graduated.
to play with horses and
get it out of my system.
I had a place to go back to Bristol and
do postgrad teacher training, which I did.
And I lasted about six weeks.
And during that time, I started
getting headaches and I was
feeling pretty miserable.
And I had the biggest blinding flash of
light experience I've ever had, which was,
I don't actually give a damn or a toss
if kids don't understand Newton's laws.
And I quit and played around with
youth schemes, working in youth
clubs and with unemployed youth.
Why?
Why did
Rupert Isaacson: you do
Mary Wanless: that?
I needed money.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, but you could
have made money in a dozen ways.
You know, it
Mary Wanless: seemed do able.
Well, I think I already I mean, I was a
pretty vulnerable young person, you know,
the whole situation of my upbringing and
then my parents deaths cast a big shadow.
So I had a, an empathy with
people who are vulnerable and
I guess I saw some ads somewhere.
I don't know.
You know, I could have tried working
in a shop or something like that.
It was something I could do that
was a shift here and a shift
there and largely evenings.
and a friend and I were
owning a horse between us.
She was doing the post grad teacher
training and it just wouldn't have worked
without me having more time actually.
We went into it incredibly optimistic
in terms of how much you can study
and have a horse and make it work.
So that's a good question.
Why did I do that?
It, it just, I saw some ads, it
felt like something I could do.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay, how long did
you do that for and what kind of work
with these young people did you do?
Mary Wanless: I did a couple of
evenings a week in a youth club.
Rupert Isaacson: Doing what?
Mary Wanless: Hanging
out with mostly the girls
Rupert Isaacson: talking.
Mary Wanless: I ended up with
a little dance class going.
I'd done a lot of ballet in my
youth and then some other dance and
expressive kind of non structured dance.
So I ended up with a little dance class.
With the girls.
Rupert Isaacson: What year is this?
Mary Wanless: It's 1970 75.
And then in the youth clubs it
was just kind of hanging out
with the guys and playing snooker
with them and things like that.
You know, it wasn't very
helpful program, I don't think.
Rupert Isaacson: And you weren't terribly
old, much older than them either.
Mary Wanless: No, I wasn't.
Rupert Isaacson: You were
more of a contemporary
Mary Wanless: No, I was 22, 23.
Rupert Isaacson: And I'm just, I'm
just casting my mind back to that.
And that's when I was at primary school,
but you know, I'm, I'm thinking, Oh
yes, ABBA Queen is big in the charts.
People have the seventies haircuts.
Football hooliganism is
suddenly a conversation.
But yeah, flared trousers,
but there was disco.
But there was still a.
I feel there was still a kind
of an optimism to that decade.
You
Mary Wanless: know, I never
felt caught up in the 70s
Rupert Isaacson: pessimism.
Mary Wanless: You know,
economically it was difficult.
I was doing my own thing
in my own little world.
You know, I really wasn't listening
to news and being, I didn't have
a very whole worldly perspective.
And in many ways I was taken up with
myself as a somewhat troubled person.
Well,
Rupert Isaacson: okay.
Mary Wanless: And horses and
kids and that was my world.
Rupert Isaacson: I'm also just thinking
now, looking outside the window and seeing
the first punks coming by in 1977 and
realising that the world had changed.
Perhaps in a better way.
Say what?
Mary Wanless: I missed, I
missed the whole punk thing.
Rupert Isaacson: Oh, there's always
time, there's always time Mary.
It's punk's not dead.
But why were you vulnerable growing up?
What, what were the vulnerabilities
and what were you carrying with you?
Because I think this will really
help us in this Equine Assisted
conversation to understand where we're
Mary Wanless: coming from.
I think part of it was being born
into a family where my mum and dad
had very little education and thought
education was the answer to everything.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Mary Wanless: And
Rupert Isaacson: There's
some pressure there.
Mary Wanless: There was a lot of pressure.
Now I'm very sure now that I'm dyslexic,
at the time dyslexia didn't exist.
I was called careless if I got things.
back to front and upside down.
I'm left handed.
You had to write with a
fountain pen in those days.
It's hard to write with a fountain
pen and not get your hand over
the writing and make a mess.
You know, I was messy.
I got things back to front.
I think I may also be ADHD.
I'm not so sure on that, but I'm
definitely capable of the hyper focus.
Part of that.
And I worked really hard in school.
I mean, I saw I have a very smart oldest
brother, really seriously smart oldest
brother, and then a brother who was in his
shadow and really wasn't very academic.
And I was kind of trying hard,
following up quite a few years behind
seeing how well it didn't work out for
my middle brother who kind of went I'm
not into this and you know, I did pretty
well, got loads of O levels and viable
A levels, got into a good university.
I could do maths much better
than I could do English and Arts.
Although I shocked myself and
everybody, I think, by getting
A's in English Literature and
English Language at O Level.
The spelling gods must have been
with me on those days, I don't know.
But, that was an almighty shock.
But I got myself backed into a corner
where Physics and Maths was what
I did at O Level, at A Level, and
then it's what you do at University.
Rupert Isaacson: But,
Mary Wanless: so the pressure
academically was really difficult.
And
You know, I, I did get a place
at a direct grant school.
So I must have done well
enough in the 11 plus.
Bristol's a top university.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Mary Wanless: But it was all a struggle.
It was a real struggle.
And it was a very rigid
and very religious family.
And my mother used the whole
religious thing in quite a nasty way.
There was a lot of shame.
Rupert Isaacson: Talk to
Mary Wanless: us
Rupert Isaacson: about
that as best you can.
I presume this was, you know,
Christianity, but what, what form, how
did the shame, how did the shame work?
She was
Mary Wanless: a Christian
scientist, which is not well known.
And you know, if you were ill, you
had to get your thinking straight.
And yeah, so, so there was
a whole punitive level about
being ill or being not perfect.
I think she wanted to pretend she didn't
have a body and bodies didn't exist.
She then, when I was 14, became quite
ill and had cancer and didn't have.
treatment until it was too late.
I can imagine there were major
arguments between my father and her.
Rupert Isaacson: He was
not a Christian scientist.
Mary Wanless: He towed the line.
And, and during, so it, there's
more family history to this too.
During the First World War, my mother's
mother, as I understand it, lost seven
male members of the family or family
friends, and she had a breakdown.
And then the second world war.
So my mom was a child
during the first world war.
I was the child of their older age.
And during the second world war,
my dad had his own business and
he was firefighting at night.
In the Blitz in London, and my
mum took over running his shop.
Rupert Isaacson: Which
was what kind of shop?
Mary Wanless: Sorry?
Rupert Isaacson: What kind of shop was it?
Mary Wanless: It was
sports and leather goods.
Nothing horsey, but sports,
leather goods Sibutio football.
Do you remember Sibutio football?
I
Rupert Isaacson: do remember Sibutio.
Little footballers, and you'd stick to
Mary Wanless: them.
Yeah, football boots and
shirts for the local schools.
Fish and tackle.
Fireworks at the right time of year.
I have memories of being knee high to a
grasshopper looking at the fireworks in
the firework cabinet and we got to buy
them with our pocket money at cost price.
We had the best firework
parties in our street.
Rupert Isaacson: So, your mum,
your dad was, okay, so he was
firefighting in the blitz.
He's a shopkeeper coming up
through the blitz in the war.
Yes.
Older, when they have you,
mum is Christian Scientist.
Mary Wanless: So mum was
in hospital during the war.
I think there was a Christian
Science visitor and that got her
into an OK functioning state.
Kind of.
So I think my dad wouldn't
challenge it because it was
too fundamental to her OK ness.
Yeah but it wasn't a very
okay version of okay.
Rupert Isaacson: Are there things, I don't
know much about Christian science stuff,
are there things you're not allowed to do,
are there taboos, are there big no no's?
Mary Wanless: Oh, there's no drinking
no drugs, you know, no gods before me.
Rupert Isaacson: No fun.
Mary Wanless: Supposedly no coffee,
my mum did have a cup of coffee every
day, but supposedly no coffee, nothing
that could be addictive or whatever.
So it is a pretty strict regime
by most people's standards.
Rupert Isaacson: So
not a bundle of laughs?
Mary Wanless: Not a bundle of laughs.
No, not a bundle of laughs.
Rupert Isaacson: And then you And I had
Mary Wanless: the odd moment
where I felt like I got it,
Rupert Isaacson: you know,
Mary Wanless: I understood it.
And nowadays, X years on, would
have a philosophy which is not
that different, but doesn't
have the punitive element to it.
Rupert Isaacson: Tell me
about the punitive element.
I mean, it's just Is it the standard
Christian punitive element, i.
e.
tear the line or go to hell?
Or something more than that?
Mary Wanless: There wasn't more than,
there wasn't a lot of talk about hell.
I think my mum must have had a lot of this
growing up in her childhood, and a lot of
shame, and anything we did that, you know,
cross the boundary for her.
I mean, we got it.
When her shame got triggered, we got it.
Rupert Isaacson: And when you got
it, that would be being screamed at?
She'd hit you?
No, there was
Mary Wanless: nothing physical,
but it was kind of being yelled
at in get your thinking straight.
I thought I knew you.
Who do you think you are?
La la la la la.
Effectively
Rupert Isaacson: you're a bad person.
Yes.
Yes.
There
Mary Wanless: was an awful
lot of You are a bad person.
And you know, there was
nothing for it in the end.
But to come back,
capitulate, apologise and
Rupert Isaacson: Appease.
Mary Wanless: And I think it was partly
and in a way I do wonder if she was
pretty much a narcissist, you know,
she never apologized for anything.
She didn't do anything wrong.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, people
didn't in those days, did
Mary Wanless: we?
Rupert Isaacson: It was
the culture, wasn't it?
I mean, nobody
Mary Wanless: was the culture.
Yes, it was the culture.
Parents were perfect.
Children were to be made in an image.
That wasn't me.
I mean, this This woman had two boys,
desperately wanted a little girl.
Her story was she had to wait however
many years before she could bear
the fact she might have a third boy.
I think that was a cover up story.
I think it was all an accident, probably.
She was 43 when I was born.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Mary Wanless: And then she
got the wrong little girl.
Rupert Isaacson: Why were
you the wrong little girl?
Mary Wanless: I didn't
like wearing dresses.
I didn't like, I, I, I was, I'd
learned to sew, I learned to cook,
I was okay with all of those things.
Actually the place where my mother
supported me the most was doing creative
things, even if what I was doing was
gluing together cotton wool balls and
making little things and sticking feet
on them, she'd go, Oh, that's lovely.
So she actually really supported
me in doing things like that.
Crochet.
You know, I did lots, made my own clothes,
did lots of those kinds of things and
actually would have been way more suited
to doing something creative than trying
to be an academic, which I really wasn't.
And now I think I fall between two stools
because the real academic horse world
doesn't think I'm academic enough and the
average rider thinks I'm too academic.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, it's always, I
think, a good sign if you're pissing
off both sides of the camp then it means
you're probably doing something wrong.
Okay, so one of the reasons I would
sort of go into this and start asking
you all these questions is because
obviously, you know, I think this is
You know, something a lot of young
people struggle with a lot, you know,
and, and when I say young people, we're
all the same young people that we always
were, and we're all the same lost eight
year old, and we're all the same, you
know, over anxious, wanting to please
three year old, and we're all, and
we're also the joyful child, and we're
also the curious kid and adolescent,
and we, I, we, I feel we always, we
carry all of our past selves with us.
And then we hit adulthood
and well, there they all are.
And so it's interesting to me that,
you know, without thinking for those
listeners who obviously you couldn't hear
our conversation before we hit record.
But, you know, Mary was saying, well, you
know, I'm not really, you know, am I that
qualified to talk about equine assisted?
And I was like, yeah, I think you
probably are, you know, and when you,
as soon as anybody begins to look up.
I think particularly in the horse world,
if you kind of had to battle your way into
it a little bit like you did, I did too.
There's usually a reason and the, it,
it's to do with the pursuit of a certain
kind of happiness and joy and freedom.
Which means that one's current
situation perhaps isn't that.
And so I think a lot of
people can relate to this.
And then there you are finding yourself
doing this youth work in Bristol.
Synchronicities aren't always.
Conscious.
One doesn't always recognize them.
But I would say that your work
has made life a lot better for a
lot of anxious, self questioning
riders who are feeling lost.
And I don't think you would have had
that empathy if you hadn't gone through.
Mary Wanless: Yes.
Something like you just described.
Rupert Isaacson: You would have
had no reason to do it, right?
Mary Wanless: You know, and
it's interesting the kids that
are born horse mad, isn't it?
I was one of them.
My family were appalled.
It was outside of their experience.
My father had a cousin, actually,
who was very horsey and lived her
life being a cook or a housekeeper
for some of the horsey known names,
actually, of that generation before me.
The family joke was you'll turn out like
Auntie Minor if you get around horses.
She was probably saner than the rest
of the family, but there you go.
But, you know, I just picked horses
out of picture books as a kid.
I just, we, we, we had a budgerigar, but
weren't really allowed animals otherwise.
I had a guinea pig.
You were
Rupert Isaacson: in North London, right?
Mary Wanless: No, I, I
grew up in West London.
I grew up out near Uxbridge, the end of
the Piccadilly and the Metropolitan line.
Okay,
Rupert Isaacson: well that's, back
then that was effectively countryside.
I mean,
Mary Wanless: it's It
was right on the edge.
You know, we had bikes,
we could go out in woods.
I mean, we had lots of breeding.
But
Rupert Isaacson: there
would have been horses
Mary Wanless: in fields around.
Sorry?
Rupert Isaacson: There would
have been horses in fields around
Mary Wanless: you.
There were horses in fields around
that I didn't get very near, but there
were horses in fields around, yes.
And I just love them.
And I mean, still do.
And the level of beauty and power
and grace and willingness to let us
play with them and be around them.
It still moves me to tears.
I mean, that's
Rupert Isaacson: miraculous.
I agree.
Mary Wanless: It's, it's phenomenal.
Had there been horsey
Rupert Isaacson: people back in the
day, even people, you know, previous
generations, people who'd been with
working horses perhaps, or drovers, or
because back then, you know, even when
I was a kid, in, in London, I grew up in
Islington, which is central north London.
There were a lot of horses around.
I mean, the Rag and Bone men were out.
Always with their horse and carts.
Handsome cab taxi drivers often kept
still horses in muses in inner London
and you'd see them out in the early
mornings exercising their horses.
A lot of riders on Hampstead
Heath it wasn't just Hyde Park.
You know, it's dwindled now
but there was it was around.
There were
Mary Wanless: ragged bow men that came
past our school and we'd always try
and look out the windows which were so
high you couldn't see out of them and a
friend and I had a diary of what horse
came past at what time on what day.
Rupert Isaacson: That clip clop
sound, the sound of freedom.
Yes.
Still to this day.
Okay, but as far as you know, you
didn't have someone in the ancestry who
Mary Wanless: As far as I
know, just my father's cousin
was the only horsey person.
I really don't know.
I don't think it would have
happened in my mother's family.
If it had happened, it would have been
my father's family, but I don't think so.
And I
Rupert Isaacson: presume you must
have begged for riding lessons.
Mary Wanless: I begged.
Believe me, I begged.
Rupert Isaacson: Deaf ears.
Mary Wanless: Deaf ears.
And it kind of, I was fortunate.
A friend moved.
She and I used to play horses on two
low brick walls that were the side
of her porch outside her front door.
And we made saddles and we made
bridles and we rode these things.
She then moved away to the country and
started riding and invited me to come
and stay and did I want to go riding?
And you bet I did.
So my parents capitulated
on that one and went, Oh my
goodness, you better have a hat.
And by the time I got the hat,
I'd kind of done the, the deal.
And the story always
was, we can't afford it.
And then I had a cousin who was
younger than me, who started having
lessons and clearly her family
had less money than my family.
So that argument wasn't
very sustainable any longer.
So I got to have writing
Rupert Isaacson: lessons.
Because as you know, now being a
career in horses, like with me, you
know, that if a kid shows up, who's
keen, most horsey people will go out
of their way to initiate them into
the cult, you know, it's, we horsey
people are a bit evangelical that way.
So money's almost never a barrier.
And, but what I do see so often, and I
can feel it in the heart of the little
girl that you were Is that crushing
of the dream and giving somebody the
message, Well, your dreams aren't
worthy and are also not attainable.
And then you either go like you did,
where you say, Well, they jolly well
are, I'm jolly well I am going to,
Somehow, someway, and it feeds the fire.
Or, quite often people Don't they give
up and I often think that's incredibly
sad one of the lines of work We do a
lot with the more dressage side of what
we do outside of the equine assisted
side is a lot of people who come To
riding late because they had had that
dream as kids and had to wait 40 years
to make some money to finally Do it
and that hurt little person is always
in there and I do think that that's
one of the real Benefits of your work
because I think by clarifying and making
accessible this complex business of
keeping a horse between you and the
ground in some sort of sense of harmony
which is usually so steeped in esoteric.
badly communicated also punitive
approaches you, you really do help.
I think people perhaps unwittingly,
I think you do help people.
A lot of people heal those old wounds.
Can you tell us now, talk to
us about ride with your mind.
Talk to us about, I want you to jump
forward to kind of your mid career.
Then I want you to dial back again and
talk about the evolution into that.
Mary Wanless: So in my mid career
I'd written a couple of books.
I was writing more books.
I was teaching courses here and there.
I'd got myself to Wiltshire by
that time and was able to use a big
competition centre there for my courses.
And after that got my own place,
but there was Winchwood before that.
And really it was born of,
people need to know this.
This needs to be known.
It needs to be known because it
makes explicit what is otherwise
implicit, can't be communicated.
If a talented writer can't
put words on what they do,
Rupert Isaacson: they cannot.
Mary Wanless: send that knowledge forward.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
They're not good teachers.
Usually they're
Mary Wanless: not good teachers and our
traditional vocabulary is not helpful.
And I just kept learning on the
job, you know, by riding and trying
to figure out my own body and what
was going on and by teaching and by
really asking people's questions.
You know, what did I say
that helped you the most?
How would you, if you had to teach this
to somebody, what would you tell them?
What was the difference
that made the difference?
And by that time I'd done a
psychotherapy training, I'd got
involved with neuro linguistic
programming, I had a training in that.
So I had a pretty good idea of how to
communicate in ways that were viable.
And I just kept putting one
foot in front of the other.
Loving teaching, loving
writing, loving writing.
Writing less so, writing's always
been the hardest of them in many ways.
And just walking a path of
following the next step.
thing that really drew my attention.
You know, in the reading I was doing and
what I was learning outside of horses that
then came back in to inform my coaching
and my understanding of people and horses.
Rupert Isaacson: What were the
biggest thing you mentioned
neuro linguistic programming, you
mentioned psychotherapy there.
Talk us through the things that
you learned outside of horses.
And then I'm going to go back through your
classical education with horses, which is.
quite impressive and I think will
be useful for people in terms
of types of mentor to look for.
Let's go first to the things outside
of horses that informed you being able
to communicate and teach well this
difficult esoteric thing called riding.
Mary Wanless: I think neurolinguistic
programming was probably
the most important of them.
Rupert Isaacson: Why did you learn it?
Mary Wanless: Because I've been,
I've been involved in psychotherapy
and decided to train as a therapist.
I didn't really think
I would be a therapist.
I'm not good at sitting still.
But I came intrigued by that
field and I found myself.
Why?
Rupert Isaacson: Because
of your early grief?
Losing your parents?
Yes,
Mary Wanless: I mean, I needed, I, when I
quit riding in despair, I went to London.
And I knew I needed to
get involved in therapy.
So my brother had done that.
My best friend had done that.
Rupert Isaacson: You needed it yourself.
Sorry?
You needed it yourself.
Mary Wanless: I needed something
to turn my life around.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Mary Wanless: I was just too
miserable too much at the time.
And got involved with this training.
And, and what would happen would
be there'd be a group of us.
Sitting around this room and our therapist
would do a demonstration with somebody
on something and then say pair up go
do it And everybody else will walk
off thinking looking like they thought
they knew how to do it And I was there
going I've no clue how she did that.
I haven't got the first clue am I the
only stupid one here and anyway, I kept
doing the training but It was really
through that kind of, I don't get this.
Am I in the stupid one?
And I literally picked up a book,
one of the NLP books in changes,
book shopping Camden town one day.
opened it to a page and it said, if you
want to learn how to do something, go
to somebody who struggled to learn it.
Don't go to somebody
who's the renowned expert.
And I went, this book is for
me, picked it up, read it,
got myself to an NLP seminar and
completed the psychotherapy program.
But then started going to NLP.
Rupert Isaacson: For those listeners
who don't know what NLP is, because
it used to be that everyone knew
what it is, and it's, it's not
quite as well known anymore.
Can you give us the nuts and bolts,
one, two, three, what is NLP?
Mary Wanless: So it's Richard
Bandler and John Grinder, when they
started off this, Richard Bandler was
trying to work out what made a few
renowned therapists so successful.
And he drew out patterns in how
they used language, how they talked.
how they heard other people.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Mary Wanless: And
came into understanding and being able
to teach some of the nuts and bolts of
that kind of process of thinking, how
we think, what thinking is made up of.
How to play with that kind of
thing to change how you feel.
Rupert Isaacson: Change the
inner language in your head.
Mary Wanless: Change the inner
language in your head, yes.
Also change your body to a degree.
Now, what I love about the times
we're in now is that embodiment is
really coming more into mainstream,
maybe not mainstream, but it's less.
I'd say
Rupert Isaacson: it is, yeah.
It's on its way there.
Yeah.
Mary Wanless: Yeah.
Yeah.
Embodiment is a term
that people have heard.
The, the whole thing I would
say with my riding life has been
about becoming more embodied.
How through horses and what I do, I
have become so much more embodied.
Rupert Isaacson: And let's assume
we have a listener now going, what's
embodied mean when it's at home?
Yes.
Mary Wanless: So what it means is, what is
Rupert Isaacson: that?
Mary Wanless: Able to really sense
your body to, if you feel something
emotionally to maybe able to track it
back to, Oh, it's a heaviness in my heart.
Oh, it's a tightness in my gut.
Yeah.
To realize that emotions come from
physical and biochemical states.
Candice Peart was a really
important writer in this.
field molecules of emotion by Candice
Pert was a really big book in this.
Rupert Isaacson: Candice who?
Mary Wanless: Pert P E R T.
Rupert Isaacson: Candice
Pert molecules of emotion.
It was a
Mary Wanless: book of
the possibly the 80s.
And Candice died rather young.
I mean, she was pretty crazy.
I actually met her.
She was pretty crazy and delightful.
But she did the science.
behind the neurochemicals and the lock and
key mechanism in cells, that when those
neurochemicals get in, that there is that
scientific background to what you would
then feel subjectively as an emotion.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Mary Wanless: So NLP doesn't work as
much with embodiment as I think people
deserve, and I think it adds something
extra to the NLP, tinkering around with
language and the images inside your
head, the things you say to yourself.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, most of
us talk to ourselves appallingly.
I mean, we, we, we don't talk to
ourselves like we talk to a friend.
Mary Wanless: No, we talk to
ourselves like our parents
talked to us when we were three.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, we
Mary Wanless: Stop that, don't do that,
you're stupid, what's wrong with you?
You know, it's sad but true, and I hope
is less in more recent generations.
I don't know that it is, but
it certainly was my growing up.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Mary Wanless: And I can remember being
on a horse one day after I'd given up
riding, gone to London, started teaching
again, and riding a horse for somebody.
And in my internal dialogue, I heard
myself say, I'm going to get this
horse going well if it kills me.
And then I went, what?
If it kills me, is it that important?
You know, and, and there were real turning
points in writing when I started to really
realise that there was this yatter on in
the background that really wasn't helpful.
And learn how to switch that off.
And now I have very little internal
dialogue, actually, whether
I'm writing or doing anything.
I don't talk to myself much at all.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
You said very glibly there, so I'm
just going to make you back up.
You said, until I learned how
to switch it off, now that is
a big thing to learn how to do.
I
Mary Wanless: can teach
people how to switch it off.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay,
so talk to us about that.
Mary Wanless: Okay.
How do you
Rupert Isaacson: switch off the
negative little voice in your head
that's telling you shit all the time?
Mary Wanless: Alright, so
there's lots of ways to do that.
One is, if you hear yourself, so you have
to kind of tune into it and listen to it.
If you hear yourself saying something
not helpful, to say to yourself,
next, and have the next thought
be something that is helpful.
That works really well in writing,
maybe it's more a writing strategy
than an everyday life strategy, but
you go, God, I ought to be able to
do this by now, what's wrong with
me, this is going so badly wrong.
Next, and the next thought could be
something like breathe, you know, and
then I have a whole list of things that
I might say to people that are little
bite size chunks of what makes it work.
So that would be one way.
Another way would be have the
voice speak to you with an accent.
Or sing to you in a way that makes
it less believable and serious.
So if it started to sing in opera, we
think you're a really stupid woman,
what on earth is wrong with you?
How come after all these years?
Or it could be Mickey Mouse.
Rupert Isaacson: It's
so funny you say that.
When I had to teach my son
Rowan how to drive, he was 16.
And you've got to understand
this was, he had been non verbal,
you know, severely autistic.
Okay, now doing amazingly
well, but still, you know.
I'm going to teach you how to
drive, you know, and I'm terrified.
He's terrified.
And I said to him, what, what can
I do to make this non stressful?
He said, do it in a silly accent.
This came from him,
Mary Wanless: right?
Rupert Isaacson: And so we cooked up
a variety of, I was kind of a redneck
teacher and I'd be like, well, we all
going to come down there Junction Zayas
and I want you to put yo's, yo's as a
Zayas on, on the road there and look
to the right Zayas and then the left
Zayas and that's real good and then I
would switch to Henry VIII my lord and
I was there in my liege and now we are
coming to indeed the traffic light and
as you know, it's going to be a little
push in the clutch and and it was good.
It totally worked.
It like took the, it came from him.
I mean, and we'd always played
around with this, obviously.
But it was genius.
So it's, yeah.
It's so interesting that you say that one
and do it in a silly accent, because it
does, it just takes all the strings out.
It just, it takes
Mary Wanless: the edge off, you know,
because so many people think that voice
in their head is God, you know, is,
knows everything, and it really isn't.
Rupert Isaacson: And
Mary Wanless: to demote it with a, by
singing it or with a silly accent is a
really great Now would you say that's
Rupert Isaacson: neuro linguistic,
would you say that's NLP?
Mary Wanless: That's, that's an NLP.
Did I get that originally from NLP?
Possibly.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Mary Wanless: Next didn't come from NLP.
That might have come from NLP.
Another one, I think this one did come
from NLP, is if you just maybe close your
eyes and listen to something that voice
might say, and notice where, whereabouts
inside your head does it come from?
Oh,
Rupert Isaacson: that's good.
Like, geographically, where in the hell?
Mary Wanless: Geographically, whereabouts.
So for me, if I did that, it would
be fairly far back on the left.
Rupert Isaacson: Mmm,
back in the limbic system there, yeah.
Okay,
Mary Wanless: and then if you
move that voice to the midline
Rupert Isaacson: Go on.
Mary Wanless: It's almost
certainly going to change.
Rupert Isaacson: Just trying it now.
It does.
It does, it changes.
I, I, I, I said to
myself, you silly bastard.
In my back left, and I
moved it to the midline,
and the word bastard went away.
That's interesting.
Silly spade, which is good, I like silly.
Mary Wanless: Yeah, it changes it
when you move it to the midline.
Rupert Isaacson: Interesting,
now why the midline?
Mary Wanless: Well it's where both brain
hemispheres maximally overlap, you know?
It's where we've got the porous colosum.
I can't tell you anything
more neurologically than that.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
But
Mary Wanless: there is, it seems
to work for everybody that the
voice either goes away or changes
Rupert Isaacson: and
Mary Wanless: you go to the midline.
And then I also have an exercise
that involves blowing up
balloons in a rather unusual way.
It's on YouTube.
And if you blow up, if you blow up
balloons in this way, you end up virtually
always with total quiet inside your head.
Rupert Isaacson: Can you be more specific?
Take us through this balloon thing.
Mary Wanless: When you blow up a
balloon normally, you put it in your
mouth to breathe into it, and you
take it out of your mouth, take the
next in breath, put it back in your
mouth and breathe into the balloon.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm hmm.
Mary Wanless: Okay?
In the version that we do, you
have to keep the balloon in your
mouth the whole time, and you're
not allowed to pinch it off.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm hmm.
Mary Wanless: Okay?
And you're not allowed to
stick your tongue in the hole.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Mary Wanless: So you have to breathe
in through your nose, and that
involves, you have to put your tongue,
the tip of your tongue up against
the roof of your mouth to block off.
the back of your mouth and your throat,
and then you blow into the balloon.
So as you do that, the pressure
in the balloon is getting bigger
and bigger with each in breath.
You need pretty big balloons.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Mary Wanless: And you have
to make sure the balloon does
not empty itself into you.
That means you have to have the same
pressure in your insides as the balloon.
So when you breathe into the balloon,
your internal pressure mustn't get less.
You've got to hold your ribs expanded.
Rupert Isaacson: You're doing
this as an imaginary exercise.
Mary Wanless: This is a real exercise.
We do it with real balloons.
Rupert Isaacson: You do
it with an actual balloon.
I was going to say because
Mary Wanless: it's
Rupert Isaacson: complex without one.
Okay, neurologically, what does this do?
Mary Wanless: That's a very good question,
and I don't really know the answer to
it, but that level of internal pressure
gets people quiet inside their head.
So in other words, blowing
up balloons like that is a
shortcut to learning to meditate.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay, so it's
circular pranic breathing, effectively,
without, but in a practical context.
Mary Wanless: In a practical context.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, that could,
now how did you end up with that one?
Mary Wanless: It actually didn't
originate with me, it originates with
a group called Postural Restoration.
The originator of that is a
physical therapist, they're
based, I think, in Wisconsin.
And Postural Restoration, they
came up with Blowing Up Balloons.
As a way of helping people increase the
pressure in their insides and breathe more
and maybe into one side of their ribs.
So there's a whole load there
that can really change the body.
Rupert Isaacson: Why did you find them?
I found
Mary Wanless: them through somebody
who is a physical therapist, trained
in their method, very experienced in
it, who came to my clinic with me.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Ah, right.
Mary Wanless: Actually,
I found it before then.
Somebody came on a clinic with
me who had somehow done it.
and showed it to me there.
And we were doing it for years.
And then I met somebody who was really
active as a physical therapist and a
practitioner of postural restoration.
And for anyone who only in the US
probably can get themselves access
to a physical therapist that does
this, it is a super way to work with
your body to become more functional.
Rupert Isaacson: So for dealing
with anxiety effectively.
Mary Wanless: That's not their main
aim, but that could be a good byproduct.
Their main aim is to get people
more symmetrical, breathing better,
spine more functional, out of pain,
able to do what they want to do.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Postural, postural
Mary Wanless: restoration,
Rupert Isaacson: restoration.
Thank you.
I learned a lot doing these
podcasts as you can imagine.
Mary Wanless: Yes.
Rupert Isaacson: If you're in the
equine assisted field, or if you're
considering a career in the equine
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We work in the saddle
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Helping them create oxytocin in their
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It works incredibly well.
It's now in about 40 countries.
Check it out.
If you're working without horses,
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Finally, we have taquine
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If you know anything about our
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So, this means we need to train
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And it also ends your time conflict,
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am I going to condition my horses and
maintain them and give them what they
need, as well as Serving my clients.
Takine equine integration aimed
at a more adult client base
absolutely gives you this.
What I love is that you
learn from your students.
For me, this is a massive thing.
I'm always learning as much, if not
more, from anyone I'm working with.
And I think in our, particularly
with writing, so often the
power dynamic is toxic.
Similarly, honestly, in therapy,
it can be, you know, I'm God,
I'm imparting wisdom to you.
And it just isn't.
Optimal?
Yes.
Ah.
It
Mary Wanless: is, it is vital to the
skills I have and what I know now, that
they were developed in concert with
the people in writing arenas with me.
You know, the questions, the questioning,
what did I say that helped the most?
How would you explain this?
What was the difference
that made the difference?
So your
Rupert Isaacson: students are
your mentors to some degree?
My
Mary Wanless: students are my mentors,
yes, and you know, the, the cutting
out the feedback loop from the student.
Yes.
back to the teacher is lethal.
And it is writing's tradition.
You know, I stand in front
of you and you do what I say.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, it
comes out of the military.
So yes, it
Mary Wanless: comes out of the military.
And the most extreme modern day
example I heard was of somebody, a
very well known coach in a different
country who used to coach sitting
in the gallery with a headset that
allowed him to talk to the student, but
didn't allow the student to talk back.
Yeah,
Rupert Isaacson: that's
Mary Wanless: the
ultimate isn't it in I was
Rupert Isaacson: attending a dressage
seminar not so long ago with a very
very well known person and Hearing that
person say things in that mock jokey
way that isn't jokey It's actually
shaming but you're now not allowed to
come back and say hey, dude, that it's
not nice because oh, no It's a joke.
That was disgusting that that
transition was disgusting like wow You
know, how much you paying to be told
that, you know, how useful is that?
As you say,
Mary Wanless: useful information
being given about how to do it better.
Rupert Isaacson: Indeed.
You, in your,
Mary Wanless: actually, can
I say something else too?
So whilst tradition cuts out the
feedback loop from the student to
the teacher, it also largely cuts
out the feedback loop from the horse.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, that's true too.
Mary Wanless: So, so a lot of what
I do is amplify that feedback loop.
Like I'm, I talk to it sometimes, like
if you wanted to become a wine taster,
you'd need labels on the bottles because
you'd need to know this is a Chardonnay.
This is a Riesling.
This is this country.
This is America.
And this is New Zealand.
This is 2000 and whatever.
Yeah.
Somebody's got to put
labels on the bottles.
Rupert Isaacson: It's
Mary Wanless: kind of like that with what
the rider's feeling there on the horse.
This isn't worth going for.
This is not a great feeling.
Do a bit more of that.
You're getting closer.
That's it.
Go for that.
Okay.
Now you just hit it.
That's what you want.
So we're playing hotter, colder on
going for a feeling and really trying
to get the rider getting to know what
to do through the horse's feedback.
Rupert Isaacson: Right,
Mary Wanless: but if you're just a rider
going, okay, my horse must do this.
He needs to learn this I need to
show him how to this come on horse.
You're not doing it.
Rupert Isaacson: You're dominant.
So there's no
Mary Wanless: feedback.
Rupert Isaacson: No, absolutely
Mary Wanless: Take away either of those
feedback loops and you have a very
unhelpful Potentially cruel system
Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely cruel to
everybody and of course with the military
cruelty is built in because you actually
need it if you're training people to
go and be desensitized to dying in
cavalry charges screaming at them and
making them fall off, you could argue.
Is useful, but hopefully that's not what
we're trying to do anymore, but it's what
we've inherited you mentioned in what
you didn't mention I read in your bio.
This also intrigued me and I want to
go into your equestrian mentors in a
minute and I also want to go back to this
profound despair that we Almost hit on
and then went away from but in your bio
talking about other methodologies that
have helped you I noticed Feldenkrais was
in there and it's interesting how often
this comes up I also like it because
when chat GPT tries to do something
with it for our subtitling It always
comes back with failed in Christ, which
Mary Wanless: That's
Rupert Isaacson: something
Mary Wanless: rather
Rupert Isaacson: You know you Like me
know the great Linda Tellington Jones
and for those listeners who don't know
her tune into our podcasts with her
She has a lot of amazing insights.
She also Learned and took a lot from
Feldenkrais talk to us a little bit
about that because a lot of people
don't know about Feldenkrais and how
that's actually influence so many
modalities that a lot of people use in,
inside the equestrian world and out.
How was it for you?
How did you discover
it and what's it given
Mary Wanless: you?
I discovered the Feldenkrais
when I went to America.
So, I gave up, I went to London and
a year later My very good friend from
university, we had danced a lot together.
She said, why don't you come with me?
I want to do the San Francisco dancers
workshop, which we did for three months.
And it's not exactly dance
therapy, but it's, it's a lot about
unstructured dance, using dance to.
Dance your life story, you
know, whatever it may be.
And we had a Feldenkrais
teacher on the staff there.
So we were doing a Feldenkrais
awareness through movement
lessons a couple of times a week.
And, you know, I think a lot of my
problems as a rider stemmed from just so
much fight or flight energy being covered
over by the give up collapse energy.
You know, I was not body aware.
I was not very functional.
And this was a very good
inroad into body work.
And I've got friends who
are Feldenkrais teachers.
One of my friends described it, I think,
rather well as almost like, you'll
take a movement and tinker with it.
You know, much as you might tinker
with something if you can't get a
key to turn on a lock, just little
movements that tinker with it.
And in the tinkering with
it, you will find other ways
than your habitual pattern.
And Feldenkrais is based a lot
on getting people doing non
habitual movement and therefore
increasing your movement vocabulary.
And once you start doing stuff
in performance and non stylized
dance, you start to realize
that your movement vocabulary is
actually really quite limited.
You know, 30 seconds is
a long time in dance.
It really is.
So
getting to be able to do
things in different ways.
I, there's a lovely quote in a book
I don't know if it's still in print,
Denise McGluggage, The Scented
Skier, one of my favorite quotes,
she talks about breaking up clods of
habitual movement, like a gardener
breaks up clods of earth with a hoe.
That's what Feldenkrais does, it
breaks up clods of habitual movement.
And you know, we've all
got our habit patterns and.
Sometimes I think of it
like, the, that neurological
connection would be like buses.
Buses only go on certain routes, you know?
The 128 takes a certain route
and that's all it ever does.
Backwards and forwards on that route.
But Feldenkrais would be like, you've
got taxis, you've got many more
ways, many more minute adjustments.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
And as a
Mary Wanless: rider, you, you want really
fine body control of your pelvic area.
You know, that is so badly represented
in the brain compared to your hands.
No wonder we want to do
everything with our hands.
Rupert Isaacson: There's so
Mary Wanless: much neurology
between your hands and your brain
and so little neurology between
your pelvis and your brain.
And so learning to develop that
neurology and that awareness.
is a big part of it.
So I met Feldenkrais in America,
came back, discovered there were
two Feldenkrais lessons in, two
Feldenkrais teachers in London.
And this was then in the early
eighties and started having lessons.
And I've done a lot of different
body work and Feldenkrais has
been one of the most helpful.
They do one on one sessions, but the class
sessions, the awareness through movement
sessions, make it affordable for anybody.
There are lots of.
lessons on the internet, some pay for some
free put out by the Throne Christ Guild.
So it's something anybody can access.
And it's really helpful.
Rupert Isaacson: One of the things
I love about it is that it really
emphasises also subtle movement that
Mary Wanless: you can
Rupert Isaacson: find.
So much variation in really, really
small variations, you know, and then
what those do neurologically Now
with the work that we've done we sort
of have to know this so it helps to
create what's called BDNF Which is a
brain derived neurotrophic factor the
protein in the brain that becomes a stem
cell that then becomes a neuron which
fires when you move and problem solve
Which is why we have optimal cognitive
function when we have a novel movement.
Because we're hunter gatherers and
that's what it requires to be on high
alert when you're gathering wild foods
or hunting wild animals because they're
dangerous activities, variety of reasons.
And one needs really sharp focus.
And of course, as you say, you know,
modern life, sedentary life, but also
just modern life, repetitive life, we
tend to get into these repetitive forms
of movement because actually they're
functional in terms of earning money
and that sort of thing because we have
a job and we move in this way for this
job and we walk to the job to go that
way or we travel to the job in this
way and in school we're told to move in
this way or that and then we're robbed.
Yeah, we become very
Mary Wanless: limited in our
movements and our body perception.
Rupert Isaacson: Right,
and we don't play anymore.
So dance, of course, is a form of play.
And this intrigues me because if
you had a shaming mum who's not a
barrel of laughs Christian scientist,
where did dance come into this?
Mary Wanless: There was a ballet
school in Ickenham where I grew up.
Lovely ballet teacher.
My ballet teacher was one of the
lovely adults of my childhood.
And so I think most little girls in,
in Econome went to that ballet school.
Rupert Isaacson: But if dance, if
dance wasn't, you know, a feature of
Christian science and partying, why were
you allowed to go to a dance school?
Mary Wanless: That's a good question.
I think ballet is traditional
enough and classical enough.
that it passed muster and disciplined
enough that it passed muster.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Okay.
There was enough suffering involved
that it was There was enough
Mary Wanless: suffering
involved, I think, yes.
Only it turned out that it was
a teacher where there was very
little suffering involved.
But I think, I think it could have
been that there was enough suffering
involved that made the grade.
Rupert Isaacson: It's so interesting that
this whole thing that things are only Only
worth doing if there's suffering involved.
And of course, that's the equestrian
tradition we've inherited.
Mary Wanless: Indeed, yes, if my
mother had known how much suffering
was going to be involved in my writing,
she might have been all for it.
She'd
Rupert Isaacson: have
subsidized it completely.
That's hilarious.
Let's go back to this.
This despair that made you give up riding.
Okay, talk us through that process,
that period, because I think, I think
many of us have been through that.
And of course this could
be in any walk of life.
Mary Wanless: Yes.
Rupert Isaacson: How did it
hit you with the thing that you
love the most in life, and why?
Mary Wanless: So I, you know, after
university and, and That year where
I didn't do the post grad teacher
training, I went full time into horses
and ran a yard and struggled with
my intermediate instructor's exam.
I failed that four times
before I passed it.
At that time, you had to pass every module
on the same day, which I then changed.
What was the block?
Rupert Isaacson: What was the thing?
Was there something you
failed at each time?
Mary Wanless: I think first of
all, I failed the flatwork and
the jumping, and then I failed
the jumping, and then I failed the
flatwork, and then I passed all of it.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Mary Wanless: And I wanted to take my
eye, you know, so I was sort of ambitious,
like I wanted to get these exams and
I knew I wasn't a talented writer.
And I ended up working for somebody
nobody's ever heard of, but he was one
of the few continentally trained dressage
writers in the UK in the mid 1970s.
His name was Dan Aharoni.
He was originally Israeli.
And
Rupert Isaacson: was that just by fluke
that you ended up working for him?
Mary Wanless: He advertised,
I think, in Horse and Hound.
I'd been being a working student for Mrs.
Sturrock, who was one of the
fellows of the British Horse Society
and renowned for being good at
getting people through their exams.
I'd been working for her.
I'd been eventing in
that job and previously.
And when this job came up, I thought,
Oh, maybe I should apply to that.
And Mrs.
Sturrock said, This
guy's really good news.
Go do it.
So I got that job.
And it was kind of funny because in
the interview, I rode Dan's horse and
at one point I did a half hold and I
knew it was it, yeah, did that on that
horse, complete fluke, quite possibly
got the job on the back of that, I
don't know, didn't do another one
in the whole two years I was there.
It was the second one I'd ever done.
I did one when I was a
student when we, we went.
before a competition, a couple of
us, and had a lesson at Fulmer Riding
School, which was owned by Robert
Hall, who'd been to the Spanish school,
and going round a corner on the right
rein at the end of the short side on a
grey horse called Balego, it happened.
And I knew that was it.
Yeah.
Didn't happen again until
that job interview, which was
probably about four years later.
Didn't happen again for, I can't
tell you how long until I got where
I could kind of knock those out.
I can knock those out now, but.
and have been for a large number of years.
But anyway, so I got that job and it
was clear to me immediately that he
had a level of skill I had not seen.
And he taught me a lot on the lunge.
And I had what should have been
a brilliant learning opportunity.
You know, he would lunge me This
doesn't sound like a road to despair
Rupert Isaacson: here.
Mary Wanless: Sorry?
Rupert Isaacson: This does not
sound like a road to despair.
Mary Wanless: No, it wasn't
despair at that point.
But during that time, it kind of
was that he said the same things.
And guess what?
He said them louder.
In response to which I did the
same things, and guess what?
I did them harder.
And so we kind of were like
ships that passed in the night.
You know, so it was a double whammy.
He showed me what a really good rider
could do, but he couldn't teach me to do
Rupert Isaacson: couldn't communicate it.
Yeah.
Mary Wanless: So I learned a lot.
Rupert Isaacson: So you learned
what you couldn't do, basically.
I learned
Mary Wanless: what I couldn't do.
And a lot of horses came into our
yard, you know, and I saw these ugly
ducklings get transformed into swans.
And basically, I couldn't do it.
Now, while I was there, I did pass my I.
Fortunately, that was a lot less
traumatic than the intermediate.
So, I did pass that while I was there.
I was very scared I would fail
the jumping because I wasn't
really jumping at that point.
I gave up inventing to sit at
the feet of the great master.
And it was two years into that
where it became really clear
that he was losing faith in me.
He was teaching me less.
I was losing faith in myself and I
actually went, I had two weeks off
and I went to Greece on a holiday for
young singles and while I was there,
I thought, I have to stop doing this.
I can't do this any longer.
And it was me going, this
is the end of my dream.
And I did sell my horse and I
quit and I went to live in London.
Rupert Isaacson: And how long
did that period of despair last?
Mary Wanless: So I worked
for that guy for two years.
Rupert Isaacson: But then the period
after that, you've sold the horse, you're
in London, you don't think I sold the
Mary Wanless: horse, I was
in London, I got involved in
psychotherapy pretty quickly.
The trips to San Francisco
and the dancers workshop.
That was also really important.
It showed me that I, I, that there was
a really serious approach to the body.
Rupert Isaacson: Learning
Mary Wanless: about the body.
When I was in America, I read, I
think the first of Timothy Galway's
books, The Inner Game of Tennis.
And I started reading some of the early
books on visualisation and healing.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
Mary Wanless: Right?
So those books I found in the US possibly
before I would have found them in the UK.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm hmm.
Especially if you're
in Northern California.
Yeah.
Mary Wanless: Yes.
And by then I'd, I got back into writing
again, I'd gone to London, I didn't
write or teach for about six months,
and then I got talked into it, and I
started with a really blank slate of
a beginner's mind, and went to the
dancer's workshop, discovered a few
things just in the early days of starting
again that were really biomechanics.
It's absolutely crucial that I
hadn't understood or been doing.
And while I was in America, I went, okay,
I'm not just an eccentric writing teacher.
There's really something in this.
And at some point I'm
going to write a book.
Rupert Isaacson: Why at that stage,
did you feel ready to, or did you
feel the book bubbling inside you?
Because I'm sure at that stage, you
were still with a lot of questions and
Mary Wanless: I had lots of
questions, but essentially When I
started riding again after I'd given
up, I discovered core strength.
Now I called it bearing down and still do,
but I discovered how to switch on my core.
And I discovered that on a horse I was
riding for somebody that jogged a lot.
And most of the time it would jog and
I would pull on the reins and it would
pull on the reins and it kept jogging.
And then every now and again
I could stop it jogging but
I didn't know what I'd done.
And when it happened it was,
you know, it was like that.
It was in a moment.
Rupert Isaacson: And if you were to put
that into a few short words now, what
did you do that stopped it jogging?
Mary Wanless: I caught up to the balance
point rather than being behind it.
Essentially being the water
skier to the horse's motorboat.
Rupert Isaacson: I
Mary Wanless: caught up to the balance
point and I found how to activate my core.
Rupert Isaacson: How did
you activate your core?
Mary Wanless: Well the simple way to
answer that is to say if you clear your
throat and just go and put your hands
on your abdominals while you do it,
you will be feeling and doing what good
riders do when they use their core.
Rupert Isaacson: And one of the
things that does is increase the
Mary Wanless: pressure in your
insides, which is why the balloon
blowing exercise is so useful.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Mary Wanless: And that was just one
piece, but it's the pivotal piece.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
You're not
Mary Wanless: doing that, and you're
riding and pulling on the reins, and
most people are sucking their stomach
in at that point, and you're going
to be the victim of what happens.
You will not be able to be proactive.
You will always be reactive.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
It's
Mary Wanless: very interesting.
So I've turned it round.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
So, yeah, it, because core is
such a, particularly in riding,
it's such a esoteric, you know,
people throw that word out there.
Mary Wanless: They do.
Rupert Isaacson: Without
saying what it is.
Mary Wanless: Yes, we
teach people to do it.
Rupert Isaacson: In your Okay, so
listeners, Mary Wondless is going
to tell you what is your core.
What is your core?
What is the rider's core, Mary?
Mary Wanless: Alright, well
there are two versions of that.
You've got the Pilates version
of the core, which is the layers
of muscle around your torso, from
your spine round to your front.
Especially the deep layers of muscle.
Now I think of the core a little
differently, but I wouldn't have
thought of it in the way I think of
it now, when I learned how to do that.
So now I would think of the core, like
if you cut an apple in half from the
end with the stalk to the end with
the little thing on it, what you see
is a line and then it bulges out.
And then the line continues
to the other end of the anvil.
Rupert Isaacson: So
Mary Wanless: my version of the core now
would be it starts under your feet, under
your instep, goes through deep muscles
of your calf, the inside muscles of your
thigh, your pelvic floor, through your
organs, up to the, the psoas muscles.
and also the slings and bags and
sacks that contain your organs.
Psoas muscles take you to diaphragm
and QL and up through the trachea
and your lungs and so on into your
neck, your throat and your tongue.
Your
Rupert Isaacson: tongue, interesting.
Mary Wanless: Yes.
Rupert Isaacson: Does jaw,
jaw come into this as well?
Mary Wanless: Not really.
Okay.
No, not TMJ, but tongue.
And, and also to agree chin
and roof of your mouth.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
So yeah, up through the palate.
Mary Wanless: So, so that would be
Tom Myers definition of the core.
And he's a guy who's written a book
called Anatomy Trains, which is about to
come out in its fourth edition, I think.
And what Tom has done for understandings
of how muscle and connective
tissue work in chains is fabulous.
Rupert Isaacson: Tom who?
Mary Wanless: Myers.
M Y E R
Rupert Isaacson: S.
M Y E R S.
Yes,
Mary Wanless: Tom Myers.
Rupert Isaacson: Tom Myers.
So what you've described really is the
inside of a taurine structure, right?
You know, we're all taurine structures,
meaning we've got, you know, a hole
here, we've got a hole at the other end,
and there's something in between, and
basically we get through life by passing
one to the other and That's what we do.
But that's a complex, simple
concept, complex process.
As you say, many chains of muscles.
Mary Wanless: But it is possible to learn
to really feel those chains of muscles.
How does it come on in
a really helpful way?
But when I first stopped that horse
jogging, it was just much more
about my abdominals and my internal
pressure within the abdominal cavity.
Rupert Isaacson: What did you
do within that abdominal cavity
that stopped the jogging?
Mary Wanless: Or as if I had done that.
I didn't do that, but I just hit
on being on the right balance point
with enough internal pressure and
was able to get my seat bones, as it
were, to not be moved by the horse.
But to take on the slower
movements of walk and therefore
walk the horse underneath me.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
That process
is of course dependent
on a certain amount of
rider experience.
You've got to feel pretty
comfortable up there.
It's got, it's dependent on a
certain amount of physical fitness.
Not crazy, but a certain
amount and strength.
And it's also dependent on, as you
say, a certain amount of physical
cognition, given that most of us are
not brought up to be that embodied, as
you say, that to be that in awareness
of, of our bodies, those three things.
Let's say you now take a, what we
call in Germany, a Wieder Einsteiger,
so a, you know, a late rider, late
comer to rider, or someone who rode
in youth and then took a break and
is coming back, which is often.
Is now perhaps out of
touch with their body.
Maybe they're not in great shape.
They're certainly nervous up there.
Worried about falling.
And are going to be at the
mercy of the horse's movement.
What would be the one, two, three
over a certain period of time where
you could bring them to that kind
of awareness where they could access
that call in that ahem ahem way
and actually make it work for them?
Mary Wanless: If you're talking
about somebody who has some riding
experience, they might not be very fit.
They may not have ridden for a few years.
I would say in lesson one,
they will pretty certainly
get a glimpse of this working.
They won't be strong in it.
They won't be able to hold it.
Learning to do that and breathe at
the same time is the critical thing.
And it's part of what balloon bleeding
teaches as well as that quiet mind.
And so I would say in, in lesson one,
people start to get an inkling of this.
If you're talking a total beginner,
we would still probably early on in
lesson one, introduce the concept.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay, so at least
intellectually they know it exists.
Mary Wanless: Yeah.
Yes.
And working in walk and walk halts
is where people begin to get it.
Right.
And if they've got a difficult horse
that really has spent its life pulling
on the rein and going which encourages
the rider to pull back and lean
back and press in their feet and do
all the wrong things, then it's not
going to be as smooth and easy as if
you've got a horse that will stop.
If you do the right thing.
I mean, all horses will stop if
you do the right thing, but you may
need to be righter than right on a
horse that where you've got to go.
Sorry, honey, we're retraining
how you think about the bit.
I know you thought it was for leaning
on, but it's for something different.
Yeah.
So you don't really want to be doing
your first lessons with somebody
in that situation, but sometimes
that's the horse they arrive on.
And that's what you're doing.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, no, I got it.
I mean, that's why I'm a great
believer in putting people on good
school master horses and creating
those horses for your students.
If, if you can.
One of the, one of the other things I
know about your methods, which I really
believe in, is giving people stuff
to do when they're not on the horse.
Absolutely.
I do half my teaching, I'd
say, is not with a pony.
It's just with the monkey.
And if you're getting certain muscle
memories, whether it's for in hand
work or whether it's for ridden work,
so that when you're presented with
the pony, either at your side or
underneath your butt, you can access.
These muscle memories talk to us about
what are your main go tos with this?
Mary Wanless: Gosh with dismounted work.
Well, we there's lots of dismounted.
Well, I mean dismounted
Rupert Isaacson: without a horse
Mary Wanless: Without a horse.
Rupert Isaacson: Non pony involvement.
Mary Wanless: So the, the real
origin of this was, I believe
it was 1982, I'd arrived in
London it was a horrible winter.
Everywhere was frozen.
I got good at giving lessons
in walk on frozen arenas.
My ability to pay my rent was on the line.
Right.
And after that winter I thought
I need something up my sleeve
in case this happens again.
And I invented the idea that one
group of clients in South London,
somebody had a big house, we'd use
her big house, her sitting room.
Group of clients in North London,
somebody else had a big house.
And then we do a series
of winter workshops on a
Tuesday evening or whatever.
Rupert Isaacson: The arena
is the living room, right?
Mary Wanless: Yeah.
And so I set that up and people
bought it and it was all great.
And then I thought, shit,
what am I going to do?
So I had to come up with
some exercises and I
one of them was, you know, just
sitting in chairs and bearing down and.
We didn't have balloon breathing there,
but did a whole load with breathing
and body awareness and noticing.
And I had some sort of martial arts ish
exercises and some Feldenkrais exercises,
and I taught mental rehearsal as well.
And I put together these workshops.
And that was the beginning of the
dismounted element of this work.
It came out of adversity, as so much does.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Mary Wanless: And I've just kept
added to dismounted exercises.
There's so much you can do driving
your car, you know, sitting
on two seat bones, pushing.
If anybody pulls on the steering wheel
driving their car, I will guarantee
you they're going to be someone
that pulls on the reins, you know,
push on the steering wheel, learn
to bear down, bear down and breathe.
Notice what's happening in your mid back.
You know, if you're a woman,
it's probably push your mid back
back into the seat of the chair.
Most women are hollow backed.
Not everyone, but most.
And there's so much you can practice
off horse that feeds into on horse.
And you can also do exercises that are
ahead of where you are in your riding
to prepare you for where you're going.
Rupert Isaacson: I so agree.
I so agree.
Mary Wanless: It's so valuable.
Rupert Isaacson: It's fun.
It's, it's, it's Often I think the key
between success and failure for riders,
because as soon as you add the pony,
it gets complicated for the monkey.
Mary Wanless: Yes.
Rupert Isaacson: Cap if we can simplify
things down, take away that pressure, take
away that fear, take away the judgment,
take away the lot, and just say, this is
just having a bit of fun with this thing.
But so few, so few writing
instructors think this way.
Mary Wanless: Yes, but they also wouldn't
know what exercises to break it down into.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
Mary Wanless: But the
value of it is enormous.
Rupert Isaacson: I, I so agree.
I couldn't agree more.
Okay, you sold me.
I'm coming on your next course.
All right.
So let's talk about mentors.
So when I was having to go down my
dressage path and my, it was because
of autism and because of finding
that working collection with a child.
In front of me or not, that the
collection was the key and then what
I found out from neuroscientists
are the collection rocks your hips.
In this particular way, if it's soft,
that's oxytocin, that's what's calming
down the nervous system, that's
what's opening up the communication.
Because oxytocin's not
just a feel good hormone.
It's Hormone of Communication and,
oh gosh, okay, so now I need to learn
more about this collection thing.
Not a dressage rider coming in
in my 40s, you know, oh shit,
I've got to learn this thing.
Going and talking to all the dressage
people say, Oh, well, it takes 500
years to learn this and it's not really
possible anyway and someone like you
probably can't wear it and it's really
just for a higher priesthood, am I?
It's got to be possible.
What
Mary Wanless: country
were you in at that point?
Rupert Isaacson: Many I've always been
but between the UK and America mostly.
And so then of course I tried dressage
lessons and ran into the same wall.
Everyone runs into of, you know, utter
confusion on and realizing that the
horses actually didn't know how to do
it and that they were putting me on.
So it was all a moot point anyway.
And then I, then I started asking, I asked
a few Professionals who I really trusted.
What would you do in my shoes?
And interestingly, I got the
same answer from three of
them, which is go to Portugal.
And I said, why there?
And they said, because it's the last
place left where they still produce the
dressage horse with the original purpose.
And I said, well, what's that?
And they said, war.
And I said, but they're
not at war with anyone.
They said, no Rupert, it's the bullfight.
Portuguese bullfight almost
entirely on horseback.
You're not trying to kill the
bull, you're dancing around it.
If there's any hesitation between horse
and rider, they're dead in 10 seconds.
So they train all their riders on
schoolmaster horses from day one.
And they train the horses to
know everything on the ground
before they put the rider on.
I'm like, that makes perfect sense to me.
So I went down there, found it was true.
And then, of course, being on these
schoolmaster horses, I kept hearing
this name, Valencia, Valencia, Valencia.
And through that family, of course,
Nuno Olivera, who created that family,
and then since then, through all the
you know, journey that I've had to do
with this, the other great mentors of
that age coming up, such as Egon von
Neindorf, and so on and so on, and you
have had a really similar trajectory,
which I find massively interesting.
And because you were, I think,
Half a generation back or so,
you got to ride with some of the
people that produced my mentors.
You know, who produced Luis Valenza,
Von Neindorf, who produced a lot
of the best riders here in Germany.
Can you talk to us about
how you found them?
Because back then, there
wasn't an internet.
And, Dressage in the UK, I remember
growing up in the Humpfield in
Leicestershire, people mistrusted
anything that was European.
The hangover from World War
II was still very strong.
We don't like what they
do over there, you know.
There was kind of a bit of that attitude.
So to find your way into that
world was not easy back then.
How did you do that?
That's a great question.
Yeah, talk us through it.
Mary Wanless: So, Dan, my
teacher who drove me to giving
up, he had ridden with Nuno
Rupert Isaacson: Oliveira,
Mary Wanless: and then had what
was going to be his horse for the
Olympics, who subsequently went
lame, with Egon von Leindorff.
So I knew those names, and Were you
Rupert Isaacson: aware of those names
before you went to work for Dan?
Or did he introduce No, I
Mary Wanless: don't think so.
I might have been aware of Nuno.
I wasn't aware of Egon von Leindorff,
but I was aware of Nuno Oliveira.
I think, I don't know when his
first book came into English.
That would be an interesting
one to know, but I think it was
probably the 70s, early 70s.
Rupert Isaacson: I would say the
early 70s probably, yeah, but even
then only a fraction of the English
writing public would have read them.
Yeah,
Mary Wanless: well I had, so there was J.
A.
Allen, the bookshop in London.
I remember J.
A.
Allen.
I used to hang out in there.
Rupert Isaacson: Me too.
Mary Wanless: And I think I probably found
my first New Law of Error book in there.
Rupert Isaacson: Ah,
that would make sense.
Mary Wanless: I also found another
really important book by somebody Polish,
I think, that was older than that.
That gave me some really good clues.
I can't remember the name of the guy.
Not Podjasky.
Sorry?
Rupert Isaacson: Not Podjasky at the,
Mary Wanless: No, no, no,
Rupert Isaacson: no.
Mary Wanless: So, I'd given up.
I'd gone to London.
I was coaching again.
I'd done the San Francisco
Dancers Workshop.
You know, I was trying to get my head
around What writing really was and
somehow I got an address for Nuna Olivera.
I don't know how I got the
address, who I got it through,
Rupert Isaacson: but
Mary Wanless: somehow I did and I wrote
and I said, I would like to come and
his daughter, I believe, worked as
his secretary and spoke good enough
English and wrote good enough English.
So I had a booking, you know, I made
a booking and went for two weeks.
Rupert Isaacson: That must
have been pretty life changing.
Mary Wanless: Sorry?
Rupert Isaacson: That must
have been pretty life changing.
Mary Wanless: It was
it was a funny journey.
It didn't go brilliantly well.
On the day one, I rode the horse
at the back of the ride, and
it really shook its head a lot.
And I thought this, it was, maybe
it was a head shaker, you know,
it was a bit pathological and
I kind of dealt okay with that.
And Nuno asked about my background and I
talked about Dan and he remembered Dan.
Then the next day I rode the horse
that was back but one of the ride.
And as we walked up the hill to the
riding arena, it was clear to me that
this horse was very old and pretty cronky.
And my spirits just went,
Oh, I've graduated on to.
The really old decrepit one.
And I didn't do such a
great job on that horse.
And at that point I was really hopeless
at the lateral work, which was one
reason why I wanted to go there.
Cause I knew it would be lateral
work, lateral work and natural
work in walk and trot and,
and after that, I didn't do terribly well,
and then we all got invited along with,
you know, I guess to go to the school in.
Is it Ericeira?
Where there's a Portuguese,
maybe military school still.
Rupert Isaacson: In Mafra.
Mary Wanless: Mafra.
It was in Mafra.
We all got to go to Mafra.
And the horse I rode, we all rode.
And then I was in my familiar
territory on some five year old A&
R the horse, you know, and everybody
said to me, Oh, you got the nice one.
You got the And I just kind of
went, don't think that's true.
But I knew what to do up here.
And so that went really well.
But the rest of the time I was
struggling and I didn't feel I got
told anything that was very helpful.
And actually got more help from
Rupert Isaacson: Joao,
Mary Wanless: I would say I got
more help from Joao Nuno's son
than I did from Nuno himself.
But somewhere there, did I
hear the name LuÃs Valencia?
I'm not sure.
But next time I went to Portugal,
I'd found out the right address for
Luis and I wrote and I was able to
make a booking and I went there.
And over the next few years, I probably
spent over three months in Portugal.
Went quite a number of times.
Yeah.
Luis was delightful.
Rupert Isaacson: Yes, he is.
Yeah.
Mary Wanless: And as long as
you could uncode four languages.
So I think one of the frequently,
I remember the sentence shortened
the escudos and Wechslen are gauche.
Yes.
Escudos being Portuguese, Wechslen
being German and gauche being French.
Yes.
You
Rupert Isaacson: know, shortened
Mary Wanless: the being English.
Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
If you're a horse nerd, and if you're on
this podcast, I'm guessing you are, then
you've probably also always wondered a
little bit about the old master system.
of dressage training.
If you go and check out our Helios Harmony
program, we outline there step by step
exactly how to train your horse from
the ground to become the dressage horse
of your dreams in a way that absolutely
serves the physical, mental and emotional
well being of the horse and the rider.
Intrigued?
Like to know more?
Go to our website, Helios Harmony.
Check out the free introduction course.
Take it from there.
Mary Wanless: So if you
could decode four languages.
You could kind of get some help
and, and we did work on the
ground too, which was great.
And, and I felt like I got to ride some
nice horses, some interesting horses.
I remember one day, I think they were
desperate for horses and I got to ride
the horse that was the Capriol horse.
And I knew this thing hadn't been out
of its stable for quite a few days.
So I'm thinking, okay, here we go.
Back to the eventing days.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
Yep.
Mary Wanless: And it grabbed the
right rein like there's no tomorrow.
And I managed, during the course
of the thing, to kind of undo
that and get it a lot straighter.
And I can remember all the young
guys there going, Merida de Capriola!
Merida de Capriola!
I thought, oh God, this is good, isn't it?
And then we got to Piaf.
And we got to Piaf, and the horse stood
up on its back legs, and I did what
English people did, which was lean
forward and put my hands round its neck.
And it came back down again, and
Louis looked me in the eye and said,
I think we know Capriole today.
Rupert Isaacson: He's a sweet man.
Mary Wanless: He's a very sweet man.
So I felt like I was kind of working
things out, getting to learn the work
on the ground, working things out from
the horses, getting a few helpful hints.
And that's about as good as it ever got.
Yeah.
With Egon von Neindorf when I went
there, I spoke no German, he spoke
no English, but he was charming.
I tried to collect Jawohl Frau Mary.
That was my, that was when I
realized what I had to do was
try and collect Yavor Fraumeri.
My verse, my, there were maybe
four of us in the arena at a time.
And my worst moment was when he told
everybody to halt and I didn't understand
and I'm riding a stallion and it sort
of marches its way into sticking its
nose up the bum of the horse in front.
Always a good bummer.
That was my worst moment there.
But it was lovely to ride the horses.
There were some really nice horses
that I learned a lot from there.
So I think it was the situation
of riding some nicer horses
in a situation where things go slowly
enough that you can work things out,
learning to do the work on the ground
and just enjoying Portugal.
I still love Portugal.
Yeah,
Rupert Isaacson: absolutely.
Me, too.
It's I stood in that arena with Luis.
Writing everything down and filming
everything and asking everything I could
think of to ask and I realized oh my gosh
It's a complete system and What you one
needed to do was learn the system by which
the horse was built not the riding Because
then the riding would come as a result
of having built this horse It was to some
degree almost independent of the rider.
Oh my gosh, that's gold and for us that
was the game changer, you know with
with horse by method and so on but I've
seen so many riders, unfortunately,
hit the glass ceiling, not because
they can't get through it, but because
the only set of tools is the riding.
And it's just not enough, you know, if
one wants to get through that thing into
Narnia there's these other tools as well.
And so you going and looking at
how these guys were building these
horses even if in certain cases
you maybe came away with less, i.
e.
with Nuno, or with more, perhaps by the
time you got to Von Neindorf too, you had
some inkling of how this old 18th century
system was sort of put together because
you'd been seeing it and seeing it and
seeing it, and then being one of the first
people to bring this kind of systematic
approach back to the uk, I think has, I
think a lot of UK writers owe you a debt
for bringing that systematized way of
doing things rather than get on and kick.
Yes.
Which is what we all grow.
You've
Mary Wanless: gotta go
beyond, get on and kick.
You've gotta go
Rupert Isaacson: beyond get on, and
you gotta go beyond kick and pull.
Yes.
And,
You've also got to see that your instruct
that your mentor can actually produce
these horses and can put you on them
You know when I whenever I'm asked to
give it is advice to someone if they
are looking for dressage Instructors say
there's actually there's two questions.
You always need to ask one is
how did you teach your horse?
Piaf and it's got to be an answer that you
can kind of get Not some esoteric wall of
words, but I put the leg, hind leg here
and then I put the hind leg here and then
I straighten him and it happens like that.
And can, the second part of the
question is the most important.
Can I ride him?
And if the answer is no, well,
then that person has not produced
a universal horse that is happy to
show you for 15 minutes what to do.
I think the answer can
Mary Wanless: be no, until I've seen you.
Rupert Isaacson: Hmm.
Mary Wanless: Or something else.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah,
Mary Wanless: because there are
certainly people and people doing stuff.
I wouldn't want to subject my horse to
Rupert Isaacson: well No, but but for
example with us We've got say here in
Germany seven schoolmaster horses pretty
much anybody could come but I know the
tolerance level of each horse and So if
we're showing people say, okay, PF And
that would be on day one so that you
can feel in your body just what it is
how long are you doing that for you're
doing that for a few minutes and You
are choreographing it and you're right
there at the shoulder and you help
everything You don't just sort of stand
in the center there and say ride go
round and rounder And no, I would never
do that to my horse and my horse would
put up its middle finger at me if I did.
But it doesn't have to be
done that way, and so it's
basically assisted in handwork.
That assisted in handwork creates
a sort of generosity in the horse.
And of course we need that from the horse
when we're working with our Clientele
with our autistic kids and so on they're
going to sit on that same horse in Piaf
and Passage And that horse is going to
be very happy to give that up because
for them It's an easy thing to do
Mary Wanless: and I mean that's
really impressive And I think
there'd be hardly anywhere in the
world where that happens, you know
Maybe that is a lot of your legacy.
I mean Nuno Trained everything
every horse in Nuno school have
been trained to Grand Prix by him.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm hmm
Mary Wanless: Then he put the horse in the
school and he never ever rode it again.
So the inevitable death downhill happened.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
And then it's always the rider's fault.
Mary Wanless: And then you've got
the horses at the front of the
ride, which are the better horses
and the horses at the back of the
ride that are really losing it.
And
Rupert Isaacson: yeah, no, sadly,
that's the same old punitive
thing just with more education.
And, you know, a lot of people
I know who knew, knew, know,
you know, said what he was.
You know, a difficult character, a
genius, brilliant, blah, blah, blah.
But one of the things I love about
Luis is that he never does that.
Mary Wanless: No, he is.
He is a generous and delightful soul.
There's no two ways about that.
Rupert Isaacson: And he'll
set you up for success.
The reason we do the thing with,
OK, day one, put you on Piaf
is very simple outside of the
therapeutic model, which is, of
course, we're doing it for oxytocin.
But on the.
One of the first pages of La Guérinnaise.
You know, Cavalerie, which is
supposedly what we're all trying to do.
And on, I think, page three of Gustave
Steinbrecht, they say, Take your
beginner rider, and on the first day,
put them on your best horse, in Piaf.
So that they can feel in
their body how it should feel.
And then little by little over the
coming years, you will bring them
up to the level of that horse.
And that's just struck me as so much
common sense, because if you think
about it, when we're learning to
jump, you don't put someone on a horse
that's never jumped before, right?
You don't, you don't, you put them
on the best schoolmaster horse you
can, because it's life or death.
But in dressage and flatwork,
we have this idea that you're
supposed to kind of hammer at it
somewhat blindly, failing a lot.
Until somehow you get it.
I don't think that's much fun for the
horse I don't think that's much fun
for the rider and it's inefficient.
It just doesn't have to be that shit But
one needs to be shown that other way and
it was Luis who showed me that, you know
So he showed me create your horse in
the piaf on the ground put your rider on
and off you go But I think by the time I
was lucky enough to be working with him.
He had systemized it Perhaps even more
than he had back in the earlier days and I
definitely profited from that, you know So
Mary Wanless: something that might
well be true, but I mean that's it's
interesting I mean that would happen to
hardly anybody in the horse world it As
in, getting to sit on Piaf on day one.
Rupert Isaacson: It's how
we teach all our riders.
Yes, it
Mary Wanless: absolutely is.
If you come back to Stephen Covey and
the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Riders,
this is to begin with the end in mind.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Mary Wanless: Yeah?
So if you've had a sense of that, and
in Piaf it's not so hard to sit, is it?
Absolutely.
It's not like it's throwing you around.
There aren't big forces
throwing you around.
And if you're not getting in your knickers
in a twist and trying to generate it
and start wiggling and doing all the
things that people do, then you just
Because the horse is just going to
Rupert Isaacson: do it because we're on
the ground making it happen and all we
need to say is sit still, relax and smile.
Mary Wanless: Yes.
Rupert Isaacson: And just enjoy this.
This, back to where we began with this,
and I think this is why it's such a
great conversation for Equine Assisted
work is, it's this element of suffering
that things are not worth having unless
you suffer, and And therefore creating
suffering where suffering does not have
to be, whether it's in your kid as a
Christian scientist mum, or, you know, and
as you say, to the point of, well, okay,
maybe you can dance if it's a suffering
enough form of dance, as you said, she'd
known how much suffering you were going
to have to go through with writing.
She might well have subsidized it.
Ironically.
And, you know, punitive thing
has done to us as a culture.
It's blah, you know,
doesn't have to be that way.
Mary Wanless: And, you know, it
needs explicit how to information.
And, and, and, and you're, Justin
and Piaf on day one is, is putting
some information into the nervous
system of this is your end goal.
And you can't
Rupert Isaacson: do this because
the, here you are doing it.
Okay.
I'm creating it for
you, but I won't always.
Mary Wanless: Yeah,
Rupert Isaacson: this is now
within your remit of experience.
It's not just in your imagination.
Yes
These things have to happen for
all sorts of life skills, right?
You know, you you you mentioned
that you're very modest you
saying well I don't know so much
about the equine assisted thing.
And I think you've talked us through
really really solid Models, I'll just
recap what you've been saying So you
were brought up with some suffering
you found that horses were a way out of
suffering you knew this instinctively
But then like many riders you found
actually When you add monkeys who are
suffering to the thing, they bring their
suffering, sadly, to the thing that
one is looking to not suffer with, i.
e.
horses.
What to do about that profound despair?
There you are also in grief, you lose
your parents at this very young age.
You're lost, you've got nowhere to go.
You end up working with youth.
And then you discover dance as well,
and what is the joy within that?
And also embodiment, and then you start
to bring that to people who are suffering.
With riding and help unlock the suffering.
Mary, you've been doing equine
assisted work your whole life.
Mary Wanless: Yes, I mean,
you could certainly say that.
And it is true that the work
I teach is life changing.
For a lot of riders, it is life changing.
And it is certainly life changing
for the coaches who get involved.
And just being able to learn it step by
step and have it be more explicit and have
a guide on the journey, you know, like
between you, you have two perspectives.
You have the rider's internal perspective,
what's going on in their body, their mind.
You have the coach's external viewpoint.
and how they're thinking about
it and communicating about it.
And if you put those together to
solve a problem, then that's very
different to, I tell you what to
do and you do your best to do it.
I haven't given you good
information, but do it anyway.
Now.
Rupert Isaacson: And I can't actually
get up on your horse and do it for you
and show you because I've just learned
to say I haven't really learned to do it.
Mary Wanless: Yes.
Rupert Isaacson: And it's easier to blame
you than to admit that and go and learn.
Mary Wanless: And, and having patterns
in your neurology and really trying to
bridge the gap between that neurological
knowing and knowing in language.
If I was The gap between language and
experience is such an interesting one.
NLP really got me interested in that.
Yeah.
The gap between
Rupert Isaacson: language and experience.
Mary Wanless: Or experience and language.
Yeah, yeah, ways to find language
to cross that gap and as well find,
you know, sitting on a more trained
horse and having the experience
of X can help to cross that gap.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay, so
now we move to the present.
You are, you know, one of the people
who sits on the right hand of God
of the, you know, equestrian world
in the UK and internationally now
and you've Arrive there through
this process of seeking answers to
questions, answers to suffering, looking
for the right mentors, and so on.
Now, there you are.
If somebody wants to engage with Ride
With Your Mind, and Mary Wanless stuff,
how should they begin?
What are they going to learn?
You might think, well that's obvious
given the conversation we have, but
actually it's not necessarily obvious.
If someone, so for example, I might
now after this conversation with
you, say to all our horse boy people,
particularly in the UK, Why don't
you go on a Mary Wanless course?
It's going to open up some new
ways of thinking, it's going to
open up some new ways of looking
at things, it's going to, there's
going to be all sorts of parallels.
We're going to come away
with definitely a toolkit.
I will totally come on
one of your courses.
What other?
You start with somebody here.
You take them through a journey.
Ideally, let's say they stick
with you for a bit Or with
one of your people for a bit.
You take them to a journey, where?
And what's that midpoint?
So what's the beginning, the middle
and the end of your programme
and how do you get them there?
Mary Wanless: The beginning would be
being on, usually it's their horse, I
don't have school horses any longer.
Usually it's somebody's horse.
They might have begged, borrowed
or stolen a horse, but I watched
somebody for a little while.
See what my priorities are, but
you know, the, the ABCs of good
biomechanics stay the same.
Rupert Isaacson: Which are?
Mary Wanless: How you line up your body.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Mary Wanless: Shoulder, hip, heel.
How you support your body weight.
That means the thigh works as a lever.
The thigh is on the saddle and
the thigh works as a lever.
How the foot gets to
just rest and not press.
and how you get to bear down and breathe.
Those are the initial kind of things.
And doing that often changes
the rider and the horse.
You know, we're halfway through the first
lesson and it's dramatically different.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Mary Wanless: And if it's hard work,
it'll be because it's hard work to sell to
somebody the idea of doing it different.
You know, yes, but my other teacher
said, yes, but I've always done this.
Yes, but surely that can't be right.
You know, if it's hard work,
that's why it's hard work.
If somebody's willing to play
with me, it's not hard work
at all, from my perspective.
And it's a lot more fun from theirs.
Rupert Isaacson: And do they
find it, as long as they're not
mentally resisting, it's actually
surprisingly easy and accessible?
Mary Wanless: It's very accessible.
It's doable.
It's hard to maintain.
There's always a pull
back into old habits.
There's always a pull
back into old habits.
So people start to get the
idea that all you do is go,
Oh, lost it again and redo it.
Oh, lost it again.
Rupert Isaacson: Not to panic,
not to tense up, not to try and
Mary Wanless: bust your way.
And every time that happens,
they're changing them.
pretty soon get to feel
how that changes the horse.
So that's kind of a beginning point.
And, and we get people doing a good
job in walk, walk, halt, rising trot
mechanism that gives a kind of baseline.
They're then sane and safe and
sensible in some areas, we hope.
And it's, it's how to do what
you have to do to take away the
temptation to pull on the reins.
Yeah.
So you're basically getting people out
Rupert Isaacson: of kick and pull.
Yes,
Mary Wanless: we're getting
them out of kick and pull.
Then in the mid stages of this, it's
learning to do it going faster and
do it during transitions and just
peeling away patterns, peeling away
patterns, both rider patterns and
horse patterns, and trying to get a
more wholesome interaction and ways of
talking about that and understanding
it and turning change into bite sized
chunks, what I call next step fixes.
Mm hmm.
and really getting the rider doing
what I call riding on interface,
which would be the rider discovering
for themselves the cause effect
rules of the rider horse interaction.
So kind of when I do A, the horse does B.
When I do C, the horse
does D and that's reliable.
And if the horse does X, I do Y.
Shoots out from underneath me, I
lean back and pull on the reins.
I support my body weight better.
It comes up through his back,
all these kinds of things.
So, so there are rules.
You know, my first sense as a
physicist, there have to be rules
of cause and effect, there has to be
a science under the art, there is.
is well hidden, but it's there and
talented elite riders stumble across
it by magic, but can't talk about it.
And as that process goes on, I don't
know that there's an end, but it becomes
more that I fix something in me and feel
how that fixes in the horse to where
you can go, Oh, my horse needs more
X and fix you in a way that changes.
The horse, right?
So it can become, it's, it's being
able to feel and sense your way
into the entirety of your body and
the entirety of your horse's body.
Rupert Isaacson: Do you have exercises
psychologically and emotionally
for accessing away from the horse,
the thing we're trying to get to
on the horse, which is joy, right?
The only reason any of us ever got on
a horse was because we thought it might
make us feel better or good or something.
Very rarely did any of us get
on a horse because we actually
needed to ride to Edinburgh.
You know, there was a time in life when
that was going on, but not anymore.
So, we, we, everyone who gets involved
with horses is coming in for joy.
We know then that can get lost.
Through, obviously, dance, NLP, the
work you've done with Feldenkrais,
psychotherapy, and so on.
These are all, of course, ameliorative.
Although dance actually can be just
very joyfully expressive of that.
Do you actively try to help people just
plain old access joy and then say okay
now you've got that thing can we bring
that thing into the saddle with you?
Mary Wanless: I would say it starts
more in the saddle with that.
Okay.
What I'm trying to get
people to access is flow.
Rupert Isaacson: All right.
Definitely joy.
Yeah, so
Mary Wanless: joy is a subset of flow.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm . I would agree.
Mary Wanless: And flow is the
state where you're totally absorbed
in a task you're doing, you're
having no extraneous thoughts.
Mm-hmm . Time is going by, you
may be unaware of time, and my
aim when I go in a writing arena
is to get myself into that state.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mary Wanless: To help the
rider get into that state.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm
.
Mary Wanless: To, this is maybe sticking
my neck out anthropomorphically, but
to get the horse into that state.
Rupert Isaacson: Or at least
have that intention, yeah.
Yeah,
Mary Wanless: so that's my intention
when I go in a riding arena.
And I think everybody's greatest joy in
life actually comes from being in flow.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, I would
say, I'd say that's pretty true.
You must be working with
a lot of instructors too.
Yes.
What's your mechanism with them
to help them access that sense of
flow and also to prioritize flow?
Mary Wanless: I teach them what flow is,
Rupert Isaacson: you
Mary Wanless: know, as I talk about it in
workshops, as well as they've started to
experience it on a horse and in teaching.
So I'm really trying to get people there
in their teaching as well as their riding.
And I think quite often it gets
people there more there in life.
I mean, I think I live my life
to a large extent in flow.
And when I can do that in everyday
menial tasks as well, that's great.
So flow is, I think the
bottom line on that.
And, and I also do encourage people to
ride out as well as ride in the arena.
And, you know, when I ride out, I,
always have something I'm working on, but
it'll just be something in my body and
my horse's body, just quietly, even if
we're just hacking along and there's no
pressure in that, you can take your time.
And, and one of the biggest things in
this, I think, is teaching the noticing
skills of teaching people to check in.
Yeah, innate riders never check
out, but teaching the average rider
to check in, what's happening now?
Oh, I hollered my back again,
right?
Yeah, and then not having to do
a whole self beating up thing.
Rupert Isaacson: Say that again.
Mary Wanless: People think
they ought to be able to ride
by the seat of their pants.
And yet, so many people come back to
riding as adults after however many years.
And maybe as a kid they did ride by
the seat of their pants and they did
have a lovely pony and it all worked.
Or you come back at 50 something,
with many more what ifs in your
brain, and the seat of your
pants doesn't work any longer.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Mary Wanless: And often
people are shocked by this.
So, you know, getting to
check in, to keep checking in.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, without negative
self beating up language, yeah.
Mary Wanless: Yeah, not beating
yourself up, but just checking in.
In a non judgmental way.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah,
oh there's that thing.
Non
Mary Wanless: judgmental awareness.
Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely, absolutely.
It's it's the difficulty about sport
instruction, because sport instruction
always, always has the implicit, the
implication that there's a judge.
You know, and of course you will never
meet that judges expectations and it's,
I agree with you so much about being
outside in nature while you do it.
It's actually gotten to the point
outside of our therapeutic work,
which we almost entirely do in nature,
unless weather forces us inside.
Just because arenas are relatively
sterile environments, you know,
in terms of introducing a brain.
You two things you want the outside world.
I've now gotten to the
point with dressage.
I almost never teach in an arena anymore
i'll do almost the entire thing in the
forest because i've just noticed that
people and horses are happier there and
then occasionally if there's something
where okay, we could benefit from the
wall, or we could benefit from the fence,
or we could benefit from a corner here.
Okay, let's go back to the
arena for that one thing.
But it's, it's so interesting how just the
very presence of an arena brings pressure.
Yes, yes, it's
Mary Wanless: true.
Rupert Isaacson: You know, gladiatorial.
Mary Wanless: And it's sad, certainly
in the UK, you know, we have
increasingly little safe riding.
Rupert Isaacson: So true.
Mary Wanless: Off road riding,
you know, to have access to the
outdoors without tying yourself
up in a juggernaut, you know.
Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely,
no, you're absolutely right.
Not,
Mary Wanless: not, not
to be taken for granted.
No, it's true.
Rupert Isaacson: When, when I was
when I was a boy, you know, we would
hack to a meat of hounds that was.
Anything up to an hour
away and might finish.
after dark and hack the
lanes home for two hours.
You couldn't think about doing that now.
You'd be killed.
I used
Mary Wanless: to ride out
hunters for somebody when I
was at university in Bristol.
We rode along the A38, which is
one of the main roads from Bristol
going north up to Gloucester.
I, I You know, brushed with some
of my nine lives along that road,
but you wouldn't dare do it now.
Rupert Isaacson: No, you wouldn't.
You wouldn't.
And back
Mary Wanless: then,
Rupert Isaacson: yeah,
it, and you're right.
There isn't the public access in the UK.
I'm lucky here in Germany because you
can basically ride any, you can ride.
There's tracks everywhere
and you can just go.
But it's, I've never experienced
that outside of places like the
Welsh borders or areas of open Hills.
Mary Wanless: And then
there are places, I mean, I.
Rode a lot on Exmoor in my university
days and God, I love it there.
It's one of UK and probably the world.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, I agree.
So yes, there's, and it's true
that one then needs ways to
kind of humanize the arena.
And we do that with autistic kids.
We will create forests in the arena.
We'll have trees that we bring in
and like you're setting up jumps,
we'll set up a forest or Right, okay.
We'll turn it into a beach, you
know, and we'll have couches
and even a little fire going.
And, you know.
A sofa will bring that, you
know, and anything we can think
of to kind of humanize it.
But It's so easy to just think in
terms of I am doing this task here.
I'm working my horse.
I'm not playing with my pony.
So even that language of, you
know, it's always serious.
It's always a horse.
It's never a pony.
It's always a rider.
So I try to use the word monkey, you
know, got sky monkey, ground monkey, front
monkey, back monkey, anything to just
sort of take the seriousness out of it.
Because of this pressure that the arena
is a place where you go to sort of suffer
and die on the sand and either Caesar
puts his thumb up or puts his hand down.
Yes, it's
Mary Wanless: kind of like that, yes.
I mean, thank God that is on the way out.
It is
Rupert Isaacson: on the way out.
Mary Wanless: There is not enough
really good, sane understanding
and coaching on the way in.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Mary Wanless: There is
some, but not enough.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, you've been,
I think, one of the big forces
for humanising the entire thing.
And I think that one of the
reasons why the UK is where we are,
actually, with sport riding, that
suddenly we can beat the Germans.
I think it's largely down to people
like you making these processes.
available to people, but outside of
the sport riding just to help people
connect joyfully with their horses.
I, I do think there's a whole generation
of riders, two generations of riders
in the UK who owe you a great debt.
So it's, it's been massively educational
for me, but also a great honor for
me to have you on here because, you
know, you've, you've really contributed
in this massively positive way.
Mary Wanless: Yeah, I think there's
been a level of me kind of pushing up
from the bottom And some of the big
name really good riders It's pulling up
from the top and inspiring from the top.
And I think there could be some truth
in that, that my influence is bigger
than I probably realise in terms of
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, I think you should
savour that truth, because it's good
work that you've done and continue to do.
So if people want to come and learn with
you how do they do that and then how
can they find your books and can they
learn with you online as well as live?
Mary Wanless: Yes, so my
website is meri onelist.
com Is that Lower,
Rupert Isaacson: please.
Mary Wanless: mary oneless.
com mary
Rupert Isaacson: oneless W A N L
Mary Wanless: E double S
Rupert Isaacson: com
Mary Wanless: that's got information on
the courses I teach in the UK and the US
Rupert Isaacson: alright
Mary Wanless: and it's got information
on coaches who are accredited in
this work, mostly in the UK and
the US, but Australia, New Zealand,
a little bit in Europe, too.
The website DressageTraining.
tv, which is a membership
site, DressageTraining,
Rupert Isaacson: all one word,
Mary Wanless: DressageTraining,
all one word, dot
Rupert Isaacson: TV.
Okay.
Mary Wanless: Puts my work online.
Rupert Isaacson: What
can people do on there?
Mary Wanless: They can watch webinars.
They can watch what we call the
rider biomechanics course, which is
broken down into bite sized chunks
of what it is that the rider needs to
do with their body to make it work.
There are other courses on things like
steering, straightness and sideways,
the baselines of on the bit and what
that really means and how to influence
a horse's posture and movement.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm hmm.
Mary Wanless: There's also the
groundwork that we do based on giving
the horse a conscious understanding of
the legs as go and the reins as woe.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm
.
Mary Wanless: Equine learning theory
is where we start in groundwork.
And you can send in little bits of video
if you're doing some of the courses,
you can send in lots of little bits
of video and get feedback on them.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
And I've met people
Mary Wanless: who've really taught
themselves to ride on the internet.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah,
Mary Wanless: it's never
sure that could happen at the
beginning, but it really can.
I so agree
Rupert Isaacson: with you.
They've
Mary Wanless: taught themselves
to ride on the internet.
Rupert Isaacson: I was very sceptical
about that and I've absolutely
seen people who've done it.
How much, what does it cost to
be a member on your website?
Mary Wanless: It's, it's going to be, it's
going up fairly soon to 25 quid a month.
And you get access to
a huge amount for that.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay, great.
And then your books,
tell us about the books.
Mary Wanless: Yeah, so there
are I've written seven books,
three are still in print.
So there's Ride With Your Mind
Essentials, Ride With Your Mind Clinic.
and Rider Biomechanics.
Okay.
And sometimes people find the
older books in, in car boot sales.
There's a couple of people I know who've
got very involved in my work that found
one of the early books in a car boot sale.
So there's probably find them
Rupert Isaacson: online too.
I mean, there will be
Mary Wanless: there and other places that
might work better than that nowadays.
But those three books are a good trilogy.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Just give us the titles again
for those who didn't get to ride
Mary Wanless: with your mind essentials,
Rupert Isaacson: right?
With your mind essentials.
Mary Wanless: That's the place to start.
That's the sort of beginning ABC.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Mary Wanless: Ride With Your Mind
Clinic, which is a series of lessons.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Mary Wanless: And talking about it through
the experience of the rider in the lesson.
So there's a lot of
photographs in that book.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm hmm.
Mary Wanless: And Rider Biomechanics
comes in through the model of The
fascial net and fascial lines and
like that understanding of the core
of the body and how to access your
own fascial lines and how that helps
you organize the horse's fascial
lines and how that whole system works.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
And fascia for the listeners.
Fascia
Mary Wanless: would be
the connective tissue.
So in the history of dissection,
like everything, they kind of cut
it into little pieces and when,
Oh, this muscle begins here and
it goes to there and it does this.
But if you turn the scalpel on its side,
you could go, okay, so here's the joint
capsule and here's the ligament, and
here's the tendon and here's the muscle.
And there at the other end
is another tendon and another
ligament and another joint capsule.
And if you keep going, turning the scalpel
on its side, you can create chains of
muscle and con and connective tissue,
some of which go from head to toe.
So they're almost like
guy ropes within the body.
And getting those guy ropes to have
an appropriate and balanced tension
makes a huge difference.
Rupert Isaacson: Biotension.
Rider
Mary Wanless: actually is using her
own fascial net to change the horse's
fascial net when it goes really well.
Rupert Isaacson: Perfect.
Okay.
And fascia, I think is something which
used to be one of those words you'd hear
and it's now becoming more familiar.
Mary Wanless: It is.
So, so Tom has done a lot to bring that
into public awareness and There are
more and more people looking at this
sort of systems approach to the body.
And then there was actually a medic
who started talking about fascia
because there's some talk about
how cancer cells migrate through
the body through the fascial net.
Rupert Isaacson: And
Mary Wanless: that became
the medical discovery of it.
Whereas outside of
Directly medical circles.
There was a lot of
research already going on,
Rupert Isaacson: right?
And if dysfunctional cells can
move through the fascial net, then
presumably functional things can too.
Yeah, so the
Mary Wanless: fascial net is
actually the basis of our feel sense.
It has way more receptors that
send information to the brain
about feel than muscles do.
And it has to be taught.
It's also the organ of force
transmission in the body.
And to transmit force
well, it has to be taught.
Rupert Isaacson: TAUT as in T A U T.
Mary Wanless: T A U T.
Rupert Isaacson: I can see
another podcast coming on.
Mary Wanless: So it has to be taught.
So anyone who's told to
relax and just goes, Ugh!
Rupert Isaacson: You're not
Mary Wanless: going to do a
good job because that's too
soggy and too like a rag doll.
Rupert Isaacson: Right, so
what you're talking about is
relaxation in tension, right?
Like a dancer.
Mary Wanless: Enough
Rupert Isaacson: tension.
But not so much tension that
it's rigid, enough relaxation.
Mary Wanless: Enough tension
but you're not uptight.
Indeed.
Rupert Isaacson: But you're
Mary Wanless: not too down loose either.
Rupert Isaacson: Yep.
Which is rather difficult when
your amygdala is firing and you're
sitting on a horse that you're
worried is going to unload you.
Yes.
So there lies the art.
And I think you help people get there.
I'm really grateful that you came on.
I'd like to have you back
actually, now that you've opened
up this thing about fascia.
And fascia and feel, because I'm a
great believer that a lot of rider
feel comes through the fascia.
And that this is something that
can help people, because you know,
when you and I were growing up,
there was this myth that, oh, feel
can't be taught, and it can totally.
Yes,
Mary Wanless: no, this
is definitely not true.
Feel can be taught.
Rupert Isaacson: I so
agree, and I'm so happy.
It's easier
Mary Wanless: for some people than
others, but feel can be taught.
Rupert Isaacson:
Absolutely, like a language.
Well, fantastic, mary wanlis.
com, dressagetraining.
tv, the membership education site.
We have the books.
Mary, thank you.
I've learned a lot.
I hope you'll come back on because I think
there's further things we could explore.
And we tend to get a fair
amount of questions coming
through from the listeners.
So, Perhaps with your permission I'll
collate some of those and then maybe
we could regroup in a few months and
Mary Wanless: yes I'd be happy to do that.
My pleasure.
Rupert Isaacson: I hope you enjoyed
today's conversation as much as I did.
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