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Welcome to Live Free Ride Free, where we talk to people who have lived self-actualized lives on their own terms, and find out how they got there, what they do, how we can get there, what we can learn from them. How to live our best lives, find our own definition of success, and most importantly, find joy.
Your Host is New York Times bestselling author Rupert Isaacson. Long time human rights activist, Rupert helped a group of Bushmen in the Kalahari fight for their ancestral lands. He's probably best known for his autism advocacy work following the publication of his bestselling book "The Horse Boy" and "The Long Ride Home" where he tells the story of finding healing for his autistic son. Subsequently he founded New Trails Learning Systems an approach for addressing neuro-psychiatric conditions through horses, movement and nature. The methods are now used around the world in therapeutic riding program, therapy offices and schools for special needs and neuro-typical children.
You can find details of all our programs and shows on www.RupertIsaacson.com
Rupert Isaacson: Thanks for joining us.
Welcome to Live Free, Ride Free.
I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson, New
York Times bestselling author of
The Horseboy and The Long Ride Home.
Before I jump in with today's guest, I
want to say a huge thank you to you, our
audience, for helping to make this happen.
I have a request.
If you like what we do here,
please give it a thumbs up,
like, subscribe, tell a friend.
It really, really helps
us to make the pro.
To find out about our certification
courses, online video libraries,
books, and other courses,
please go to rupertisaacson.com.
So now let's jump in.
Welcome back to Live Free, Ride Free.
If you can see a bit of a glow coming
out of your computer and you're
having a feeling of, "Oh, I am not
worthy," you may need to avert your
eyes because we have He Who Sitteth
upon the right hand of God back here.
We have the great Warwick Schiller
superstar, messiah of the horse world.
So or is he just indeed
a very naughty boy?
So I guess we need to find out.
I wanted to chat with Mr.
Schiller partly 'cause he's my mate
and I like chatting with him, but also
because he and I both share an affinity
for altered states of consciousness.
And I think it's something we don't
talk an awful lot about within our
relationship with horses, but I think
that's actually what we're doing
when we interact with horses, and I
think that's what people have always
done when they interact with horses.
And so I wanted to ask Mr.
Schiller's thoughts on this, and he
said, "Oh, I, I haven't got much to
add on that, but maybe we can riff."
So I'm gonna ask him to riff.
Hey, Warwick.
Warwick Schiller: Rupert, how's it going?
Apparently from that little spiel
I've, I've got, now got a Cockney
accent or maybe a Liverpool- Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, you know
the, the, the Australian accent is
apparently from the Cockney accent.
Warwick Schiller: I heard the Australian
accent actually developed from generations
of people being constantly drunk.
Every person in the country was
basically constantly drunken.
Rupert Isaacson: What do you think we
were doing in London in the 18th century?
Ah.
That's where we get mother's
ruin from gin, Gin Lane.
If you ended up on the transport
ships, probably alcohol was involved.
Warwick Schiller: Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: And then you arrived
there and went, "Shit," and looked at the
whole thing, and then drank more probably.
Yeah.
Tough place.
But yeah, just as the American accent
is supposed to be sort of an offshoot
of the Irish accent to some degree it
seems that the early convict settlers
were largely out of the slums of
East London and left their legacy.
It's a good legacy.
Warwick Schiller: Mm.
Yeah, that whole, that whole accent
thing, like the American accent thing's
really interesting about which accent
came from where and how it got there.
And there's, there is, I was, I saw
something a while ago and it was
talking about how a lot of people-
people, judgmental people make
fun or look down upon some of the
word usage of African Americans.
Rupert Isaacson: Uh-huh.
Warwick Schiller: Like they, when
they say they aks for something
instead of ask for- Or they be.
Yeah ⦠yeah.
And, and if you trace
them back far enough- It's
Rupert Isaacson: old English.
Yeah
⦠Warwick Schiller: they're the, yeah,
they're the old English, and they're
the unadulterated old English.
Absolutely.
Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
If you read 18th century novels,
you'll find all that language in there.
And it's specifically like a time, like a
snapshot of the 18th century because that,
of course, is when the slave trade, the
Atlantic slave trade, was at its height.
Warwick Schiller: Mm.
Rupert Isaacson: About 1740
to 1840, '50, you know.
And then the Civil War comes along, and
that is exactly indeed how people speak.
And if you look at a lot of the surnames
of African Americans, they're often
very old English surnames because,
of course, they were forced to take
the name of the plantation owner.
Warwick Schiller: Mm.
And Australian accents.
So tell me, how do you pronounce, you
know, you've got a tree, and those,
the arms that stick out of the side of
the tree, what are those things called?
Rupert Isaacson: I believe that's a branch
Warwick Schiller: Yeah.
So in Australia, in every state other
than South Australia, they're a branch.
A branch.
Not a branch.
Okay.
But in South Australia, they're branch.
It's branch and dance.
Because South Australia was the
only state that was settled by
non-convicts, so they were educated
people, so they said branch and dance.
And all the rest of us learnt to
say branch and dance up in your nose
Rupert Isaacson: here.
Up in your nose.
Yeah.
Warwick Schiller: Mm.
Rupert Isaacson: Which, of course,
cockney's up in the nose, too, innit?
It starts up there, and it
ends up down there, with a face
like a bag of nails, innit?
And, ⦠yeah, I could, I could,
I could, I could see that.
And South Australia, of course,
is where the the, a lot of
the best land was originally.
And of course, it's where, I thinkâ¦
Is that not where they got
the wine industry going first?
Warwick Schiller: That's where the wineâ¦
Yeah.
Yeah.
Barossa Valley in South Australia.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, Australia's a good
place to start when we're talking about
altered states of consciousness because,
of course it is one of the places with
the Aboriginals where the altered state of
consciousness is still well in use today,
as I know, because I took my son for
healing from the Kuku Yalanji shamans up
in the Daintree Rainforest in Queensland.
And that was one place where I saw
things which I had to then sayâ¦
I had to just be comfortable
saying, "I don't know what I saw."
Where my son was being, having smoke from
a certain bark wafted over him, and while
that was going on the healer was taking
little piece, like this, along his spine.
And the
As he was doing this, he was, he
was not wearing a shirt, so he
couldn't do, have sleight of hand.
He couldn't have hidden anything,
and he was flicking his fingers into,
like, an old chipped coffee mug.
And so of course, you know, I've
got to see what's in the mug, right?
So I'm going, "What's in the mug?"
And I see that it's beginning to fill up
with kind of viscous, snotty goo with,
like, little bits of blood in it, like
exactly what you, you cough up with phlegm
or sneeze out if you had a bad cold.
And it's just kind of getting fuller.
And at the end of the session, the
guy mooks, he shoves it into the fire,
and he says, "Come back tomorrow."
Did the same thing.
Filled up about half as much.
Came back the following day.
Did the same thing.
Filled up only a tiny little bit,
and then he said, "Okay, he's good."
And of course, I had to say in my crass
Western way, "What was that then?"
And he w- he looked at me and
smiled and didn't explain.
But I did see it and at the end of that
three days, my son suddenly developed
what's called theory of mind, where they--
someone can understand that someone else
has a different viewpoint to you, which
comes very late, if at all, with autism.
And then math- mathematics just
started pouring out of him.
So Australia's a good place to
start, but Australia of course is
not, in terms of altered states
of consciousness, at least in its
indigenous history, a horse culture.
But there are horse cultures, of
course, that have been exploring this
for millennia, namely Mongolia and
the tribes of the Eurasian Steppe.
But, and of course I've had
some experience there, and
I'm happy to go into that.
But I want to talk to you, I want to
ask your impressions, because we're
getting into this era of horsemanship
where things are getting stranger and
stranger, and in some ways that's a
good thing, and in some ways it's-
I don't know if it's good
or bad, but it's confusing.
We're in the era where people talk
about, say, consent, but you can't
really ask a horse to send you an
email through h- his legal office
saying that he gives you consent.
You have to have some other mechanism
for deciding whether or not subjectively
to you that has in fact happened
Y- we have, you know, people saying,
"Well, you shouldn't pat your horse.
That means that the horse
has this reaction to it."
Well, does it?
I don't know.
Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't.
I'm not a horse, I can't say.
If somebody gives me a hug and pats
me on the back, I find it quite
reassuring, unless they thump the
hell out of me, and then it hurts.
Like, when I shake somebody's hand, if
there's handshakes that make me feel
reassured, and there's handshakes that
crush my hand, and there's handshakes
that are so limp that I want to run away.
But is a handshake bad?
So what we're starting to, I think,
what all these things point at,
though, is a desire to communicate
with horses in a way that's much more
meaningful than, "Do this job for me."
And at the same time, horses, like
humans, like dogs, like most sentient
beings, enjoy a sense of purpose, and
the happiest horses I've ever met have
always been working horses, provided they
were, you know, having been treated well.
So the altered state of consciousness,
I think, is about the only thing
we've got that acts as some sort of
interface between all of these confusing
questions, which are good questions.
It's good that we're questioning whether
ca- tap- patting a horse is good or bad.
It's good that we're questioning whether
we should even ride them or whatever.
But at the same time, if we go into
too much of an extreme that way,
we can risk losing entire cultures,
and maybe horses, because they've
been domesticated for thousands of
years, want to interact with us.
They seem to like dogs.
So where do we go with this?
And it, it just seems that this is not
something we can answer rationally.
We have to explore, I
think, the irrational here.
And who better than my irrational friend
Warwick who- ⦠can ir- irrational
with the best of them as can I.
What do you, what do you think,
Warwick, when you think about all this?
You know, I think, I
think we're heading in
Warwick Schiller: a
better direction with horses.
And I'm, I'm actually quite,
quite big on consent these days.
But I don't think, I don't think
it's the, the thing you do, as
in should you pat them, not pat
them versus rub them, you know?
Should, you know, a lot of people
like they, they think they're
patting their horse and they're
slapping them pretty hard.
I don't, I don't think that the consent
thing's a bad thing, but like you said, it
can get, you know, it can get to where it
goes off on a, an extreme tangent to where
And people, you know, people are
kind of drawn to like extreme
tangents- Mm ⦠about things.
But, you know, as far as the altered s-
you know, I've, I have experienced altered
states of consciousness through say
breathwork in ceremony, things like that.
I've not really experienced those states
of consciousness through horses, but I
think there might be kind of levels of it.
But you have, you know, I had you
on my podcast and, well, the first
time I had you on my podcast was
about, tell me all about Rupert
Isaacson and your amazing life.
But the second time I had you on, we
were talking about hunter-gatherers.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
Warwick Schiller: And you were talking
about, you know, shape-shifting
and that sort of thing, like
inhabiting the consciousness of
another being, animal, whatever.
But I think
A smaller version of that is being very
empathetic to another sentient being,
whether it's an animal or a human, in
being present enough to be aware of
their experience at that very moment
And, you know, when you were talking
about like patting a horse, um
And I, and I think the, the where people
say, "Oh, you shouldn't do that," is
if people are slapping their horse.
You know, you see a lot of people in
competition, they get finished and
they slap their horse on the neck.
Think, if you think about where is the
person mentally while they're doing it?
Are they mentally in
communion with that horse?
Are they beaming, looking at the crowd
and whacking the horse, and they've
got no idea what the horse is doing?
And I feel like if you are moreâ¦
Or no idea how their horse is
receiving what they're doing.
And if you think about, okay,
let's go back to, like, the
1950s, 1960s in an office, okay?
And this is gonna make some people
shudder, but it was a thing that happened.
It, it wasn't unusual for the boss
to slap the worker girl on the ass
Okay?
It was--
And if you think about it, what
was he thinking about or what
was he very aware of at the time?
I guarantee you, if he was looking
at her face and her facial expression
and taking in those micro expressions
while he did it, he'd realize that,
"Oh, she doesn't like that at all."
Even if she was smiling and laughing, but
there'd be, there'd be some tells in her,
around her eyes and whatever like, "That
was, that was very creepy, but I've gotta
smile because he's the boss," or whatever.
Rupert Isaacson: But
is that a good analogy?
Because-
Warwick Schiller: I don't know
if it's a good analogy or not
⦠Rupert Isaacson: people are
completely different there.
I mean, no one who's patting their horse
is coming from the place emotionally or-
Warwick Schiller: No,
no, but the- ⦠dronely
Rupert Isaacson: that, that, that,
that, that 50s boss was coming from
⦠Warwick Schiller: the analogy that I'm
drawing on is, are you aware of how
what you are doing at that very moment
is received by that sentient being?
And I guarantee you, the 50s boss wasn't.
Rupert Isaacson: No.
And he- and- ⦠in a funny way,
that w- that, what he was doing
there was an expression of power.
It was an exercise- Yes ⦠in power.
Right.
And it was an exercise in effectively
saying you have no choice.
But I don't think that that's where
the euphoria of somebody who is
patting their horse in that moment-
Warwick Schiller: Oh, no, no
in a way is even- That's,
that's not the part of the
analogy that I'm trying to make.
The part of the analogy I'm trying to
make is most, I would say most times
when people, you know, at the end of
a competition or whatever, they reach
down, they really slap their horse hard
on the neck, I guarantee you, at that
very moment, they are not shape-shifting.
They are not inhabiting the
consciousness of their horse.
They are not very aware
of how that's received.
Usually they, they're thinking
about the crowd, the prize money,
the whatever, you know, the
trainer at the back gate, whatever.
But they're not-- I don't feel like they'd
be exactly in the moment with their horse.
And, you know, how I went off on
this new tangent I'm off on about
10 years ago with horses came from
being exactly in the moment with a
horse and reading the tiniest little
things and responding to that.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah I could
see it being many things.
I can actually, w- you know, we can only
ever talk about our own experience, right?
So back in the days, about 500 years ago
when I used to compete, I can remember
finishing rounds, particularly jumping
rounds, particularly jumping rounds that
were cross-country rounds, particularly
jumping rounds that were cross-country
rounds that were over really big fences
that if you messed up, you could die.
So you were constantly dealing with that
elevated f- excitement fear that that
Spot between fear and ecstasy.
Warwick Schiller: Yeah, the veil's
a little thin- the veil's a little
thinner right there, isn't it?
Yeah, and that's what ecstasy means.
E- ex out of
Rupert Isaacson: stasis,
out of the stat- out of the n- out of
the normal state, out of the state.
I can remember finishing those rounds, and
whether or not I'd hit, you know, done it
in, in the ribbons, whether or not I was
gonna get place, I would have a euphoria
where I can be pretty sure that I probably
patted my horse's neck pretty hard.
But I would've been going, "Oh, good.
Thank you so much.
Ah."
It would be like that.
And, and horses read emotion.
So I had a horse that would also eat
those fences, like I could feel as he
was going, and he would, y- that thing
where their ears go forward like that,
and then there's this surge where they
kind of like wanna attack the fence,
that there's a kind of, there are
certain horses that love it, you know.
And if they don't love it, you
probably shouldn't do that kind
of thing on them because you c-
will probably wreck quite badly.
You don't want a horse to go
reluctantly into something like that.
They either love it or they don't love it.
If they don't love it, don't do it.
But if they do love it, and there's a
fairly large subset of horses that do.
Okay, so when we were finishing
a round like that, where I was
coming from certainly had nothing
to do with the crowd, also I wasn't
competing at that level and didn't
have anything to do with whether I
was, quote-unquote, "winning" or not.
I was ⦠It was this mixture of
gratitude, relief, Ex- ex- ecstatic joy.
Mad joy.
Which I s- felt the horse shared because I
spent many hours with him doing that kind
of thing, 'cause I used to foxhunt a lot.
And when you- Right ⦠foxhunt,
that's just not just, like, a
round, that's the entire day.
And you're going up fences, particularly
in that area of England that I grew
out- up in, which are ridiculously
big, and you can't see the other
side of them, and you have to just
kind of hope for it the best and go.
And again, there are horses that
dig it and horses that don't dig it.
Horses that don't dig
it, you don't do it on.
So I would argue, just as
devil's advocate, that both of
those things are probably right.
There are probably people who slap
the horse's neck very, very hard as a
sort of, sort of, ah, expression of,
"I have done well," looking at the
crowd, and there are people who might
do it in the way that I just described.
And I think the horse would read the
emotion either way, because horses
are entirely emotional beings.
I would argue that going around one
of those cross-country courses or a
day's hunting like that does put you
in an altered state of consciousness.
You, you can't do it if you're not.
You know, you go back later in what we
call cold blood, and you look at the
fences that you did the day before,
and you go, "I would never do that now.
Y- I can only do that in
this weird heightened state."
And I wouldn't ask the horse just to,
like, come out of the trailer and do it.
You know, there's a whole kind of easing
in, and the horse goes into this- Right
⦠altered state of consciousness as well,
where they start to hunt, and they are
listening for the hounds, and they are
When the hounds find, the horse is
like, "Yes," and they, th- the horse
starts to know what the different horns,
horn blasts that the huntsman know.
You know, just like po- good polo horses
know how to play the game and like it.
Even if the person riding them is
a bit rough, the horse will still
play the game because they like it.
So are those not altered
states of consciousness?
And is, so is there not also a whole range
of emotion from negative to positive,
you know, within, within that sphere?
Warwick Schiller: Yeah.
I mean, I was just commenting on the, you
know, you, you brought up the, the you
know, the way the horse world is going
and people looking at things differently.
Yeah.
And then you brought up the
analogy of the slapping thing.
So we had a, a, we had someone
staying here with us a couple of years
ago, a British lady, lovely lady.
And she has like the, like all her
BHS credentials, whatever all that
stuff is, but she was a horse slapper.
Like, she would- Sorry.
She would-
Rupert Isaacson: Would you
like to rephrase that, Mister?
Warwick Schiller: No,
she was a horse slapper.
She would, she would be by one of my
horses and she would go, "Good boy."
W- And she has that sort of
energy and that sort of intention.
Mm.
But if you watch their eyes pop open
and their head shoot up and their,
their top line get tense in that
very moment, and then they're like
And then the horse, she said the
horse was kind of like, "What
the frigging hell was that?"
That's the sort of
thing I'm talking about.
Mm-hmm.
And, and I think horses, yes, horses do
read emotion, but this lady, she's lovely.
She has this lovely soft energy.
She's a Reiki master.
She's woo as all hell, get out.
She's great.
But she was a horse slapper and
I, and she couldn't not do it.
Mm.
It was part of her culture.
Mm.
I would say ⦠Like, she'd do it and I'd
go, "You just slapped that horse again."
I, I said, "You just
slapped that horse again."
And she goes, "Oh, did I?"
Like, she didn't even
know she was doing it.
But when she was doing it, she
was not looking at the facial
expression or the muscle tension
or the posture of the horse- Mm
and realizing that he didn't dig it.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
Warwick Schiller: You know?
Like, I could, you could see if you were
looking at the right place, if you were
looking for the right things, you would
see that horse go from like, "Hey, this
is all g- Oh shit, what did she just do?
What did I do wrong?"
Mm.
And then she's gone and then
they'd, you'd get they'd go,
"Oh, I don't know what that was."
So I mean, you were the one that
brought up the horse slapping.
I wasn't gonna go on- Yeah, yeah.
No, but- ⦠on the horse slapping stuff.
But what I'm talking about is
at that very moment, this horse
slapping lady she was not-
sharing the same perspective of what was
going on in the world as the horse was.
And I think, you know, this alter-
y- you know, like I said, I've talked
to you on my podcast about you know,
shape-shifting and, and, you know, I
think you did say that at some point
in time shape-shifting is just empathy.
Rupert Isaacson: It is.
Warwick Schiller: And empathy is
putting yourself in the shoes or the,
the emotionality, the physicality, the,
the, the, the experience of the other.
And I feel like for me, you
know, I, like I said, I've, I've
experienced some altered states of
consciousness in ceremony and with
breathwork and stuff like that.
I haven't experienced those
kinds of altered states of
consciousness with horses, but
I feel like I have experienced a
A level of presence to where you are
just really present with the other and
very observant, very observant of what's
going on with them, and I think that's
kind of the, at least for me, maybe
the altered states of consciousness.
And the other thing when I, you know,
when I'm doing clinics, a lot of times
people have said, you know, 'cause
I start at 8:00 in the morning, I'll
go till-- I don't stop for lunch, and
I'll go till 5:00 or 6:00 at night, and
people will say, "You must have an iron
constitution to be out there all day," and
you know, you, all, all you do is drink
water and you don't-- It's just amazing.
I'm like, the time flies.
I'm like, when I am in an arena with
working with horses, explaining what I'm
doing into the microphone to a crowd of
people, there is no 10 seconds ahead of
time and there is no 10 seconds before.
Now, if I'm out there just working
with horses on my own, because I
kind of know what I'm doing, I can
be thinking about something else
and still working with the horse.
I could be procra- you know, I
could be in my head about some other
problem and my wife's mad at me or
whatever it is, you know, and I can
still be working with the horse.
But when I am in an arena with a crowd
of people and a microphone stuck in
my mouth- Mm ⦠and I'm explaining
in real time what I'm doing and why
I'm responding to the horse in front
of me, that for me is when time, I
don't know if it slows down, speeds
up or whatever, but there is no time.
Like I don't, you know, my-- If my wife's
not at a clinic and she doesn't come to
many of them, she makes sure she emails
everybody ahead of time and says, "Okay.
Group one, you come in at
8:30," blah, blah, blah.
"Group two, you come in at 10:30.
Don't wait.
Just come in," 'cause I'll be out
there with the same group all day long.
I, I mean I, time-
Yeah ⦠there is no time.
So for me, that's probably the
Altered state of consciousness for me-
Rupert Isaacson: That is an
altered state of consciousness.
Warwick Schiller: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: S- so when people ⦠I
think everyone who works with horses
in any way, or is with horses, or
spends any time with horses, everyone
f- experiences this loss of time.
I think this is something which we notice
as children even that you do not notice
time when you're with a horse, especially
when you're riding them too, because you
are brought into the present moment, you
know, 100%, and you don't have to try.
You are just placed there, bump.
Horses, it's like horses carry
us into the present moment.
But as you say, you can be
standing next to them, doing
things with them and explaining
that, and the same thing happens.
I, I know ex- I, I feel exactly the same.
Same thing happens to me.
It's a running joke in my workshops
that, you know, Rupert just doesn't
no- notice time, and he won't break
for lunch, so you better break for
lunch and just t- say, "We're having
lunch now," because I, I will forget.
I just, you know.
Warwick Schiller: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: And that is an
altered state of consciousness.
And, and then back to the, the
horse slapping thing, the reason
I brought it up is because I think
it, it, it's about alignment and
shared experience, which is empathy.
So say, for example, I finished that
jumping round as a younger rider, or
that day's hunting and I'm just in that
state of euphoria, and the horse is too.
We're in it together.
We've gone through it together.
Then that big embrace and the energetic
pat and all of that is a little bit
like when footballers score a goal
and they all jump on each other.
If, if someo- you know, if they were
just hanging out in the street and
they did that, it wouldn't go well.
Somebody would fall
over and hit their head.
No one would be ready for it.
No one is expecting it.
No one.
But it's kind of a ritual and a
ceremony of expression, of joy
that by mutual consent everybody
engages in in that moment.
It ⦠And I think the same things
happen with humans and horses.
So yeah, if you, if, if the horse is
just like hanging out and you just
walk up to him and pat him in that way,
he's like, "Jesus Christ, what that?"
You know, "What's going on?"
But if you've gone through this shared
experience where you're both on this
euphoric high and you're both in this
state of high arousal and excitement
together, and you've become that centaur
together, which you had to in order
to do that thing- Yeah ⦠which again
is an altered state of consciousness,
then I think those sorts of spontaneous
acts of joy and affection are taken
for what they are, but perhaps might
not be in another context- Right
where that shared
experience hasn't happened.
And that is, you know, again, I
think altered states of consciousness
are all about that because ritual
and ceremony and shared experience,
right, are all part of that, no?
Warwick Schiller: Yeah, if we wind
this back to, you know, you were
talking initially about, you know,
the horse world is different now.
We're looking at thing, you
know, everybody's looking at
things differently sort of more
empathetic, those sorts of things.
And then you mentioned the horse
slapping thing, and I think you
mentioned it in, probably in
the context of on social media-
Rupert Isaacson: Mm
⦠Warwick Schiller: people
say, "This person did theâ¦"
You know?
Yeah.
And I, and I f- and I feel like-
I, I, I f- I feel like no one
has ever lived somebody else's
life.
You know, so think about like, I
don't know where you live now, but
like in this country, in the USA,
there's this huge political divide.
Mm.
And those on the left are telling
those on the right that they're bad
and evil and whatever, and those on the
right are telling those on the left,
"You're all idiots," and whatever.
And I don't think anybody is
convincing the other side to change
their mind about anything, because
I don't think you can- And if
Rupert Isaacson: anything, they're just
entrenching them further into their
Warwick Schiller: narrative.
Y- yes.
Yeah.
But, but no one on the one side of it
is, has an opinion that's different to
every experience they've ever had in life,
and no one on the left side is having an
opinion that's different to every exper-
I mean, the opinion you have is based
on the experiences you've had in life,
and no one's lived anybody else's life.
And, you know, in the
horse world on social media
It seems to be the, the thing
to do is to make your point by
putting up pictures of somebody
else doing what you think is wrong.
And, you know, it's, it's interesting,
like here a little while ago, the-- I--
there's a lady, I think she's fromâ¦
lives in America, I think she's
from Europe somewhere, who's a
very big like biomechanical lady.
Everybody probablyâ¦
If I mentioned her name, everybody'd
probably know who I was talking about.
And I saw somewhere on social
media how she had said that
Backing a horse up, like getting a horse
to back up, is ruining horses' bodies
and, and I'm like, "That's interesting."
And a, a, a horseman had
her on his podcast, and they
actually got into it about it.
And I listened to the podcast just
'cause I'm like, "Well, I respect this
woman's knowledge of biomechanics."
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Warwick Schiller: And so I wanna
know what she thinks is better.
Maybe I'm, maybe I'm doing it wrong.
I mean, I feel like it helps my horses'
bodies, not detracts from them, like
she says it's ruining them, you know?
So then I listen to it.
Well, she has spent most of her
time in the English world, okay?
And she has spent m- every horse,
basically every horse she's ever
seen asked to back up is just
pulled on, and squeezed their
belly and just forced to back up.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Warwick Schiller: You know, she's
never seen anybody sit on a horse and
just pick up the softest feel on the
reins and just wait for that horse to
kind of start to adjust their body.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Warwick Schiller: And so it's not, it's
not the fact that backing up is a problem-
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah
⦠Warwick Schiller: it's the way she
has seen horses be asked to back up.
So in her experience, she's right.
After I listened to the pod- 'cause I
was thinking, "She's wrong," or whatever.
After listening to the podcast, I
know in her experience, she's right.
The way she's seen it done is,
is not helpful to horses' bodies.
But it's not the act of backing
up that's the problem- No ⦠it's
how they're being asked to.
But if you've only ever seen people
back horses up that way, then your
perspective is backing up's bad for them.
Mm-hmm.
And so, you know what I mean?
So what I'm trying to say here is- Yeah
nobody's lived everybody else's-
Rupert Isaacson: I do, I do feel
that one can also be curious and
say, "Well, other people seem to back
horses up in ways that aren'tâ¦"
I mean, look at if you have to rope a
cow, if you, if a horse backs up from
the gate or ba- even without a rider,
without any human, backs away from the
feed or the water trough to make way
for another horse or the myriad ways
in which a horse might go backwards.
But as you say, is it being done with
force and tension, or is it being
done in a certain kind of a flow?
Warwick Schiller: Yeah.
Is the, is theâ¦
Like you look at a horse back up from,
say, a water trough to let another one in.
When he has the idea, "I wanna back
up," the first thing he's gonna do,
he's gonna shift his weight backwards.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Warwick Schiller: Okay?
He's going to get ready to back up.
And this particular body worker lady, I
don't think she's ever seen a horse asked
to back up That was wanting to back up.
So they didn't organize their body.
So all the, you know, it'd be like having
a horse lower his head through relaxation
or pull it down with draw reins.
Okay, their head's in the same place,
but the, the body, those two bodies are
doing two completely different things.
Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
Warwick Schiller: Yeah.
And so anyway, the point I was trying
to make was I think, you know, 'cause
you were kind of alluding before to, you
know, the probably social media, you know,
that, does, does that make sense there?
I mean, I, I, I- Yeah,
Rupert Isaacson: 100%.
Warwick Schiller: But it- I completely
understand where people, why people,
Or, or think about it, the way I
like to look at it is think about
levels of consciousness or levels of
awareness or whatever, and that's,
you know, there's a million of them.
But if, like I spent, I spent what I
felt like was 50 years at the same level.
Like, I only could view
the world through one lens.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
Warwick Schiller: And then when I was
about 50, I had, oh, now I've got this
perspective change, and now I can, I
have a different view of the world.
But when I look at somebody who
has the view of the world I used
to have, I completely understand
the fact that they're right.
In their mind, they're right.
They only know that.
And the, the thing that kind of, I don't
really let it annoy me, but the thing
I say a lot is people who especially
in social media, who feel like they're
kind of enlightened or whatever,
putting shit on people who aren't on
the same level they're at, they're
forgetting that they were at that level
at some point in time in their life.
And when they were there, they
were doing the best they could
with, with the knowledge they had.
So it, that, that kind of-
Rupert Isaacson: Back to empathy.
Yeah Yeah.
All that whole-
Warwick Schiller: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I just, yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
I mean, of course, social media
does not thrive on empathy.
There was a time when people
used to say sex sells, and now
we know that anger outsells sex.
Warwick Schiller: Oh, hell yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: And fear outs- Angry sex
Warwick Schiller: is
Rupert Isaacson: even
Warwick Schiller: better, though.
Rupert Isaacson: Then you
mix the two, you know?
Warwick Schiller: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: As you know, if
you followed any of my work, I'm
an autism dad and we have a whole
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When my son, Rowan, was
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And it's been working so
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live their best life, to live
free, ride free, see what happens.
Back, so, okay.
So altered states of
consciousness can be good and bad.
I would argue that when people are on
social media, there's an altered state
of consciousness that happens there.
There is a, there is-
I think a truth, which is that
where you put large amounts of
attention and frequency, and this
is the point of ceremony, right?
Warwick Schiller: Mm.
Rupert Isaacson: And ritual, then you
can elevate or you can depress frequency.
And so let's say you wanted to do
something joyful and healing, you
would have a ceremony that elevates
through song, through dance, through
movement, through ⦠You could have the
intercession of psychotropics, but not
everywhere in the world do they grow.
But certainly you're going to probably
use song, rhythm, things like this,
and they will help you enter that
altered state of consciousness.
And you can do it on the, and, and
when you're on the back of a horse,
if y- if things are going well,
you're also getting lots of oxytocin.
You know, when you're on social
media, you can enter another state of
consciousness, which d- depresses the
frequency, and it's another ritual.
There's a whole ritual to getting online.
There's a whole ritual to getting
onto the site that you're going onto,
and then gradually letting the anger
build, and then joining in with other
people, and whoa, black magic happens.
I feel that in the ancient s-
I, I work a lot with old masters
stuff, as you know too, the dead
dudes, as I like to call them.
The
Warwick Schiller: dead dudes.
The dead dudes.
Rupert Isaacson: Most of the dead
dudes, up until the 19th century,
talk very happily about the spiritual
dimension of working with horses.
After the 19th century and materialism
comes in, and Cartesian thought really
kind of lands with the Industrial
Revolution, it leaves the discourse.
So let's start with the the
oldest text we know is Kikkuli.
That's 1350 BC.
He's in, s- serving the Hittite kings,
but it- we've only got fragments from
him, and his fragments are largely
you know, to do with training.
But we do know that they were
making offerings to a horse god
within those stables regularly.
Then we know that, that's ⦠We,
we jump forward to Xenophon,
and he's in Greece a lot later.
He's in 400 BC, and he's talking
about how you must make the
correct offerings and libations
around your horses, around the stables,
paying attention to what deities are
present, not just with the horse, but with
the atmosphere of the training ground.
Then this is taken further by the Romans.
So where I'm sitting in Germany
right now, I'm sitting on a
place called the Limes, which is
That's where we get the word limit.
And the Limes was like
Hadrian's Wall, but way bigger.
It was an earthwork with a palisade
on it that went from the mouth of the
Rhine in what's now the Netherlands,
all the way down through Germany,
passing within a couple of kilometers
of where I'm sitting, to the Danube to
sort of close off that Tran- transâ¦
The Rhine-Danube gap, which they always
worried that barbarians would come
pouring through, and in the end they did
Warwick Schiller: Who was on what side of
that
Rupert Isaacson: war?
Okay, so, if, if Iâ¦
If you look that way, it's the
barbarians, and if you look that way
from where I'm sitting, it's the Romans.
Yeah.
I'm currently sitting in the Roman
Empire, but I'd only need to go
half an hour's walk that way and
I'd hit a reconstructed Roman tower.
Okay.
Along that limus w- have been found
depressions in the ground by some of
the R- Roman military camps thatâ¦
Where it's very clear that we
know that cavalry were stationed.
And that cavalry was largely in
this area, what's called Sarmatian
or Alan, where we get the w- name
Alan from incidentally which were
Iranian-speaking riders out of the steppe.
However, once they were incorporated
into the Roman army, they very quickly
began to take on the worship of a
goddess who is the only goddess that
was ever taken in as a militaryâ¦
Co-opted as a military goddess
from another culture by the Romans.
So the Romans often co-opted
other gods and goddesses from
places that they conquered.
They're like, "Ooh, we like that one.
We'll have that.
We'll have Isis," you know.
"We'll haveâ¦"
You know, they, they took Epona, and
Epona was the Celtic, m- largely French
Celtic, Gaul- Gallic Celtic goddess of
the horse and of plenty and the harvest.
Sometimes she's depicted as a
horse, sometimes she's depicted
as a woman on a horse, sometimes
she's depicted as a cornucopia.
And the Irish Macha and the Welsh Rhiannon
are basically equivalents of, of Epona.
It's really interesting.
The Roman military decided to
co-opt her as a military goddess.
So we found inscriptions over on
this military camp on the limus,
you know, where, where we are.
From the Roman stables makingâ¦
There's anâ¦
From an altar to Epona.
They're making offerings to her,
and we found these all the way
from Hadrian's Wall all the way
down to anywhere the Romans were.
These, these, these inscriptions
to Epona, these altars to
Epona in these military camps.
And not just to Epona, but to the
geniuses, the spirits, the guiding
spirits, the, the genies, if you
like, of the training ground.
And if you think about this idea of
where attention goes and frequency can
sort of coalesce into matter, thinkâ¦
And that's sort of what magic is really.
Mm.
Which is what the quantum states are,
and that's what ritual does, and that's
why it can be used for good or ill.
That's of course what
these people were doing.
They, they would say, "Okay, we want
to have success in the training ground.
We don't want our horse to go lame.
We don't want to fall
off and break our leg.
We want, you know, things to go well
and we want our horses to be healthy,
so we're gonna pray to Epona and
we're gonna pray to the genies and
the spirits of the training ground."
And you've got Xenophon before
them talking about this.
And then over on the steppe you've got,
you know, the Alans who are putting
swords in the ground and worshiping
them and worshiping horses as well.
And then in Mongolia even today where
the horse comes from, you know, you,
when you go to a shaman, you'reâ¦
It, it's a h- a horseman from a horse
tribe with a horse skin drum helping
you ride your wind horse, your luck,
your mojo, your soul to the spirit
world to seek out answers to dilemmas.
That's gone from our culture.
So now we, if we're
lucky, we'll enter aâ¦
Well, we have no choice.
We are lucky that we will enter the
altered state of consciousness that you
described when you were talking about
when you're working in a workshop,
or that I described when riding
that cross-country course, or even
if we're just out on a trail ride.
And we've also described
a slightly more negative-
altered state of consciousness, which
might be that social media stuff.
But we're not approaching it consciously.
And I wanted to talk about
approaching it consciously.
What if we were to?
What if we were to go back to that?
What if we were to go back to
having altars at our stables?
What if we were to go
back to pouring libations?
What if we were going to go back
to praying to the genie of the, of
the training ground, of the arena
How would that inform what we do?
And is that the logical next expression?
Is that the logical next step to this
type of conversation of trying to
take this more empathetic approach?
Warwick Schiller: You know, the
reason I had you on back on my
podcast a second time talking about
hunter-gatherers was really talking about,
if you think about it, what's the
next step forward for, for mankind?
And it's not forward, it's backwards.
It's going back to these--
You know, we didn't evolve to
live like we currently live.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
Warwick Schiller: And all the, you know,
mental health crisis and blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah, all has to do with a
Disconnection from nature,
disconnection from the natural world,
a disconnection from ourselves really.
A diff- a disconnection from the
The senses, I mean, you've experienced
it with the, like the, with the
Bushmen and stuff, you know, like the
senses that humans used to have, still
basically have, but we don't know
how to access them sort of things.
And I think it, it would be the, you know,
it would be the same thing with the horses
Rupert Isaacson: It's gone
from our discourse with horses.
We are beginning to get back to it.
I mean, it's not that spiritual
people don't get involved with horses,
obviously, and you've got people like
Linda Kohanov, you know, who've been
looking at this, you know, and I think
making a good contribution there.
But for example, when we go to
It could be a, a sport horse thing, it
could be a natural horsemanship thing,
it could be various types of horse thing.
We're not seeing this really talked about.
I think everyone would feel a
bit embarrassed and a bit silly.
But yet the Romans did, and the
Mongols did, and then y- if you,
if you read, say, Pluvinel, you
know, 17th century dressage dude
Even actually Isenberg,
you know, gettingâ¦
That's contemporary 18th
century with La Guerinière and
dressage as we kind of know it.
They're saying, they begin their d-
their, all things come from God, and
from God, you know, blah, blah, blah.
And, and that, and they begin
that way, and then we roll into
talking about something like a bit
or what you might do with your leg
So I think we're all aware that these
altered states of consciousness are
actually experienced all the time.
It's just that we've lost the
vocabulary for it within this
thing that we adore, that we love,
that is our culture, that we live.
You know, you and I both like to spend
as much time with ponies as we can
And we're aware of the spiritual element,
but we're not deliberate about it.
Would it be different if we were?
What do you think?
Warwick Schiller: Yeah, I think so.
You know,
ca- y- this made me think of a couple
of different podcast guests I've had.
I know one of them at
least that you've met.
Oh, Emily, for
Rupert Isaacson: example.
Warwick Schiller: Yeah, yeah.
You'veâ¦
Well, well that's, no, that's
a totally another level, Emily.
Yeah.
No, I was talking about you've
met Kansas Carradine, haven't you?
Rupert Isaacson: I have, yeah.
I know her well.
Warwick Schiller: Yeah.
She's fantastic.
And so we've-- I w- I did a thing called
the Gaucho Derby a couple of years
ago in Argentina with, with Kansas.
So it's a, you know, it's a 500-kilometer
adventure survival horse race onâ¦
I mean, sorry, it's adventure
survival navigational race that
happens to be on horseback.
It's not really a horse race.
But- Mm-hmm ⦠before we even went to
Argentina, Kansas said she was connecting
with the horses she was gonna ride.
And- Probably the, I think it was
the first year of my podcast, I had
a guy named Tristan Tucker on there.
So Tristan lives in Holland, I think.
But he was telling me when he go-
he, you know, I, I was asking him
about, like, when do you start
to connect with your horses?
What, you know, like
when you first sit him.
He goes, "Oh, I do that
before I leave the house."
You know, so there's, there's,
there's people that do that.
And I-- There's a, a lady here in
America, oh, I think she's from
Canada actually, that has a podcast.
Her name's Noelle Floyd.
You ever seen Noelle Floyd's podcast?
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, we're actually
trying to connect with each other to-
Warwick Schiller: Mm
⦠Rupert Isaacson: get a podcast together.
Warwick Schiller: She
calls it Dear Horse World.
You know- Mm ⦠my podcast is
not a horse podcast, it's about
interesting people, but she talks
to horse people about horse stuff.
But so many of the people on there
that are at a high level of some
sort of discipline or whatever,
they have this spiritual element.
They don't talk about it to
everybody else, but she knows
how to ask the right questions.
Mm-hmm.
And it kind of comes out of them.
And I, as a kid, you know, my, I, I came
from the rodeo world when I was a kid.
And my father was a, was a, a very good
bull rider, and I thought I wanted to be
a bull rider when I was a kid, whatever.
But there's a guy named Gary Leffew.
So Gary Leffew is he was a world
champion bull rider back in the day.
If anybody's ever seen the movie Eight
Seconds, he was the one that taught Luke
Perry, the actor, to ride a bull for that.
He was the advisor for that.
But this guy, okay, so he's in that
world, and you think whatever, you know.
But Gary Leffew is all about that
sort of thing, and what he used to
do was he would spiritually connect
with the bull he was gonna ride.
So in, in like the rodeo world,
say in a, a, say a bull ride, the
bull's performance is half the score.
So if your bull bucks really hard, he
gets a high score, and then you, if you
ride him well, you get a high score,
and the score kind of adds up together.
And he could win on bulls
that no one else would win on.
Like, they'd just come out, and
they'd just kind of buck off
down the arena sort of thing.
And he would sit and meditate with
this bull before he ever rode it
about what he wanted the bull to do.
And he's-- He tells a story about
he drew this bull one time, and most
people would, what they call, turn it
out, meaning I'm not gonna get on him.
I'm not gonna win anything.
And so they said, "You gonna turn him in?"
He goes, "No, no, he's gonna jump
out there, and he's gonna crack
it back to the left and spin to
the left, and he's gonna jump out,
and he's gonna spin to the right."
I'm like, "Not that bull."
Anyway, he gets on the bull, and the bull
does exactly what he mapped it to do.
And- So there, there is
that in all sorts of places.
But I like, I- you said something here
about 10 minutes ago where you said, "I
don't think it's talked about that much."
But I feel like people like, say
Noelle Floyd on her podcast talking
about those horse people, she
asks, she asks the questions that
kind of lead in that direction.
Whereas most people, if they
had one of those riders on a
podcast, be like, "So, you know,
if your horse is jumping, you know
3.6
and you get a 3.9,
you have a problem.
What, which leg do you putâ¦
You know, those sorts of
questions where she tends to ask.
And it's been-- I haven't listened to them
all, but she puts a lot of little clips
on social media and stuff, and I'm always
fascinated by some of the answers of these
world-class jumping people and whatever.
They say things like, "Whoa."
They're down the rabbit hole.
They just don't talk about it.
Like, it's not something that they, you
know, there's not gonna be an article
in a jumping magazine about that.
But there's-- they're operating
on-- they're using a part
of that for their success.
I'm not saying everybody, but there's, I
think there's quite a few of them who are.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-mm.
Mm-mm.
Right.
I take your point.
So basically, you know, what you're
saying is there's a lot more of
it around than we might think.
And, you know, listening to your
words there about the bull riding,
I mean, that is shape-shifting.
It-- he could, you know, let's say
he was going down to the Kalahari
and then underwent some training,
he could take it even further.
Warwick Schiller: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: But what he's
definitely doing is becoming the bull.
And his life depends upon it
And if he was to have that conversation
in certain cowboy bars, you know,
it wouldn't be taken so well.
But yet it's working and he's doing
it, and he's obviously willing
to talk about it in some places.
I wonder if, you know, given that the
old dead dudes, the Xenophons, the,
the Pluvinels, were effectively the
authorities of their day it would
be interesting to see what hap-
would happen if one started to bring
this discourse into things like the
Pony Club and into things like 4H.
Because you could, you could,
you could put it through any
spiritual lens you wanted to.
You know, like Pluvinel sees
it through a Christian lens.
Xenophon sees it through the pantheon of
the Hellenic gods, which is a throwback
to Sumeria, which some people would
say is a throwback to the Anunnaki
and, and, and Atlantis and things.
If they- Now
Warwick Schiller: you're getting somewhere
⦠if they wanted to go there The Anunnaki.
Okay.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, yeah.
Anunnaki.
And then you've got the Mongols out
there, and probably the Sintashta
people, who were the ones that we
inherit all of our Western horsemanship
from, Russia and western Ukraine in the
early Bronze Age, probably worshiping
some form of Tengri, which is the sky
god, and their horse gods, and horse
sacrifice and so on, and people are
buried with their horses and all of that.
So it seems that we've actually spent
longer in our equestrian history
paying deliberate attention to this,
and actually only a relatively recent
bit not paying attention to this.
And yet, as you say, there are
still people out there who are,
and it seems that the people
who are, it's working for them
I was doing a, a gig in Montana
couple of years ago, and
showing some in handheld- It's,
Warwick Schiller: it's not
Mont- it's not Montana.
Rupert Isaacson: It could be Montana.
And now that I live in Spain, it could be
It's a different pronunciation again.
It'll come to me in a moment
Warwick Schiller: But when you say
Montana, it's, it's in the nose, like-
Rupert Isaacson: It is in the nose
⦠Warwick Schiller: branch, not dance
Rupert Isaacson: I've, I've been, I've
been too long in the USA, my friend
Warwick Schiller: Yeah
Rupert Isaacson: I mean, I
can ⦠If I have to, I can kind of
fall in, so, you know, parenthet-
Warwick Schiller: Do you ever
have to do that- Parentheses
the drive-through in Texas so
that they can understand you?
Rupert Isaacson: All the time.
I would h- I would go to the feed
store and I'd say, "Can I have, like,
that and that and that and that?"
And they'd look at me blankly.
And then I'd say, "You mind if I could
have some of that and some that?"
And they, they'd say, "Well,
why didn't you say so?"
And I said, "Well, I did, but,
you know ⦠Okay, I'm glad,
I'm glad you understand me now."
Or I'd stand there and sort of
go, "Money, those ones," you know?
Warwick Schiller: Have y- I-
Rupert Isaacson: As if
Warwick Schiller: I
⦠Rupert Isaacson: Zulu, yeah
Warwick Schiller: I, I was
trying to make something one day.
I don't know if it was something to do
with, like, something to tie up a, a,
like a slow feeder bag or something other.
But I went to the hardware store, and
I wanted to get some starter cord.
So, you know, stiff, thin, stiff rope.
And so I go in this hardware
store, and this old fella
says, "Can I help you, sonny?"
And I said, "Sure."
I said "Where's your rope?"
And he goes, "Oh, it's over here."
And there's a big wall of rope,
all these reels of types of rope.
And he said, "So what kind of
rope you looking for, sonny?"
I said starter cord."
He goes, "Oh, we don't have that."
I'm like, "Okay, fair enough."
'Cause I'm thinking I don't need
exactly starter cord, I just need
some sort of a thin, stiff rope.
So I'm looking around at the
rope and he's watching me.
And he says, "Tell me once
again, what are you looking for?"
And I said, "Starter cord."
He goes, "Starter cord?
No, we don't have any of that."
I'm like, "Okay."
I'm still looking, and finally
he goes, "One last time, sonny,
what are you looking for?"
And I said, "Starter cord.
You know, like, to start a
water pump or a, a lawnmower."
He goes, "Oh, you mean starter cord.
It's right over here."
Rupert Isaacson: That's right.
It's like when you try to order water-
Warwick Schiller: Oh, yeah
⦠Rupert Isaacson: you
know, in a restaurant.
I've, I've end- Yes ⦠I've ended up
being given walnut salad before when I-
Warwick Schiller: Really?
When you asked for water?
Rupert Isaacson: Water, yeah.
Mm-hmm.
I got walnut salad.
Warwick Schiller: Okay.
That's awesome
Rupert Isaacson: rather than water.
Water, water.
Warwick Schiller: Okay, so
you're in Montana, sorry.
Rupert Isaacson: All right.
So I'm in Montana- Go,
Warwick Schiller: Chris
⦠Rupert Isaacson: drinking
water in Montana.
And we're doing a little thing with some
in hand work, and someone says, "Have
you asked that horse for permission?"
And because it seems to me that
you just sort of took the horse
and started doing the thing.
And
I thought about it, and
then I said, "Did I?
Did I just take the
horse and do the thing?"
Or actually was something else going on,
and then I sort of went back in my mind.
I was like, "Well, actually I was standing
with that horse waiting for my turn to
go for, oh, I don't know, 10, 15 minutes
while the other person who we were
doing it with, you know, did her thing."
So I was chatting away with this horse,
and cuddling away with this horse, and
scratching away with this horse, and
just hanging out, and sometimes hanging
out in companionable silence, and
sometimes communicating with each other.
So of course, by the time we did go
in there, we were kind of good to go.
But I
So I said, "I, I can absolutely see
why you might think that that's what
happened, but what you couldn't see
was the 15 minutes lead up to that."
And honestly, and then I started thinking,
you know, what actually does go on in
my mind before I get up and do any kind
of presentation of any kind, 'cause
it's not always with horses, right?
Could be about autism or whatever.
And I realized I'm praying
all the time, right?
So, and, and who am I praying to?
Well, I'm actually praying to this
kind of combo of inherited Christian
iconography, and I'm also praying to,
if it's with horses, I am actually
praying to, through my ancestral lines.
So I'm praying to Germanic horse gods.
I'll, I'll include Odin in there
and others, and I h- will include
a bit of Epona, and I actually
realize I do do that, actually.
And then I'm actu- then I'm reaching
out also to the sort of gnostic,
Gnostic principle of the monad, you
know, of Go- the God within, that we're
all God, and the horse is God, and
we're all God, and we're all love and
But I'm just not talking about them.
I'm justâ¦
And I was like, "Well, maybe I should."
So I said, "Well, you know, it's
a good question that you brought
up there because we tend to keep
these things internal, don't we?
But if I actually was to take youâ¦"
So I said, "Let, let me just take
you through all the, all the entities
that I, or the sort of spiritual
dimensions that I prayed with and
it, but it'll take three minutes.
Are you all right with that?"
That was that.
And so I said, "Well, you know, it
goes through all of these things
'cause those are my ancestral lines.
But if my ancestral lines were from mon-
Central Asia or Native America, they
might be different, but pro- but probably
approximations of the same thing."
And it, it, that, that's what s- started
to get me thinking about the, the, and
that's sort of why I also brought up
the thing of consent-based horsemanship
because that's where she was coming
from, and it actually led immediately
in my mind to the spiritual dimension of
horsemanship, which then led in my mind
to the altered states of horsemanship,
which I think we all experience but
just don't talk deliberately about much.
And I thought I'd I want to have a
conversation with that, and I can't think
of anyone who is probably better to have
a conversation with that about than you
Do you involve much prayer?
Warwick Schiller: Well, let
me back up to your prayer.
'Cause when you were saying that,
I'm like, "Oh, I do that too."
So you said, "Oh, I realized I was,
I was actually praying to, like, my
Judeo-Christian, you know, roots,
but then they're this and that."
Are you, were you even conscious
that you were doing it?
And were you consciously
Connecting with those entities or that's
just such a part of your, you know,
your experience and upbringing that you
were just connecting to the divine and
those are the names you give the divine?
Rupert Isaacson: All of the above.
Because I think what happens is
we end up ⦠We're always just
connecting with the divine, right?
So the horse, if, if, ifâ¦
I remember being very, very young in
school and in chapel looking up at a
little inscription on the wall that
said, "God is love and love is God."
And I was probably nine, and I remember
looking at that and went, "That's true."
And then later on I had an experience
where I was actually in an altered
state of consciousness, but not
through anything in a ceremony.
I just got really hallucin-
I got really feverish.
I had a very big fever, and I was on
Table Mountain in Cape Town, fortunately
for me, with a cousin who's a medical
student, who got me off the mountain.
And I had-- I remembered that,
"God is love, love is God," and
thought, "Yeah, that's true.
Why is that true?"
Well, if, if God is everything,
then matter must be God.
And if God is love, then matter
must be love, which means
that the rocks that I'mâ¦
the minerals that create the rocks and
the oxygen that I'm breathing, and then
when we get down to the car, the metal
that the car door is made of, which is
also minerals that come from the earth,
and then the fuel that's in the car, which
is the fossil forests of what, whatâ¦
You know, this must all be love.
So the gasoline in the car is love, and
the, the paint on the, the chemicals
that make that paint which cover is love.
So but when we sometimes want
to filter to a particular
context of, let's say, the horse
Then we might use a metaphor
that is horse-based.
We might use a horse deity, or
we might use an aspect of horse.
So if you were the Romans, you
might talk about the geniuses of
the training ground or whatever.
But you're still really talking
about the same thing, aren't you?
So it is all love
And we're engaged in this
endeavor with horses
that we do only for love.
The only reason we do it is for love
Warwick Schiller: So
think about what is love.
And, and, and, and for me, the
the times during altered
states of consciousness,
like from, like I said, from ceremony
or breathwork or whatever, is when
you feel completely connected to the
whole universe and you feel like you're
one, it's also a feeling of love.
So I think love is just not
blocking out your connectedness to
Anything else.
Like, the, theâ¦
I, I think the, the more you can
let everything in and have no filtersâ¦
I don't mean-
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
Warwick Schiller: I don't, I don't
mean Rupert at the pub after he's had
a few pints, that kind of no filters.
That's never happened.
That's never happened.
No, it's never happened.
No, like y- wh- when you can actually let-
reality.
And you know, I was reading a book
a while ago, and it was-- there was
a line in there that hit me, and it
said something about we all have these
filters that we only let so much reality
in, because if we let the whole of
reality in, we'd probably go crazy.
But when you can have theâ¦
I don't know if it's the trust, but to let
Everything in.
That'sâ¦
The, the, the feeling you get
when you, you feel connected
to everything like that, 'cause
you've let everything in, is love.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
And love is union, right?
So, you know- Mm ⦠we're, we're
going for that feeling of the centaur.
We're going for that feeling
of I don't know where the horse
ends and I begin, and vice versa.
Ex stasis
that sense of being out of time that you
described in your experience with horses.
I think when, when reality comes
into that degree and we have ecstasy,
'cause ecstasy doesn't have to always
be euphoric, it can be quiet as well
and its flow
We s- we, we don't notice it.
We're just in it because then
we're part of the whole again.
Does the, does the drop, does the
wave know that it's part of the
ocean or does it think it's a wave?
There might be moments where the
consciousness coalesces the matter l-
like this so much that there could be
a moment where the wave is conscious of
being a wave, and then there, that could
go back to the whole, and is that us?
Is that, you know ⦠So when we, when
we're with horses, are we fortunate
enough to, in our modern context, still
be lucking into that thing where we,
we forget that we are the wave or the
human or the pimple on the nose and
that we are the ocean, we are the whole?
But when you are in a union,
when you are the ocean and the
whole, you cease to notice.
That's irrelevant.
You've gone back to source
You're no longer ⦠Your, your, your,
your, your sense of self, your ego
has left the building because it no
longer has any, any job to do there.
Doesn't need to defend you.
Doesn't need, because you're ⦠You know,
and I think, I think people like us get
to experience that every day, but it's not
necessarily at this point yet part of
our methodologies of teaching much,
but we are having the conversations.
We-
Warwick Schiller: Yeah, I
think, you know, I think as a
As an educator, as a teacher, you
can, you can only kinda teach if
you wanna be effective, if you
wanna make change, I feel like you
can only teach to the level of the
to the level of the, the
people you are teaching.
You know, there's, there's no use
a, there's no use a college physics
professor going to a kindergarten and
standing up there and talking about
all the same stuff he would talk to,
to graduate students to kindergartners.
It's, it's not even gonna land.
So you've gotta, you
know, you've go- I think
You can, and, and what I, what I really
like to do, so if you think about
what I, quote unquote, "do," you know,
I have an online training program.
I do clinics around the world.
I present horse expos in
different places around the world.
I have a podcast that you've
been on a number of times.
We have the podcast summit that
you've been to se- of several of them.
And I think everything I'm doing
in the doing of those things, the
underlying thing that I'm trying to do
is I'm trying to get someone, if not
everybody, to have a perspective change-
Rupert Isaacson: Mm
Warwick Schiller: about something
you know, I wanna basically, I wanna
bust someone's long-held truth.
And I feel like if you can bust
someone's long-held truth about anything,
and a lot of times, say with, with
clinics and things like that, the, the
long-held truth I'm busting is, "Oh,
my horse does this because he is-- he
doesn't like this," or he whatever.
And when you can bust someone's
long-held truth, and especially
if it's their first one.
You know what I mean?
If it's their first one, I'm--
I can wipe my hands off and
walk away and like, "I'm done."
Because I guarantee you, once you bust
someone's long-held truth, then they
go down the rabbit hole themselves.
You don't need to grab them by the ear
and drag them down the rabbit hole.
You just have to kind of, um
You, you just have to kind of show
them that at least one of their
long-held truths is not true.
And I feel like
That, you know, that's
the beginning of stuff.
So, you know, so, you know, in,
in teaching the people, I'm always
kind of talking about some of the
stuff we're talking about here, but
that's not what I'm teaching, but
I am kind of dropping it in there.
And I don't profess to be very far away
you know, very far down whatever rabbit
hole it is, but a lot of times I might
be a little further down the path than
the people that I'm teaching and I'm
trying to drop a hint to them to, to
start to maybe look at things, you know,
a little differently.
We had a chat about this one night
actually, you and I at a bar.
But yeah, so I, I feel like when
you, you, you, you kind almost have
to know what your audience is, who
your audience is to see how, how
far you can go with some of that.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
No, for sure.
I mean, I remember when when I
published The Horse Boy I wasn't asking
people to believe or disbelieve that
Rowan going out to the horse and the
reindeer shamans of Mongolia healed him
But what I could do is say, "I had
this experience And this is what I
saw, and this is where my child was,
and this is where he was afterwards.
And that was also why it was important
for me to catch it on camera with a
documentary because I thought, well,
you know, if I say I went to this place
that you'll never go and I met all these
people you'll never meet, you know.
As the journalist in me is like, "Yeah,"
and the autism parent in me was like,
"Yeah, I don't know how helpful that is."
But the point of that book wasn't to
say you should go to Mongolia or you
should believe in shamans or anything.
It was just to say
these experiences exist.
And if you allow for the fact that
that's a reality for goodly chunks
of the planet then at the very least
it widens your options, doesn't it?
Maybe that's why I wanted to
have this conversation, actually.
I, I feel that, you know, so oftenâ¦
You talked about trying to bust people's
long-held truths and what you- I think
you- another way to put that might
be letting people know that there are
other options out there, that they
don't have to be stuck in a place- Yeah.
Do you know who- ⦠that's
making them feel unhappy, right?
Warwick Schiller: Yeah.
Do you know who Ram Dass is?
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Warwick Schiller: So I s- saw,
it must have been on Instagram.
It was a, one of his readings.
He, he said, he said, "When you
become enlightened or when you, you
know, when you're on the first step
of being enlightened, the thing
that you cannot do is run down the
street yelling it to everybody."
He said, "But what you can do is you
can let them know there's a place
that they can come up for air."
He said, "You can't stop
people from suffering.
You can't fix their suffering for them,
but you can make them aware that there's
a place that they can come up for air."
And
I feel like that's,
that's the thing there.
When, when you are on a certain path and
you might be a little further along the
path than some others, what you cannot
do is try to tell everybody else, "This
is the path and you should be on it, and
you're wrong if you're not," whatever.
But you can drop a hint and say,
"Hey, if, you know, if you're s- you
know, if you're sick of the pain," or
what- whatever it is or s- whatever,
whatever the thing may be, whatever the-
Rupert Isaacson: Mm
Warwick Schiller: thing may be, kind of
introduce them to the fact that th- there
c- there are, there are other options.
Rupert Isaacson: And there is sanctuary.
Warwick Schiller: Yes.
Rupert Isaacson: W- I think many of us
who got involved with horses young and
then got competitive and then had dreams
realize at a certain point that the very
thing that- We had dreamed that would
set us free, sent us into a cage, but
the horse didn't send us into a cage.
We just rode him in there and
built the cage around ourselves
Warwick Schiller: Right.
Exactly, yes.
Rupert Isaacson: That
Warwick Schiller: was our ego
that took us into the cage.
Rupert Isaacson: Indeed, indeed.
But you can't, you can't not have an ego.
Warwick Schiller: No.
Rupert Isaacson: You know,
pe- people always say, "Oh,
you gotta transcend your ego."
It's like, well, eh, it's in there.
It's a little bit like trying
to transcend your fingernails.
I mean, they're there.
So it's what, what's it for?
What do we, what do we do with it?
What purpose is it serving?
And-
Then people like you
think, "Well, hold on.
I am-- If I'm in a cage,
what's the opposite of a cage?
That's where I'd like to be, right?"
So if the opposite of
a cage is no cage, i.e.
freedom, what could represent
that better than the horse?
In, in all human analogies to horses and
metaphors, it's always around freedom
and movement and dynamism and dreams.
All, all of our metaphors
around horses are like that.
We don't, I think, have many
derogatory ones except for maybe a nag.
But even nagging in terms of
someone's nagging me, that doesn't
come from the, the, a nag of a horse.
And a nag of a horse doesn't
necessarily mean a bad or a
broken-down horse in the old-
Warwick Schiller: You know, I don't think-
⦠English ⦠I don't think Americans
use the term nag in relation to horses.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, it's,
it's more English old English.
Like-
Warwick Schiller: Yeah.
And I, I remember as a kid where
Rupert Isaacson: they
get- ⦠like a Ross in German.
Yeah
Warwick Schiller: Yeah, like when I was a
kid, like, "Oh, I gotta go feed the nags."
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: You
Warwick Schiller: know,
they're just the nags.
But it's not a derogatory term at all.
But yeah, it's not something thatâ¦
I had to think about it while
you were talking, but it's
not something that the US uses
Rupert Isaacson: So, you, you
created that podcast, and you
created that summit, and that was
one of the first experiences I had.
That's why I wanted you
to talk about this today.
That's one of the first experiences I'd
had where the kinds of conversations
that we're having now would be met in
sort of open forum from people, from
anything from show jumpers and dressage
people, to Western people, to natural
horsemanship people, to totally woo-woo
people, to horse behavior people,
to, da-da-da, to neuroscientists.
But everybody could agree that we're
here because they make us feel good,
and we all experienced a loss of that
feeling good, and then looked for a way.
And I would say that you've made a
real contribution, actually, Warwick.
One of the most, probably the most
meaningful contribution that I know of
in this quarter of the 21st century.
I don't know anyone else who's brought
that conversation forward and made
it universally safe for people from
pretty much all the conventional
walks of the horse world to begin
to start to have this conversation.
And you talked about Ram Dass
saying, "Come up for air."
I think everybody's response at
those summits was a sigh of relief
That it was okay to talk the word
Warwick Schiller: Yeah,
it was really interesting.
There were several
Let's say big time woo-woo horse people
that I thought-- that were famous
that I thought, you know, when we
invited them, they're not gonna come
because, you know, they're, they're
way bigger than us sort of thing.
And then when they did
come, they were kind ofâ¦
I thought when I first met them,
they were a little bit standoffish.
And by about day two of the
summit, they let down and I can't
remember if I intuited this or one
of them actually said it to me.
But the, the, the outcome of it was
they showed up thinking this is a bunch
of horse people, and horse people are
very judgmental and, you know, they're
gonna be looking down on me, whatever,
so I'm not gonna let them all in.
And by the second day they're
like, "Oh, I can be fully me."
One of them said, "I let my-- I
got to let my freak flag fly."
Where I can, I can just be completely me
and honest about who I am and how I feel
about things, and I will be accepted.
There was a nu- there was a number of
the, like the woo-woo ones, and then
there was some, you know, I think Mark
Rashid actually, he came to the first one.
You were at the first one, weren't you?
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Warwick Schiller: Yeah.
And Mark said, after that, he
said, "I didn't realize how
lonely I'd been out there."
He says-- 'cause in the-- Mark
doesn't really fit into a category
anywhere in the horse world.
He's certainly not, you know, on the
extreme woo-woo end of the thing.
But he, you know, he said afterwards,
he goes, "I didn't realize how lonely
I was out there because I realized
this is a place where I can just--
I can talk about anything I wanna
talk about in any way I wanna talk
about it, and it will be accepted."
And he says, "That's not the case
out there in the horse world."
Rupert Isaacson: As you may know,
if you've been following my work,
we are also horsey folk here.
And we have been training horses for
many, many years in the manner of
the old classical dressage masters.
This is something which is
often very confusing for people.
We shine a light on that murky, difficult
stuff and make it crystal clear.
If you'd like to learn to train your
horse in the manner of the old masters and
really have fun and joy for you and your
equine, go to our website, heliosharmony.
com Sign up as a premium member.
and begin to take the Helios Harmony
course, which will take you from zero
to the Piaf, where the horse is dancing
on the spot in hand on the ground.
And then from there, you can
develop out to anywhere you want to.
Heliosharmony.
com to unlock the secrets
of the old masters.
Mm.
And I was-- as you were saying that,
the judgmentalism in the horse world,
I was thinking about, okay, we talked
about old dead dudes who talked
about spirituality, but we also know
that not all spirituality is good.
Spirituality can reflect light or dark.
So of course the Xenophon, you
know, well, he's also a slave owner.
He's also an ex-mercenary, even though
he's also Socrates' student and one
of the founders of Stoic philosophy.
You've got, you know, the Romans there
giving offerings to the, to Epona and
the geniuses of the training ground, but
what are they doing with their horses?
Going and doing punitive raiding.
Not very nice.
You got the Mongols, they're doing their
thing with the wind horse and so on,
and Tengri, the sky god, and they're
killing everybody from- The Pacific to
the Mediterranean every two generations.
And one could go on.
You know, Native America's got a
bloody history tribe to tribe and
Anyway, so people haven't always
used it for good, and even within
Horse Boy, we're using a system
that creates col- soft collection
in a horse that has a byproduct,
not just of balance and safety,
but of oxytocin in a child's body.
Feels good.
Feels good to ride a
horse in soft connection.
It's 'cause of the oxytocin, which then
happens to be hormone of communication
and nervous, you know, system regulation.
So quite early in that thing, I realized,
oh, we're taking a system that was
actually to some degree designed to
harm your fellow man, and we found a u-
way to use it to heal your fellow man.
And I realized, I see you could take
any of these things and you could
decide to use it for good or ill.
You could, you could
including the spiritual side of horses
and the altered state, you could enter
battle madness and berserk, go, go
berserk on your horse, take henbane, which
is the, the herb they took to go into
the berserker rage, and that even, you
know, came down to the medieval knights.
They would take henbane because it
also makes you not feel blows, and they
would call it the fury of the nobility.
But it
Warwick Schiller: was actually-
What is that, what is that
Rupert Isaacson: herb?
Henbane.
Henbane is a- The- ⦠a herb that grows
here in Eurasia, and you can use it for
this altered state of consciousness.
It looks very-
Warwick Schiller: Does-
⦠Rupert Isaacson: likely that that was
what they used for battle madness.
Warwick Schiller: Does it
have any modern medical use?
Like is it related to any,
like a analgesic thing or?
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, it is.
Let me just pull it up here on Mr.
Google.
Hold on.
Henbane
uses of
Let me spell it properly.
That would help, wouldn't it?
Henbane.
My fat fingers uses allâ¦
Here we go
Henbane.
Hyos- Hyoscyamus niger, niger is
a toxic plant historically used
in traditional medicine and ritual
practices for pain relief- Mm ⦠muscle
spasms, and as a sedative because it
contains potent and dangerous tropane
alkaloids like Scopolamine and-
Warwick Schiller: Oh, okay ⦠hyos-
It's got scopolamine in it.
Okay.
Hyoscine.
Yeah, okay.
Rupert Isaacson: Unguided internal
use is extremely dangerous and
discouraged by modern medicine.
But it's a built-in anesthetic,
and it also opens up the lungs
and it has been involved in ritual
and magic for an awful long time.
And it's also thought to be part of
the flying ointments that people felt,
you know, that people who thought they
were going to witches' covens and- Mm
rubbed henbane ointment on themselves
thought that they were flying.
But it's certainly beenâ¦
All the archeology from the Viking
battle sites and many of the medieval
battle sites show henbane being
used, and also cultivated and in the
satchels of the barber surgeons that
attended those military groupings.
Warwick Schiller: Mm.
Rupert Isaacson: Now I would imagine
that you could use it in a way that
makes you go, "Rah," into battle and
kill everybody, and I could imagine
that you could use it then afterwards
in a different dosage to heal the wounds
that you, you know, incurred- Yeah,
Warwick Schiller: well imagine-
⦠Rupert Isaacson: doing that thing.
Warwick Schiller: I imagine it could
probably l- like if you wereâ¦
Think about this.
If you were injured and you took it,
you're in a, a certain emotional state,
and if you're in the, "Rah, I'm about
to go kill people," emotional state and
you take it while you're in that state-
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah
⦠Warwick Schiller: it probably
lands differently, and that's the
kind of point I want to get to.
We've been talking, Indigo, about
using things for good or evil or
whatever, or doing stuff for good
or bad or whatever, and for a
while now I've been really on about
the intention behind an action has
a different energetic signature.
And if you really wanna get into-
100% ⦠altered states of- Frequency
and vibration ⦠whatever, frequency.
That'sâ¦
And, and, and I heard the best example
of this a while ago I've ever heard,
and I, and I'll, I'll kind of give you
the spiel I've been doing at, like,
at clinics and horse expos and stuff.
So did you ever read Eat Pray
Love by Elizabeth Gilbert?
Yeah.
So she wrote a, released a book
maybe earlier this year or last year
called All the Way to the River.
Have you ever heard of it?
Rupert Isaacson: I read about her
doing a new book, but that's as far
Warwick Schiller: as I know.
Okay.
So Elizabeth Gilbert was married to a man.
She has kind of frizzy hair Anyway, she
has a hard time having a hairdresser
get her hair just right, and she
heard about a friend of hers in New
York said, "Hey, there's this gal.
She's really good with hair like yours.
She works out of her apartment."
So she goes-- This is in the book.
This is-- It's autobiographical.
And she goes and sees this lady, and this
lady is an ex-heroin addict who's been
in jail, has had both her legs broken in
like a, you know, a drug deal gone wrong.
She's covered in tattoos.
She's streetwise.
And she starts doing Liz's hair, then
they become really good friends, and
eventually they become lovers, and
Elizabeth Gilbert divorces her husband,
and now she's with this lady named Raya.
And the book is about Raya end up
getting I think it was pancreatic
cancer and dying, but that's
their, their journey together.
But there is a, a piece in the book where
they go to a funeral, and I've been doing
this at, at horse expos, telling this
story where I say that the-- there's a,
there's a different energy to the same
action done with a different intention.
I said, "I'm gonna give you
a great example right now."
So Elizabeth Gilbert and Raya
go to this funeral of an old
friend of Elizabeth Gilbert's.
Old lady.
She's a grandma, okay?
She's passed away.
Raya doesn't know her.
They go to the funeral, and while
they're at the funeral, Raya notices
that the grandson of the lady
that died, she goes, "I can tell
that guy's an active heroin user.
Liz, your purse is not safe in this room.
Don't sit it anywhere.
Actually, take it out and p-
lock it in the trunk of your car.
Don't put it on the front seat.
Lock it in the trunk of your car.
And if anybody else here at the funeral,
you know, go around and tell them it's a
good idea if they-- Don't tell them why.
Just say it's a good idea if you lock
your purse in the trunk of your car."
And so Liz does that.
Anyway, that night or the next day or
something or other, Liz says to Raya,
"Thank you so much for thinking of me
and those other people at the funeral."
So think about the energetic
signature behind her saying,
"Your purse is not safe.
Go lock it in the car."
How does that sit in your body?
You feel like, "Oh, that
was nice," doesn't it?
Does that lands in your body like that?
That's the energy of it.
It's like, "Oh, that was
very nice of her to do that."
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Warwick Schiller: So Liz says to
her, "Thanks so much for thinking
of me and the other people."
And Raya said, "Oh, I wasn't
thinking of you or the other people.
I was thinking about him, because
he's an active heroin user, and
there's only two ways to go.
You're either gonna die or
you're gonna get in recovery.
And if he comes, gets in recovery,
at some point in time, if he's in a
12-step program, he's gonna have to
get to step six, I think it is, where
you have to go and locate and reach
out to everybody you have ever wronged-
Tell them the circumstances of
how you wronged them and what
you did, and apologize for it."
And she said, "The last thing I would
want him to have to do is to reach out
a bunch of people and say, 'I stole your
purse at my grandmother's funeral.'"
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Warwick Schiller: How does
that land in your body?
That's different, isn't it?
Like, that's like-
Rupert Isaacson: It
Warwick Schiller: is ⦠ooh,
she's not think- Not to mention-
Rupert Isaacson: She's- ⦠helping
him avoid arrest potentially.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Warwick Schiller: That too.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Warwick Schiller: But think about,
you know, when we first heard the
story, you think, "Oh, she's thinking
about someone's possessions."
Mm.
That's nice.
And then when you hear the real
reason she did the same action, but
the real reason she did it, she's
trying to save someone's soul.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Warwick Schiller: And so that exactly
the same action has a completely
different energetic signature- Mm-hmm
because of the intention
behind the action.
Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
Warwick Schiller: Liz thought she did it
because she didn't want me to stealâ¦
I didn't wanna lose my purse and
some money that I can easily replace
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, I mean that,
that's kind of where we started, isn't it?
With, with patting your horse.
I mean, you could, you could ⦠W- Yes
what's the intention?
What's the emotion-
Warwick Schiller: Yeah,
Rupert Isaacson: yes ⦠behind it?
And is it a shared emotion-
Yeah ⦠and all of the things.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
Context and and love.
Warwick Schiller: Yeah.
And there's levels of love.
Like- Mm ⦠one is like, "Oh, yes,
that's nice of her to- Mm ⦠save
my purse and my driver's license
and my credit card, my- Which was
Rupert Isaacson: indeed a truth- Yes
but it was a byproduct.
Yes.
Warwick Schiller: But then if you
think about the real reason she
did it, it's like holy cow, that's-
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah
⦠Warwick Schiller: that's
a different action.
Same action, but it has a different
intention, so it lands ⦠I feel
like it lands differently when you
tell the story, but I feel like
energetically with the universe- Mm
with your, like, karma, that-
That ranks up there, like, you know
Rupert Isaacson: It does.
It does.
And it's interesting that it was
the henbane that, that, sparked
that story because y- you know, you
could use that for battle madness.
You could use it to heal.
And then also the person in the battle
madness, if they have that coursing around
in their body, is also less likely to die
they, because they've got an analgesic.
Warwick Schiller: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: And at the same
time perhaps more likely to die
because they will expose themselves
to more danger and more blows.
And interestingly, that the
horse would be an unwitting
participant in that process.
It's just the thing that
carried you into battle.
Warwick Schiller: Yeah.
But it's, it's, you know, it's a little
bit like, like plant medicine in ceremony.
Your intention going in
will determine what happens.
It's the same, it's the same medicine.
So I was thinking about
that henbane stuff.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
Warwick Schiller: If you were
getting ready to be in that
berserker-type mentality- Mm
do s- do a certain thing with that.
And if you were, like I said,
if you were wounded or whatever,
it would affect you differently.
Have you ever heard of a book called
Dying to Be You by a lady named Anita
Rupert Isaacson: Moorjani?
Warwick Schiller: No.
This lady had terminal cancer, and like
she was dying, and they, like, they
said, "We can't do anything for you."
And she went into, like, a bit of a
coma sort of a thing, and for two days,
and came out in complete remission.
It was all gone.
She basically kind of had a near-death
experience while she was gone, and
she wrote a book called Dying to Beâ¦
Dying to Be Me or Dying
to Be You, I forget.
But in the end of the book,
she was talking aboutâ¦
Or she actually answers questions
that people have asked her.
So she's reading the book, but
she says, "So I've been asked
about this," and she answers that.
"I've been asked about this."
And they said, "So one of the questions
that got asked of her is what,
what food do you eat these days?"
And she goes, "Well,
let me tell you a story.
I used to eat very healthily.
I ate I was a vegetarian, I
was gluten-free, I was this, I
was that, and I was eating very
healthily, and I still got sick."
She said, "Because I
was eating out of fear.
I was eating these healthy things
because I was afraid of eating other
stuff 'cause it would be bad for me."
And she says, "Now, after having my
near-death experience," she goes, "I
kind of eat whatever I want, but I
eat it with a different intention."
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
Warwick Schiller: And so the same material
going into your body lands differently- Mm
if you have if you have
an aspect of fear to it.
And think about the, the women have
it so bad, but you go into any place
that sells magazines, and there'll be
a, a cookbook or a woman's magazine or
whatever, and somewhere on the front
cover it will say, "Guilt-free recipe."
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
Warwick Schiller: And it will be a recipe
that takes out all the tasty stuff,
because if you eat the other stuff,
you should feel guilty for eating it.
But we're gonna make it, you can eat
this so you don't have to feel guilty.
Like, that's,
that's mind control.
That's you know.
But anyway, the, the point I'm trying
to make here is the same food with a
different intention lands differently.
This same plant, this henbane thing,
with a different intention lands
differently, and I really feel like the
same action with a different intention
has a different energetic signature.
And when you're dealing with a, an animal
like a horse who is so sensitive to
that sort of thing, I mean, you know,
it's almost hard to quantify what's
going on between someone and their
horse without knowing exactly what
their intention is for their action.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
I'm thinking about people I know who
still engage in combat on horses.
Actual combat.
I know two
Warwick Schiller: Who's fighting, who's
fighting wars on horseback these days?
Rupert Isaacson: The Portuguese bullfight.
Warwick Schiller: Oh, okay.
Yep.
Rupert Isaacson: And so I know a couple
of people, I don't know anyone active
in it anymore, but I know a couple
of people who are retired, and it's
one of those things where the m- you
know, the morality of it is Very clear.
Like, there's no, there's just
no doubt that you shouldn't
go and stick things in bulls.
So I think that side of the conversation
one can agree on that it's not good.
What's interesting about the
horses w- that participate in it is
that they tend to really like it.
But it tends to be a certain genetic
line of horses that have that kind
of, "Hoho, hey," sort of personality.
Warwick Schiller: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: And evolved in those
river valleys of the Guadalquivir
and the Tagus, where over about two
million years these horses that we now
know of as Iberian horses, their wild
ancestral stock, and even actually into
the historical period, would be living
wild or feral with large herds of wild
cattle that are hyper-aggressive, rather
like Cape buffalo because they carry a
little bubble of territory around them.
And if you accidentally step over
into that territory, which you're
going to, they'll come and attack you.
But if you skip, "Wee," to the outside,
you-- they'll leave you alone again.
But you all pack up together like
that because of safety in numbers
from predators, because those parts
of Southern Europe historically
were h- habitat of Eurasian lion.
And that would have been the main
predator, the apex predator there.
So you w- got these horses that for two
and a half million years or whatever
evolve next to these wild cattle, and a
certain amount of kind of motherfuckery,
you know, comes into that of playing,
messing with these bulls a little bit.
And not being at all freaked out by them,
and even provoking them a little bit as
part of the play behavior, particularly
of the young colts and stallions.
And then that becomes part of the
Celto-Iberian tradition where they start
to worship the god Poseidon, who is
always represented by the bull, which
is the earthquake, the volcanic activity
under the Mediterranean that you're
always trying to appease, 'cause e- every
now and then an island blows up and a
big earthquake and a tsunami happens.
And the horse, which is the waves,
the tossing waves coming in.
And so bull fighting seems to have evolved
partly as a ritual practice and but
what's interesting is that, The horses
dig it, that like it, and you can't
do it on a horse that doesn't dig it
'cause you'd just be killed really fast.
But the morality is clear.
It's not nice to go around
sticking things into bulls
So in America, in California where
you live, in the Central Valley,
there is a population of dairy farmers
who come from the Portuguese Azorean
Islands.
A lot of Portuguese, yeah.
And they live up around
Modesto and those places.
Yeah.
Stockton
And they, because bullfighting is illegal
in the USA, have evolved a bloodless way
of doing it, and they have a subculture
where they put a big old pad on the
back of the bull, and they stick that.
So nothing goes into the bull, and the
bull just gets annoyed and comes after
them, but the bull is of course not losing
any blood, so it's not getting weaker.
So you could argue that it's actually
more dangerous, and that therefore the
horsemanship involved is more brilliant.
Warwick Schiller: Mm.
Rupert Isaacson: And you look at that
as a sort of evolution of something
that morally you can't condone, but
you can look at the horsemanship and
go, "Whoa, that's amazing," and live
with that ambiguity, and then see itâ¦
But the horse is sort of an innocent
to the human endeavor there, and that
human endeavor is a bit dark And then
there's an evolution, guess where?
In California, go figure, where human
evolutions often seem to take place.
And there they are doing it bloodlessly.
You know, I, I talk a lot about
my fox hunting background,
but I don't fox hunt anymore.
I was told by a Navajo shaman to stop,
and that it was somehow connected
to my son's autism, so I stopped.
But I always missed riding to hounds.
So I started riding with bloodhounds
where we hunt each other for fun.
And so I could be the quarry, the
hounds are after me, and then I
can have fun with helping to make
it a bit more difficult for them.
Double back on myself, go through
water, and then maybe you'll- Really?
⦠yeah, you're riding in the field,
so I can also make it a bit fun
for, a bit difficult for Warwick.
So I'll make sure that I run or
ride over those really big hedges,
you know, just, you know, for fun.
But you can find a way around if you want.
And at the end, the dogs will always get
me, but they'll just lick me to death.
And so I started doing
that, the bloodless form.
And then we started doing it through
Horse Boy, 'cause this is in Germany, my
friend who has the pack of hounds is in
Germany, with one of our Horse Boy places
and we thought, "Well, why, why couldn't
special needs people experience this?"
Because normally they don't get to
experience this kind of mad joy.
Normally the, the experience
for them is so controlled, and
it's almost infantilized and
particularly when they get older.
And one of the nice things about
Horse Boy when they're younger is
I can have the kid in front of me.
We can go cantering out
there into the range.
But once the kid is, you know,
bigger, it's like, well, ugh.
So what we did was we put the horses
through a training process where we
could then make sure that they would be
super calm with the hounds around them,
but they would have to cross country.
Some of the kids could jump a little bit.
The ones that couldn't, we would make
it interesting for them, the terrain.
So we had my friend Henrik's son
Julian, who's got spina bifida
and hydrocephalus, and he actually
lives on that farm where we did it.
At the end of that day's hunting
where the hounds were all around
them hunting, 'cause we did the l-
we did it in spirals so that they
were never far from the action.
So it wasn't like, "Oh, well,
isn't it nice they get to sort
of participate, but then we all
bugger off and have the real fun."
Warwick Schiller: Right.
Rupert Isaacson: We try, you
know, it's more inclusive.
And then he said, "Wow, that I've
never been in the forest in my farm.
I've never been in there."
That's the first time I've gone
in there, and the horse carried
me in there on these hunting days.
And then we thought, "Well, why does it
have to stop with kids with special needs?
What about all those kids who
are in the local town who are
just sitting in shit apartments?
And, and, and a lot of them
are, are refugee kids from the
Ukraine and Syria and places.
Why don't we invite them?
And they can't ride, but okay, fine, we
can have our tractor ride, you know, that
follows and goes with and is part of that.
And this is also an organic farm,
and we can talk about how the farm
is managed, and we're also gonna
encounter a lot of other wildlife.
And, you know, actually, we should
be doing this for all the kids in
the town because otherwise how are
they gonna value the countryside
if they don't experience it, right?
So let's make it a countryside
day and, and then have a big old
party afterwards and invite them."
So what started with, for me, hassling
a fox who had no choice in the matter
became that experience I just described.
And f- what for those Azorean bullfighters
began with torturing a bull with brilliant
horsemanship became this bloodless form.
And I think the- these
avenues are always open to us.
But you talked about truth.
It ⦠What is it, was it
you said a long-held truth,
busting a long-held truth?
Warwick Schiller: Mm.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: You know, when
that Navajo shaman came up to me and
said, "You need to stop fox hunting,"
that was busting a long-held truth.
It doesn't do us any harm to go through
these p- processes and, but we can go
through them with our horses, right?
is one of the reasons why
The horse and the altered state of
consciousness are so closely aligned
for us because the horse carries us.
When you, you're talking about doing
plant medicine, and you and I have,
you know, done a, a ceremony together
We're carried by that plant, aren't we?
And we're carried by that ceremony,
and we're carried, we're take-
we- we're taken on a journey Mm.
Mm.
Your podcast is called Journey On.
Warwick Schiller: Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Discuss
Thoughts
Warwick Schiller: Yeah, no, I mean,
I, I, I guess I do agree with you
there, but I don't even think we
need to be riding them for them to
Carry us to a place
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm
Warwick Schiller: And the, you know, you
started out talking about consent and
I have found that
So consent is for me, consent is not,
"Oh, they don't want us to do anything."
Consent is just listening to the little
things they're telling us along the way.
I think you end up being able to do
everything you wanna be able to do
with them, but I think you can end
up in a different place to whereâ¦
You know, I think the consent with horses
a lot of times is they're basically
just asking you listening, you know?
'Cause usually it's not
a no, it's a not yet.
And usually after a few times-
Mm ⦠when they, when they say, when
they say not yet and you go, "Okay,"
you don't put them away for the day.
You go, "Okay, read that.
How about now?"
"No, not yet."
"How about now?"
And then after a while they
go, "Okay, you're listening.
I'll let you in."
And it's almost, you know, it'sâ¦
I don't know if you wanna go
there, but it's, it's almost
like the art of seduction.
You know what I mean?
It's a, it's a dance.
It's a, "Hey, we both know what's up."
Rupert Isaacson: Let's- It- We
could, we could, we could perhaps
replace seduction with invitation.
Warwick Schiller: Yeah.
Well, yeah.
Yeah.
It's, it- but it's a, it's
a, it's a conversation.
You know?
It's a, it's a, it's a back and forth.
We're both kinda playing
the game sort of a thing.
But I do feel like horses, You know, w-
so the reason I went back to consent is
because what I've found is that when you
are working on the, an- the early parts
of the, the consent stuff with horses.
Now, 'cause I'm not, you know,
I don't think this whole consent
thing goes on all day, every day.
After a while, they're
pretty good with, you know.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
Warwick Schiller: They, they
don't say no after a while.
Mm.
But I feel likeâ¦
And so, and most of the consent
comes in the beginning, and
especially the unraveling of
previous trauma that they've had.
Mm-hmm.
Things like that.
But getting back to the altered states
of consciousness, a lot of the little
things that they do that say not yet
or yes or whatever are so subtle-
Mm ⦠that you have to be very,
very present to be aware of them.
And so when you're aware of those
things, it's a b- it'd be like the, the
meditation practice of stare- staring at
a, lighting a candle and staring at the
flame, and just looking at that flame.
It's almost like that.
I mean, I feel like that'sâ¦
So you talked about horses
carrying us, and I said, "You don't
necessarily have to be on their back."
'Cause a lot of times- Mm ⦠all this
consent stuff comes in the very beginning
of the relationship, like when you're
starting to do your groundwork and stuff.
Especially, like I said, with
horses who've, who have behavioral
issues from previous traumatic
experiences with humans.
When you, when you know what to look for
and know to look for these tiny little
things, you're very, very, very present.
And I feel like that's where it
takes you into altered state.
You know, so you are, you, you're kind
of like me when I'm doing a, a clinic.
I'm not thinking 10 seconds ahead.
I'm not thinking 10 seconds behind.
I'm not thinking about what's for lunch.
I'm not thinking about what's
happening next Tuesday.
I am right there in that moment.
And I feel like that's, you
know, even though we might be
on the ground at the time, but
that's where they're carrying us-
Rupert Isaacson: Mm
Warwick Schiller: to can, you know,
at least in my experience with,
with a lot of the stuff I do that,
that is one way they can carry us
to altered states of consciousness,
which is just that, that presence.
And I do feel like the physicality
of a horse, like they're big animals.
Like there is an element of
danger if you get it wrong.
That I think narrows your focus to
where if you were doing something
that there's no element of danger,
you could be thinking about what's
for lunch, and you could be thinking
about next Tuesday, whatever.
But when you're really focused on,
it's just like you said about the, you
know, going over those big fences or,
or a cross-country course or whatever.
You are not thinking about, "Oh, I
wonder what's for lunch when I'm finished
the cross-country course," when you're
heading towards a jump that if you screw
it up, you're gonna be upside down-
Rupert Isaacson: Mm
⦠Warwick Schiller: under
a horse sort of a thing.
You know, it, it, like I said,
the veil is much thinner.
You are much closer to
the, much closer to reality
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
We, in, all the work we do, as
you know, we basically train the
horses to do everything on the
ground before we ever ask them to
do anything in the saddle, right?
And then even when they are,
quote-unquote, "riding horses," we're
working them on the ground all the time.
I'd say two-thirds of my
time is on the ground.
Yeah.
And as you were talking about that,
and you're right, the ab- the utter
focus, one of the lovely things about,
I think, when you're on the ground
too, is the horse is in your sight.
When you're sitting on a horse, it's not.
You, it's a different experience,
and you and the horse are looking at
each other in the eye, and you and
the horse are able to communicate.
You can kiss your horse.
It's, it's right there in front.
You know, it, it's, everything is there.
You're together.
You're dancing.
And I was thinking about, again,
here in Germany, there's this island
called Ruger where in the Baltic,
where the archeologists have found
a horse divination site, cult site
from the Iron Age, more or less.
And it's actually quite well documented
what they used to do because, again,
Roman traders and people like that
would go and visit this island and a bit
like the, you know, the Druids, they,
they would write down what they saw.
And it was always a white horse, and
they were brought out to, walk over,
when there was a dilemma or question,
to walk over a series of spears set
but with a sharp point in the ground
and obviously far enough in the
ground the horse could step over them.
And how the horse decided to
step over them or not step over
them, but was read as augury for
And this went on for hundreds of years.
It wasn't just a bunch of weirdos
getting a silly idea and then everyone
going, "Yeah, well, that's just what
those blokes on that island do."
And then, you know, it died
a death 'cause it was crap.
You know, it was obviously
working for them.
And then it turns out that there
are similar sites down in the
Caucasus Ossetia it's now called,
and which is just north of Georgia.
And that this was
actually quite widespread.
And it turns out that this was also
related to those Alans I was talking
about earlier, who also had a sword
cult where they would put the s- sword
in the ground and worship it with their
horses and worship the horse god, which
may have actually been the origin of
the King Arthur legend because there
were groups of Alan Roman auxiliary
cavalry who were left in Britain when the
Romans abandoned it, who seemed to have
organized a defense against the Saxons.
And Arthur could well have been one
of these guys, and the sword in the
stone, you know, blah, blah, blah.
But ⦠And then there's in the anc- in
the Vedas in India, there's a ⦠And
this actually went on, the last recorded
mostly sort of a Bronze Age to Iron Age
thing, but it was recorded up until the
18th century occasionally where a horse
would, particularly in Rajasthan, which is
horse country, they would let a horse out.
The king would let a horse out for
a year, and a group of warriors
would have to follow that horse,
usually a stallion, and wherever
it went they'd have to protect it.
And if it strayed over into other people's
territory, then that was meant that you
were supposed to go and invade there.
If it went and did other things, you
were supposed to do other things.
If it died, there were
things you had to do.
If you, if it got sick, there were
ways you had to make it better.
If it covered mares in that
time, it blah, blah, blah.
And then at the end it had to come
back and then there was a ritual.
Of course, they would
sacrifice the horse at the end.
And a lot of these cultures
actually had horse sacrifice,
including the steppe cultures.
And it, these Indian cultures
seem to have been offshoots
of the steppe culture as well.
Mm.
Yeah.
But certainly it didn't always
involve sacrifice, and certainly
it didn't always involve riding.
And maybe this process of horse
observation that we now know is,
works really well for equine-assisted
psychotherapy, for example You know,
y- a part of you might think, "Well,
you know, I mean, what can it mean?"
You know, you stand there looking
at some horses and one takes a shit
and, you know, another one walks
over there and looks at something and
then, you know, does it mean anything?
But many, many people find it incredibly
helpful and meaningful and people clearly
have for, you know, some millennia
Let's see what you got there
Warwick Schiller: What was your question?
Rupert Isaacson: I want to
see what, what you got there.
What's the book you just got?
Warwick Schiller: Emily
Kay's daughter's book.
Rupert Isaacson: Ah, okay.
Now we're talking.
All right.
' Warwick Schiller: Cause
the, you know, 'cause
Rupert Isaacson: the first- Tell,
tell, tell the lads, by the way, the
listeners, they won't necessarily
know who Emily Kay's daughter is.
Just give us a littleâ¦
Warwick Schiller: emily Kay's
daughter is a lady from Sweden.
She she has a, a sanctuary in Sweden
where she has horses, cows, sheep,
goats, pigs, chickens, whatever.
But she runs a, runs a school for
what she calls interspeciesâ¦
Oh, sorry.
Non-hierarchical interspecies interbeing.
And you can parse that
out and figure it out.
But Emily is sheâ¦
Y- y- you could call her
an animal communicator, but
she's much more than that.
She's, she's almost, she's
shaman-like to where she can inhabit
the consciousness of animals.
She can actually tell you what the
collective consciousness of horses have
to say about the future of humanity.
She's that sort of person.
You know, sh- she had a very traumatic
childhood and used to take riding lessons
in Sweden and you know, if the pony's
not doing what you want, you whack him
on the bum with a stick sort of a thing.
And I think during one of these whacking
on the bum with a stick instances when
she was about 10 or 12 basically her
time-space continuum collapsed, and she
inhabited the consciousness of the horse.
So she could see from the horse's
perspective what it was seeing, she
could feel physically what the horse
was feeling, and she could feel
emotionally what the horse was feeling.
Anyway, she can she can still do that.
But I jumped up and grabbed this
book because it's a book of hers
called All the King's Horses.
She spent quite a bit of time
in Jordan working with the, the
royal family's horses there.
But when she presented at our
podcast summit in Englandâ¦
You were there, weren't you, Rupert?
I was.
Yes.
You, yeah, you, you caused her
to have an existential crisis.
But when she presented at our podcast
summit in in England, she got up on
stage and she said "So I want to read you
something from the Islamic scriptures."
It's a quotation from the
Hadith, which is the sayings
of the Proph- Prophet Muhammad.
And she said, "Goodness is tied into the
forelock of the horse until the day of
resurrection, and the people who look
after them shall playf- shall, should
pray for them with blessings as they
shall in turn be divinely assisted."
And she then said, "So, like
this podcast, it started out with
horses and ended up with God."
And this is the whole, you know, trying
to tie a bow in the thing we're talking
about here as far as you know, horses
and altered states of consciousness.
Rupert Isaacson: You
absolutely did tie a bow.
And after that summit in the UK I went
and did a, a retreat with Emily and in
Sweden at this sacred place that sheâ¦
And she can not only communicate
with horses and other animals and
humans, but also with rocks, stones
And water.
And I got to see it firsthand.
And I camped in that forest-
Warwick Schiller: Mm
⦠Rupert Isaacson: with her on that
mountain, and something came out of
the cliff and talked to me- Mm ⦠very
briefly on one of the nights I was
there, without the intercession of any
sort of altered state of consciousness
that was deliberately sought.
I love that you ended actually there
with her, and we're, we're, we're at that
two-hour mark, and I think this probably
is that ⦠I don't think it could be
said truer than what you just read.
In fact, it's so much so, I know that
if ⦠I have ⦠This often happens
to me when I'm listening to podcasts
is that, you know, I might be driving
or something, and then it's like, "Oh,
what was that thing they just said?"
And then I have to, like, stop the
YouTube and, and go back to it.
So what I'd like to do, would like you to
do, is please will you read that again?
Warwick Schiller: Yeah, I'll get it.
I'll do it without messing up this time.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah
Warwick Schiller: So it's from the
sayings of the Prophet Muhammad.
"Goodness is tied into the forelock of
the horse until the day of resurrection,
and the people who look after them should
pla- pray for them with blessings as
they shall in turn be divinely assisted."
Rupert Isaacson: I think
we should leave it there.
Warwick Schiller: Probably a good idea.
Rupert Isaacson: All right.
Thanks for this.
Warwick Schiller: No worries.
It's great chatting with you again.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Yeah, it was.
It really was.
Let's do it again.
Warwick Schiller: We shall.
All
Rupert Isaacson: right.
All right.
Well, much love to you, my friend.
Warwick Schiller: You too.
And yeah, say hi to the
family and the kids.
Rupert Isaacson: I will, I will.
Say hi to everyone at your end.
Warwick Schiller: Mm.
And Rowan when you talk to him too.
I've been following him on his adventure.
Rupert Isaacson: He's in Leipzig
right now, backpacking by himself.
Warwick Schiller: That's
Rupert Isaacson: so cool.
Interrailing by himself.
Youth hosting.
It's amazing.
Warwick Schiller: That's awesome.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
All right.
Warwick Schiller: Okay.
Rupert Isaacson: One love.
Warwick Schiller: Thank you, sir.
Rupert Isaacson: Thank you.
Till the next one
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