Rupert Isaacson: Welcome to Equine Assisted World.
I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson, New York Times best selling
author of The Horse Boy, The Long Ride Home, and The Healing Land.
Before I jump in with today's guest, I just want to say a huge
thank you to you, our audience, for helping to make this happen.
I have a request.
If you like what we do, please like, subscribe, tell a friend.
It really helps us get this work done.
As you might know from my books, I'm an autism dad.
And over the last 20 years, we've developed several
equine assisted, neuroscience backed certification programs.
If you'd like to find out more about them, go to newtrailslearning.
com.
So without further ado, let's meet today's guest.
Welcome back rockers.
We have Dr.
Mark Uranga here from Idaho.
And if you're worrying, wondering, not worrying, wondering where
the name Uranga comes from.
It's Basque, Basque Spanish well, so Basque French, which is this
interesting corner of the Atlantic, semi Celtic Fringe in Europe.
And some of you may know that there was a large scale immigration of
Basque Shepherds to the United States in the 19th and early 20th century.
So there is an interesting subculture and I went and did a training in Idaho last
year and was lucky enough to meet Mark who brought his mule to the training.
And the mule was the Star Fi show for sure.
And, mark intrigued me because as a doctor and a pediatrician,
he has some interesting insights on the work that we all do.
And I think it is always useful for us to know that doctors
actually do support this stuff.
And, you know, don't, don't just roll their eyes and say, well, you
guys are just playing with ponies.
So it's, it's nice that we have a chance to get 'em on here and ask him
why, why does he think that equine assisted stuff is, is, is valid?
What does it do?
And so on.
So without further ado, mark, who are you?
What do you do?
And yeah, take it from there.
Mark Uranga: Well, thank you first for all the work that you do to advance the
idea that there's growth to be had for, families and for children outside of a
clinical model, specifically speaking, one confined to buildings and to
people with different types of degrees.
My background is, as you mentioned, as a Basque Idahoan, and I don't
know that I can separate the two.
I was born and raised in Boise, Idaho, and from an early age,
thought I might be a veterinarian.
At about the age of 20, when it was time to take the test for veterinary school or
medical school, I felt drawn to a little bit richer involvement with families and
complexities of human-centered medicine.
And from there I went to medical school and trained in pediatrics,
and I've been practicing for about 14 years in the Boise area, a year or two
before that in New Hampshire and the richness of the clinical environment.
Is something that I treasure every day.
It is not always the place to make inroads for people that struggle to
sit still or to be in a confined space.
But it is a place that about 20 times a day, I test the
interactions with children, adolescents, and their caregivers.
And the, the draw of that for me was initially to show parents how interacting,
even in moments of time can really help children feel more safe, more comfortable.
Clearly the, the pediatrician's office, if any of us remembered, it's mostly
about shots and it's mostly about inconveniences and fear, either because
of going with illness or getting a shot.
And some of our training, I was lucky enough to have mentors who.
Emphasize the value of making a child comfortable.
And what I quickly found is that a comfortable child is a more reliable
patient, somebody that I can learn their nuances much more quickly.
I think that having been drawn to pediatrics, it came from a background
where I was lucky enough, as you mentioned, to grow up in a kind
of a community within a community.
So in, in current life, a lot of us aren't around children anymore.
And I was lucky enough to go to a daycare from eight weeks old to about
12 years old where an Basque woman modeled the interactions with children.
And I was surrounded by little kids at a time where I didn't have necessarily a
lot of cousins or 10 siblings or anything like that, but that early experience
helped me be comfortable with children.
So.
As I was modeling that in, in clinic, it, it's become more and more clear
that this communication that we develop in moments within a, a clinic
visit, really makes a difference in the interactions with a child.
Rupert Isaacson: You said you were lucky enough.
I, I don't hear many people say, I was lucky enough to go to a daycare, you know?
So clearly that was a positive experience.
What is special do you think about the Basque approach to children and family?
Mark Uranga: It's a, it is a great question and one that I
I've had a couple opportunities to explore that well think growing.
The Basque culture has always been a little stubborn and has also been defined
by a language that doesn't easily, it's not a romance language by background.
So the, the overlap with invaders or visitors from Roman elsewhere was
more problematic for the conquerors.
And so there's sort of this history of a, of a little bit of nuanced and, and
more isolated approach to, to community.
And within that, the, the family becomes a really important kind of seed.
And so as many immigrant stories are families coming over, came with different
attachments different sponsors and the sort of things that allowed them
to start to thrive in our community.
And as I grew up, my grandfather was an immigrant.
We're so, we're removed from the immigrant experience per se, but the, the culture
that that followed, that was one in which grandparents knew grandchildren and
grandchildren were friends with cousins.
And, and so the modeling and that.
Combined ability to reach out yet feel protected is something that I think is
really well modeled in our community here.
Now, having maintained a connection, the, the very social, the hyper social model,
I would argue within vast society really is one that encourages a give and take
at the daycare and younger age level.
And simply by I suppose absorption of those ideas, it just felt
more comfortable, I think, to be around children and to allow those
children to drive towards their areas of interest and and comfort.
Whereas in a, in a group that's maybe a little bit more nuclear family
or family centered, where it's been kind of gratifying or I suppose it's,
it's been held up as a standard.
A single adult or maybe two adults will provide the role modeling and the
limits and the interactions outside of the family can be more limited.
I think a, a community oriented upbringing allows people to see those different
models and to feel more comfortable within a time where, you know, an
8-year-old is carrying around an eight month old and these things that, that
don't always happen so much anymore.
Rupert Isaacson: Is that was, that was what was going on at your daycare.
Mark Uranga: Yeah.
Yeah.
Certainly.
That's very some of that unusual Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: In our culture.
Mark Uranga: Yeah.
Quite unusual in the American culture that even in, within many
daycares it's, you know, the kids under one year and then one to two.
Yeah.
They do a different thing 'cause they're walking and more mobile and
then there's this kind of napping age and the age after kindergarten.
So yes, it, it does isolate those peer groups.
Rupert Isaacson: It's interesting, I mean, it seems to me what you are
putting a finger on here is tribe.
Mm-hmm.
Would you say?
Yeah.
Mark Uranga: Yeah, yeah.
And, and tribe is something that.
Has value and has downsides.
But I think that the, the value in tribal upbringing, as it were,
is that trusted adult that adds something to what a parent's offering.
The increasing responsibilities that you touch on in a lot of your
work, the, the learning that goes along with that so that it's more an
experiential approach to especially social problem solving, I think.
Rupert Isaacson: Do you feel also that I mean not all tribes are nice tribes,
but let's assume that you had a good exp it, it seems that you had a good
experience so, that this tribe is good.
Do you feel that the Basque community is particularly good
at letting things be child led?
And if so, why might that be?
Mark Uranga: I, I do believe that and.
Much, much more clearly in the, the current European bas, the
ones who are still in, in Spain and, and somewhat in France.
And I think that's because they want to keep talking to their adult friends and
let the, the children have their space.
I think there's that recognition that their safety mm-hmm.
A, a given plaza or a, a shared common space where things are safe, but there
are, there are conflicts, there are sharp edges, you know, there are things
that, that scrape knees and, and hurt feelings and, and those sorts of things.
But they're in a, in a location where they can recover from that with a
still, with a feeling of, that's
Rupert Isaacson: interesting.
So, so why do you feel that that kind of tribal model builds
resilience then, as you say, so, scrape knees and hurt feelings.
You know, we are so shy of that stuff now.
We, we think we, you know, people are really quick to jump to
immediately to trauma, you know?
Yes.
Rather than, and then of course, now there's interestingly a movement coming,
saying, well, yes, but there's a whole kind of growth after trauma thing.
Mm-hmm.
You know, getting scraped me in and hurt feeling as a kid
isn't necessarily traumatic.
It might be unpleasant, but it's also kind of necessary preparation for the,
for what we're gonna meet in the world.
What, again, just I'm intrigued by your experience as a basc, um mm-hmm.
And then how this has informed your approach to pediatrics and the
equine assisted world, which we're gonna come back to in a minute.
But I do think this is great context for people.
'cause not everyone is coming out of this kind of tribal background,
particularly in the west, you know, so you're quite unique in this way,
and I think there's a lot to offer.
I want to sort of mine that vein for a while.
So when you say sharp edges, you know, scrape knees hurt
feelings, but in a safe space.
Can you, can you elucidate a bit more on what you feel the value of
that is and what that leads to in adolescence and adult life for people?
Mm-hmm.
Mark Uranga: Yeah.
I think that, that we have lost, that graded did experience of living of the,
the things that I learn where I'm not protected, but where I can recover.
So there's, as you mentioned, that the trauma literature, which is an
area that affects d different people differently and can be expanded by its
scope to include things that are more an opportunity for growth in some people
than an opportunity for destruction.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Mark Uranga: And what.
Even within the, what I'll call allopathic medical literature, the literature
that's largely informed by MDs and people with degrees and these sorts of things.
Um hmm.
The, the paradigm about mental health or, or resilience does start to include
some ideas that the practiced resilience, the, the times that somebody had
recovered from trauma, as it were Yes.
Is that, is it builds that resilience.
An example is, is well known within pediatrics now, where children who are
seeking an independent experience, let's say in Idaho, maybe walking to the store
to buy some tic-Tacs or whatever it is, you know, as a, as a trauma focused
society, our first thought would be cars.
Bad people.
What if they don't have the right change?
All these sorts of things.
As a resilience associated paradigm, we look at that as the opportunity
to to interact with somebody that might cut in line to, to have to
figure out the math on their own.
And, and these early steps are the same things that, that apply when a
high school senior doesn't get accepted to their number one choice of school.
And if everything has been bubble wrapped up until that first negative
experience, then there's no, there's no practice, there's not been a pattern
of rebound that a family can, can mine and, and then can take advantage of.
Rupert Isaacson: It's really interesting because, you know, there's
a lot of talk, you know, people tend to think in extremes and so.
In the sort of trauma informed world, there's also this idea of adverse
childhood experience, you know, and, and that this lessens the chances
of, of success and thriving later.
And, but what I find interesting about that is so many of the people
I know who do thrive, have had adverse childhood experiences.
And then is a scraped knee falling out of a tree, falling off your horse,
breaking a limb, that sort of thing, an adverse childhood experience, or is
that a just planet earth experience?
Like is have we allowed trauma and adverse experience to now?
Become a sort of abused term that has now sort of bled into normal
experience so that now we are afraid of normal experience, you know?
Yeah.
Just talk to us a little bit about the dance there, psychologically and
emotionally for the, for the sort of, for the young growing human.
Mark Uranga: Yeah.
I think one of the best areas I see that it's just so concrete, and I think
all of us can relate to it, is the, the child who falls in front of a parent and
what is the message sent by the parent.
So two years old, they trip on their own feet, and is the response
concern, is it overconcern, is it on the more negative side?
Is it mockery or something else like that?
The, the way I can predict, not based on the fall, how that child will react, but
based on the parent's reaction, right?
So the, the mechanism is, is immaterial to the response and.
That is where I get back to the sense of safety.
Like you were talking about a sharp edge, yet a safe recovery from that.
So, the child who falls and whose, whose parent is like, oh yeah,
let's get up and keep moving.
Or too bad that happened, or, or make a joke about not breaking
the floor or whatever it is, you know, they, they move on.
But the, the one who's concerned or so sad or, or anything that
child is, is much more likely to escalate based on the signals they
receive from their trusted adult.
And I think that getting, moving forward as we build these patterns, we basically
have experiences that are pre-verbal and through general development.
We build upon those verbal experiences and, and our emotions.
And yes, we add words to them, but in the background and experience is usually
going to elicit an emotion first.
So if our experience has been to rebound, then our first response
to a lost job or the death of a loved one is that sense of rebound.
If it's, if it's been signaled to us that those are traumas,
then, then they become traumas.
And I'm fortunate, I believe, to have models in the community and
in, in parents and in others where the, the rebound is emphasized.
And I think as you look at this variability of what do we
call an adverse child event?
What do we call a trauma?
And the response to that as you.
Basically I, I'm a pediatrician.
I love to think of all people as grownup toddlers.
Toddlers are just more honest.
I certainly am
Rupert Isaacson: in that, in that category.
I've never really stopped being a toddler.
I just got bigger.
Yeah.
Mark Uranga: Yeah.
Right.
And, and it's true of all of us.
Some of us embrace it and so all more power to you, Rupert, to have em
embrace that, but we have that response.
Rupert Isaacson: It's civil to deny
Mark Uranga: we have that response.
So we move forward from that based on our experiences and it's all practice.
Rupert Isaacson: Do you feel that this type of, this emphasis on
resilience in the Basque community?
I see.
I'm, I'm half Jewish.
I'm half Ashkenazi Jewish, and obviously in our heritage, even
though I look like a Viking, because my mother's side is Viking.
But my father's side is Ashkenazi Jewish.
My father looks like Saddam Hussein.
And we had this joke when they were looking for Saddam that, you know,
I was gonna show up at the Pentagon with him, say, look, I've got him.
And then he and I would split the money, you know.
But the Ashkenazi experience was pogroms, you know, it was you know,
always have to have one eye on the exit.
'cause you never know.
And how the, the, the more you thrive as a community mm-hmm.
The more likely it is that some busted somewhere is gonna come
along, decide to take it from you.
Yep.
So, and your community in a nasty, bloody kind of a way.
So you.
Better kind of have options.
So you want to have family and you wanna have family in other
countries and other cities so that you've got lines of, of, of exit.
And if you, if you, there's always more of them than there are of you.
So, and there is no homeland.
Now you, on the other hand, come from a, the somewhat the opposite, but mm-hmm.
So there is a homeland.
Yeah.
However, there's lots of invaders, you know, so.
Mm-hmm.
For those, for those who dunno, their European history, everyone on
their dog has tried to invade the Basque territories at some point.
Why?
Because they sit at the, at a very, very sort of strategic
and fertile and pleasantly climate juncture of the western.
You know, European Atlantic right there, sort of at the top of Portugal
and Spain and the southern bit of France, and it's jolly nice there.
So anyone who ever came through went, oh, it's nice here.
I think I'll have some of that.
And the mountain people living there who, as you said, you know, were
speaking a language that predates all of these other European languages
and have been there seemingly as, as a, as a, as a, as a composite
community, much, much for millennia.
Despite all of these tribal migrations going across Europe and measure, hold
their own in this mountain fastness, yet everyone tried to take it from them.
And the fact that they are still there is somewhat of a miracle.
It's, it's not dissimilar to the Kurds up there in northern Iraq
and Eastern Turkey and so on.
Somehow managed to hold onto that area despite, you know, it ridiculous
amounts of, of, of, of assault.
So do that can create a certain bitterness or it can create a certain.
Let's seize the day and live type.
And, and, and we've survived this long, so probably we'll survive again.
And from the pogrom point of view is, well, they killed so many of us
that we sort of whittled down to, you know, the special forces now.
So, you know, we're quite good at survival.
Mm-hmm.
Do, do you feel that that is there, is there a bit of a heritage that way?
Like you bit the Native Americans of Europe, of Western Europe in a
funny way, you know what I mean?
Yeah.
Just, just mm-hmm.
Talk through that idea of resilience and survival a little bit for us before we
go into actual equine assisted stuff.
Mark Uranga: Sure.
Yeah.
I, I think you get to both of those, having a creation story
or a creation myth, depending on how you'd like to think about it.
Oh,
Rupert Isaacson: go on.
That's
Mark Uranga: interesting.
The, the creation story.
We all have a creation story.
I, I love the, the nexus of how my creation story.
Interact with the creation story of the Idaho Basques or
the, the Basque country itself.
Your story of migration continuing as long as written Torah stories were
placed, the, the Jews were on the move, and you've moved from South
Africa confidently to, to Germany and, and how we each fit in these stories.
The relationship, I believe to, to parenting and pediatrics lies in a
concept of what is called authoritative parenting, not authoritarian author.
Author parenting.
Yeah.
Okay.
How is that different from authoritarian Exactly.
So, and different from passive parenting or permissive parenting.
The middle ground is that which recognizes the variability of a child and does
not force upon them certain things, but provides the background, the framework.
From which a child essentially defines themselves.
So whether that definition is in contrast to the family expectations
or in alignment, there's still a foundation that's provided with that.
So the, the idea being that a family exists within a community, a community
of, of basks is, defines themselves as partly stubborn, quite social very
committed to their shared background.
And within that BASC community, defining our family as being committed to each
other, having a shared background and being somewhat stubborn or persistent,
those allow for our children to consider.
A model that is either in tune with their growth or in contrast with that.
And, and, you know, all communities have their rebels or their black
sheep, and those people are equally as defined by their community.
I think where it provides that foundation, there's a little bit less wallowing
around for who am I or what am I?
So where we see that, I think breakdown in a community or in permissive parenting,
what can happen is that a child lacks the tools to discern largely right or wrong
because somebody is, is just following the child without that bigger view of
a goal in mind or an ideal per chance or, or however we choose to define that.
So they, those, those children can kind of cast about thinking.
At two.
Is it okay for me to throw food all over and yell at mom and dad?
Or is it not okay?
And when I get to be four and five, maybe I can do the same thing to my
teachers, and why would I expect to follow the, the laws when I'm 15 and 16?
And, and, and lacking that experience, that kind of defined set of values can
really lead kids to, to place of anxiety or kind of driftless experimentation.
Whereas kinda getting back to the idea of how a community defines itself,
itself, you're absolutely right.
As you mentioned earlier, some tribes are not all good guys, as it were.
And, and yet if a, if a child is given that experience within a, a
tribe of, of learning, then from the outside world that, oh, that life is.
Better or different, they're still able to contrast that
to their, to their background.
So I'm not sure if that gets entirely to the idea.
Well,
Rupert Isaacson: yeah.
The, the, the question's also about, I think it's, it's really good for
people to have a clear idea about authoritative versus authoritarian.
Can you just define that?
And then I want to go to follow the child.
'cause as, you know, follow the child is one of our, you know,
prerequisites within the work we do.
But yes, it's not follow the child aimlessly, it's follow the child.
Exactly.
Because someone isn't speaking.
So you're not there to, if you're not there to observe, then Uhhuh
you haven't got much to go on.
And you need to follow what motivates people.
And, and, and that is true whether they're speaking or not.
If you don't follow what motivates them, then you are in conflict.
Um mm-hmm.
But.
And, and, and authoritarian to me is defined by conflict.
You know, it's mm-hmm.
I, I grew up, not with my own family, but with the school system that I went
through a very, very authoritarian mm-hmm.
System.
It's interesting, you know, I meet conservative Americans and they meet
me and they think, oh, you're such a hippie as like, you have no idea what
auth, what conservative really is.
You know, you, if you'd gone through the school system that I went through Yes.
Where we were beaten, you know, daily, and we were all in the military and we
were all, you know, it, it very different.
Very, very different.
Very violent, very, you know, blah, blah.
Okay.
But all that aside, it was authoritarian.
And so what it meant was that the, there were, there were two things that
designed the school system, de defined the school system I went through.
One was that they said, you are all or you boys are going to, 'cause
it was only boys are going to be in competition with each other.
We are going to set you into competition with each other,
which means some of you will fail.
And they, they were saying this to you at age 11 and we're gonna break
you down so that we can then build you up and give you privileges later.
Mm-hmm.
Why would they do that?
Well, they would do that so that a hundred years ago people
might go out and run the empire.
And that was creating an officer class where people would go and sort of with
both a sense of personal confidence and a sense of absolute belief in the system,
go and sort of die of malaria in the Sudan age 30 while trying to administer an
area four times the size of Germany, you know, just one province and deal with the
tribal wars and this and that and do, and have the kind of resilience to do that.
But there would be a wastage, and you saw this wastage also happening in sort
of World War I where the officer classed the young officers first over the trench.
You were supposed to inspire the, I say the average.
Average lifespan, you know, of a young officer in World War One, in the
British Army was six weeks, you know, because you had to be first over the
lip of the trench and so on and so on.
However, those that survived would then become the building blocks of the empire.
And you can see how that worked very well for the people
that were running the empire.
You, you, you needed a group of people like this, but what it meant was that
at the bottom line, if you bucked the system, if you said, I don't really
want to follow these particular rules, you were met with violence immediately.
That it was, it.
So if you were going to go against the authority in any way, it was
instantly physically violent.
And what a lot of us learned was to actually cope with that and to say,
Ooh, actually I can survive that.
And.
Now, what are you gonna do?
You know, because now I'm not afraid anymore.
However, there were others who were completely destroyed by it.
So as obs, you know, I observed this growing up and thought, well,
there has to be a better way.
And so when you use the word authoritative, I like,
and I'm intrigued by that.
Could you, could you explain really to your, what we, we can, I think we can
understand what authoritative means but au sorry, what authoritarian means.
Right.
But let's go to authoritative.
Mark Uranga: The idea of an authoritative parenting model or community for that
matter, really, is that there's an, there's an expectation, there's a, a
standard that we might move toward.
It is a model that allows.
For the ex exploration that you might think of with a permissive,
permissive parenting model.
But when, but when that child turns to the parent, to the community to
look for an answer that they don't, they truly do want an answer for,
they're looking for assistance.
It's willing to provide that.
Whereas a permissive parenting model kind of renes on that responsibility, you
have a, an underdeveloped brain or person coming to you looking for an answer.
And with a permissive model, it's a reflective, let's say well, should I have,
should I have a cookie or an Apple mom?
Should I have a cookie or an Apple dad?
Should I have a cookie?
And Apple, a truly permissive parenting model, would say,
well, what would you like?
Well, with food engineering being what it is, it's a cookie.
With a, with an author authoritative model, it would be, I think an apple's
gonna make you feel healthier, or I think you should start with an apple.
It's, it's offering that guidance where it's due, and ultimately all
of us look for some structure there.
We are not living in an anarchy.
You and I would like to go through a green light thinking that somebody is not gonna
drive through the red light, you know?
Yeah.
There are clearly levels of these, but what, what the authoritative
model provides is it gets a little back to that safety as well.
Like if I'm lost, if I'm casting about, I can provide you something
that will provide you comfort or safety in the longer term.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
It, it, I was writing, I wrote a note here as you were, it, it sounds
to me like you're talking about service to the community that mm-hmm.
First, there's the idea of what serves you.
So do I have the cookie or the apple?
You know, so my, my answer to that would be, I totally get why you want the cookie.
Mm-hmm.
I want the cookie too.
Yeah.
And there will be cookies.
Don't worry.
Yeah.
There will be cookies.
Mm-hmm.
However, maybe not those cookies.
'cause those cookies are full of shit.
Right.
But how about these cookies?
But before we have those cookies, let's talk about the apple.
Now, I'm not going to force you to have the apple.
Right, but look, I'm gonna have the apple and what if we had both?
What about apple and cookie?
How about that?
You know, and then I would be prepared with, to go through a
certain amount of, nah, nah, nah.
Because I have the same Nah.
Inside me.
So I, you know, I'm, I'm not gonna say someone else shouldn't have it.
But at the same time, I would take a slightly humorous approach
to that and say, look, but, and also sympathetic, like, I get it.
I get it.
They've marketed these cookies to us and, and we are driven by sugar.
Yeah.
So of course you want it, but why don't we also have this apple as well?
And I would hope that with that continued thing and, and say one, you know,
there, there's gonna be no force here.
There's gonna be no, you must have the apple or Right.
There'll be some sort of terrible consequence.
Mark Uranga: Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: But as you say, the cookie may not, may make you
not feel so good and you know, maybe you need to go through that feeling.
Mark Uranga: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: And when you go through that feeling, then I'm
still here with the apple, you know?
Mark Uranga: Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: And someone will say, well, Ruper, why don't you
just tell them to have the apple?
Is that because, because then, because then the cookie
becomes a holy grail, you know?
Exactly.
And so, you know, how you tread the line between permissive
and authoritative mm-hmm.
Seems to me about what serves you best.
Mm-hmm.
Right.
And if you can appeal to the child to say, well, what's in the child's
best interest on the end of the, and then clearly mom and dad are
thinking about my best interest then is it a sort of logical thing?
For me to think about the best interest of the community, the family, and Right.
The, the note that I took there is, is service to the community,
what actually provides for happiness and fulfillment in life.
Mark Uranga: Yeah.
I think that evidence about that is, is increasing in a way that just makes a
lot of sense when you have a, a community and an evolutionary perspective that
shares resources or serves each other when we were all just barely scraping by
and caves are on a Savannah or whatever.
Those, those, what people call selfish genes do replicate by, by providing
that service, there's the evidence surrounding a sense of fulfillment
is universally supportive of.
A sense of service or commitment or attunement or any of these sorts of
connection sort of ideas that when we can place a child in, help them
find their place in that world.
I think a lot of the, the work that you share about experiences with hunter
gatherers and these sorts of things, these are very concrete contributions
that children make at a small age.
And their sense of attachment is, is so much more community focused than our
world where it's in a, in a generally speaking western world where we have
work to do, that's specialized work.
We have bills to pay that are, you know, technical and we have projects
to do that are too skilled then.
Then the child feels a little isolated.
They lack that sense of service and their, their kind of drive for that
leads them to look for attention.
That, that I think, often we wrongly think is attention that wants play or
immediate gratification, whereas that attention seeking that's so hardwired
is about finding that attunement, finding that connection and then that
safety that I can do these things and, and somebody's with me and watching
me and helping me through those.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
You know, I guess in the old days we had, although, you know, we, we didn't grow
up in hunter gatherer community, sadly, where absolutely the, the community,
everyone's in service to the community.
But two generations ago.
Most people were growing up in some sort of family business, family farm family,
you know, or not most, but certainly many.
Mm-hmm.
With kids being included in what was going on.
Maybe they wanted to, maybe they didn't, but they were
certainly included, you know?
Mm-hmm.
And they were skilled from quite an early age in not just the physical or
mental competences required in the family tailoring business or the family farm, but
also the financials and the economics and the balancing the books and the mm-hmm.
You know, I've got to buy in this amount of feed and fertilizer or this amount
of cloth and, and you know, needles and balance it against, you know, mm-hmm.
Blah, blah, blah.
And that of course seems to have gone, you know, that, that,
that now, barring very few.
Sort of isolated communities or people that are just lucky enough to grow up
in certain types of family business.
Now the family farm, it, it's, it's something that almost exists in myth now.
You used twice in the last five to 10 minutes the word attunement.
Attunement.
Mm-hmm.
Right?
And this is a word which many of, many of the people who listen to this podcast also
listen to Warwick Schiller and Warwick Schiller uses the word attunement a lot.
And those of you who listen to l Leanna Tanks podcast where she's talking
about the use of attunement with working with the criminally insane.
And how that's, if you haven't heard that one, by the way,
listeners, you've gotta go back and.
Find Leanna Tank's interview.
It's, it's, it's, it's meaningful and there's a lot in there that helps us all.
What do you mean Mark by attunement and what should we understand from this term?
Mark Uranga: Well, yeah, I, I lean heavily on, on Warwick chillers
shorthand, which he always de, he describes as being seen, being heard,
feeling, felt, and getting gotten.
And the first parts of that are, are very sensory.
So they are and again, with toddlers in my life every day, I, I always
think of the toddler model when, when a toddler approaches me, do I look at
them or am I seeing what they're doing?
When, when I come into the room, does the toddler turn from me?
Do they make nonverbal cues that, that they're concerned?
And again, I just think toddlers are honest people, whereas the
rest of us have this overlay of politeness and what should I do?
And these sorts of things.
Yet we signal these things as well, without a doubt
as we talk to other people.
And the idea of attunement is, is with toddlers, with mules, with horses is
that awareness that is not verbal.
I think that it can have a verbal overlay, but the richest attunement
with adults as well is, is more of a nonverbal, sort of a, of a dance.
And the, the role that that plays in, in my life is.
Again, 20 times a day I enter a room and I could have a kid that's gregarious, a
kid that's hungry, a kid that was just told they can't be on their phone or
within, within moments, their physical reaction to me informs which way I go.
Are they already goofy and do they want me to make jokes?
Are they quiet?
Do they want me to use a quiet voice?
Do they do I see that their shoes light up and they want to jump up in
the ground, up and down on the ground?
And when a child has that sense of being seen, then they can start to develop
a sense of comfort and safety and move away from that protective stance that
the stranger danger that's typically going to accompany at least a physician
visit, but often any other new adult.
Rupert Isaacson: That's brilliantly put.
I think you answered it incredibly succinctly.
The, the nonverbal cues which we learn through horses really,
really help us with the nonverbal cues with our fellow monkeys.
And ultimately our fellow monkeys are much more dangerous than our horses are.
You've used the, you've referred to the word stubborn quite
a few times as well, right?
And you, you stubborn with the bass community, but you seem to
have referred to it as a positive.
Mark Uranga: Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: You've also now included the word mule
Mark Uranga: and,
Rupert Isaacson: I know you as a handler of a very good mule that
I was lucky enough to meet when we were doing some training together.
I wouldn't say that Mule was stubborn.
I would say that Mule was, was a hundred percent present and cooperative.
I wouldn't have wanted to make that mule do anything it didn't want to do.
But I wouldn't wanna make any equine or human do something
they wouldn't want to do.
But nonetheless, you, you, you've sort of gone bask stubborn mule in your life.
Talk to us about that.
Why have you gone for mules?
Why do you feel stubborn is good?
What do you mean by stubborn?
Because people have different meanings around that word.
And then talk to us a little bit about mules.
Mark Uranga: Yeah.
I, I use stubborn as you picked up with it.
Some sense of pride, some, some sense of irony.
It's, it's obviously quite close to persistence and okay.
Rupert Isaacson: Perseverance, perhaps
Mark Uranga: perseverance, persistence, stubbornness.
And it just
Rupert Isaacson: mountain people.
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Mark Uranga: Yes.
Yeah.
So the reason I like to lead with stubbornness is because
of the baggage that it has.
Yet we flip the idea to persistent and all of a sudden to perseverance
all of a sudden this is an attribute.
Right.
And I suppose it's the goal to which that's directed.
The, we, we talked about creation myths and the idea that.
The Basque people would be stubborn enough to run off the Romans and
to stop the Moors as they came up across from southern Spain and
Rupert Isaacson: Charlemagne and the Franks and everyone, everyone had to go
the vi goth, the vandals, whoever it is.
Yeah,
Mark Uranga: yeah.
So, so it, it comes to define that group and the mule I know you have
listeners of, of all backgrounds, and it's always fun to, to step
back to the, the making of a mule.
A mule is the product of a male donkey, a jack, and a female horse, a mare.
There can be a converse, which could be a hiney, which is a
female donkey and a male horse.
But the vast majority of hybrids are mules.
And the mule in our life has the value of being one of the most surefooted
of the equines in the mountains.
So Idaho has.
The largest wilderness area within the contiguous 48, the lower
48 states as it were in area.
I've been lucky to move through as we talked about movement and experiences.
Mm-hmm.
As hunter gatherers, I've shared those experiences with many people in many ways.
And as our family got into equines that lure to be able to safely
travel through rugged country is what drew us to work with mules.
And the, that stubbornness is also a sense of self preservation.
So the background of the donkey is more a mountainous breed to be
around cliffs and other places where standing their ground was an option.
And it was not the steps of Asia where flight is always the survival mechanism.
So the mule.
And we, we get the pause, the stubbornness as it were.
And, and I remind myself and my kids that, that we want this in
our mules because their sense of self preservation keeps us safe.
And I think one of the fun things that I've come to learn, we, in our family,
we have a, a Navajo pony, we have an appaloosa horse, we have a mule, two
mules one of which may or may not be a Henny, but those, the mule will pause.
And usually with the attunement that we have developed, carry on for example,
through a goalie that maybe smells a coyote or through something that's
changed in the environment from when they walked out to when they walked back the
horse, our ponies, there are times where we will use them to lead because they.
Again, with that attunement that we've built, we'll be willing to
override their sense of hesitation to try to move through something.
Whereas the value of the mule in our area is really to take that pause.
They see all four feet and they can move slowly and and safely
through those environments.
And Sam came to us as a, a purposefully bred mule who lived with a, his previous
owner for 20 years approximately.
And the time you saw him, he was 27 and Wow.
Wow.
He looked so good.
Yeah, he looked so good.
And he as you know, he's, he's a willing mule.
And, and that's because what people have ha have asked of him in the past
have been safe questions have been trustworthy questions, largely speaking.
He's not been forced, he's not been compelled to do something and.
It's, I, I, I hear this in your background from a military school of
breaking somebody down and building them up and the old breaking a horse.
You know, I guess it still exists somewhere, but we've been lucky enough
to have models and yeah, mentors who start horses who, who, who meet
the horse where they are and, and move forward with that goal in mind.
And, and Sam came to us largely in that path and, and we've been lucky enough
that Samuel continues to help us grow.
I love that he's
Rupert Isaacson: called Samuel.
Yeah.
Right now let's go back to the word stubborn, though.
Stubborn can mean in its pejorative sense, in its negative sense.
Unwillingness to change basically, right?
Unwillingness to take on new perspectives, which of course is not a way of self
preservation because you know, when the.
When, when the Vikings or whoever are coming over the hill, you can't say,
well, they're not coming over the hill.
Or, you know, I've lived here and this is my grandfather and my grandfather
before him was on this land.
And yeah, I know dude, but there's like 8,000 dudes coming
over the hill waving xis.
So you know, how about we make a plan B or C.
Mm-hmm.
Or D.
Mm-hmm.
And the people that could make the plans, you know, A to e were
more likely to survive than the one who said, I will not move.
Mark Uranga: Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: We love to think of the kind of Gandalf, you know, you shall not
Mark Uranga: pass,
Rupert Isaacson: you know?
But then again he did get killed when he did that with the bowel rock.
And there might be a time for that type of self sacrifice.
And of course, you know, we, we also assume that Gandalf is coming with
a certain amount of self-confidence of magic behind him, and he
happens to know the king of the Eagles who happens to come along.
So, you know, he's got, he's got, he's got backup.
And he wouldn't have stood there with his stuff and done that if
he didn't feel he had backup.
So.
You are not using the word stubborn in that pejorative way.
Yet nonetheless you are using that word.
And I feel that when we're working with particularly
people on the spectrum mm-hmm.
Who are in the less flexible stage of their life, and I talk about this a
lot with my son Rowan, who's 23 now.
He's here in the house.
You know, he'd be the first to come up and say yes.
When I was young, I was incredibly inflexible.
I made it extremely stressful on everybody around me and myself.
It's just that I didn't have any choice in the matter because that's where my
brain and my nervous system were at.
But little by little I learned to be flexible.
Mm-hmm.
Talk a little bit about the dance between stubbornness and flexibility because.
There are nuances there that I think deserve to be explored.
Mark Uranga: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: And then I want to, to talk a little bit about how you've
gotten involved in equine assisted work.
Mark Uranga: Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: And then we, I want to go into a little bit about,
as a pediatrician, what you see as the value of equine assisted work.
So let's start with that dance between stubbornness in the
pejorative sense and flexibility.
And then let's go to mules and equine assisted.
Mark Uranga: Perfect.
Well, I think one of the patterns that I see in pediatrics and these
interactions, you know, throughout the day is somewhat of a default coping in,
in all of us at a first level of stress.
Are we, do we cry?
Do we dig in?
Do we, do we freak out?
Do we shut down?
And the idea mule is a great example of this and not always
because they have the horse as well.
And so sometimes it goes to flight, but, but a tendency to just stop.
Like, this is not okay, let's stop,
Rupert Isaacson: stop and observe perhaps.
Mark Uranga: Yeah.
And that, that starts, that, that plants the seed of stubbornness, I suppose.
So if that in a person persists and we stop and we do not change,
then what is an acceptable coping strategy becomes a maladaptive
coping strategy, I would suppose.
And the same, you know, can be true of flexibility.
If, if I change at a whim every, you know, passing pad, then, then I've
lost a sense of self and where I might move forward with something.
So the dance, and it's a dance as I mentioned, I think I see with
every kind of identity or coping strategy or however a person would
think, is that time where it serves us well are in, in kind of bulking
as it were, or stopping, am I safe?
Is it safe to continue?
Now I can move on.
That is where I, I think, I hesitate to think of stubborn
as always maladaptive, right?
And I, and I do, you know, it gets to the nuance of definition, but I think
that it's fair to call it stubborn first because I do believe that it's,
that it becomes persistence when it's adaptive and that it, it becomes a
bad thing when it, when it isn't.
Like you said, you just hold fast to something that is a lost cause.
That, that's not so good.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
And I think the reason why it was good to have hear you explore that is
because for a lot of people that are working with you know, inflexible,
neuropsychiatric, cognitive conditions you know, I, I had no choice.
I was a dad and I found myself in that situation.
So I just had to cope and I had to figure out a way.
So obviously what I did is I went for mentorship and I
went for mentorship with Dr.
Temple Grandin.
And she said, do these three things.
I did those things and they worked.
So, you know, so my persistence and my stubbornness is like, I will not give
up on this child in this situation, even though it's beyond my current resources.
What I'll do is I'll look for someone who's got those resources and I
will have them, you know, mentor me.
A lot of the people that are working with special needs, needs, they may not
be coming out of this type of situation.
So let's say you are an 18-year-old and you are finishing college and you
decide, or, or just you're going out into the way say, I I like this world.
I, I, I would like to help these people.
I myself am adolescent, which means I come with a certain
inflexible mindset, you know?
Right.
And because my amygdala is still not, you know, our, our brains are
developing up until the age of about 25.
I mean, they're always developing, but you know what I mean?
There's, there's these imbalances between the amygdala and the, the
hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex that don't really even out for a
while, which is why, you know, we, we are rocky and self-absorbed as,
Mark Uranga: as adolescents.
Rupert Isaacson: Right, right.
And we, we come by it, honestly, you know, it's just how our brains are developing.
And then we kind of cool out a little bit.
But many people are, you know, as young people are going into the field
before, really their own brains have, have gone through these changes.
Mm-hmm.
And then horse people, we horse people and notoriously close-minded.
Mm-hmm.
It's, it's, it's a, it's a drum that I thump a lot because I, I'm
a great believer that all horse people should go and learn other
disciplines of hoarseness mm-hmm.
All the time.
Rather than saying, I don't do this, or I don't use nose bands, or I don't use
bits, or I won't do this, or those cowboys are terrible, or that hunter jumpers
are terrible or that this is terrible.
That, that's you won't know until you go and learn it.
If, if you think it's bad, go learn it and then decide.
I'm often encouraging people in our trainings to say, if you are asking
Mark Uranga: mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: People who have difficulty adapting.
To do really difficult things like communicate or mm-hmm.
With a horse, go into that trailer, which is a big dark hole, or yeah,
accept a rider on the back, or get toilet trained if you're a kid or whatever.
Then what difficult, challenging,
Mark Uranga: mm-hmm.
Thing are
Rupert Isaacson: you doing?
What language are you learning?
What difficult physical skill are you learning?
What computer programming, scratchy, heady thing are you trying to learn so
that, because if you're not constantly finding yourself back at the beginner
stage of things, what tools have you really got to lead somebody else with
two legs or four through that process?
So I like that you are talking about the need to persist.
Mm-hmm.
How do we cultivate.
Enough open-mindedness so that we can do what a meal does
so that we can pause mm-hmm.
And observe.
Mm-hmm.
So that, and then go and discern ah, right.
Okay.
I guess the way down the mountain is actually there.
Yeah.
Or, yes, it smells of cougar, but two weeks ago, you know.
Mm-hmm.
Or yeah.
How so?
We don't wanna always override, but sometimes we need to override, sometimes
we need to say, smells of cougar half an hour ago, but I gotta get down that slope.
You know?
Yeah.
Alright.
Now how do I, how do I do it?
So that to some degree is the equine assisted world.
It's, it's, it's, it's dancing.
That dance, um mm-hmm.
How do we, how do we take this pausing positive stubbornness
Mark Uranga: mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: And turn it into looking for opportunity for
ways through dilemmas, basically.
Mark Uranga: Well, I, I think your work does an excellent job of
providing that idea of, I have a goal of improved communication in mind
with somebody I'm working with with autism in an equine assisted sense.
And when I see an opening, that's what I can go with.
When I see a pause, I reflect on why the pause, why, what caused a
loss of that sense of safety was.
Was it something to validate?
The awareness of that is critical for moving forward.
That being attuned to that hesitation is what allows the next step.
So I like
Rupert Isaacson: that being attuned, being attuned to that hesitation
allows for finding the next step.
Mark Uranga: Yeah, and I love those times of opportunity with, with
patients, with the, the times that I've gotten too close to their bubble and
they went from smiling to shut down.
That's in a, in a nutshell, when I'm building that five minute relationship,
which I get, that's my time to, to rec, to, to realize that with them, give them
that pause and, and then move forward.
And in a bigger sense, in a relationship that.
You're developing therapeutically or we're developing in an equine
assisted sense, those pauses and that asking of a yes question.
This is a horsemanship, mule manship idea.
Right?
Let's ask a question that our horse can achieve.
Let's ask a question that our patient, that our child, that
our colleague can say yes to.
That's what builds the trust and, and that that connection and attunement, especially
with our non-verbal learners is, is really validating to their existence.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
So you are, you're a pediatrician.
Mm-hmm.
To you, is the value of equine assisted work as a whole, why is it a good thing?
I think
Mark Uranga: one of the biggest things it does is, is it provides a different model.
We're in
a model in science that has a lot of value for breaking down questions of
is this medicine gonna kill bacteria?
Is this vaccine going to save lives?
But it, but it is not as good at the holistic pattern.
What combination of things for a given child create progress?
We, we know that certain models a, BA for example, and, and something
you're well aware of is one that shows, shows promise for a number of
people, and we have outliers to that.
Are those.
We know that from the scientific model, but what we don't always pick
up is the subtleties of the why.
Why is that person an outlier?
Was it you know, time of day person that we're working with whatever it is.
The, the equine assisted model allows an entirely different paradigm.
And I think that the work you do to bring that back to all kinds of
neurotransmitters and the science behind that validates that the equine assisted
world in, in a scientific model in some regards, provides the observation.
Science starts with an observation and a subsequent hypothesis, and
then a testing of the hypothesis.
And then as we is that a, a testing?
Is that.
Repeated testing, do we get the same result?
And the observation that being around horses helps me feel better,
helps our autistic son feel better, allows us to take the next step in
medicine, in the, the research model of saying, well, is there something
that we can isolate from that?
Is it the horse?
Is it the movement?
Is it the production of oxytocin?
Is it, is it just the handler?
And they could be riding a tricycle.
The medical model, the scientific model allows us to delve into that.
But there's, there's the mystery of the horse, the, the of the
horse that is just not easy to replicate in my experience, I think.
We started with a horse and a, and then a pony, and then, and then added mules.
And there's just enough more resistance in a mule to feel a little bit more
like a toddler in that a horse, when as I worked with them, their pause or
hesitation would tend to be more active.
And in, in my start, I, I felt confident.
Let's say we were trying a new movement and the, the LOP starts,
well, you wanna elope, let's lop.
I, I love loping.
This is a great excuse for that.
Whereas the mule will tend to have that pause and forcing through doesn't, doesn't
really get us to the right direction.
It's in, in the horse, in my horse experience.
I kind of lost that moment.
Why was that?
Because the movement allowed me to move past it.
Whereas I think that that pause that I see in a, in a mule more commonly is, is
a little more analogous to a toddler and and to people, you know, to our peers.
Mm-hmm.
Because there's, there's that not just, well, I'm gonna flee the scene that's
a little more inherent to the horse.
The, the response of a mule still has that opening for, okay, now we're both
here not doing what I would like to do.
How do we still get there?
Rupert Isaacson: Interesting.
So it kind of forces more inventive communication in a way.
And I think we also all know that mules are hyper intelligent.
They're, they're more intelligent than the sum of their parts.
Right?
So they tend to be more intelligent than, horses are more intelligent
than, than ass certainly than my ass.
So yourself, you must be familiar with that.
With the poet Ogden Nash.
He was a poet American jazz age poet, writing in sort of sophisticated New York.
And he wrote funny, often satirical poems about everything from sort of
marriage to making a martini to, and he had lots and lots of ones about animals
and, you know, the giraffe or the, the lion or the elephant he won about mules.
And I love it.
It's two lines.
It's in the world of mules.
There are no rules.
Mark Uranga: Perfect.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Yeah.
And to me that Oh, that's funny.
Yeah.
That really is good.
And in, in the in, I've done two really big mountain trips
in my life using with mules.
One was in Spain 30 plus years ago, and another one was in Latu in
the highlands of Southern Africa.
And.
What you could really see was the discernment that the mules had
about how to handle situations.
And that if you were to try to force anything mm-hmm.
The mule might actually react badly and push you off the cliff.
But if you when with the mule and did allow the pause and the slowness
and the, the mule would get you and your stuff down or up safely.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
But you had to meet them more than halfway.
And I felt that, but it was a fair exchange by, you know, because
I mean, they're gonna get you.
Yeah.
You are involved in a in an equine assisted organization.
Tell us about that.
What, where is it?
What is it?
I, I know 'cause I went, you know, to do a training there, but I'd still like you
to, to introduce it and talk about it.
Yeah.
And what do you feel the value of, of their particular approach is
that, that, that jives with you?
Mm-hmm.
As a pediatrician, not just as a dad who wants to do nice
things for, for kids with horses.
So yeah, tell us what is, what is this, what is the equine assisted
organization that you're involved with?
Just start there.
Mark Uranga: Sure.
The, the organization is called the Warm Springs Care Farm.
And it's probably the one and the only, if you were to Google Warm Springs Care Farm,
it pulls its name from the geothermal hot water that runs down the street,
the warm springs that heat all these historic homes around along warm springs.
Historically, all those homes came with enough land for
horses and a carriage house.
And the Warm Springs Care Farm is one of the few that's
maintained enough acreage to have.
An arena and they've since added some goats and, and chickens
and these sorts of things.
And the value, I'm lucky enough to live on the same road and have the same
experience in my backyard, is to come over a bench and down over a canal into
what feels like an oasis within the city.
And Warm Springs Care Farm really embraces that.
It's not a forest based learning environment.
It's it's an, an oasis.
And that comes with small animals as well.
Ducks, chickens, as I mentioned, goats the, just the break that
adults, you know, we kind of, again.
Circle back a little bit to the idea that we're, we're all
nonverbal in communication.
These emotions, these senses that we have, we don't lose them, we
just choose to ignore them at times.
And basically crossing this threshold at the Worm Springs Care farm, you know,
you're in a place that is a different pace and the, the role that they play is
creating this space for growth or therapy that is driven by the participants.
They are not so solely focused on equine work that they don't
welcome the drumming circle.
They have a, a farm club for kids.
They they have some dance groups and other things.
They welcomed your clinic, which was, I think, a breakthrough
for a lot of us in the idea of how to engage with work that is.
Demanding and compelling yet tiring.
And, and so that organization basically provides the openness with the physical
location to make those experiences rich for anybody that visits there.
Rupert Isaacson: You what, what, what role do you play there and what do you
feel your insight as a pediatrician brings to you doing that work?
Mark Uranga: Well, I think it's is such a great
refreshing thing to be able to say, I know of this place that is magical
that is not another appointment.
It's not another, you know, therapy that a child is compelled to go to it.
Is something that's engaging and you know, not all kids are engaged
in that model of growth, but the ones who are find it so reassuring.
And I think that
with the involvement that that fortunately I've been able to have some, not as much
as I, as I would like based on demands of being a working dad and a pediatrician
and a, a mule owner and other things, but that there's some, some clear validation
to that approach that within medicine we will have patients that have not done
well in therapy, even though for, for some people that's the right answer.
Who haven't done well in occupational therapy building where it's a
more of an artificial environment.
Some kids thrive with what's provided in that setting.
And the, the role I think that, that I'm able to play is.
To advocate for the value that they provide and recognize that as a, a
legitimate and important way forward for, for families and, and kids, and
that it's not some, you know, hippie thing that is just, just playing with
animals and, and not growing, but instead it, it provides that kind of,
that crucible in which growth can occur.
Rupert Isaacson: It's so interesting that, you know, we
use the word hippie in Peor here.
I say I'm total hippie, obviously.
Yeah.
As a pejorative, because of course the counterculture otherwise known as the
hippie culture arose out of science.
You know, that the, the, the Allen Ginsburg and these people who were, they
were all PhDs, they were all doctors.
Most of them were at Ivy League schools.
The, a lot of the people that engendered the counter culture
movement were actually scientists.
The reason they were, experimenting with altered states of consciousness
was for the same reason that the CIA were and still are, you know?
But, you know, with an idea to heal rather than to harm or control.
And yet we still have this almost sort of slightly guilty thing of, even
though it was clear, the hippies got it right in terms of quality of life.
Like what would you have rather have been in the early 1960s?
Would you rather have been the, the, the bloke who was just
chain to that corporate ladder?
Or would you rather have been a Woodstock, you know, I mean, and, and then gone
away and founded Ben and Jerry's?
You know, I mean, which would you rather, I'm not saying there's anything
wrong with being on the corporate ladder, and there's also not anything
wrong with being a hippie that does not go and found Ben and Jerry's.
But many of the hippie generation, of course, actually did become
really good entrepreneurs as well as, scientists and so on.
And, and really were the kind of blaze the trail for the freedom that
we think of now as western culture that we can clearly see in this world
where it's under threat and Sure.
Challenge.
You know, would we rather live in a, in a totalitarian society where we
can't express these things or what would we, well, I think we all know
what we'd rather we'd all, you know, rather have a bit more rock and roll.
So, and this of course starts with our children, yet we do still feel this sort
of slight guilty thing about going one.
But I am supposed to be a very serious person.
And even though none of us ever wanted to be, because we we're just toddlers at
the end of the day, and you talk about saying yes, it's good as a doctor to be
able to give validation, you know, we, we now know the neuroscience behind.
Hippy dom, why it works.
Mm-hmm.
You know, whether it's an altered sense of consciousness and why they
work or whether it's why working with horses through oxytocin and BDNF brain
derived neurotrophic factor, which is actually neuroplasticity, why it works.
These things have now been looked at.
And then you can get to the more esoteric stuff, you know, like the
HeartMath Institute, you know, looking at the emission of photons outta
the heart and electromagnetic plus people say, oh, that's all bollocks.
Well, I live in Germany, it's not bollocks.
The University of Castle up the road, which is very German.
Mm-hmm.
Did a whole study about 20, 25 years ago into the emission of photons
from human hearts and how in states of empathy, we actually, they go way
farther out and therefore, you know, we do actually affect the people
around us in this really positive way and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So it's well studied.
Right?
It's well studied.
Mm-hmm.
Absolutely.
But, but yet it.
The authoritarian thing because we all inherited this religious
and militaristic thing.
Mm-hmm.
There's some little part of us that did drink the Kool-Aid.
Mm-hmm.
And even though it's cultish, it is frankly cultish feels a set slight
sense of kind of guilt for the fact that we know that that's the better way.
So I I, I love that as a doctor, you can, you can then say, well, look.
Yes.
While certain types of very structured therapies will provide some answers,
there are not just a few outliers, there are hundreds of thousands of them.
Yeah.
And yeah.
You know, my, my son did not do well with a, BA, you know.
No.
Right.
Absolutely not.
And, and a BA people they do not invite Temple Grand into their
conferences because they know she's going to say, sorry lads,
but it's too limited, you know?
Because at the end of the day's, coercive, you know, yeah.
But.
You have also talked about I don't wanna talk about what we're against
because also I know very good a, BA therapists and in the state of California,
you can actually get Horse Boyer movement method approved as a BA yeah.
You know, because there are certain BCBAs down there who believe in what we do.
So I, I don't want to be in this sort of them and us thing.
But one thing I love that you have said is that I've written them down, you have
said, as well as stubborn and attunement.
Mark Uranga: Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: You said a place that is magical.
Mm-hmm.
You also said the mystery of the horse.
Mm-hmm.
You also said the of it all.
And yet you're a doctor where your job is to be the,
not the, you know, not, not, I've got, I'm sorry.
So magic mystery, being comfortable saying, I don't know.
Mark Uranga: Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: When we go into a pediatrician's office, that's
not the language that makes people feel at ease, and yet of course we
know that this is 50% of reality.
Talk to us about that as a doctor, the importance of magic and mystery and qua.
Why is it important?
Mark Uranga: I think that it's built into pediatrics.
It's, there's, there's no mystery greater than that gap sometimes between the.
The adult and the, the parent this, the parent, I'm sorry, and the child
this like, I want this and I don't want this and this, this, this is a,
a mystery to me what's going on here.
And, and I, I see my role as kind of entering that mystery.
And I've, I've learned this from, from the equine world of now, first of all,
because of my background as we talked about and my experience, I, I have
felt comfortable with children and, and I'm kind of enter their world.
Maybe I'm still a little, I just like you, a toddler, adolescent,
and all these things all at once, and I'm willing to enter that.
And then interpret for the family.
The, what I've learned as a, as an adult learner in mules and horses
is mentors that talk me through the process that, that, what seems.
You know, I've been called Baby Whisper or whatever else like that.
And, and, and that's, that's a nice compliment.
It's mysterious and it seems unachievable to families, but when I say, well,
your baby wanted it to be rolled over on its stomach with its chin propped
up here and, and watch, they want this much bouncing, not that much.
Bouncing the mystery unravels in a positive way.
What I think was somewhat appealing in an early part of my career was
to think, oh, I'm just good with kids, and like, too bad these people
can't figure it out or whatever.
But, but they are the people to figure it out and it's, and it's
something that can be translated.
It's, it's not a mystery as, as much as it might be.
And I think this is as a learner, something where.
The way that you can transition to an in hand PO is mysterious to me,
but, but it's, it's broken down.
And, and you, you do that and it's, it's no mystery.
That's a, a little different than I think the mystery I was referring
to earlier of that connection, the, that primordial movement on the top
of a horse that takes us back to Mongolia or, or places beyond that.
That we are something
Rupert Isaacson: ancestral, perhaps.
Yeah,
Mark Uranga: ancestral, absolutely.
That we are still a monkey on a horse helping it move.
And, and that communication doesn't matter.
You know, our horse doesn't have an iPhone.
It turns out they still have the, the mammalian drivelines
and the main mammalian responses.
And when we can practice those with this unadultered version.
Of the mammalian nervous system.
We bring that back to these, to infants.
And, and I love the early stage where, you know, lots of questions, lots
of TikTok videos and, and gizmos and gadgets and, and AI assisted bassinets.
And yet it's just a baby that is gonna respond to the same cues
that a baby 200,000 years ago did.
Is it hungry?
Is it, is it comforted in a swaddled sense?
Is it feeling unsafe?
Is it wanting help?
Is that it's crying because it wants help.
So, so the, I think that there's a mystery that, that we in a good sense
can break down with some of these things with horses, a mystery with.
Babies.
And yet a sense of mystery.
The, the awe is something that I, I don't think I lose with children.
Their their honesty, their quirkiness, their sense of humor.
And that is, I think something that, as we mentioned, was
celebrated in my upbringing.
But is it one of those that's a universal, I think experience that from children in
the Bible to how children are perceived in different cultures around the world?
I think there, there's an elevation of that sense of innocence
and, and maybe the, kind of the mystery that lies within that.
Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
And, and perhaps you talk about the mammalian sense, although
there are occasions in mammalian things where infanticide happens.
Yeah.
You know, when the lion takes over the pride that.
Croley goes and kills, or the, or when the stallion takes over the herd, uh mm-hmm.
Has sex with the mares to the, make them all abort mm-hmm.
The fetus to the next one.
And it, it, these are brutal, horrible ways of, of serving the DNA requirements.
But you're also talking about the mammalian nervous system.
I'd like to talk about that a bit because the, I often call it
the mammalian caregiving system.
Mm-hmm.
The, you know, it's actually not difficult to figure out what mammals want.
Mm-hmm.
Because whether they're loner mammals, like tigers
Mark Uranga: mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: Or whether they're group ones like lions mm-hmm.
They do when they're young, require all the same nurture, and
if they don't get it, they die.
But before I go there, and I want you to talk a bit about what is
the mammalian nervous system, I, it's useful to have it mm-hmm.
Actually sort of broken down.
Is it, this is the place, the places that is magical, is the important
of magical, A magical feeling place is that it's whimsical.
And what I mean by whimsical is beautiful in a natural way that's on
a human scale, or at least on a scale that we feel we can participate in.
And does that make us feel safe?
Because it feels like biodiversity, which feels like abundant food, which
feels like an environment that we can thrive in as opposed to harsh
concrete or harsh cliffs, which.
While they might be impressive, we can't thrive in and, and
actually are threatening to us.
So is is magical in the positive sense, whimsical meaning we can thrive here.
Mm-hmm.
And then is the mystery of the horse and the s quo, is that actually listening?
Is that actually the, what appears to be mysterious is, is it just
that one has to learn to listen?
You talk about the mule that takes the pause, the mule listens.
The mule says, all right, well I dunno what's going on here.
So let me listen with all my senses.
To try to make the correct decision here.
And then you say, okay, well, Rupert, when you transition a horse into the
papp, it looks, it looks magical.
And I say, well, no, it's actually 300 little stages, each of
which is very logical by itself.
But when you put them all together, it has a magical look
to it or a mysterious look to it.
But if you break 'em down, it's the same process as any other process, but it
does require a certain kind of listening.
Mark Uranga: Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: To discern those 300 little things or to
know how to approach those 300 little things with a given horse.
And then you talked about, or do we respond well to, or, and this is, there's
a lot of studies now about, or Right.
Because it gives us a sense of perspective IE that our, yeah.
I stand in front of the mountain.
I stand in the face of a beautiful piece of art.
I stand in front of the, the horse and.
Feel the sense of awe, which means I get a sense of perspective of on myself, and
suddenly I'm transported from my ego.
I'm not now hearing the little voice in my head that's telling
me I'm shit all the time.
It's gone beyond that.
It's gone beyond me.
And now mm-hmm.
I have the sense of perspective, which is healing because I actually
get a break from my own bs, you know?
Right.
Is that actually what's going on with all these things and is that
why they're actually really not?
And then you talk about the mammalian nervous system.
How does the mammalian nervous system engage with these things as a doctor,
you know, to create wellbeing?
Mark Uranga: Right.
Yeah.
The, the starting point, I think for that, it certainly bring, brings us back
to the mammalian nervous system and its job, first and foremost to keep us alive.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Mark Uranga: And then from there.
To help us be comfortable and proliferate and in the, in that order.
So when we are considering any of these things that the, the the horse, the mule,
the toddler find uncomfortable, they, that's the starting point is the safety.
If we're not safe, we don't get to eat a, a cheeseburger and make a baby.
We, we have not passed.
Go.
Right.
So the, the safe starting point the combination of, and we, and we
live in the arid west and we have both crickets and rattlesnakes.
And on a given run I could see either, but I suppose it's DNA
and a little bit of learning, but.
The first response to a cricket on a run is always rattlesnake, no cricket.
It's that safety first.
And but by learning on that, on that same run as I start cross
passing more and more crickets, it's never a rattlesnake until, oops.
Like I misjudged that one and, and that's a rattlesnake.
But, but the role simplistically, I think of, of the mammalian nervous
system are those two things, safety and proliferation, okay?
And where
we
enter into somebody else's world, a toddler, a mule, a
a nonverbal autistic child.
We need to enter providing a sense of safety.
And if we don't provide that, then.
Any well-meaning degree approach environment is gonna fall flat.
And so the role in healing as a physician, that sense of kind of
the combination of mammalian brain safety and mystery comes in is that
the trust that I build with a child is what extends to the family's buy-in.
And in the equine assisted world, it's, you know, you've had, you've had guests
on, on your podcast for like, you know, Rupert Isaacson's, my last shot
and this, this quirky stuff that's not a medicine is not, you know, covered
initially by insurance or this or that.
Is, is yet.
By providing that engagement.
And what I, I, I love, I don't live with an autistic child, but I love
about pre-verbal chi kill children and non-verbal children is the
authenticity of their responses.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
That
Mark Uranga: especially when their families lived with that, they
can see what you create, what we create in an equine assisted
world within moments at times.
Now that isn't immediately the word count or the toileting or whatever it
is, but, but, but the safety that's provided, the downregulation of all the
stress hormones is what then allows for building of those other connections.
And that gets back to the idea of.
A goal, the authoritative model of it's fun to play on ponies and playing on
ponies when we count the hoof beats, moves us in a direction that we value.
And so that I, I was lucky enough this, this past week, I, I work as,
as a river guide on the middle fork of the salmon, which is a hundred
miles of Wilderness River through man
Rupert Isaacson: of many talents.
I want to come and I want to come and do that.
Mark Uranga: Yeah, we'll put you on the list.
You would thrive.
And with this upcoming inter conversation I was expecting, I, I
floating through on a raft in this wilderness area where Bighorn sheep
thrive and mountain lions and, and this sense of awe, and I'm thinking.
Why, why?
Awe, why do I have awe?
And and I, I don't know, but I do believe that you're right about
that humbling factor of it, the perspective that that's provided.
Why?
I mean, it's, it's nice to think of this as the smart ape,
the homosapiens, I suppose.
But, but what, what purpose has that served us?
And I, I know what purpose it serves me now.
And maybe that's what it's always served.
It's a, a purpose of recentering, a purpose of humility and appreciation
that, you know, those rocks, we have a lot of concerns in our world.
But, but those rocks and those cliffs, like they're gonna be there.
They may have noxious weeds on them, they may be deforested,
but something about that.
Is eternal.
And, and maybe that's that sense of awe allows us to let
go of things and always had it.
It's, we think of ourselves as extremely challenged, but how many
of us are fearful for lions behind our back while we're still struggling
to get enough berries collected before, you know, before we starve.
So those, those same emotions that underlie that and that again, that
combination of how those things move us forward is still a mystery.
And, and I think that's one of the richness of delving into how working
with a horse or a mule can, can solve a problem that is not answered by our.
Reductive approach or breaking apart of pieces and numbers and substances
and neurons and all that stuff.
If we can embrace that mystery it, I think it, it offers a, a feeling
of hope as well for families.
Rupert Isaacson: if you're a horse nerd, and if you're on this podcast,
I'm guessing you are, then you've probably also always wondered a little
bit about the old master system.
of dressage training.
If you go and check out our Helios Harmony program, we outline there step by step
exactly how to train your horse from the ground to become the dressage horse
of your dreams in a way that absolutely serves the physical, mental and emotional
well being of the horse and the rider.
Intrigued?
Like to know more?
Go to our website, Helios Harmony.
Check out the free introduction course.
Take it from there.
Yeah.
And let's talk about nurturing.
And then there's, there's something else I want to return to with nature.
What is the mammalian caregiving system?
I think, I think this is really worth drawing some attention to.
'Cause I don't feel this is emphasized in the sort of training which one
gets in most therapeutic paradigms.
I mean, it comes with things, yes, we want to be empathetic or we want to be.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Okay.
And we certainly wanna be good to our horses and so on, but.
I think it's often missed why physical nurture
Mark Uranga: mm-hmm.
Is
Rupert Isaacson: so important to a mammal.
Right.
And what a horse can give with this.
Just can you talk us through a bit the, the mammalian caregiving
system as a pediatrician?
Sure.
Mark Uranga: Mammalian caregiving system.
I love thinking about this.
In two ways.
One is the cold scientific way, and that would be, it provides us with
procreation and advancement of our genes.
And I do believe that even within that cold scientific kind of approach, there's
now been extensive work done into.
How that interaction relates to things we would think of as mental
health and wellness and fulfillment and these sorts of things.
So ultimately the, that interaction where a baby comes out looking, quote
unquote cute, they are, and we are programmed to consider this animal
vulnerable deserving of attention.
And that in turn leads to that physical connection.
And, and whether riding on the back of a horse or, or holding a toddler or dancing
with your partner, those connections create a whole cascade of, of wellbeing.
That is what we think of as the bond.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
Mark Uranga: And ma mammal, the term mammal comes from mammary gland, which
linguistically speaking, mo most languages that I've learned have a ma in a ma
ma ma in the mom, the ahma, the madre.
Because the m sound is just an early phonetic sound that babies make.
And so getting back to that connection, the first thing they're associating
sound with, we have associated sound with as a, as a culture.
And a, a scientific pursuit is still rooted in that, basically that request
for attention that comes from the infant.
And what we see is that in time we've had this fluctuation of,
well, what is good for a baby?
Well, it's good for a baby to have contact and to feel safe and.
Yet, as I alluded earlier, we have so little experience with babies that
our first thing when we think about their safety is not dropping them.
Be careful, don't do this, don't do that.
And, and they're treated with such fear and tension that, that it doesn't
take long for some kids to, to kind of already kind of internalize that.
Whereas that sense of bringing something together, the, the night
and day difference between a an hours old baby who's un swaddled
versus swaddled is very simple.
And, and it gets back to that connection.
And if that connection, the swaddling occurs, and then that baby's with dad or
with mom or uncle or whoever, there's, there's this basically a connection that
occurs that causes both parties to relax.
And one of our ongoing struggles and.
Modern medicine is, is the isolation that occurs in, in that bonding.
So we have a baby in a hospital, which is a safer place to have a baby than
a Savannah, but we have a baby in a hospital and send a dyad, a mom and
a baby, and a, and a dad three, three people home to have a isolated experience
where there's trip, you know, ideally there are people hand off to and that
sort of thing, and, and the, those are the, the families that thrive.
But, but our, our current model separates that grouping in a
way that's not supported in any prehistorical evidence or any other
kind of primate models necessarily.
So.
That that mammalian bond, the, the need to feed a baby and to nurture them.
Our, our babies are not pre-programmed to swim to the ocean and make more babies.
Our babies need to be fed.
They need to be nurtured.
And that
process, because it's, it's risky for the adult, it, it's consuming of resources
and all that other sort of stuff.
It, it has evolved to create feelings of goodwill.
Good, good feelings that, that make us as parents engaged in that process.
And most new parents of children or new dog parents or whatever it is, get that
early sense of attachment that this is a different thing that I am invested in,
and that that's essentially hardwired because that's necessary for them.
Procreation and the advancement of our species.
So that mammalian caregiving system is one that we, we really interrupted
in, in the modern world where we had small family groups that were
surrounded with other babies and other caregivers and and now it becomes a
kind of an individual stress that can, that can be really hard to, to bear,
especially lacking any practice in it.
So we really, we recently and historically have disrupted that, and for whatever
reason, the movements over the years have sometimes elevated the, the stay
at home mom or the wet nurse or, you know, name your model that was supposed
to be a better way to raise children.
And they, they've all had their struggles and.
And when we get back to that sense of community that we kind of started with
the other trusted adults, that's where we see kids thrive when they have Yeah.
That variety of engaged people.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
And, and the hugging, the, the, the contact, the physical contact of course.
And the breastfeeding.
But you know, any, any of Absolutely good.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Oxytocin.
Mm-hmm.
And oxytocin makes us not only feel good and safe and soothed,
but it makes us communicate.
Right.
It's the hormone of communication.
So it's our survival strategy for problem solving, for conflict resolution,
and making sure that we don't all end up eaten by the hyenas, you know?
Mm-hmm.
And it seems to me that, you know, when, particularly when people are coming from
a place of high stress, high cortisol.
Mark Uranga: Sure.
Rupert Isaacson: One of the things a horse can do is provide
an awful lot of oxytocin.
Mm-hmm.
Either through the movement, knocking of the hips or through the body to body
contact of such a large, welcoming animal.
Mark Uranga: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: It's interesting though that yeah.
It seems such a mystery when really mm-hmm.
All that's going on.
Just a reinforcement of, of the basic human needs.
You must be, you must be familiar, obviously with Maslow's MAs
something, call him Maslow of MAs, some people it Maslow.
Mark Uranga: Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: The social, you know, psychologist and sort of
general scientists who, who came up with the system of human needs.
Right, right.
As you were hierarchy mm-hmm.
The hierarchy of human needs.
And as you were talking, I pulled them up on my phone.
Mm-hmm.
So for those who don't know, it starts, it's a pyramid.
Mm-hmm.
And it starts with physiological needs, so.
Mm-hmm.
Water, food, shelter.
Sleep.
Mm-hmm.
Warmth, air to breathe, you know?
Mm-hmm.
And then safety needs, personal security.
I, no, violence, crime, war.
Mm-hmm.
Health and wellbeing.
Stable environment, financial security, safety nets, you know, food.
And then only after those two do you get love and belonging.
Only after those two can you get family, friendship, community, romantic
relationships, group memberships.
So like those two things have to be there.
And then after that you can get esteem, self-respect or
respect within the community.
And finally some idea of self-actualization.
But you need all of these building blocks in place.
What's interesting about that is I've, I've heard, I've had, you
know, many social psychologists in, in my family, and, you know.
What I only found out recently, and you talk about living in the
arid West, was that Maslow himself came up with that because he lived
with the Blackfoot Indians oh.
For about six weeks in 1938.
Mark Uranga: Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: And he had this explained to him and then never, never credited
the indigenous people that he'd gotten it from, because I think he was at Harvard.
He would have been censored back then.
He would've lost his job.
Interesting.
Because, you know of mm-hmm.
Western arrogance and racism, you couldn't say that, you know, these UGA booga
people over there had given you this.
But of course, so many of the modalities that we use are indigenous.
Right.
So, cranial sacral work totally came out of Native American stuff.
So did, so, did oh gosh.
Feldenkrais.
And the Feldenkrais method and you know, it's almost what I do.
I was mentored by the Bushman, by the son in the Kalahari, and the list goes
on and, and then of course you get into allopathic medicine and we're
giving drugs and all of this stuff.
Well, where do we get these drugs from?
We get them from pharmacological, pharmaceutical, pharmacological compounds,
which are actually mostly plants, which we get from indigenous people who show
the people from the pharmaceutical companies what works for mineral cramps
and what works for headaches and so forth.
And we get aspirin from Willow and it's all ancestral knowledge.
And then we have bedside manner, you know.
There are doctors that kill their patients because they're arrogant pricks.
And there are doctors that, you know, whose patients seem to get better, even
though they didn't do as well at medical school as the arrogant prick doctor.
Right.
Because they just have a good empathetic bedside manner.
And that would seem to be love and shamanism and alterative of consciousness
and placebo effect and all of these things coming into an interplay.
And yet we, we feel we have to, to view these things through a
sterile lens when actually Right.
They're not at all.
You are dancing that dance between the ancestral and the modern, the
allopathic and the, and the holistic.
Mark Uranga: Mm-hmm.
The
Rupert Isaacson: mammalian caregiving system and the clinical.
Mark Uranga: Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: And in the middle of this stands the horse.
Mark Uranga: Mm-hmm.
And there you are
Rupert Isaacson: on the heart and what is the horse, of course, but.
To really, for many of us, a personification in personality of nature.
Mark Uranga: Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: As we sort of, we've hit the two hour mark here, but as a doctor.
Mark Uranga: Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: What about nature?
Do you prescribe it?
Does na a growing number of doctors are prescribing time in nature now?
Is there such a thing as Nature deficit disorder?
What does it do to the human nervous system to not be in contact with nature?
You're a doctor.
Mark Uranga: Yeah.
The role of a doctor is to heal.
And if we take any tool out of our tool belt because of arrogance
or a preconceived notion, we're already neglecting our role and.
Absolutely.
I prescribe nature.
Absolutely.
I prescribe community and absolutely there are some families
that, that's not available.
And, and medicine has, I always talk about the medicines that affect mood
or learning as a bridge, and it's a lifesaving bridge for some people.
And the, the and of medicine is recognizing ideally, and, and often I fall
short a goal of, of self-actualization, a goal of, of getting to that best self.
And it's kind of like following the child.
Well, it is following the child.
This patient this person is where they are, and if where they are has
homelessness and school volatility, and A DHD and Ritalin stabilizes that,
then that's the safety that medicine can provide to move to that next step.
And it's, it's a constant compromise.
I can't bring everybody out to ride Sam and my clinic Samuel would love it.
And I wouldn't have the life that I have now because it
would all be volunteer work.
But the, the awareness of that is, is so much bigger than the clinic room.
And, and this is where.
Relying on people like yourself or others that expand the conversation
that don't foreclose Different ways of both providing safety and growth.
That's where families can, can find some validation, I think.
And, and, and those families that are able to move from change their learning
environment and integrate horses into their learning or the movement is a
part of the learning that they provide.
That's something that I can walk with them as well.
And I just feel so lucky to have happened in to, to people that can expand my
horizons that allow me to incorporate that vision into the work that.
The clinical work that has medicines, the clinical work that has metrics,
the clinical work that, that has numbers yet the clinical work
that always has a patient with it.
And, and that's, and that's a beauty that's not lost in modern medicine.
It, it may be lost in modern healthcare, but that relationship that you
mentioned that can, can help a patient heal despite worse numbers at the
start is I know I speak for the vast majority of my colleagues when I say
that's what keeps us here for all the, the struggles that patients feel.
It's, it's day in and day out as a physician.
And so when we have models that can enrich that.
In equine assisted world sort of models, when we can bring in something where
we're constantly learning, and I don't get any CMEs for all the horse and mule
clinics I've done, but, but boy has it informed my ability to communicate with
families and when, when those things combine in, in my world, serving that
patient and that family, that that ultimate test is, is what I'm looking
to, to pass that, that meeting them where they are and walking in that, that
journey it's, it's really rich and I'm really blessed to have that opportunity.
Rupert Isaacson: Should all pediatricians go volunteer at some
sort of nature-based thing to give them that type of perspective of how
human communities thrive basically.
Mark Uranga: Yeah, absolutely.
We should all, should it be there
Rupert Isaacson: in medical school?
Mark Uranga: Yeah.
Yes.
And it absolutely, and, and it, and it is through some of your work
obviously, and, and, and others.
I think that that era of arrogant medicine is hopefully passing and
humble, humble medicine that's not, this is similar to the, the balance
that we talked about with authoritarian, authoritative, and passive mm-hmm.
Guidance.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Mark Uranga: There is expertise in medicine.
There are
Rupert Isaacson: sure studies,
Mark Uranga: there are medicines, there are are known
approaches that should be given.
When, when people are looking for a paradigm that offers that
it should be provided, it should be allowed that we have this.
That we have other opportunities.
What, what isn't fair to a, to a family and to a patient is to just
give them a menu and say, I'll come back when you're ready to order.
It's it's, this is your menu.
And or
Rupert Isaacson: worse, say, you must go down only this path
Mark Uranga: or even worse.
Yes.
Or medications or whatever, or Exactly.
Right.
These, these either extremes are those that don't serve families well.
And we, with a place like the Worm Springs Care Farm and other practitioners in the
area, we are, we're lucky to, to hold those up as options and we are quite
fortunate that we can provide certain medicines that serve as a bridge for those
families that aren't in the, the place of safety and security to embrace that
next step and that self-actualization.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Mark Uranga: It's, it's a rich area that that we get to play with
as, as hopefully equine assisted work movement method sort of work.
Those things that embrace the holistic improvement in, in function of any person
whether a neurodivergent a DHD anxious.
Those, those combination of things are gonna be the most successful.
Rupert Isaacson: It's a
it's a great delight to hear a doctor say this and we are
beginning to see this change.
There's a.
A horse boy Movement method center in the UK called Move the Mind run by an
amazing person called Nicole Gillard.
And they're close to Bristol University, which is one of the
big medical schools in the uk.
And now she gets the medical students that she was contacted by the university.
Of course, a lot of the medical students are horsey girls and they now
come out and the university pays her to do their mental health electives.
Mm-hmm.
There and as you may know there's a, a, a fairly eminent physician, Dr.
Megan Mcal
Mark Uranga: Yep.
Rupert Isaacson: In Virginia, who is an autism mom who runs a really
good practice autism movement method and horse boy practice called Chats.
Mm-hmm.
In Yorktown in Virginia.
But she, her work was instrumental in getting East Virginia Medical School,
which is part of Old Dominion University.
To put on last year a neuroscience conference specifically for pediatricians,
looking at nature-based solutions.
And we, we ran it last year with various neurosciences and so on.
Would you, I think we're gonna do it again next year.
Would you come and be a speaker there and present and people could
then come and talk to you and,
Mark Uranga: yeah, sure.
I'd be questions.
I'd be honored.
I'm not sure if I'll be able to bring Sam to Virginia.
Rupert Isaacson: You have to at least show us some video.
There we go.
Mark Uranga: Yeah.
I would be honored.
Rupert Isaacson: I missed
Mark Uranga: that last opportunity, but, but it would be a pleasure.
Rupert Isaacson: And then Warm Springs Care Farm.
Mm-hmm.
I presume people can find this online if they type in Warm Springs Care
Farm, Boise, Idaho, that, yeah.
Right.
Yep.
And, you probably don't wanna give away your private email over the,
over the internet, but perhaps
Mark Uranga: I, I'm okay.
I've actually inspired by you and others, I've just started
to dabble in, in a podcast that I do have an associated email.
Great.
My podcast is called The Kid Wrangler so far it's just on
Spotify the Kid Wrangler on Spotify.
And then the email address that people are welcome to email me at
is the Idaho Kid wrangler@gmail.com,
the
Rupert Isaacson: Idaho Kid wrangler@gmail.com.
Brilliant.
I look forward to listening.
Mark Uranga: Yeah.
Well, thanks.
Thanks for inviting me.
I, I am largely here because of the amazing work you're doing and,
and seeing any improvement and, and how people do is just rewarding.
Thank you.
Shared as a community.
Rupert Isaacson: Wow.
I shall be seeing you down the trail then.
Mark Uranga: Alright.
Rupert Isaacson: All right.
Thank you again.
Mark Uranga: Thank you.
Bye.
Rupert Isaacson: I hope you enjoyed today's conversation as much as I did.
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