Rupert Isaacson: Welcome to Equine Assisted World.
I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson.
New York Times bestselling author of the Horse Boy.
Founder of New Trails Learning Systems and long ride home.com.
You can find details of all our programs and shows on Rupert isaacson.com.
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.
These lovely equines, these beautiful horses that we work with, help us with.
Thank you for being part of the adventure and we hope you enjoy today's show
Welcome back to equine assisted world where we talk to people who are at
the cutting edge of this remarkable profession that we're in with horses
helping people physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually never has.
The world of therapeutic stuff with horses being as interesting as it is
now, now that we understand so much about the nervous system, the brain and
knowing more with each year, as more and more studies come out what started
as just adapted riding for people with physical disabilities 60 years ago has
now evolved into a mosaic that can be very confusing for many people, and our job is
to shine a light on the people that are out there doing really interesting work.
So I'm talking to one of these people today.
She's Shae Stewart and she lives in Texas.
And interestingly up until now, up until this interview what we've
been emphasizing on Equine Assisted World has been the work that people
are doing with people, with horses.
We haven't really touched much yet, but we will be doing more
and more on the wellbeing of the horse that does this work.
Because of course, is having to.
deliver well being to a human, to a monkey, well, it's got to have
well being itself, otherwise it will have no well being to give.
And we know that, that traditionally, in the therapeutic riding world All that was
really asked of a horse was to be quiet.
But if a horse was aching, if a horse was hurting, if a horse was sour wasn't
really considered to be a problem because as long as it was just safe and quiet.
Now of course more and more we want our horses to be athletes, to be
happy, to be healthy and to be joyous.
in their movement, which means that they've got to be really treated
the same way that you would treat a competition horse, just with less stress.
And this is something that's creeping in more and more to the therapeutic
world, the realization cropped, lame, arthritic horse is not going
to be able to do the job very well.
And also it's just not right to make a horse like that, carry people around
on their backs or do that sort of work.
However, there's much that can be done with horses that are aching in pain and
so on to put them right and to get them good in their bodies and their minds
again, so that they begin to dance again.
And we certainly do that with Horseboy Method and Athena, our
programs with a massive emphasis on the work in hand and long reining.
And lunging when appropriate to muscle the horses up and get their brains going
again and rejuvenate them effectively.
But there's more to it than just that.
And Shae Stewart, who's on today is an equine craniosacral person who does this.
Very successfully all over the place, and I first heard her on Warwick
Schiller's journey on podcast and then was lucky enough to meet her
and hear her at last year's the 2022 journey on podcast in Washington, D.
C.
In San Antonio, she was riveting and she and Jim Masterson were both talking about
ways of physical and neurological well being for the horses that do our jobs.
And I realized that when I went and had conversations with other people
out in the equine assisted world, well, yes, osteopathy and having
the horse chiropractor out, people are good about doing that kind of
thing these days, mostly still not as much as I would like to see.
But the idea of craniosacral work, it's quite new to a lot of people.
It's not new to me because when my autistic son Rowan was at his most severe.
We did a lot of cranial sacral work and for sure it helped.
We saw major neurological advances as a result of that.
So I do think it's something that any of us who are in this
field should know more about.
And we have an expert here to take us through it.
So Shea, thank you for coming on Equine Assisted World.
Shae Stewart: Thank you for having me.
It's so nice to see you and talk to you again.
And I look forward in our conversation.
It takes me a minute to warm up to these.
So,
Rupert Isaacson: yeah.
By the way, for the listeners, Shay is famously and charmingly shy.
So my job is to dance around in front of her in a pink gorilla suit and to
make her laugh so that she will relax.
So I'm just putting on my pink gorilla suit now and I'm doing my little
dance and there she's laughing.
Good.
That's good.
So Shay to put you out of your misery, can you help us understand
what is cranial sacral work?
What is it?
Shae Stewart: That is the most common question I get, and even in
my classes, people ask me, how do we, how do we explain this work to people?
First of all, there are different concepts in within the craniosacral world, and so
it depends on who you ask will that will determine what answer you get about what
is it, but it is a form of body work.
It's very gentle.
It's when you watch it, it may appear that the practitioner is not doing much.
It's sort of like watching somebody read a book.
There's not much going on on the outside, but there's a lot happening on the
inside and we focus on in simple terms, we focus on relieving compressions and
the craniosacral system, which is the skull, the spine and the sacrum and all
the dura that's attached to these bones.
What are
Rupert Isaacson: dura?
Excuse me?
What are dura?
Shae Stewart: Dura is...
It's like fascia that attaches to the inside of the skull bones
and it's what the spinal cord is made of and it's all connected.
So, so the dura that's attached underneath the skull comes out to through the
base of the skull and goes all the way down the spine and ends around
the , second sacral vertebrae and that Entire piece is, is all connected.
It's like its own form of fascia and that's where cerebral spinal
fluid runs up and down the spine.
So we work on relieving bone compressions and pressures on the dura
that help the nervous system function in a balanced state.
And it helps the flow of cerebral spinal fluid because that can get disrupted
with any kind of head compression.
That's basically like a short answer,
Rupert Isaacson: right?
So presumably if we're sitting on a horse's spine, we're going to with
the best will in the world over the years, put some sort of stress on it.
Just as if we're wearing a rucksack every day of our lives, we're going to put some
wear and tear on our backs as humans.
Right.
And I presume that if we were wearing helmets.
Every day of our lives or something like that with a chin strap or
something, we would inevitably cause some sort of changes in our cranial
skull to neck attachment areas, right?
And I presume it must be the same for a horse that people aren't
necessarily going out to hurt their horses and they might be trying to
look after their horses very well.
But if one is going to sit one's monkey butt on a horse's spine
and put something on his head.
To help to balance direct and do all the other things a bridal does,
presumably, even with the best kept horses, there's going to be a benefit to
alleviating those cumulative pressures.
Now, yes,
Shae Stewart: yes, just the nature of how we handle horses.
We're putting pressure on their heads, even if we're the most
gentle soul on the planet.
We're still putting pressure on their head if we're riding them, we're putting
pressure on their spine and their muscles that attach directly that in the base
of the skull that attached directly to the spinal cord directly to the Dura.
So, anytime a horse pulls against pressure, pulls back while tied
has something holding their head down, you're going to.
Anytime the fascia, the superficial layer of fascia gets tight, you're, you're
going to restrict the deeper layers.
Rupert Isaacson: Let's just assume that not everybody listening here
knows these anatomical terms.
A lot of people will know what fascia is.
But some people may not.
What is
Shae Stewart: fascia fascia?
There's there's different layers of fascia.
A simple way to look at it.
It's like, a living, moving layer that's the superficial layer is.
Like a skin suit, kind of, before our skin.
The
Rupert Isaacson: tissue that we find under the skin when we skin a deer.
That white stuff.
Yeah.
So it seems to hold it all in place a bit.
Shae Stewart: Yeah, kind of between the skin and the muscle.
If you're peeling that apart and you can see that, that layer that
kind of keeps it all together.
That's the fascia.
And then there's different layers of it.
So that would be superficial.
And then there's a middle layer and then a deep layer.
That holds all the guts in place.
And
Rupert Isaacson: how deep is the deep layer?
Are we talking inches?
Are we talking centimeters
Shae Stewart: inches?
It's deep within the body.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
So to work down the levels, you really, you would have to go as deep
as your thumb or as deep as your hand or something like that to reach
the stuff.
Or is it not that deep?
Shae Stewart: In a horse, if you went to the deep layer, say, like
the mesentery sack, which is the sack that holds the intestines.
So that would be, I don't know, a hand, hand width deep
Rupert Isaacson: or something.
I mean, it's good for people to get these for the, by the way, for those
listeners who were not listening to our conversation before we hit record
it's nice to live in Texas, the whole Texas thing about holding horses sacks.
Yeah.
Sacred.
Holden Amholster Sachs again.
Well, shame on you.
I've
Shae Stewart: been out doing that sacral stuff.
Rupert Isaacson: That sacral stuff.
So, okay.
So what is the job of fascia?
What does it do?
Why is it important?
Shae Stewart: Fascia?
Well, you can even go deeper and in a deeper sense of fascia and,
and call lymph, blood, cerebral spinal fluid, like a liquid fascia.
I
Rupert Isaacson: would say cells effectively, right?
Hmm.
Cells.
Cells that make up the matter of, of our organism.
Yes.
Shae Stewart: Yes.
It's like a living, its own living, breathing, moving substance within
our system that, that moves fluid.
Some people say it's, that's what our acupressure or acupuncture
channels are through the fascia
Rupert Isaacson: and.
So fascia, back in the days before people thought about this sort of
thing and we just thought, well, if you were stiff or old or you had
an injury or you just toughed it out and we all grew up that way.
I think we've all grown up toughing out our injuries and those of us
who've spent a lifetime on and around horses have been knocked around a
fair bit and have bits of our body that have taken some, some knocks.
One of the things which I realized in the last, I'm 56 now the last time I
gave myself a goodly smash was actually not that long ago, I broke two ribs,
but that doesn't, almost doesn't count.
But I, That's
Shae Stewart: a true
Rupert Isaacson: first person.
Yeah.
That was just in May, but it's gone away now, so instant amnesia.
The, but I did something to my knee.
In 2018, which took a long time to come right and I couldn't ignore it anymore.
The pain was keeping me up at night and then I realized that the, the pain wasn't
really coming from the knee at all.
It was actually coming from further down the leg.
And someone pointed out to me that maybe having the fascia there loosened
up and stretched out a bit might help.
And I went to someone to have that done.
And.
Indeed, the pain went away and when it comes back, I sort of now
know what to do to do that thing in the side of my side of my calf.
So I realized firsthand that as an older.
rider.
How useful and important these things could be, which made me
think about my horses, of course.
And I'd always been, you know, someone who would get the back quack out.
I like to have the chiropractor come to look at my horses every six weeks
or so, because they do a lot of work.
I like to give them the TLC I can give them just because I love them.
But I am now leaning more towards doing stuff with their with their cranios
their their cerebral spinal fluid, which of course is the craniosacral
work, because through one of our programs, Movement Method, we've
realized the importance of this.
Can you talk to us about craniosacral fluid and what its job is?
In the mammalian body is and why it's so important that it has a free flow
backwards and forwards along the spine,
Shae Stewart: Cerebral spinal fluid.
Well, to backtrack a little bit, the, the craniosacral, the form
of craniosacral that I focus on is biodynamic craniosacral.
Okay.
Rupert Isaacson: What
Shae Stewart: does that mean?
We, we get deep into the fluid body.
So we, we do cover a lot of embryology when we're studying.
And we, so the way we look at the body is when you're an embryo.
We're a fluid filled sack and this fluid has intelligence and this intelligence is
us that we, we basically create ourselves.
So, this intelligence knows what we're going to be, what we're going to
form into and so the biodynamic work.
And
Rupert Isaacson: this is not what people would call DNA.
That's it codes that are coming in to program program us up fluid.
Shae Stewart: We, we studied embryology specifically within the 1st, 21 days
or so before genes kick in before.
Before all that comes in.
So it's like a deeper intelligence and this, this motion that creates us from
our fluids is, is within us as adults, so.
So embryology is not something that just happened to us.
It's some, we created ourselves and, and our fluids have a wisdom.
So in, in the biodynamic world, we look at the body as a fluid body.
And this the innate wisdom is inside that.
And we just help, help the, our body find this origin, their origins.
Basically, so go ahead.
Yeah, we do go a little deeper than cerebral spinal fluid, but cerebral
spinal fluid is it's formed in the ventricles and which are pockets inside
of our brain and it comes from blood.
So, the blood goes through the cord plexus into the ventricles, which.
Which are like where there's four of them.
So we've got like four pockets inside of our brain inside of our head or skull and
blood comes through and it forms cerebral spinal fluid within these ventricles
and then it goes down into the spine.
It's a, it's a zero net gravity.
So it's floating, it floats our nervous system and it helps
cushion our brain and it's.
A transmitter of signals.
It sends signals throughout our body.
It helps our body detox at night when we're sleeping.
That's a lot of the times when the detox happens.
You have to forgive me because I'm still a little jet lagged, so my words get stuck.
Rupert Isaacson: You've been blocking that cerebral spinal fluid
sitting in a cramped airplane seat.
Shae Stewart: Yeah, it got, it had too much pressure.
It's not, it's not flowing well right now.
So it transmits nutrients.
It transmits it's, if you think about water, like what does water do?
Transmits.
electricity.
It receives information and transmits it throughout the body.
So cerebral spinal fluid nourishes our nervous system and helps, helps
it eliminate the toxins from the day.
Rupert Isaacson: And presumably we excrete it out with our pee, with our sweat, with
our tears, with our, through our blood.
Okay.
And then we create new.
So do we create new spinal fluid every day?
Yes.
And so I presume, I also read that cerebral spinal fluid also brings the
neurons that, the stem cells of the neurons that create our brain cells,
our heart cells and our gut cells.
into place, like almost like a conveyor belt each day because we're
regenerating those cells every day.
Yes.
It's a very efficient conveyor belt that it sort of brings them down
and they go kachung here in the brain, kachung here for the heart,
and then kachung here for the gut.
And then we excrete that out.
We create some more cerebral spinal fluid and the next neurons come down when
those old ones, the next lot of old ones have to be taken to the waste basket.
With all that in mind, I could now understand, I think, how
compression that might affect the flow of that cerebral spinal fluid
might be detrimental to well being.
Would that be correct to assume?
Shae Stewart: Oh, absolutely.
And I have some, I know some people doing dissections and they're looking at
this specifically with horses that have had a, that seem to have a decrease in
their cerebral spinal fluid from head injuries, head compressions, and they
have, the area seems a little dry and we, they're wondering about neurodegenerative
diseases, even things like Cushing's.
Is that really about the pituitary gland or could there be a component of
cerebral spinal fluid that's not flowing being produced enough and it's, it's
a, it's a great, it's also known as a crystalline matrix, a liquid light.
So it's.
We could also look at it as one of our sensory receptors.
It reads our internal environment and helps send signals
all throughout our system.
So if that's failing, then our system isn't going to function.
There's a man named Maro Zapatera.
Have you heard of
Rupert Isaacson: him?
I have not, but I'm going to write it down.
How do I spell Maro?
Shae Stewart: M A U R O.
Rupert Isaacson: M A U R O.
Zapotera.
Is that a Z A P?
Shae Stewart: Z A, let me see exactly.
I think it's Z A P P.
Z A P P A T E R R A.
Zapotera.
He is a, a medical doctor who, I believe he studied biodynamic
craniosacral and he is.
Studying cerebral spinal fluid, and he has some really great lectures and he
talks about how the neurons that are cerebral spinal fluid washes over are
very similar to the same neurons that are found and invertebrates in the ocean.
Okay, so, like, sea worms or starfish and these neurons.
That these invertebrates have read the oceanic environment, and
that's how they, they know what's going on in their surroundings.
Rupert Isaacson: I see what you're saying.
So it's a, it's a, it's a conductive fluid.
Yes.
Crystalline would mean conductive that therefore can transmit
intelligences or signals that can be.
interpreted by the brain into intelligences, right?
In the same way that an electric, a sound wave sensor could, or a, because
all of these things are vibrations at the end of the day, are they not?
The, an electromagnetic, an electric, an electric charge is A series of waves.
So if that's being conducted through something like cerebral spinal fluid,
presumably the cerebral spinal fluid must be reading or conducting signals
that are coming in from other nerves, other stimuli to presumably, would that
be to the autonomic nervous system?
Is that where they would, is that where those signals would be?
Delivered to I think the Vargas nerve and the, and then up to the brain, the
Shae Stewart: entire central nervous system, our entire nervous system, but
he even, he even goes a little further and talks about how it's cerebral
spinal fluid is a conduit of cosmic consciousness to our physical bodies.
So not only can it read and send signals.
On the inside, but also on the outside and what's coming in,
Rupert Isaacson: right?
I'm looking.
I'm as soon as you said Dr.
I began to Google him as, as we're talking and he is indeed a medical doctor
and a researcher and a sports medicine physician in Pasadena, California.
And yes, he is talking about consciousness.
And.
This fluid he's I happen to know he's not the only one in history.
It's interesting when one reads the old Brahmic texts, and some people
say that there's the Indian texts.
And some people say that the New Testament is in fact a, an allegory of what goes
on with cerebral spinal fluid and that Christos Christ is the oil that goes up,
you know, two and a half days at the.
Okay.
Beginning of each month, two and a half to three days, it goes into the
tomb, into the skull, and then comes back down with consciousness and so on.
What I, what I do know is that, or what I think I know, perhaps you can
tell me if I actually know this is that
if enough cerebral spinal fluid surrounds the...
Pineal gland in the middle ventricle of the brain, which of course all animals
have but, but we have a really big one and it's called pineal gland because it
looks like a pine cone and it sits in right there in the middle of our brain
that inside that pineal gland are also crystals salt crystals which can with
enough pressure on them with enough several spinal fluid pressing around
the pineal gland can then create an electrical charge, a small electrical
charge, and that the pineal gland, I understand, produces melatonin, which
governs our sleep cycle, and also, which is a tweak on serotonin, so it's the
same chemical, but the pineal gland does a little tweak on it to, to create our
melatonin but then if there's enough pressure from the cerebral spinal fluid
around this pineal gland that chemical, that melatonin becomes something called
DMT, which is what makes us see angels and talk to God and that sort of thing.
And there are, there are plants that create this, like the plants in
Ayahuasca that the shamans down in.
The Peru in the Amazon use and certain types of things like
morning glory and so on that are known to be heavy hallucinogens.
They call these, you know, the God plants and some people would say,
Oh, well, in that case, no one ever talks to God or see angels.
It's just cerebral spinal fluid pressing on the pituitary on the pineal
gland and causing us to interpret these electrical signals in this
way as light and sound in our brain.
And then other people would say, or does it allow you to see what's really there?
Either way, it would seem to be.
At the very least important because it's bringing these neurons into place
and also, as you say, acting as a sort of shock absorber brain cushion
between the brain and the skull.
So it seems to do an awful lot of things, cerebral spinal fluid,
and I could see how getting in the way of it could be problematic.
How do you unblock it?
Shae Stewart: Through craniosacral, so the biodynamic work, we we do have
specific contacts that we put our hands on, on the skull, the spine, the sacrum.
When you get into the more advanced biodynamic work, the contacts are less
specific and more covering the whole.
We believe that cerebral spinal fluid is moved by a field of motion
that we call primary respiration.
And it's...
Some of the older biodynamic osteopaths or osteopaths talk about how there's
a rhythm within our body and that this is what moves our cerebral
spinal fluid and even moves like our capillaries because our capillaries
are not moved by our heartbeat.
And
so some of the, I mean, I can talk about the different rhythms.
If you'd like, please.
Okay.
I'll talk a little bit about the history and how this came about.
So the and anyone who studied craniosacral might be aware of some of this stuff.
The man who created the first school of American this first American osteopathy
school, he was a medical doctor and he spoke fluid fluent I'm in, I'm in fluid
brain, he spoke fluent Pawnee, so he was part Pawnee and this was back when, you
know, the settlers were taking the land.
From the natives and his family was on land that also belonged to the Shawnee and
the land next to them was Cherokee land.
So he, in a sense, became their medical doctor, but.
I think they taught him more than he, more than he helped because he, he
started to get very dissatisfied with the medical world and he lost some of his
family members and he couldn't save them.
And he started looking at the the way to heal a little differently.
And he started this school where he focused on more
physical, aligning the body.
He talked about moving what he called nerve force and although he, he doesn't,
he doesn't credit that he learned all this stuff from the indigenous people.
It is pretty obvious that a lot of this work came from them.
And he, he often spoke as when someone would come to his, him with a problem,
he would say, I'll take, I'll.
I'll do it.
I'll take an Indian.
I look at the body.
So this was back when they, when he, the, the.
European settlers, European land robbers, , however you wanna call 'em.
They looked at the colonialists, let's say.
Yeah.
The colonialists.
Colonialists, they looked at the skulls, a solid piece, and it was one
of his students who saw some skulls 'cause back, this was the after
the Civil War, and there were human skulls everywhere, so they could
just study bones, and he saw that the bones were actually meant to breathe.
So our skull is joined in pieces, we have multiple skull bones, and they're
joined by what's called sutures, so little joints, and he saw that this looks like
it is meant to breathe and his words were like the gills of a fish and So he
started prying bones apart and looking at how they're joined and he started this
lifelong study of how this moves, what's going on in the body to cause all of this.
And he concocted a helmet where he tightened different pieces of it.
That would restrict a certain bone in the skull and then he would
make note of where in the body this was affecting and his wife was a
great resource and helped write.
He wrote a book.
And I'll have, I would have to look up the book's name.
It's out of print, but you can still get it.
You can find it every once in a while.
It's like 400, but it's, it's where he documented all the
different changes in his body, both physical, emotional, and spiritual.
Oh, he did this to himself.
Did it to himself.
What was his name?
William Garner Sutherland.
Rupert Isaacson: William Garner Southerland.
Okay, please go on.
Shae Stewart: He's considered the grandfather of craniosacral.
So even though we've Learned that this is a form of body work that has been called
been titled craniosacral by William Garner Sutherland, although it's been around
since the beginning of time, since the beginning of human time, we've had the
original healers who connected the source and help the body find their origins.
there's a ancient book and Chinese medicine where they state keep the.
When you keep the hips still, the sacrum, the sacrum gets stuck, the heart suffers.
So it's, it's a concept that's been around forever, but William Garner
Sutherland and, and most of these things get passed down through stories
and you know, it wasn't written.
So William Garner Sutherland was the first person who studied it
from his, his mindset and wrote down what we now call craniosacral.
And he found, so he started working on people in this subtle way, and he found
that, yes, there is movement in the bones and he, he found within himself
that there was areas that would get restricted when, like, the frontal bone
was, was not moving how it should, or the occiput or, or whatever bone and.
As his palpation skills grew deeper, meaning he could sense more in the
body on a deeper level, he found that it wasn't the bones just moving, but
there was a fluid moving these bones.
And so he started working on the fluid restrictions in the body.
And then as he, as he kept going in this work, he, he started, he was
called one day to work on a dying man and he felt a presence in the room.
And this is when he realized that there was a presence that moved
our fluids that moved our bones.
And this is what he called primary respiration, or he turned, he,
he coined the term, he called it the breath of life because he
was a, he was a Christian mystic.
So they looked at things from the Christian point of view, the Holy Ghost
Rupert Isaacson: effectively.
Yeah.
Okay.
Interest.
This is interesting because of course, as you know, that in, in, in the
Hindu tradition, you have Kundalini, which means the coiled one, you know,
energy at the base of the spine in the sacrum that you can bring up.
And then back down again for well being, physical, mental, and, you
know, and, and also, you know, contact with the divine, the Bushmen of the
Kalahari, the San, Khoisan people who I have a lot of experience with, they
talk about something called Ngum, and Ngum is exactly the same thing.
And they describe it the same and they have a way of.
Manipulating it into the abdomen and boiling it so that it
boils as it goes up the spine.
And when you touch them, they becoming extremely hot to the touch.
And and this is what they can then sort of effectively burn your illnesses
out of you when they're in this state.
And of course, they go into the spirit world this way.
So, but it all seems to come down to cerebral spinal fluid.
When as you know, when my son Rowan became verbal in the saddle in front
of me through, and I noticed that.
The more collected the horse went the more his hips moved and therefore it's
softly and in rhythm, the more he spoke.
And I had this.
Explained to me as predominantly the production of oxytocin,
which is, of course, not just a happiness hormone, but a feel about
about a communication hormone.
But then I started also wanting to find out how I could do that when he
wasn't on the horse and that became the basis of something which we now
call movement method, which I'm always.
Wanting therapeutic riding people to learn because of course, most of the
time that the person is with you, they're actually not on the horse.
So what are you doing with the rest of that time?
And I began to use a lot of sacral rocking.
With him and then with other people lying on the ground, you put the hand on the
sacrum and you rock gently and we began to call it the diaper shake because
it reduced people to sort of a happy toddler stage, you know, within seconds.
And I was giving a training.
I was thinking, well, this is oxytocin, right?
And then I was giving a training to a an autism dad from Canada.
And I showed, we were doing the diaper shake part of the training
and he said, where'd you learn this?
And I said, Oh, I learned it from a physiotherapist who showed me how to get
walking again after a ruptured disc and seemed to work very well, but it makes you
feel really good in kind of a similar way.
And I presume it must be oxytocin because, well, it is oxytocin and
serotonin, but it's more than that.
He said, Rupert I'm a, I'm a, I'm a spinal surgeon.
That's my job.
And I'm not just a spinal surgeon.
I'm an engineer that designs instruments for spinal surgery.
And he said, in my spinal unit.
Whenever anybody comes and has had spinal surgery or if they come with
an injury, we prescribe this sacral rocking that you're doing because it
makes you generate massive amounts of cerebral spinal fluid which has
all these effects that you've just.
Detailed.
And this was interesting to me because, you know, I had gone to
a cerebral a craniosacral, very good craniosacral practitioner
when Roan was much, much younger.
And it had really helped.
She would do it to him while he slept.
And it really helped with some of his more agitated symptoms back then.
And I began to put two and two together.
So.
Now, if we turn our attention back to the horse that, for example, I see a person
coming in who seems agitated and upset.
I'll often try to get them to accept this diaper shake thing
knowing that it will help.
And if I'm feeling in any way agitated or upset or even have pain in my body, I
will ask friends or family to do it to me.
So I can recognize behaviors.
Where it could be helpful, perhaps that's what you would call from
William Garner Sutherland looking with the Indian eye or whatever.
Now you are looking at your Indian eye at horses.
So let's say I bring my, I've got a little therapy herd of seven horses.
And if I invited you to stay with me here in Germany, which I'm going to, because
of course I want to completely plunder your knowledge and I would wheel my
horses out to you and say, okay, Shay.
Cast your eye on them and do your magic and let me know
what you think they might need.
What typically.
Do you see come up again and again, just the kind of, is there like a checklist
of five things that you kind of always see with your average horse that's been
a riding horse for X amount of years?
And do you have a sort of series of go to's that you do as your initial work
with these things before you go deeper?
Like what, what, what do you, what do you typically see?
What are the patterns that you.
That you've noticed that perhaps it would be helpful for us as horse owners
and people who work with horses to also begin to look out for, like, physically,
Shae Stewart: like, if I'm standing
Rupert Isaacson: there, because they're going to show initially
anything through their body and their movement as much as they would show
it through their emotional state.
Shae Stewart: Oh so probably one of the biggest things I
see is a dysfunctional posture.
They may stand there.
You walk out with the horse and the horse stops, you stop and the
horse stops and they may stand there and, and look completely relaxed,
but their posture to me says.
That their nervous system is not balanced and a posture and balance is a big one.
And I, I also see asymmetries in their face swelling in their face
that, that may, may not be obvious if you haven't seen them without it.
But the typical posture imbalance would be when they stop their front legs or are.
more back behind them.
So it looks like they're leaning over their forehand and their legs are
not directly under their shoulder.
I, I'll see the base of their neck looks a little dropped.
The croup might be level or higher than the withers.
The neck, their head may seem a little higher than it should in a relaxed state.
And those are the biggest changes I see in the cranial sacral.
The other thing I see are what I would call a headache look, which
is the eyes, the eyes will be maybe drawn down, narrowed, darker.
I'll watch, how, how are they?
Engaging with their environment, are their ears moving?
Are their eyes looking around?
I watch eyeball motion.
Like, if when you turn the horse 1 direction, and they look, do their eyes
track smoothly and have a full range of.
Lateral motion, or do their eyes stop at a certain point, and then they
tilt their head in a awkward position to look, or when they're looking
to one side, do their eyes make a weird skipping or tracking to them.
I see that a lot and usually I motion has to do with sphenoid bone compression,
which is the bone that the brain sits in.
And all the ocular nerves run through this bone and so any tension and fascia
can, can pull on the little holes we called for a man that are in, in the
bones at the cranial nerves run through any, any tension in the fascia, any head
compression can put compression on these.
I'll look at how are they holding their tongue, does this, does their
mouth feel dry or does it feel too wet?
Is there too much saliva in their mouth?
Is there not enough saliva in their mouth?
How are their ears moving?
Does one seem to kind of look weak and not maybe move well with the other one?
Do they move at all?
Some horses just may stand there and their ears kind of off to the side.
I look at how are they breathing?
Is it just, can you only see motion in their belly when they're breathing?
Or does their entire ribcage move?
Even the muscles in their back should move when they breathe.
I watch, how are they holding their tail?
Is it soft?
Is it off to one side?
Is it, does it seem tight?
I look at their fur.
The hair on their coat should all go in the appropriate direction.
And sometimes you'll see a weird patch of hair specifically on the neck that
looks like it's growing straight up, but that's the fascia pulling the
hair out of alignment, so to speak.
Oh look, does their coat seem dull?
Does the hair seem like it's tight?
And flat on their skin, or is it soft and, and fluffy and relaxed?
I'll look at how they're, how they're landing on their hoof.
Is it balanced?
Do they stand too much on their toe?
Those are basic things I look at.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
And so let's say you, would you normally see all of those things or
would you normally see, say three of those things or five of those
things together in a given horse?
Do they tend to come in little clusters, depending on the type of horse or the
type of work the horse has been in?
Shae Stewart: Those are pretty common things I see in almost every
Rupert Isaacson: horse.
Okay, all of that together?
Mm hmm.
And so where, what's your go to?
Where do you begin?
Shae Stewart: Well, I begin with myself.
So, in order to do this work, you have to get out of your thinking brain and be...
Embodied and horses are highly telepathic and
I have, I have what I call a cycle of attunement exercises that I'll do.
I'll check in with my breath.
Where's my brain?
I'll ground myself and then I.
Expand out.
So I do a meditation where from my midline, which is our spine, I'll
tune in there and I will expand out three feet from my body and
I'll expand out through the barn.
I expand out through the environment and I invite this slower rhythm
to present itself, and then I will go to a contact on the horse.
A lot of times I'll start at their sacrum,
or I'll start on their temporal bones, and then I'll do that same cycle of attunement
where I'll, I'll check in with my breath, I'll find my midline, and I'll expand
out, and then with the flow of this rhythm that comes from nature, your mind kind
of naturally drifts, so I'll pull, get pulled back into their temporal bones.
And I might hang out there for a little bit in my mind's eye.
Maybe I'll track down their body.
Most horses will tell you where they want you to be.
They'll either tell you, don't leave my temporal bones.
And they'll, they'll show you that by when I do leave the temporal
bones, they'll snap out of the zone they're in and they'll glare at me.
Some will even pin their ears or they'll, they'll toss their head
away, or they'll show me some sign that they're disconnecting.
So I'll go back to the temporal bones and they'll go right back to where to
that healing state that they get into.
And it's usually usually in the 1st, few sessions with the
horse, they're pretty specific.
with where they want my mind to be when I'm with them.
Rupert Isaacson: When your mind is, say, on the temporal bones or on the
sacrum, what are your fingers doing?
What are your hands doing?
Shae Stewart: It's a very light touch, like the weight of maybe a sheet of paper.
So I will wrap my hand around their temporal bone, or I'll place my
entire hand on their frontal bone.
Some bones are a little deeper, like the sphenoid bone is.
Deeper inside the skull on a horse on a human, you can feel it, but
on the horse, there's a specific contact and then you go in with your
mind's eye deeper into that bone.
Rupert Isaacson: I presume when you were learning to be a craniosacral
practitioner did you initially learn to be that on people and did your tutors.
Do you use these same techniques these psychosomatic techniques that
you're talking about with yourself, or are these things that you came
to in the course of your career?
Well,
Shae Stewart: I started receiving craniosacral in 1989.
So I was 20, well I'm 55 now, I was 21, 22, something like that.
And
Rupert Isaacson: why did you begin to
Shae Stewart: receive it?
So I was, my sister was a professional ballet dancer and they were, you know,
they always were getting some interesting form of body work and this was before
spas and massages were a big deal.
And maybe even before chiropractic, I mean, chiropractic was around, but there
wasn't a chiropractor on every corner.
And I was having migraines and a lot of neck pain.
And my sister recommended this craniosacral therapist.
And I just moved to San Francisco and so I went to see her and I did not know
what she was doing, but it felt amazing.
And I realized that my migraines were a symptom of a dysfunctional nervous system
and it, it changed my life receiving this.
So I was familiar with craniosacral before I started learning it.
I was also familiar with tuning into nature.
And I was also familiar with I guess you can say telepathic communication.
The women in my family were psychically connected and.
Rupert Isaacson: Why?
Hmm?
Why?
Did they, did they come from a particular tradition?
Or was there a story behind that somehow?
Shae Stewart: It just, I don't know.
My mother...
My mother died when I was 11.
So I would love to talk more about this stuff with her.
She was into Sufism but that wasn't until the last couple of years of her life.
My grandfather's grandmother, I believe it was his grandmother, was Cherokee.
And so he had a, he just had a different way of looking at life.
He hung out with With indigenous tribes and the Amazon and up in Alaska.
And so he would tell these stories and the, the women and my family were
just all connected, like they would send each other messages and there
wasn't any kind of tradition or.
Ceremony around that.
It was just, you know, my mother would say, oh, I need to talk to her cousin.
I'm going to go think about her and she'd go outside and kind of tune in.
And then, you know, an hour later, my cousin would call
and or whenever the phone would ring, they all knew who it was.
They'd pick it up and go, oh, hey, you know, so and so, or whatever their
name was without even saying hello 1st.
So that was.
That was kind of part of some of my upbringing and then it kind of
went away a little bit when my, after my mother died and when I
went and got my first craniosacral session, a lot of these things that
I had forgotten about came back.
And so it was a form of body work that I was always seeking to receive.
And it was hard to find back then.
And it was around 2006 or so that I started studying it on horses.
And I met a lady who came to, I had a horse facility and.
The Santa Cruz mountains in California, and I was studying
all different types of body work.
And I met a woman who taught equine craniosacral and to answer your question.
No, none of this was talked about in those initial classes, but
that was a long answer, but no,
Rupert Isaacson: it was a great answer.
And I do see that there's an indigenous tradition line coming
through here, both within your family.
And of course, within William Garner Sutherland.
And that I begin to see these patterns coalescing.
That are traditionally, traditional esoteric body work.
That's now coming to the western mainstream.
Talk to us about your horse background.
Why were you in horses?
Why did you have an equine facility in the Santa Cruz mountains?
How did you get into horses?
What's been your horse journey?
I,
Shae Stewart: when I was about six or seven, I met my first horse
and was completely obsessed and my dad had had horses as a child
and rode, and this was in Texas.
And so they put me in lessons and about a year later we were, had moved
out to the country and we had horses.
My dad, I had a horse, my dad had a horse, my brother had a horse.
I had horse people in my family and I was taking jumping lessons and
we lived so far out in the country that there weren't many kids.
And I preferred.
Being around animals anyway.
And so that's how it started.
And I rode things, things kind of went awry when my mother died and
I lost the love for much in life.
You know, it was like just a shell of a person.
And then in my twenties, I started riding again and I was leasing horses.
And it was a matter of time.
I just, I ended up with a horse and I was had a knack for them.
I was just good around horses and I could, I was really good at horses that were.
Troubled and heightened, I could, I was really good at bringing them
down and I started I bought a place out in the Santa Cruz mountains when
the area was depressed because of the earthquake in 89 and right after.
I bought a house, the area boomed and the place where I kept my horse, they decided
to move and so I was able to buy it.
It was really run down.
You know, I had, you know, I got a deal because it was needed a lot of work.
And that's when I started training and I had a mentor that I met.
Probably the late nineties and he was just amazing.
He really worked with the horse's thought.
He talked to, he talks about directing their thought helping them feel
better about what's being asked.
And that's who I studied from.
And I would spend like five weeks a year in Arizona bringing
the most messed up horses.
You could think of, and because that's how, who came to me, people, I was like
the last straw, can you fix this horse?
So that's how I got into hoof trimming and saddle fitting and body work.
Cause it all, it all, you know, you have to know you can't just
train behaviors out of them.
And I did that for 15 years or so.
Who was this
Rupert Isaacson: mentor?
What was his name?
Harry Whitney.
Mm hmm.
Shae Stewart: He is in Arizona.
He used to be in Arizona.
He travels all over the U.
S.
and teaches clinics.
He's still around.
Yeah, he's still around.
He flies under the radar.
He, have you ever heard of Tom Dorrance?
Yes.
Okay.
He was friends with Tom.
So,
Rupert Isaacson: okay.
How did you, how did you meet him?
Shae Stewart: He, when I first moved to the Santa Cruz mountains and first thing I
did was look up a place where I could ride horses and like the first or second week
I was there, he was coming for a clinic.
Okay.
And I didn't even know what a clinic was.
This was before horse clinics were a thing.
And and the woman who owned the place said, do you want
to sign up for this clinic?
I was like, sure.
So that's how I met Harry.
Rupert Isaacson: And what were you doing for a living at this point?
You weren't a professional with horses at this point, were you?
Shae Stewart: No, I was not.
I was a flight attendant.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
And you did that for a number of years, I presume.
Shae Stewart: Yes, I got that job.
I was in college and I was knew what I wanted to get into art therapy.
And I wasn't being very supported from the parents, my dad and his
wife thought that was just nuts.
And so it kind of killed my confidence of what do I want to do?
What do I want to study?
And so I thought, well, I needed a new reality.
I needed a, I needed, I knew I was not in a good place and I needed
something I needed to change my reality.
So I ended up, I knew a woman who was a flight attendant
and her husband was a pilot.
And I thought, well, that that will be a cool job to get me out
of here and go see the world.
And so I started that when I was 20,
Rupert Isaacson: I could also imagine that it would lead to
quite a lot of exhaustion jet lag.
And if you were, if you were compounding that with grief from this untimely death
of your mother, that at a certain point.
your body might take you by the scruff of the neck and give you a bit of a shake.
Did that indeed happen?
And, and did craniosacral, is that partly why you sought
out craniosacral for yourself?
Shae Stewart: Yes, that's the, it was, yeah, the migraines were debilitating and
craniosacral was it was life changing.
It was like that part in the, you know, the movie The Wizard of Oz.
When it's black and white and then she gets to Oz and
everything's in this vibrant color.
Yeah, that's what I feel like after my first session.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
All right.
Well, I'd like to lead the conversation into some, some practical areas because
those of us who work with horses all the time, we want our horses.
To feel as good as they possibly can, particularly if their job is to
transmit well being to other people.
But also, as I'm sure you know, in the therapeutic world, we
mostly deal with donation horses.
And people donate horses for a reason.
Usually they come.
Fairly messed up.
And so as I said at the beginning of this conversation with Horseboy Method,
with Athena, with our mounted, with our horse equine programs, we spend a lot
of time with lunging in hand work, long reining work, giving horses crazy time,
free jumping, lots of trail riding, lots of unmounted work, lots of just
rebuilding them and rebuilding them.
We get good results.
But we're always looking for how to be better.
I asked you also about certain patterns that you see.
when horses come in front of you.
So I definitely see a certain number of patterns.
We now have over, you know, probably over a hundred locations that
do say horse boy in the world.
And I'm always going out to them and there's their new crop of donation
horses and go, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I could identify sort of five or 10 things that I see regularly.
Could I, and I'm sure a lot of listeners do, could I ask you about those things?
Through your lens, and perhaps you could give us some insights into
what could be behind them and what could be good approaches for them.
I think people would find that very helpful.
Could I start with the first one?
The first thing we almost always see is
congenital weakness.
In the loin and the stifle that Lee that shows itself almost as,
as, as, as lameness, but not quite.
And we spend a lot of time strengthening those 2 parts of the horse.
But we definitely noticed that almost every horse that comes
in front of our eyes has this.
Why is that?
Do you think?
And what's your go to there?
Shae Stewart: I think they get weak there from
a posture imbalance.
And how they're ridden and any kind of head compression can cause this weakness.
It'll throw off their posture.
And so you get on them and, or you do in hand work and you train,
try to train the correct muscles.
But if their nervous system is not regulated, if they're stuck in a
heightened state and their nervous system, you're going to be fighting
against that because it's the brain telling the body how to be.
It's not.
a muscle that just needs to be strengthened.
Where craniosacral shines is the work on the nervous system.
So I believe that's where it starts and that's where you
can see the biggest change.
I had another thought, but it went away
Rupert Isaacson: about that.
Perhaps it will come back.
If we turn our attention to another thought, maybe that
thought will come back because I would like to hear it if possible.
I'm just going to move up, move up the body a little bit.
So there are two other ones, which, you know, we often see.
Kissing spine is something we often see thoracic kissing spine in horses
that have been jumpers and lumbar kissing spine could be from anything.
Again, we have ways of addressing it and sometimes we can be quite successful.
However, I would dearly love to know more.
And again, can you just tell me your thoughts on, on those two
Shae Stewart: things?
Well, another thought about this whole thing is, we, we, any mammal, humans,
horses, Dogs, you know, whatever can have what's called a contract.
Who force.
So say, you know, horse gets runs into a fence on their shoulder, their
left shoulder, and that force can travel down through the body and end
up causing an issue and the right hip.
So pinpointing where some of these things are from, this is why craniosacral
helps because we don't go in and try to fix, we try to expand health.
And plus the, the point in the body that might be hurting might not have anything
to do with where the initial problem is.
Kissing spine is very common.
I don't know if it's because now we can, we have better imaging, we can see it.
You know, maybe it's been there this whole time and now we can diagnose it.
It's usually the, there are surgeries, but the surgeries are not a one and done deal.
Usually there's problems in the entire spine, not just the thoracics.
Or the
Rupert Isaacson: the things that stick up off the top of the spine
Shae Stewart: that stick out from their spine,
So there can be arthritis in the actual vertebrae as well with kissing spine.
And, you know, once again, I'll take it back to the nervous system.
Yeah.
The fluid body, the, and even, even when you do a therapeutic approach,
like chiropractor, chiropractic or osteopathy, it's still, it's introducing
a force into the system and there can be a ripple effect of that.
And that's where craniosacral can come in and help help
those rhythms match up better.
The breathing rhythms in the system,
Rupert Isaacson: arthritis, of course, you know, one is obviously
going to be seeing a lot of this.
Most horses that are donated are older and have had careers.
So there's wear and tear on the body on the cartilage and on the bone.
Let alone, you know, tendons and ligaments to with.
Arthritis.
One thing that we have seen is that what can appear to be really chronic
arthritis, we often find kind of, at least symptomatically, kind of goes away.
When we do a lot of gentle in hand work, we, we find the same thing with
a lot of the kissing spine issues, but we have to take some time over it.
This is not a rushed process.
There's that word again, the processes, they're in process but when, when when
arthritis, for example, seems to dissipate
is in fact, what we think of as bone deterioration, is it
actually more tightened fascia?
Shae Stewart: I wonder about these things because I've seen one of the places I
teach is a YMCA camp and they, they're, they have all their horses are donated and
they, they're all arthritic.
And the, the ease of movement that comes, you know, we're helping the
body get back to its original source.
Remember the health, we're, we're holding the whole system to help find where's
it not hurt and can we expand this.
Instead of trying to fix something.
And we're also talking a lot about physical problems and there's more
than just the physical, there's the mind and the spirit as well.
Indeed.
And horses and I've worked with quite a few quite a few places where they
have therapeutic horses that, that are donated and they come with a lot
of other stuff that's attributing to their physical problems as well.
Rupert Isaacson: One of the things which I find.
Sometimes troublesome about going to equine conferences and such where
people are speaking is that often it's held up as a sort of abuse if
horses have been kept in stables and boxes now and that sort of thing.
And often the people saying this just happen to live in geographical areas
of the American West where they have access to an awful lot of space.
And one of the problems I have, it's not that I think they're necessarily
wrong, but it's not helpful for somebody who's, say, keeping a horse in suburban
New York, or you Frankfurt or London and what's available to them that they don't
even own the facility that they're at a boarding stable there, you know, and they
don't have power over the environment.
And so I started thinking about this quite seriously, because a lot of a lot of the
therapeutic riding stables we're dealing with were in urban or peri urban areas.
And why we couldn't just go to them and shame them and say, well, you guys suck
because you know, you're not in Wyoming.
And so, well, we know we're not in fucking Wyoming.
That's why we're trying to do.
That's why we're serving these kids from the local housing estate.
Yeah.
So, how do we make it better as best as best as we can.
So we started looking at how can we emulate as much as possible.
Horses in a natural environment in herds, if they have to be
kept in confined areas a lot.
And we work with a.
A really good urban project in Dublin, in the middle of Dublin, you think of
Ireland as all green fields, but this place is like right in the center of
Dublin, doing a really crucial service for kids in a pretty shitty area.
And we had another place in the middle of Amsterdam and another, you know, we've
had quite a few urban horse places and I'm intrigued by these because they,
they suddenly are a real challenge.
And so they're getting.
the crocked horses and they don't have much option about how to keep them.
So one thing we began to experiment with was just the
emotional well being of the horse.
So we said, well, what does that come down to?
Really?
It comes down to, they've got to be in a herd, right?
And if they're in a herd and they can touch up against each other but if they
can't do that all day, what's the maximum we could give them and how could we do?
And then there was a curious.
They don't want to do the same thing every day anymore than we do.
The axons and dendrites in their brain, you know, become rusty, just like they
do in ours if we don't do new stuff and novel movement and blah, blah, blah.
So we came up with this idea of crazy time, that you could, in arenas,
you turn horses out in groups.
And you encourage them to play, but you don't chase them around
too much, you interact with them and you build playgrounds.
So if the horses like to jump, well, okay, we will jumps and things like that.
But we also have other things in there for enrichment, like balls that might
move or other interesting objects.
And then if they don't jump, well, maybe it's poles on the ground.
There's a large element of choice.
They choose a bit like kids in the playground, are they gonna go up
the climbing frame or aren't they?
But the climbing frame needs to be there.
But of course, horses are essentially playful and playful even when they're old.
And, and playfulness of course is wellbeing.
When some, when a playful animal ceases to be playful, you know, it's in trouble.
When a kid ceases to be playful, you know, that kid's in trouble or even an adult.
So, We encourage play and teaching people enough tact, equestrian tact, to keep the
play going, because the horses actually enjoy that interaction with the monkeys.
They're like, well, what's next then?
And then also to change up the playground every two, three minutes.
You change the jumps a bit.
You change what's on the ground a bit.
You chuck a ball at them.
You do this.
You do that.
You put some interesting object there.
You take it away just so that they're like, oh, what's next?
And we found that if we dedicated.
X number of hours per week to doing this in these areas, which were by
no means ideal for keeping horses, everything in the horse has changed.
Physically, as well as mentally.
And then we had to come up with, well, how do you make this not a time conflict?
Because, of course, these stables are seeing, you know, a lot of clients.
And then we said, ah, but what if that was the session where
you're seeing the client?
And then what if, so we, we now have a whole.
set of things we call crazy time because kids want crazy time too and adults
want crazy time and it becomes about teaching them horsemanship or it could
be about teaching them maths because we can mark out the distances and the
heights and the widths of the fences and all the materials that are the types
of wood that the jumps are made from or the poles are made from or any number
of things that we can do and so that that those crazy time sessions are paid.
So there's no time conflict anymore.
So it's a kind of win, win, win the horse gets what they need.
The client definitely gets what they need.
And you, the facility owner get what you need, because not only are
you serving your client, but you're serving your horse and but it.
It was looking at the site, as you said, that beyond the body, and we found that
the body stuff then obviously responded better to the body stuff that we were
doing with the lunging and that sort of training and the, the, the in hand work.
But really it seemed to me that what we were coming down to was happiness.
And that could take many forms and then I began to look at horses that were kept
in large pastures and realizing that they weren't necessarily that happy.
They definitely, you know, it was more optimal than horses that were kept
in boxes, but I began to see plenty of depressed horses in pastures.
And that was intriguing to us.
Well, why would they be depressed in a pasture?
Because surely they're getting kind of what they need.
But it seemed to me that the quality of the interaction with each other and
with the humans, if that was somehow lacking, that could lead to boredom.
And which is a sort of form of unhappiness, even
though they're eating grass.
What do you think about that?
This, this idea, it seems to me more and more that the curiosity and play
are really at the root of well being.
And that this is something that is not really looked at in
organisms of any kind really.
And where might this come into the cranial sacral and nervous system?
What, what, what's going on with that?
Do you think?
I think
Shae Stewart: that's all a great idea.
And when I, when I trained and, and studied with Harry, he,
he talked a lot about that.
Getting the horse make helping the horse find interest in what you're
doing and be mentally engaged and, and not stressed out or not shut down.
I've seen horses that lived in her.
Outside and pastures, but it was such a dysfunctional herd.
They, they were just difficult, difficult horses to handle.
And my place in California, they lived in small paddocks cause it's, it was
on the side of a mountain and we did the best we could and they, we rarely
had colics, the vets would always.
Say, why don't you have colics here?
The place down the street, they call it every week, somebody's
colicking and there just wasn't that much, there was not much injuries.
So I think there's a lot to that, keeping them curious.
Changing thing up things up.
We had barrels in the arena.
We do all kinds of things with those and where the cranial
sacral comes in as it helps.
It helps the body let go helps the nervous system.
The body let go of stresses inside the system that it that
it's been holding on to and.
And the craniosacral work is giving their nervous system a safe place to let things
that have been stored deep in the cracks.
Help those cracks open and let them out, whether it's you know, an
injury or, or some emotional thing in there that's stored, that's, you
know, trapped in the system, so to
Rupert Isaacson: speak.
When you say in the cracks, do you actually mean in cracks, like in the
cracks between the plates of the, of the brain, of the, of the skull?
Metaphoric cracks.
Yeah.
But I guess it is true, is it not, that People say I don't,
do you think this is true?
That memory is to a large degree carried in muscle.
And that's why people say, Oh, you know, I did this yoga pose and then
suddenly there's my grandfather.
I remember my grandfather telling me this joke, you know, that
I've completely forgotten when I was five or something like that.
Do you, this, this idea is, I'm a bit intrigued by what you said just now about.
That where the cranial sacral will come in is that it helps let go of stored stress.
Shae Stewart: Yes.
And, and the, my training, we look at it as stored in the
fluids and the fluid body.
So it goes deeper than muscle memory, deeper than cellular memory.
It's, it's stored in the fluids.
And if you think about, imagine that we have inside of our skin,
if we were like a water balloon.
And there's different there's slower rhythms down in the deep.
And then as you get more surface level, it gets faster.
The faster rhythms are usually where the dysfunction is stored.
And the slower rhythms can't push that out.
Because it's, it's trapped in there.
And it's, it's deeper than a muscle memory.
So in a craniosacral session,
sometimes like I was working on a horse not too long ago, and I
got as a sense of, I had a vision of the horse just standing in the
pasture, staring out into the forest.
And I felt the sense of emptiness, just empty.
About five minutes of the horse processing this and I was getting this vision about
five minutes later, the owner said, I'll tell you about the horses that just died
and she told me about how the two oldest horses had died pretty close together.
And she said, ever since.
They died, this mare that I was working on stands out in the pasture
and just stares out into the forest.
And she doesn't follow the other herd when they go to the next pasture.
She just stands there and stares.
And situations like that happen often in a session.
And the way I look at it is the, the sadness, or I don't know if
I want to use the word trauma.
But the, the, what the horse went through is processing out of the system.
And I believe that's why I get the vision.
And then the owner picked it up too, without realizing what she was picking up.
Rupert Isaacson: When you get that vision, do you feel, and when that
horse is exhibiting that behavior, the staring, is that the sadness
going through its process, bubbling, bubbling to the surface, and then
eventually being able to be released.
Yes.
And is your job to expedite that process, basically, to help smooth
Shae Stewart: out the process?
To hold space.
Yeah.
Hold space to allow it to happen.
And by me becoming aware of it does help reinforce the system to let it go.
Rupert Isaacson: Have you seen a change in the mayor?
Mm hmm.
Shae Stewart: Yeah.
She, and when this.
I've had it happen.
Sometimes when when things release from the horse's system, it, you may feel heat,
actual heat come off right under my hands.
It'll get maybe even sweaty or these visions.
Of of an image of whatever they're processing.
I've I've seen an image of the horse pulling back and
cross ties and falling down.
And when it when it releases, there's a shift in the tide.
That I'm surfing on in the system, it'll, there'll just be a shift
and everything will slow down.
Rupert Isaacson: It's this thing about faster rhythms and slower rhythms.
This seems to me to have a parallel in brainwave states now.
So if the accepted wisdom is that the slower your brainwave state,
the more functional in certain ways.
So if you're tied up to an EEG.
Machine that's measuring your brainwaves, for example, if you had
epilepsy or something and they were that if you were having fits seizures.
Brainwaves would be going very fast and anything that slows them down seems
to be better and it seems that the the main Functional states that have
been identified in a crude level of beta, which is the sort of functional
cheerful All right, how's it going?
It's my job in it.
All right, mate.
All right, you're right.
I'm right then to alpha being okay now I need to get Deep breath focus.
I've got to take that drop kick over the bars of the goal for this.
I need to come into slow my brain, slow my breathing, slow my, and that would
be measured as an alpha brain state.
And then if one went a little bit further than that into a very meditative
state, perhaps even slightly between sleeping and waking, that might be
a theta state where people report getting a lot of inspired thought.
And then for.
When people are in deep REM sleep Delta.
And it seems that if people can consciously go into Delta, like some
shamans and some indigenous cultures, they hooked up EG machines and found
that they're in waking lucid Delta in their trances, that seems to be
when they can almost bend reality.
And now.
Even further states, gamma states are being, it seems the more they
go into this, the more they find.
And of course, these are electrical currents.
And these electrical currents are going through a brain, which is composed
of fascia tissue which is composed of liquid, largely, and vibration.
Cells vibrating at a distance from each other.
Is that what's going on when you're doing your work, that you're
bringing those rhythms into those.
Is it, are you bringing those rhythms, those, those vital rhythms, which
might be measured in a brainwave state, might be measured in a heart rate,
might be measured in flow of cerebral spinal fluid or lymph or blood perhaps
would be measured, breathing might be measured in all of them at the same time.
Are you bringing those into a slower resonance?
And is that what allows something that you said earlier, which
I found intriguing, that
of health to be re accessed?
Yes.
Because nothing's now in the way.
Is that what's going on?
Yeah,
Shae Stewart: that's exactly what's going on.
That's why it's so important when you learn this work to understand
how to orient to the slower rhythms.
And there's, there are documented rhythms that have been timed and it
might not be a rhythm that you feel moving Because it's too slow, but
it's a total quality of that state.
So there's.
The long tide or primary respiration, and that's the 100 second cycle
rhythm that's, that has been, they find references of this and all over
the world and nature and science.
There's even slower rhythms.
So it's the same with the brainwave studies, the biodynamic world,
the more people get into this, the more they find deeper and slower.
They call them tides, but it's more the tonal quality or the visions.
So there's even there's a 300 second cycle.
1 that's been talked about.
There's a 20 minute cycle.
1 that is being talked about and there's.
The rhythm that we all kind of settle in, which is a mid tide, which is two, two and
a half cycles a minute, and that when you can palpate, and then there's a cranial
rhythmic impulse, which is a faster rhythm and this might be controversial
to other craniosacral people what I'm about to say, but the faster, the.
Cranial rhythmic impulse is not a therapeutic tide, and it's not something
that the even the older osteopaths even recognized, and in this day and age,
it's taught as a rhythm to look for.
But in my training, it's, it's taught as a rhythm of dysfunction, a rhythm of a,
of a dysfunctional state of the nervous system and working with the horses.
I did go off and do a 2 year, 10 level biodynamic.
Program for humans, but working with the horses is what got me to understand the
slower rhythms because they live in that.
And I feel a faster rhythm in them.
Sometimes it's usually an area that was an acute injury or.
A recent you know, fall or something or a recent form of body work where
they put something in the system that caused a faster rippling to happen.
Rupert Isaacson: How do you feel that rippling?
How do you feel it faster or slower?
Shae Stewart: If it's a dysfunctional rhythm, it's a faster rhythm and I can
feel it through my hands and in my.
In my sensories, however, I'm receiving the, the, it's, it's considered a
perceived sense or a felt sense.
Would you feel it as vibration?
Would you feel it as pulse?
What would you feel it as?
The faster dysfunctional rhythms, I would feel it as a slow vibration
or just an irregular motion.
So the bones in our system do have a pattern of a healthy motion that
they should move in, you know, like the frontal bone, the lateral
edges flare in cranial rhythm.
And so what I would feel in a dysfunctional pattern, maybe one
side is not moving at all and the other side is moving too fast.
So I don't feel that fullness coming into my hands.
Rupert Isaacson: And why in some forms of cranial sacral would they think
that the faster rhythm is a good thing?
I don't know, do they say it's a good thing because you feel for this because
Shae Stewart: it could be the, the original osteopath who designed the
program worked in the faster rhythms.
I have seen and some of the equine osteopathy, they will feel if they don't
feel a rhythm, they go in and adjust and then feel for that rhythm and it's the
faster rhythm that they're feeling for.
So they did disrupt the system to bring that rhythm, but in the biodynamic
world, we work within the slower motions.
Rupert Isaacson: When I heard you talking at Warwick Summit you talked
about a 50 second rhythmic cycle and you seemed to feel that that
was fairly optimal or desirable.
Can you talk to us a little bit about what that is and why
that would be a good thing?
Shae Stewart: Yes, that, that is what we call primary respiration,
primary respiration, and it's a 100 second cycle with the phase
change every 50 seconds or a minute.
You can, you can say it's about a minute.
That is the, that is the primary respiration is what biodynamic
craniosacral practitioners orient to.
And.
And this is what we're taught is the healing rhythm that comes from
nature that flows through our bodies.
And it's measured in a 100 second cycle minute or cycle.
Tied.
Rupert Isaacson: I'm just looking this up here.
The first thing that came up when I typed in primary respiration is.
Good old Google.
The primary respiration mechanism, PRM, tell me if you think this is
true or not, is a functional unit based on the accommodative actions
of cranial articular surfaces.
Is a cranial articular surface the bones in your skull?
Shae Stewart: Maybe the cranial sacral mechanism, which would be part of
that would be the bones in the skull.
Rupert Isaacson: PRM has five distinct anatomic slash physiologic components,
colon, the inherent rhythmic motion of the brain and spinal cord,
fluctuation of cerebral spinal fluid.
So reading between the lines of that is what they're saying.
If you're in this primary respiratory rhythm that you're talking about then
your or the horse's flow of cerebral spinal fluid Which we began this
discussion with talking about all the reasons why that that's a good thing
if it's in that rhythm Is that the optimal in terms of source health?
Is that where you ought to be when you're a kid and things
have not yet messed you up?
Yeah.
Shae Stewart: Yeah, this is a, this is the yeah, the, the source it's the,
it's where, where, where it's all at.
It's the original source that's found in nature and inside of us.
Rupert Isaacson: Do we see these same things like in the plant kingdom?
Do we see them in, in osmosis and do we see them in photosynthesis
and that sort of thing?
Does it, do we, do we even reflect it in other?
Shae Stewart: Yes, it's been measured in the plant world.
There's I think his name, I think his first name is William Seifrietz.
He was a botanist from the 50s and he measured the you can
look up the YouTube videos.
The original videos are still on YouTube with where he studied slime mold.
Rupert Isaacson: Protoplasm.
That was him.
He was the slime mold guy.
Shae Stewart: Yep.
William Seyfritz.
Rupert Isaacson: William.
I'm typing in William.
How do I spell Seyfritz?
Seyfritz or Seyfert?
Seyfritz.
I thought
Shae Stewart: it was Fritz, but I might be.
Rupert Isaacson: Slime mold.
Let me.
Do I have to type in slime mold guy?
Shae Stewart: I found it.
S E I F R I T Z.
Rupert Isaacson: F R I T Z.
Shae Stewart: Cyphretes on protoplasm.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay, tell us what he found.
Shae Stewart: He found that there was a motion within this protoplasm and you
can see in the video it looks liquid running up the protoplasm and it'll go one
direction for 50 seconds, pause, and then it'll switch and go another direction.
And they've He, they started playing with putting toxins in the mold
to destroy some of it to see what would happen in the slime mold.
And they found when it regenerated that motion, it didn't pick
up where it was left off.
It picked up with the rest of it.
And he, so he determined that it was being moved from an external source.
Rupert Isaacson: Did he know, did he speculate about what that source was?
Not
Shae Stewart: that I have found.
It could be in some of his
Rupert Isaacson: lectures.
And just so that people know what protoplasm is, protoplasm is the
colorless material comprising the living part of a cell, including
the cytoplasm nucleus and other.
Organelles.
So what we're talking about there is the stuff of life, right?
The stuff that makes up one's cells, if that is being animated.
It's interesting if a botanist in the 50s was speculating that it's
being moved from some outside source.
Are we getting, is that what we call God?
Shae Stewart: That's where we can get into deeper conversations depending on
what your source is, whether it's God
I could look at it as God.
It feels like when you step into that when you step into primary
respiration, it feels like you lose sense of, of a definition of body.
And there's a connection to all
Rupert Isaacson: life form.
The web rather than the matrix.
Is that love?
I
Shae Stewart: think it...
It can boil down to unconditional love.
Rupert Isaacson: It sounds like it.
When, when I've ever asked a a traditional healer, I've worked with
different ones around the world, and whenever I've asked them in whatever
tradition, whatever geographical location they're in, could be as diverse as
subarctic Canada to the Kalahari to Australian rainforest to other places.
And I've said, well, what is it, this force that you're using this
cerebral spinal fluid, this Kundalini, this chi, this key, this num, I
get the same answer every time.
What they always say is, Oh, that's easy, Ruth.
That's just, it's just love.
But with a certain training process, you can learn to direct it.
And I think I've heard that answer about seven or eight times now among people
who certainly were not interacting with each other over the internet, living
in Hudson, Siberia, or, you know.
under trees in the Kalahari.
What, how, how would we know?
How do you know if you're breathing and existing in this minute cycle,
this primary respiration cycle?
What are the signs to look out for in yourself?
What are the signs to look out for?
Shae Stewart: It's always there.
Never stops.
It can present itself, so to speak, when you're in a more expanded state, instead
of compressed, narrowed in on something.
There are external signs, like when I work with horses, there can be external signs
like a sigh, a bird flying by a breeze.
It's a very quiet state and time stands still.
He totally lose track of time.
It's very connected.
It feels palpable.
So it feels like.
The air around us, instead of feeling you know, airy and it feels, it
feels thick and moves almost like a slow ocean and every cell and
the body syncs up with that motion.
It's the, the best place to explore it is for me is either in the woods
where you're surrounded by trees.
Or in the ocean, you know, out in nature.
Rupert Isaacson: It's not really...
Do you know you're entering it?
It just happened to me while you were talking.
You know, sometimes you do one of those involuntary...
Mm hmm.
2 3 phase.
Breath and...
And you didn't do it because you were looking to do it.
It just kind of happened as a reflex.
It's that release and you feel in that good place, that's a return
into that primary respiration thing, a more agitated state.
So it would seem to me then that what you're talking about, we started with
the wellbeing of horses and therapy.
Well, but of course, you know, this is what we're looking for if we're in the
therapy world in our clients, of course, and of course, if we're, we're the ones
responsible for the well being of the horses ultimately, and if we're also
responsible for as much of the well being of the human as it comes under our care.
Hands are under our care as is possible in that time that we have them.
It would seem that, again, the horse can't transmit that well
being if they don't have it.
And we can't transmit that well being very well if we don't have it.
So it seems to me that what you're talking about with the cranial sacral
might be three fold useful for the horse, for the client, and of course
for us who are connecting those two.
And what's going on.
If someone is, is listening to this podcast and says, well,
okay, that will make sense to me.
Great.
What's my next step?
How do I, I've got a, I'm, I'm a, I'm running a stable, I'm busy.
This is yet another thing I now have to think about.
I'm not gonna get stressed about de-stressing.
Yeah.
What is the least stressful way that someone could go about.
Engaging with this equine craniosacral work and indeed with the crossover
to the human that could cause the least disruption to a busy week.
Like, what would you suggest people start to do?
Shae Stewart: You mean like in their own daily life or finding a cranial
practitioner to come in and help?
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, I mean both I should imagine because
one predicates the other, no?
Shae Stewart: Yes.
I would, I would say look for a craniosacral practitioner.
You could even Google a human practitioner and see if they work on horses.
And I would even go a little further and say look for a biodynamic
craniosacral practitioner.
A
Rupert Isaacson: biodynamic craniosacral
practitioner.
Okay, so.
What we need to do is go online when you're, not while you're driving your
car, listening to this podcast, but when you've parked your car, go online
and look for a biodynamic craniosacral practitioner somewhere in your hood.
Yes.
Are there a lot of them?
Are they easy
Shae Stewart: to find?
They're probably easier to find in Europe than the U.
S., but there is a school, a biodynamic craniosacral school in the U.
S., so they're becoming more available.
Where is that school?
They're all over.
It's called, of course, I can't remember what it's called, my
human teacher teaches for them.
I can't remember.
It's like biodynamic.
Can we look it up quickly?
Craniosacral of North America.
There's one in the UK.
Michael Kern has one in the UK.
Rupert Isaacson: Michael Kern.
Is that K E R N?
K E R N.
Shae Stewart: There's all kinds of people.
There's actually going to be a Breath of Life conference.
And Colorado in September,
Rupert Isaacson: Breath of Life Conference, Colorado, September.
I'm writing that down.
We're in Colorado.
Shae Stewart: It's in Estes Park.
Okay.
My friend and teacher has a, or had, but it's still out there, a podcast
called the Craniosacral Podcast.
Okay.
And he interviews all the leaders in the industry.
And you can learn a lot about it.
By going on his podcast.
There are a couple.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay, go ahead.
Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you.
Shae Stewart: His name is Ryan Holford and it's called the Craniosacral Podcast.
Rupert Isaacson: The Craniosacral Podcast.
And I've, okay, I found your Breath of Life conference and this is the
Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy Association of North America.
Yes.
Okay.
And then you say, is it Michael Kern, K E R N, in
Shae Stewart: the UK?
K E R N.
He has a school in the UK.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
And then I suppose if we type that in for other countries, we might find it.
Yeah,
Shae Stewart: if you type in biodynamic craniosacral, you'll find.
Either through the association, there'll be a list of people, or it'll pop up.
Rupert Isaacson: And if this person, if one found this, this let's say I'm
sitting here in Wiesbaden in Germany and let's say I found, I will of course
quickly go Google someone after this podcast is done and probably have
them come out to My Horses and Me.
And then my clients
is somebody, do the people who are doing it on horses need a
special horse training or is it sort of ubiquitous across mammals?
Shae Stewart: It's ubiquitous across mammals.
I've done, cause I, most of my training is human.
There aren't a lot of equine trainers and there's specifically, I mean, there may
be a couple of us focus on biodynamics.
It's, it's a little bit more of a deeper part of craniosacral,
but you can learn it on humans and just think about the orientation of the
bones is different for the different.
I've worked on zoo animals deer chickens.
I've worked in all kinds of animals, dogs, cats, goats, cows.
Rupert Isaacson: You have a very chilled out husband.
Shae Stewart: He's pretty, he's pretty calm.
He's got more, he's, he gets more, has more nervous energy than I do,
but I can calm them down pretty quick.
Rupert Isaacson: So he's got it on tap.
We just, you just adjust his, his frontal lobe.
Shae Stewart: I just start talking slower and I could just see him kind of
Rupert Isaacson: You have a vision of him sitting in a cafe with a beer in his hand.
Yeah.
Under the sunlight of vine leaves or something.
There he is.
Yeah.
Great.
If people want to contact you obviously you have a lot of insights
into this, particularly with horses and, you know, in our world.
The set equine assisted world, we're always looking for that win, win,
win, something that serves the horse, something that serves the client,
something that serves the practitioner.
'cause there's also a lot of burnout.
It's, it's, it's it's not just the horses that, you know, get broken, it's, it's
also the people working in the field.
How do people find you and contact you?
She,
Shae Stewart: I have a website.
It's equine balance.net.
Rupert Isaacson: Equine balance, all one word?
Mm-hmm.
dot net.
Okay.
Shae Stewart: And I do have a Facebook business page, which is the same along
with my name and I try to stay active on that and write up thoughts and things that
people can think about when they're around their horses or just in life in general.
And that's equine balance by Shea Stewart.
Rupert Isaacson: This is on Facebook equine balance.
By Shea, S H E A.
Stuart with a W, Stuart, like the Scottish royal family who were the
Catholic branch of the English royal family of the same name in the 17th
century, who then launched the Catholic rebellions in the 17th and 18th century
against the British crown, who had turned Protestant at that point, and
caused the centralization of Government in England to then regulate the British
Empire it was the Stuarts who kicked out.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
The, and that was the age of enlightenment in in England.
So the, the Stuart dynasty came in after the Tudors the French Scottish, that
was James the first after Elizabeth the first, who was a bit paranoid.
anti witches and he was the guy who sent, he was the guy who sent the, and didn't
like religious extremists, he sent the first religious extremists out on the May,
a vote called the May Flower after putting them in a prison called the Clink Jail
in the South Bank in England, and they thought maybe we should get these guys out
of England and they can go do their stuff to each other and the Native Americans,
so pack them off to the New World.
And so now they're considered to be very blue blooded in America, but
actually they were political agitators.
In in England, and then he was the Protestant line, and that was why
he was allowed to come onto the throne in England because the father
of his predecessor, Elizabeth the first had turned English, England.
Protestant so that he could divorce Catherine of Aragon and try and get a son
with Anne Boleyn, which didn't work, by the way, so we cut Anne Boleyn's head off.
And then, as they did back then, as they did back then, repeatedly and
then the, he died with no male issue.
So that created a problem.
And there were two branches of the Stuart line.
Sorry, I'm wrong.
He did die with male issue and he, and his, his son was Charles the first, but
Charles the first was a secret Catholic and fell foul of parliament and that
then the English civil war happened.
These are the Stuarts and they cut his head off.
We were the first country in Europe to cut the King's head off.
And then we realized that that didn't do us any good.
We just got a different bunch of gangsters in.
So after they had dealt with Oliver Cromwell and his gangsters under a
Republic briefly, we brought back the monarchy under the Stuarts, which was
Charles II, the Merry Monarch, who was the great patron of the arts and sciences
and founded a little thing called the Hudson Bay Company and a little thing
called the East India Company but was also a secret Catholic and a bon vivant,
and he left no legitimate male issue.
So then there were wars, civil wars between the French Scottish Stuarts
and the distant cousins of the Stuarts that the aldermen of the
City of London would bring in to sit on the throne at any one time.
William of Orange And people like that, and all of them failed to have sons,
so eventually they had to bring in some German cousins called the House
of Hanover, and that's the Georgian period, those are the Georgias.
And of course the Stuart line, financed by France, who was always
going to agitate a little bit to make life difficult for England, would
occasionally field once a generation.
a descendant of the original royal line to have a go at the English throne.
And the last one happened in 1745 under Bonnie Prince Charlie, Charles
Stewart, Charles Edward Stewart, who rallied the Scottish clans and they
got within a hundred miles of London.
And that's when the British government said no more.
And they smashed the Scottish clans, cut down all the forests
in the Highlands, sent all the inhabitants out to the Americas.
That's why the Appalachian hillbillies have muck and
then, and Mack in their names.
And versus indentured laborers.
And then they went and ran hogs in the, in the, in the appellations.
And if they were lucky, that's what happened to them, they
weren't hanged or unaccorded.
And they created the patchwork countryside that we see today in the British
countryside of hedgerows to create a landowning, taxpaying middle class that
was loyal to the crown that, unlike those pesky aristocrats with private armies
that would occasionally get drunk and decide to have a crack at the crown.
And so there you are, Shea Stewart, that's your history.
By the Cherokees, who of course met.
Well, because they, of course, met those Scots Irish emigres who were thrown
out there by the British when they were tramping up and down the Appalachians
and they encountered people like the Cherokees and the Lumbees and the
Iroquois and intermarried with them.
Shae Stewart: You're amazing.
It's like walking
Rupert Isaacson: history book.
It's just my shtick.
I like history.
There's many things I don't know.
I just happen to know that small thing.
It's my cerebral spinal fluid at work.
Shae Stewart: It must have a really good flow.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, I guess like anyone, when it's interested in
something, it sort of perks up a bit.
Yeah.
Including...
I find the whole subject of cerebral spinal fluid fascinating, and the
further I go into it, the more I do see that does indeed seem that the mystic
core of all religions in the world seem to deal with Thank you very much.
Allegories around this process of cerebral spinal fluid and the middle ventricle
of the brain and the pineal gland and the interplay between the pineal and the
pituitary gland and so on and so forth.
And I really would encourage listeners to dive down that rabbit hole
because it informs daily life in a really interesting way because daily
life is the rhythms of one's body.
I mean, what else can it be really?
And therefore the rhythm of our horses bodies.
And it makes it all a bit more interesting than just saying
he's got stiffness in the stifle.
Yes.
I love your approach of saying, well, yes, he does have a stiffness in the siphon.
And yes, we can look at things that will ameliorate that on a, on a
muscular and even fascial viewpoint.
But I love the idea that you have, that you're talking about of going deeper than
that and saying, ah, but if those joints and those fascia themselves are being
governed by a flow of effectively liquid.
Within the body, which we're all composed of, which we know we're composed of.
We know we're all mostly water.
And then if we can get that flow, right, then a lot of those things
are going to fix themselves.
I mean, that does make sense because if the, if, if the fluids
around my stiff leg from that.
Wrench that it got back in 2018 are held in a liquid that is not blocked,
then it's going to ease that stiffness.
And that does make sense to me.
It makes absolute sense to me.
But I've seen it at work.
I've seen good cerebral craniosacral people at work, and that's why I was.
Wanting to get you on here.
Because I think with with we horse people, we we've been looking at things from a
sort of anatomical veterinary viewpoint for a long time, which while useful
and helpful is not the whole picture.
And there are other other forces at work.
And what's interesting too is, as you say, that the people that
came up with this were doctors.
And a lot of the best vets I know look very closely at the stuff that
you're talking about because with their knowledge of anatomy and physiology,
they're not coming at it with prejudice.
They're coming at it from a practical viewpoint.
So if people go to equinebalance.
net Or they go on Facebook and they see equine balance by Shea Stewart, not the
Shea Stewart that challenged the British crown, but the Shea Stewart that's
going to make your horse feel better.
So that your horse will then be able to cavalry charge the British better
and knock those red coats over.
What would be, we've now gone about the length of a podcast.
There are more things I would like to ask you, particularly about the
psychic spiritual side of it all.
And I'm sure that a lot of the listeners will have questions, I'm going to
encourage those listeners and by all means send your questions direct to Shay
because you'll find her on that website.
But if you also direct questions to me, then I can collect those
questions, and we can have her back on.
Would you?
Shae Stewart: There, there are so much more we could talk about how horses
hold human trauma or human issues.
Yeah, there's so much more
Rupert Isaacson: we definitely we definitely have to have that one that
sounds like two hours right there Yes.
All right, then.
I'm officially asking you.
Would you please come back and talk about?
Okay,
Shae Stewart: I could talk about this stuff all day every day.
And so I'm always happy when there's someone interested
Rupert Isaacson: How do horses hold human trauma?
And what can we do about it?
Okay, we need to know.
In that case, would you, would you consent to come on sometime
again in the next three months?
Because I'm now Absolutely.
Yeah.
Alright, so let's just ask the listeners quickly.
Hey listeners, do you want to learn how horses hold human trauma?
What we can do about it.
Whoa.
That was like deafening.
Yeah, I've
Shae Stewart: heard that.
Yeah.
We could talk about how things are held in other, you know, I, I, I can
talk about experiences I've had with receiving craniosacral and things
I went in that I thought I was.
Helping, and it ended up being from something completely different.
We can talk about psychic, spiritual stuff, visions of, of all kinds of
stuff that there's all kinds of stories
Rupert Isaacson: around that.
Okay, we'll go firmly into the woo.
Okay.
Yeah, definitely.
All right.
It's official.
I'd like to do it before Christmas if possible.
Can we?
Yeah, you're busy.
Shae Stewart: Yeah, I can always find time somewhere.
So yes.
Rupert Isaacson: Grand.
All right.
Well, I shall look forward to it.
Shay, thank you so much for this.
Massively enlightening.
I'm going to go and consider my horses.
Cranial sacral fluid.
And I'm going to look for a practitioner and I'm going to see if I can coax
you out to help me a little bit.
Cause I know you come back and forth from Europe a little bit.
I'm grateful.
Thank you very much for coming on.
I'm, I'm
Shae Stewart: grateful.
This was such a joy and such a treat and such an honor as well.
So I really appreciate your interest in asking me and this.
Thank you.
Rupert Isaacson: This was great.
I'm sure we all feel honored too.
So round two will be within about probably 10 weeks or so chaps.
So, buckle up.
We'll go into how horses hold human trauma because how can they
not?
How can they not know what we can do about it?
Because that's our Yeah.
The better my horses feel, the better they can help others.
Yes.
And to do that in a way without guilt and shame, I mean, that, that, that's
something that I found, you know, off putting sometimes when talking to
people that are or claim to be animal communicators, where, where I'm skeptical
of the human, not, not of the fact that people can communicate with animals.
I think that people absolutely can, but I'm not sure that
everyone who says they can can.
And the, the, the people who say they can, and there's that,
there's that slight note of.
And it's because you suck.
Smacks of manipulation to me because it's one of those things
that it's, it's intangible.
You can't prove it.
You can't, you know, so you, what one could use that in a manipulative way.
If I wasn't coming from a pure place that said, I've also seen shamans in the
Kalahari turn themselves into leopards.
We can talk about that.
You know, and what, what that, so it's not that it can't happen.
But what they would say the animal is saying is usually got nothing to do
with something a human is doing wrong.
You know, it's, it's a bigger picture than that.
Yeah.
Yeah,
Shae Stewart: it is a much bigger picture.
And 1 thing everyone can could go out and do today is take some time,
get out of your thinking brain, get into your heart space and put your
hand on your heart on your horse and just expand your heart space.
And watch and see what
Rupert Isaacson: happens.
I'm going to do that tomorrow.
Anywhere on the horse is good?
Anywhere they accept the touch?
Yep,
Shae Stewart: wherever they're comfortable.
Okay.
I tend to, I, I like in the back on their pelvis, you can touch them there.
That way you're not zeroed in too much on their head.
Hmm.
We, we narrow our focus too much on things and that can, that can feel like
Rupert Isaacson: pressure.
Well, sure.
It's what predators do.
It's what we do before we make our pounce and kill.
Yeah.
Shae Stewart: Yeah.
I feel it when I get craniosacral by someone who doesn't know how to read the
system or expand out, I can leave with a headache if they're too focused in on
the bone that they have their hand on.
Okay.
I don't like it.
It's too much pressure.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay, do you tell them?
Do you communicate that?
Shae Stewart: It depends.
I, I don't usually go to those, those anymore.
I don't, I kind of, the last one I went to, I had the feeling if I said that,
I don't know if she would know what I was talking about, like, if I said,
stop thinking about my sphenoid bone, expand out to the horizon somewhere.
I don't know if that would make sense.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
So that's what we're going to do.
Listeners, we're going to go to our horses tomorrow, but I'll hand on in
a place that's not too monkey fixated.
So maybe we'll avoid the head.
And as Shay says, suggests, perhaps we'll look for the...
Somewhere around the sacrum, if that seems okay to the horse, and then
we're going to expand out, right?
Expand
Shae Stewart: out.
Don't leave.
Expand out from your heart.
Expand out from your...
Stay connected to your heart and expand out.
You don't even have to think about the horse.
Just think about that
Rupert Isaacson: space.
Okay.
Just expand out from the heart while happening to have a hand on a horse.
Yes.
Okay.
And,
Shae Stewart: Tell me what happened.
I will.
Yeah, and anyone out there send me a note at tell me what happened.
I like to hear.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
What should they send you a note on?
What's the email address?
Oh,
Shae Stewart: Shea, S H E A at equine balance.
net.
Shea equine balance.
net.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Go put your hand on your horse in not too focused a monkey intensity
way, check in with the heart and then without making it too intellectual.
expand out a bit and see what happens.
Yeah.
Okay.
And then the horse responds.
The horse responds.
Okay.
That sounds like a good starting point.
Thank you.
All right.
It's, this is a very difficult podcast to press the end button on.
So let's think of it like a pause button.
The next one.
Because I could, I could keep going all night.
I know.
Shae Stewart: I know.
I
Rupert Isaacson: could too.
But there's a lot to think about.
I'm going to go walk the dogs now and think about this.
So you give me lots to think about.
Shae Stewart: Good.
Yeah.
And then we'll have more to talk about.
Rupert Isaacson: Oh, well, all right.
Well, until then, sounds good.
Try and stay out of the heat.
I know how hard it is over there in Texas.
Shae Stewart: Yeah.
I don't even want to go outside.
I
Rupert Isaacson: bet you don't.
I used to live there.
I know.
All right.
Yeah.
Have a beautiful rest of the day.
Bye.
thank you for joining us.
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