Rupert Isaacson: Welcome to Equine Assisted World.
I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson.
New York Times bestselling author of the Horse Boy.
Founder of New Trails Learning Systems and long ride home.com.
You can find details of all our programs and shows on Rupert isaacson.com.
Here on Equine Assisted World.
We look at the cutting edge and the best practices currently being developed and,
established in the equine assisted field.
This can be psychological, this can be neuropsych, this can be
physical, this can be all of the conditions that human beings have.
These lovely equines, these beautiful horses that we work with, help us with.
Thank you for being part of the adventure and we hope you enjoy today's show
Welcome back to Equine Assisted World.
Today, I've got Kim Barthel.
Am I, I'm pronouncing that correct?
Not Barthel, but Barthel?
Kim Barthel: You've got it, it's Barthel.
Rupert Isaacson: From Canada.
And the reason we've got Kim on today is because our great friend, who's
also going to come on here, Lianna Tank, who's one of the most interesting
human beings on the planet, basically.
And I'm going to get her on here for her own interview soon to do with her
work with the most intense populations of the criminally insane and how she
is working neurobiology, neuroscience and horses and all of that into that.
She said, Rupert, there's this lady, Kim Barthel, and you've got
to bleeping, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, have her on the show.
And I looked at Kim Barthel, and I went, bleep!
She's kind of doing what we do, but she was kind of doing
it before we were doing it.
And I'm talking about the movement method end of what we do.
Because remember that I'm always encouraging all of us
horse obsessed nutters to get away from the horse sometimes.
Because remember that.
Not every person who comes or kid that comes is going
to be motivated by the horse.
Sometimes they are motivated on Monday, but not on Thursday.
And even if they are motivated, what are you doing with the rest
of the time that they're with you?
Because 90 percent of the time they're not on the horse.
And then also, what are you going to do when you send that client home, either
to their family, if it's a kid or home themselves, if they're an adult, what?
insights, what tools, what games, what brain building stuff are you going
to give them so that they can keep it going as a 24 seven culture of
movement and neuro plasticity at home?
Because if not, then yeah, sure.
Anytime they come to one of our centers, it's better than a kick in the face, but
we all know it won't get the job done.
The only thing that gets the job done is when there's a full participation.
So that's why we need people like Kim Barthel to come along and mentor us.
So Kim, can you tell us who you are, where you are, what you do, and why?
Kim Barthel: This is a podcast, so you can't see me smiling, but
it's big from one ear to the other.
And thank you for inviting me to have this conversation with you.
Rupert Isaacson: I have
Kim Barthel: known, I have known about you a very long time.
Well,
Rupert Isaacson: that sounds ominous.
Kim Barthel: In a very positive way, of course, because of the famous horse
boy movie and my work in the field of special needs, neurodiversity, autism
for this is year number four zero.
That makes me feel a bit.
Nauseous, but that's when you
Rupert Isaacson: don't look a day over 12.
So you
Kim Barthel: bless you.
Bless you.
So I I'm an occupational therapist historically with many things that
came after a specialty in neuroscience, neurobiology sensory processing and
movement and ended up working in the field of trauma for most of my career.
Sort of with deep love, passion and unexpectedly.
Rupert Isaacson: So more trauma was a thing, right?
Kim Barthel: Yeah.
Before trauma was a thing, you know, before it was a thing.
And so, putting those pieces together is what I'm interested in.
The mind, body, spirit way of thinking of human experience.
The name of our company is called Relationship Matters.
And so, the tagline, the mission of our company is to support the conscious
evolution of the human spirit.
and how that fits into the realm of how people can become their best self.
Rupert Isaacson: Now, you, in our little preamble, said you are let's see if I
get this right, a neurodevelopmental
treatment instructor.
Kim Barthel: You got it.
What is that?
Good, good question.
Well, you know, in our, Rehab fields of physical therapy, occupational therapy.
There are lots of theories, frames of reference, for how to support people in
becoming better at moving their bodies.
And neurodevelopmental treatment was developed in the
fifties by a lady named Mrs.
Berta Bobath right after World War, well, World War II, after World War
II, because rehab in that era was not really very clued in yet to the brain.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
Kim Barthel: And how to change motor system, stroke, cerebral
palsy kids with spina bifida.
This was very new, polio in that, in that era.
And Mrs.
Bobath.
She learned through her own intuition, as you know, most magical, amazing things
are often, I think, intuitively channeled.
This came from her, and she was a sculptor.
And through putting her hands on people's bodies, she helped them learn
to bring online The muscles that were unaccessible, inaccessible, and to quieten
the ones that were working too hard.
And this technique she called handling, putting your hands on the body to help.
And you really deeply have to understand anatomy, and how muscles work together.
And so this theory became the way.
That the popular mechanism of how therapists would treat, especially
children, with neuromotor challenges in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, until today.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
What got you attracted to this?
Kim Barthel: Kind of serendipitously, really, because when I first
graduated from university, my love was the sensory systems.
And I went to study with Dr.
Jean Ayers.
Rupert Isaacson: Why?
Why was it the sensory system to your first love?
Kim Barthel: I don't know.
You know how sometimes You just know you know something.
Rupert Isaacson: And it's
Kim Barthel: like I've been doing this.
Rupert Isaacson: Did you have sensory issues yourself?
Kim Barthel: Not, not, well, not really.
Not, not in the way that you think about it.
Rupert Isaacson: Were you surrounded by people that did?
Kim Barthel: I, I really yes.
I was exposed to, to children with neurodiversity as a child.
And I wanted to.
And
Rupert Isaacson: how come?
How come?
Because a lot of people were not back then.
That there was a lot of separation.
Kim Barthel: I don't, I don't know that I can answer that question to you.
I think.
They were in your
Rupert Isaacson: school, they were in your family, they were in your groups.
No, just,
Kim Barthel: Sort of, an exposure.
And I guess a personality quality of mine is I want to do, I have
a deep desire to do something meaningful and also different.
So occupational therapy is a, and was in the 80s, something
that people didn't have a clue.
What it, what it was.
And when I started in my path of university, this theory of
sensory integration for kids with autism was so fascinating to me
because it was so mysterious.
And it made sense that if I was struggling with processing, it would
impact the way I engage in the world.
And, and that's why I started there.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: What I find intriguing is that in the 80s.
Obviously through the 90s and early 2000s, the, the main way of looking at
autism treatments was through behavior, behavioral, you know, ABA and so on.
And we're still battling with that to some degree in the USA, even though in
other parts of the world, it's, thank God, you know, being consigned to history.
How come you weren't drawn to that?
Because that was the prevalent thing.
And why to the sensory integration?
And did you face opposition?
Kim Barthel: Big time.
I think that the behavioral approach never resonated with me.
And, and I guess that
Rupert Isaacson: Why was that?
Kim Barthel: Well, I guess that spiritual component that I'm talking about over and
over again here was just in my fabric.
And I don't talk about, I don't mean religious, I mean the
compassionate state of human behavior.
It just was.
Who I was, and none of that ever felt right.
And Dr.
Ayers was all about child, the child guides treatment.
Rupert Isaacson: Interesting.
Kim Barthel: Child centered practice.
Rupert Isaacson: And this is back in the In the
Kim Barthel: 80s.
Yeah,
Rupert Isaacson: because you know, you know, our ethos with movement
method is follow the child.
Right.
And I, but I was given that by Dr.
Temple Grandin, who was of course given that by her mother.
So you could argue that movement method is really a result of mentorship
from Temple Grandin's mother.
But even when I was trying to follow that advice in the early days.
In the.
You know, early 2000s.
My God, was the opposition vicious.
You must have felt, you must have faced a fair amount of
Kim Barthel: I'm
Rupert Isaacson: smiling
Kim Barthel: because Temple Grandin is a commonality between us.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Kim Barthel: At my very first conference, I was 20, at the Ayers Clinic, I
was introduced to Temple Grandin.
So in a sense, Dr.
Ayers gave her to me as my practicum.
Rupert Isaacson: Interesting.
Kim Barthel: And Temple was developing her hug machine at the time.
And she gave me the inside experience of what it was like to live in a
body that processed differently.
And she could put words to it.
And so I have known her 40 years, and she was a profound influence on this
idea of being with people where they are.
Rupert Isaacson: What was, if you could say in one line, what she told you that
resonated in words, what did she say?
Kim Barthel: Well, it's really actually not what she said
specifically as in one thing, it's how she would give me feedback.
So for example, she may not remember this, and she might
hope she giggles if she does.
She said to me, Kim, why are you, I had a sweater on, why are you wearing a carpet?
And I, I, of course, had no knowledge about anything.
But that's not fair
Rupert Isaacson: because she wears sweaters.
She knows what a sweater
Kim Barthel: is.
But it was the nature of the quality of the fuzz, right?
And she said, I, that, that, and then she went on to describe
how that hurt to look at it.
Rupert Isaacson: Interesting.
Kim Barthel: And just the
Rupert Isaacson: texture of the
Kim Barthel: texture
Rupert Isaacson: of that sweater
Kim Barthel: sweater.
Yeah, like
Rupert Isaacson: note to self in September when I'm going to
be hanging out with no sweater.
Kim Barthel: Right.
Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
Kim Barthel: And then she said something to me like, stop moving
your lips I'm trying to listen to you.
And I was like, I don't know if I can do that.
Because she was working hard on processing my speech and my face at the same time.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
And those,
Kim Barthel: those are the things that had deep profound impact
for endlessly for the future.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, I can see that.
I could see that, you know, one of the things we never do is demand
any kind of eye contact, right?
We could, we say, you know, if they look at you, great.
If they don't be interesting, they might, but if they're not looking at you,
they're probably taking in what you're saying in the same way that if someone's
listening to this podcast while driving a car, they don't need to look at us for
sure, taking what you're saying, right?
Do you think if you had at that point turned your face away and said, okay,
fine, temple, you know, look at the wall or turn away from me, just listen.
Like on the radio, you know, might that have worked?
Kim Barthel: I mean, that's in fact what I did.
And so I think this idea, you know, we talked today about the
neurodiverse affirming movement.
I think I've been living that for my whole career of not trying to
get people to be what I want them to be, but to how I can be with them.
And that's what I think she taught me in that conversation.
Rupert Isaacson: Brilliant.
I would love to get together over a bottle of wine with you two.
I will probably be the only one drinking the wine, but it'll certainly
help my, lubricate my understanding.
Kim Barthel: But you asked me also, how did I get to movement?
Yes.
Wine.
So, so Dr.
Ayers looked at me one day, who I, who to me was like, I couldn't think
of anyone that was more important.
Brilliant.
As a mentor,
Rupert Isaacson: she
Kim Barthel: said, Kim, you've got to go learn about the body.
And I was like, okay, I'm like 21 years old and I don't
know anything from anything.
And I said, okay, I'll go do that.
What does that mean?
And she said, well, I think that neurodevelopmental
treatment, go and study with Mrs.
Bobath in London, the UK, you got to go do that.
And I was like, okay.
So I tripped off to take what we call an eight week certification course.
With Mrs.
Bobath, and
Rupert Isaacson: That's such a great name, Bobath.
Kim Barthel: It is, isn't it?
And that was the beginning of that, that part of the collective thought process.
And I think that, you know, one of the reasons that she asked me, Dr.
Ayers, reflectively, Dr.
Ayers passed away, so I never had a chance to ask her why.
Why me and why that?
But it, with reflection, I think it was about how sensation impacts and
connects to the body in movement, which was not part yet of the fully developed,
fully baked theory of SI at that time.
Rupert Isaacson: SI being?
Sensory Intervention.
Okay.
Kim Barthel: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: And were you yourself someone who who moved a lot?
Are you still now someone who moves a lot?
Kim Barthel: That's such a good question.
Honestly, no.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Interesting.
And I
Kim Barthel: think, I think that also, I mean, I was a dancer.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, then yes.
Kim Barthel: And I never felt good enough.
Rupert Isaacson: You're like a classical dancer, like ballet.
Kim Barthel: Classical dancer, yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Ah, that's the problem.
Perfectionism.
It's just like dressage.
Yeah.
It's it's ayanga yoga.
You know, I mean, when we go for perfectionism, we just kill the joy.
Yeah.
Kim Barthel: Yep.
There was.
And so my love of movement was, yeah, dampened by the experience
of not ever feeling good enough.
And I was shocked when Mrs.
Bobath said, I think you need to teach this because never did I think that
I would be skilled enough to do that.
So, You'd
Rupert Isaacson: given up on dance.
Early, like in childhood or in your teen?
Kim Barthel: Seventeen, seventeen.
I don't think of that as so early, I did it, took, you know,
classical dance for seventeen
Rupert Isaacson: years.
And was it, was it a great love, classical dance, or actually was it just
something that you were made to do and you actually liked to move in every way?
Kim Barthel: No one's ever asked me these questions before.
Good for you.
It's a combination, it was intermittent, you know, there was
times of great love and then times of.
I can't stop this because I'm, I'm, I'm in, I'm in the flow of it feeling like
there's some need to complete something.
Rupert Isaacson: I am in blood steeped so far that to turn back
was tedious as to go that's Macbeth.
He said when he feels he can't stop because the momentum is taking him.
No, I, I know exactly what that feels.
And, and one was often made to feel that way, of course, by family.
Yes.
Mentors, you know.
Did it break your heart?
Kim Barthel: Did it break my heart?
I think I'm still working on it.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Kim Barthel: And I think that the lingering feeling of not good enough
has been both a gift and a curse.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
And because of course the cold hard fact is that even the ballet
dancers that make it, make it, make it, never feel good enough.
Yes.
And
the axe to the chest that you've just described.
of course, allowed you to view the world compassionately.
But it's a rough go.
It would be nice if kids didn't have to go through that in order to.
Kim Barthel: Exactly.
And I think, you know, the gift of knowing Movement from the
inside, and then also witnessing or experiencing people who struggle
Rupert Isaacson: to
Kim Barthel: move,
It just gave me a sense of
embodied understanding,
meaning I can feel movement.
As I watch movement.
Rupert Isaacson: That's interesting.
Kim Barthel: And without that experience, I don't think I would have that in me.
Rupert Isaacson: It's a really interesting thing.
If movement's ever been taken away, and I know a lot of people listening
to this would've been in situations, so movement has been taken away
either permanently or temporarily.
But for example, I smashed up both legs once and you know, I was parked
on the couch for a long time, and the appreciation of being able to
like get up and go to have a pee.
And what a privilege that is, and what a, what a pee village, in
fact, that is, and you know, it's stuff that I've taken for granted.
Gratitude versus entitlement
really starts with movement.
I mean, if you think about a slime mold.
Put that slime mold into a Into a labyrinth, and they see it go,
or they put the slime mold into a controlled thing where they put some
toxin and it goes away from the toxin.
If the slime mold couldn't find its way through the labyrinth, if
the slime mold couldn't move away from the toxin, imagine, even at
that level, cellular suffering.
Kim Barthel: Totally.
Rupert Isaacson: And I think that's something we can all relate to.
So listen, you said that I actually thought that you were not a horse person.
I was thinking, okay, I'm just going to be putting this one up there for the horse.
crazies amongst us, which include me to remind us that we should, you know,
learn our neuroscience and all of this.
But it turns out you actually do have a background with equine therapy.
Can you just go into that a little bit before we go on to the work
that you actually do now and what we can learn from you just so
we can understand your context?
Kim Barthel: Sure.
My connection to the horse world didn't come because of a love of horses.
It actually came from a love of movement and seeing the horse.
as an offering for enhancement of movement experience for kids that,
especially children, who had quite limited mobility, cerebral palsy, and
the whole opportunity for weight shift, movement through space experiencing
connection with a being that allowed them to feel, felt, this was my draw.
Rupert Isaacson: And to be moved, to be moved by something, giving
you, lending you its power, right?
Kim Barthel: Yes.
And, and, and very quickly it was obvious to me that this
was a relational experience.
Rupert Isaacson: When did you get involved in therapy, therapeutic writing and how?
Kim Barthel: So I lived in a place called Winnipeg.
Canada, and we had a startup therapeutic riding process that
was one woman who wanted to use her horses for the purpose of.
Supporting kids with disability,
Rupert Isaacson: and this is when
Kim Barthel: it would have been in the early 90s.
Rupert Isaacson: And up until then, there was nothing that
Kim Barthel: there was nothing, especially where I was living.
I mean, I'm, I know that it existed before that, but not in the area where I was.
And given my appreciation and understanding of movement and sensation
in this way, this organization sought me out and said, can you come and help us
understand what we might do on the horse?
I
Rupert Isaacson: see.
So they, they contacted you as a consultant?
Kim Barthel: Yes.
And what
Rupert Isaacson: did you show them?
What did you suggest?
Kim Barthel: Well, I'll never forget the first time I went.
And we did back riding, meaning I was actually sitting on
the horse with the child.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Even though you're a rider?
Kim Barthel: Yes.
Rupert Isaacson: So they'd obviously produce a nice safe
horse underneath you, right?
Kim Barthel: Definitely.
Definitely.
And this experience for me was necessary
Rupert Isaacson: because
Kim Barthel: not only was I feeling the movement of the child in front
of me, but I was simultaneously experiencing the movement of the horse.
Rupert Isaacson: Fantastic.
Kim Barthel: And so there was this, I think, I know you know exactly what I'm
talking about, you know, sitting there with your child and feeling them while
feeling the movement through yourself.
And this was what helped me figure out, so to speak, that word is too
literal, how we might use saddles.
in different ways.
What could be done on a horse in a back riding situation, which I
don't think is as common today.
Rupert Isaacson: No, I'd say the horse boy, us, we're one
of the only people that do it.
Kim Barthel: Yeah.
I don't know if it's good for the horse.
I don't know.
Rupert Isaacson: It is if you make the back very strong.
Because the entire culture of Asia, Northern Asia, and most of the Americas
would be all killing their horses if it wasn't, because that's how
all their kids grow up, because they actually use horses for transport.
So it's a interesting, rather racist viewpoint that a lot of
Western horse people have, is that this must be bad for the horse.
But where they're, where they're, It writes off all those cultures immediately.
However, where they're being trying to be good is where it's coming from
a good places they they're concerned for the health of the horses back and
it is true that if you're going to ride with someone in front of you.
You want to make sure that you put.
inordinate amounts of muscle on the horse's back.
So that's what we do.
Kim Barthel: Very good.
And so, you know, we also looked at changes in direction, reach into space,
games, as you talked about earlier, what, what kind of stop, start, reach and throw.
These were very early activities that we thought of to engage kids in moving
their bodies in ways that they couldn't do sitting in a wheelchair or on the floor.
Rupert Isaacson: Tell us those of us who Don't know in neuroscience.
What do those activities do for the brain?
Kim Barthel: Okay, deep breath, where do we start?
What's so interesting about that question is what I know
today versus what I knew then.
Because our understanding of neuroscience today is so vastly different compared
to the day of the 90s where we, you know, we're beginning to understand
the concepts of neuroplasticity.
Rupert Isaacson: It was a new word then.
Kim Barthel: It was a big new word and, and really the foundation of change,
the potential for the brain to heal itself.
Because prior to that time, it was believed that was not possible.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
I mean, it's not that long ago that even in mainstream neuroscience, the doctrine
was the brain is hardwired at five.
We now know that's so not true, but it was orthodox for a while.
Yeah.
Kim Barthel: Yes.
And so the You know, the idea of neurodevelopmental treatment was even
founded on this premise that there is learning happening all the time.
And I don't just mean learning as in practical skills, but
learning at a cellular level.
And you know, it's funny you use the word, it's slime mold.
I often give the description of, I was working in the neuroscience lab,
looking at a paramecium in a Petri dish.
Rupert Isaacson: What's a paramecium, for those of us that don't know?
It's
Kim Barthel: a single cell, and it has a brain in its membrane, and it knows
where to swim and where not to swim, dependent on what's in the environment.
And when you drop in a toxin into the petri dish, that, that cell will
not move in that direction again.
And this is the premise of rehab, is, or, or, never mind rehab, that sounds
like, Because for many kids, it's not rehabilitation, it's habilitation.
You know, their bodies never had those experiences.
So we understand that the brain is an inter today, today, we
understand that the brain is multi faceted, interconnected circuits.
That's non hierarchical.
That things are moving in loops.
And impact in one area of the brain will have interface
in other areas of the brain.
And so when you are, for example moving through space side to side,
forward and backward, we call this weight shift on the horse.
This impacts the brainstem, the cerebellum, the basal ganglia.
These are blah, blah, blah words in a neuroscience way.
It impacts the frontal cortex.
It, it has an impact on structures of knowing where my body is
and who I am and who I'm not.
Rupert Isaacson: Procreception.
Kim Barthel: Yep.
In, in pteroception.
This is me, this is not me.
That all of these experiences that the horse offers integrates the brain.
In, in a way that allows circuits to wire together, that they
may not have an opportunity to do in a different environment.
Rupert Isaacson: And again, for those people for whom neuroscience is
something new, why is that a good thing?
Kim Barthel: Oh, why is it a good thing?
First of all, one of the greatest challenges that is so poorly understood
is that my sense of self, me or me in relationship to other, means that
The sensory experiences that I'm taking in have to be felt by me as me.
Gosh, that's abstract, isn't it?
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, but it makes sense.
Kim Barthel: You know, I have to know I'm moving, that there's an I.
And I think that so many people with differently wired
brains struggle with this.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Kim Barthel: Struggle with knowing what's me and what's not me.
Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
Yeah.
Where are the boundaries between myself and the world?
You know, it's interesting Rowan Scubb he's actually
downstairs while I'm giving this.
He's eating his dinner.
He's just been helping.
Today building the fence pasture and the 23 year old hulking six foot one dude who
drives independently, who has his own car, who just sold in the process of selling
his house so that he can have money in investment that he can then live on.
This is a very, but he, as you know, he didn't start that.
And he, he himself says the early years were a blur of feeling a confusion.
of not knowing where he began and ended.
And that while that might feel good in a certain moment in a sort of certain
altered state of consciousness, if you go through life that way, it's
really confusing and disorienting and alarming and upsetting.
And there is a certain point With all this movement and with all
this integration with nature and all this sensory integration,
effectively, things began to clarify.
He, and he talks about this with parents a lot, who are trying to understand
what their kids are going through.
It's very interesting that you were observing this you
know, back in the early 90s.
Kim Barthel: Well, this is why, this is why your work was so appealing to me.
That when I first watched and read about Horseboy, I thought, of course!
This and, and the idea of also the spiritual aspect of looking at person
from a holistic perspective had a deep resonance of this is what's
happening to the brain is you're putting together pieces that didn't
necessarily connect well in isolated ways that through opportunity,
you've allowed those freeways.
that have an inherent design to connect, but just couldn't get there,
now have the experience to do it.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
I think that's a really good point that they have an inherent design, not which
of course is therefore desire, right?
So why, yeah, why would it feel distressing to feel
those blurred boundaries?
Because as you say, we're designed to feel not hard boundaries, but nonetheless,
do we have an epidermis, you know, it stands between us and the world we have,
you We have this sense of self, and this is our compass, this is our navigation,
and so it's very interesting that you said design, because yes, to experience
one's self not operating to one's innate design, how could that not feel alarming?
Kim Barthel: Definitely.
And you know, when we think about we are really designed for survival,
not for comfort, darn it.
Yeah.
And so we are inherently That's why God
Rupert Isaacson: invested, invented Scotch whisky.
Yeah.
Kim Barthel: Yes, and many other forms of adaptive behavior to
help us cope with this, with this experience called human life.
But I think that we are tracking for danger constantly.
Rupert Isaacson: Yes, yes.
Kim Barthel: And we regulate our sense of distress in the body.
I have to feel me in order to regulate me.
And that sounds, I know that when I say that, that sounds fluffy, but it's
like, I have to, Understand what I'm experiencing at a very primitive level
anyway, in order to feel safe in it.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, if I'm walking, it's interesting, while I'm, while I'm
having this talk, the, the screen saver thing is a photograph of that we took last
year in Etosha Game Reserve in Namibia.
With my family, as you know, I spent time with the Bushmen and we were on our way
to meet them, the son, and the picture that I'm looking at is of two young lions
playing and there's a herd of zebra behind them, and they're all grazing peacefully,
but there's two zebra who are watching the lion, and then behind them, there's
a herd of springbok who are not bothering to watch the lions because they know
the zebra are watching the lions, and The zebra know very well that as long as
the lions are in that behavior, they're okay, but it needs to be monitored.
And they also know that If those three quarter grown lion cubs that they're
playing, well, lion, big cats live with their parents for up to two years.
So it means that the females must be, the fully grown females, the
lionesses, must be somewhere around.
And either they're going to sneak around the back or they're hanging out close to
their three quarter grown cubs because they don't want the hyenas to come and go.
So either way, the situation needs to be monitored, but they're not monitoring
it in a way that is huge alarm.
They're just keeping an eye while the rest of the great herd grazes.
If they didn't have a sense of self, I'm a zebra and that's a lion.
And it's over there at that distance.
And this behavior means this in relation to, am I safe?
Am I not safe?
One could imagine that.
It would certainly add to the already probably quite great stresses of hanging
out close to lions if you're a zebra.
Kim Barthel: You, you, you've described this such a, in such an elegant way.
And you're reminding me of my neurobiology professor, Robert Sapolsky, who
wrote, Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers.
Rupert Isaacson: Interesting.
Kim Barthel: And he is a biologist, neurobiologist, and studied exactly what
you're talking about and how our autonomic nervous system, I call it the automatic
nervous system, is, it has a knowing.
And the knowing doesn't necessarily require language.
It's a knowing that is very sensory based intuitive based.
That comes from this monitoring that you're talking about and allows me
to shift into fight flight freeze.
or a sense of centeredness that allows me to continue to monitor
but not experience terror or fear.
And if I didn't have an integrated sense of body, I wouldn't be able to do this.
Rupert Isaacson: You know, this is really good.
This is, you know, a lot of, I think for a lot of people, a word like
A phrase like sensory integration.
It's one of those things you hear, and the first time you hear it,
you're like, oh, what's that then?
And then you go, oh, well, I suppose I sort of know what that is because,
so it's like people, when they hear autism, they're like, oh, what's that?
And then, oh, I suppose I should, but no one actually says, well, It's these
three letters, A U T, that should have an O on the end, auto, meaning
the self, the Greek word for the self, you know, locked in the self.
So, and then you go, Oh, right.
Okay, now I understand why they call it autism.
Sensory integration, it's really interesting the way you explain
it there, because I remember in my early days of all this, people
saying, Oh, sensory integration.
I'd be like, Oh, shit.
You know, I'm supposed to know what that means.
I've got no idea at all what that means.
But unfortunately, I think a lot of times these Phrases are thought up by academics.
So for example, like you say, autonomic, you'd rather call it automatic.
I agree with you there, because when you hear autonomic, you just think,
unfamiliar word, don't hear that, getting onto the subway every day,
don't hear that when I'm buying.
You know, my newspaper or whatever, it seems to exist only in this context, and
it makes me feel kind of a bit stupid if I don't automatically know what it is.
Sensory integration, I think a lot of these terms, the language, the jargon
gets in the way of the understanding.
Couldn't
Kim Barthel: agree with, couldn't agree with more.
And it's to make it into understandable concepts that is useful to families
and to people who themselves are looking to be their best self.
Rupert Isaacson: So sensory integration then is if I know who
I am and where I am and what I am, then I know how to keep myself safe.
Basically,
Kim Barthel: you did it.
I don't know if anyone else has said it that simply great bottom line.
You know, there's another thought I'm having as you're talking
that autism is not one thing,
Rupert Isaacson: right?
Kim Barthel: That every person, you know, most of the children that I've
treated with autism are now in their 30s.
They all have a different story.
How they experience.
And it, you know, it's often very simply described academically as being
overly sensitive or having difficulty in processing a piece of information.
This is not my experience.
My experience is that there is a difficulty in putting pieces together.
That often the way one sense, works together with another sense, isn't
easy to make the puzzle whole, and so people really oversimplify
their attempt to understand what it is, I think, the persons who's
differently wired is really living in.
Rupert Isaacson: It's an interesting thing.
I think anyone who's ever taken a psychotropic, a strong psychotropic
and psychedelic drug has had that feeling of disintegration.
Kim Barthel: Correct.
Rupert Isaacson: And I think if one hasn't had that feeling of, oh shit,
you know, I'm sort of disappearing, I'm fragmenting, I've, my cells are
breaking up, I'm, I've lost, not just lost control, but I am no longer me.
Kim Barthel: Right.
Rupert Isaacson: Disembodied.
Although there is a me that's experiencing this, you know, which is
what anchors one in those experiences.
Imagine going through that all the time.
Kim Barthel: And, and, and trying to organize relationships and, and
also mask so that people, so that you give people what they want.
My heart breaks when I think about it.
Rupert Isaacson: I'll tell you a funny story, but it's, it's a public story now.
It's not me but something that describes that perfectly is, have you
seen the Carlos Santana documentary?
Kim Barthel: No.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
It's brilliant.
Okay.
It's brilliant.
the plane and when he played at Woodstock.
He was they're going through this and he was really young and he, he'd be
the house band at the Fillmore in San Francisco only because he tried to
break in to see the bands because he was this Hispanic boy from Tijuana, right?
And that raised by Mariachi, good musician.
And when they said, Hey, you're breaking in this of, yeah, but
I just really want to see that.
And they said, okay, can you play guitar?
And they sort of challenged him and he did that.
You're awesome.
And it kind of, he became house band sort of age 20.
And then he finds himself.
at Woodstock.
And apparently he says all those crazy facial contortions I'm doing at Woodstock.
He said, what happened was I arrived on the helicopter and I got off
the helicopter and there was Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead sitting.
He said, here, take these.
What are these?
And they said, these are very, very, this is very, very strong LSD.
However, you're on the bill to go up in about six hours.
This is a long concert, so you've got time to go up and go down.
And so he went, okay, I did the math.
I think I could do that.
And he took him apparently half an hour and said, okay, you're up.
And he said, he went on stage.
And his guitar neck became a snake that he couldn't control
wobbly snake that was right.
And he said, all of those facial expressions I'm doing on me saying,
because I've got a rooted sense of self saying I know I am actually
Carlos Santana I know I am here in front of 100, 000 people.
And if this.
goes to hell, that's the end of me.
In this extreme distress saying to the gitanic, no, no, he says, I'm
saying, no, you will be a gitanic.
You will not floppy thing and try and get away from me.
And he's of course playing the most extraordinary music as he's doing it, but
he said it was very, very, very stressful.
And I remember watching that on the plane and going, wow,
that's such a good analogy for.
What I think a lot of people with neurodivergence go through,
particularly in early years.
Kim Barthel: Amazing.
I know you know a lot about compassion and I think that what's important
in this conversation to me is that.
And that's where it comes back to that question you asked me about the
behavioral approach, which is such a different way of engaging with humans.
And how important it is to try, try to put our mind in the mind of the other.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, well, of course, if one's trying to train robots, then,
of course, either to go into battle or stand in a factory line, that
becomes of lesser importance, right?
And that, you know, it's the inheritance, I think, of behaviorism.
Because I certainly went through a school system that was a bit like that.
They made us behave in certain ways that were designed to inure
us to combat, basically, to be officers of the British Empire.
You'd be first over the top into the machine gun fire.
And I think it works for that
Kim Barthel: Compliance is necessary under extreme danger.
Rupert Isaacson: Under extreme danger.
But
Kim Barthel: not when you, not when you spill your milk.
Rupert Isaacson: No, no.
And I remember thinking, why do I want a compliant kid?
Because if I get a compliant kid, that's a kid that will
get into a car with an adult.
Just because the adult, the adult says, I'm an adult, you must comply.
Get in the car.
I want a cooperative kid.
Yeah, but I also want a challenging kid.
I want a kid that says, no, I don't know you.
Who are you?
Right.
I'm not getting in that car.
Kim Barthel: And compliance actually diminishes curiosity.
Rupert Isaacson: Indeed.
So, okay, we've got a largely equestrian audience here.
And as I often say, we equestrians are a bit autistic in terms
of our obsession with ponies.
And it can be a bit hard for us to think in other terms sometimes.
What are your, give us your best advice.
If we are trying to serve.
A child's or a person's neuro system, nervous system and brain.
What are the three or four main things that if we don't do, will
not just not have us succeed, but will absolutely ensure failure?
What are the things that we must be aware of and must do?
Kim Barthel: Number one, in all contexts of learning, is safety.
And this comes from attunement.
My experience of horses is they are incredible at this, in the attunement
to the person that they're with.
But also for us as facilitators in this process, safety is part of our job.
It's our responsibility as well.
And when I use the word safety, I'm not just talking about physical safety.
I'm talking about the speed that we move into situations the tone
of voice that we use, the nonverbal communication that we use as the adults.
Rupert Isaacson: You're talking about emotional safety.
Kim Barthel: Yes.
That is the backdrop for the nervous system to open the door.
To the greatest degree of plasticity is safety.
The second, whoops, the second variability is
Rupert Isaacson: repetition.
You froze and a little thumbs up came out of your brain.
So I'm thumbs upping your brain for that one.
I couldn't agree more.
The emotional, the emotional safety.
So hard for horsey people because we're so bossy without even knowing we're bossy.
Kim Barthel: And it's important.
That's an important variable.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Kim Barthel: Repetition.
Number two is that the brain loves repetition from the perspective of wiring.
So when you are looking to establish a pattern of relative permanent change, it
means I need to do it again and again.
And the third one, you asked me for three, is the brain is a predictive brain.
So it is constantly, whether you're neurodiverse or not, the
brain is constantly trying to fill in the story of what it expects.
And so the more often there's clarity and predictability in how
you present what you do, the greater the degree the brain can rest.
In, again, safety, but also in its potential to expand a new pattern.
So, emotional safety, repetition, and predictability.
Rupert Isaacson: Now, play devil's advocate there.
Emotional safety, no devil's advocate.
But for repetition and predictability, of course, we want to begin to
help people to acquire the skill of dealing with non predictability,
because that's going to happen.
And stuff that comes novel new.
I need to learn it quickly without repetition.
Can you talk us through how paying attention to repetition and
Predictability helps us deal with non repetition and non predictability.
Kim Barthel: Love it.
And that's not a devil's advocate question.
It's a very good question.
I need to have a foundation, a platform first.
And all that we've just spoken about around, The ambiguity of processing,
the lack of security in my own reliable way of understanding the world,
that once that predictability and repetition are foundationally there,
I have a launchpad to then move from.
So in, in my world, we call this the just the just right challenge,
where me as the support person.
is, again, through attunement, offering both security and risk in ways that are
scaffolded so that the person knows that they can do it without moving outside
their window of tolerance into fear, both physically, emotionally, cognitively.
And so it's not black and white.
Right, it's, it's an in the moment thing of I watch you, I see the tenuousness
in you, and I may say, we can do this.
It's okay.
And the nervous system becomes available.
Alternately, I might choose a task that is genuinely too hard and dysregulates or
decomposes That doesn't mean I've lost, it means I have an opportunity for repair
where the person then knows they can survive a challenge that they,
all of this happens in the arena.
I think
Rupert Isaacson: When you say in the arena, you, you,
you mean in the riding arena?
Kim Barthel: Yeah.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: I think that's one of the reasons why with what we do with horse
boy, we actually try to get out of arenas,
Kim Barthel: out of the arena
Rupert Isaacson: because we want to encounter the world.
Kim Barthel: Yes.
Rupert Isaacson: I mean, obviously if the weather's terrible in the arena, but if
we can, we want to encounter the world.
As you say, I want to give a platform of
trust.
It'll be all rightness.
If we go out there and we will encounter some things we don't know
and will, but not too much.
So I need a certain amount of control over the environment, at
least in the early stages later on.
So, so basically, do you feel it's about building resilience?
Kim Barthel: Yes.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Kim Barthel: And that resilience is, comes from trust, right?
It begins with trust, trust of you, trust of the horse, trust of me.
And then I can venture into the unknown.
Rupert Isaacson: It's so interesting you bring this up.
When I was spending a lot of time with Kalahari San Bushman, I didn't
realize, but when I was being given a.
mentorship in parenting.
And the reason was that what I was observing, the first thing I observed
was that they co slept with their kids and they didn't co sleep with their kids
from some philosophical point of view.
They said, hyenas come at night, right?
And they will take your shoes off your feet and you won't even feel it.
They will certainly take your baby or your infant or even your small child that
is even 60 centimeters away from you.
And you won't know So the only way you can keep them safe, let alone warm,
because it also gets very cold at night there, is to put them between two adults.
And the hyena's less likely to mess with that situation.
That's why we do it, Rupert, that's what they say.
And I was like, got it, got it.
And I was like, oh gosh, right, so if a baby's crying, because you put it in
a crib to cry it out, I was put that way, I'm sure you were put that way.
It means that somewhere in our nervous system, in our, in our ancient DNA.
It's saying, I've been left here for the hyenas.
Better scream.
No one's coming.
Oh, hyenas will get me.
And therefore a certain despair must kick in.
I wonder how much of our You know, angst and neurosis comes from those sorts
of experiences that we have when we're barely conscious, but we're experiencing
it on a, you know, on that DNA level.
And then
what I noticed, so then of course I co slept, right?
And I remember a couple of my friends saying, but Rupert, aren't
you worried that Roan will end up really dependent if you do that.
And what I'd observed with these kids is that at about 16, they get up, they
take a spear, and they go into the bush, and they come back with a wildebeest,
you know, and dodging the lions.
It's like, no, they seem to, it seems that if you give them all this
unconditional love at the beginning, weirdly, they are more secure.
Kim Barthel: Exactly.
Completely, completely agree.
Rupert Isaacson: What do you think is the most,
common error most of us that work in the field of neurodivergence routinely
make, and what's the sort of easy fix that we often miss that we don't see?
Kim Barthel: You are asking me all the hardest questions.
I think the greatest error we make is trying to come to some sense of what
we think normal is, the myth of normal,
and that we are trying to be guided by goals that are constructed
to help that person fit in.
That's going to take us a long time to shift and change, but I think
those of us who work with and support individuals who are different is to
help them see their own value in who they are and allow them an increased
opportunity to feel safe in themselves.
So that they can become their best self.
Rupert Isaacson: How do we do that?
Kim Barthel: Journey, it's like a journey, really.
It's, it's a ongoing standing alongside with curiosity about what's
interesting to you and how do I join you and you just described it.
In your Kalahari example, how do I join you, keep you safe, and build a bridge
for you to explore at the same time?
And we're talking about human attachment,
which is a unfolding process.
We could talk about this forever.
Rupert Isaacson: Oh, we could.
I fully intend to.
Kim Barthel: I am, I'm not inviting myself, but I am coming
to teach in Ireland in in October.
So.
Maybe there's an opportunity to meet in person.
Rupert Isaacson: Indeed, we will be there.
And you need to meet and everyone listening needs to
meet a man called David Doyle.
David will not come on this podcast, even though he is the man
I probably work the closest with in my, you know, professionally.
Because he hates to public speak, even though he's really good at it.
And he is, in fact, I think the modern day incarnation of the Wizard Merlin.
In a, in a bad pullover.
He'll kill me for saying that.
But he's, he's an extraordinary, extraordinary person.
And yes, I would love I would love to work with you in the many horse boy
movement method places that are growing in Ireland because Ireland is where the
Minister of Health, Anne Rabbit, just got behind the latest horse boy place which is
called Stuarts Care in Kilchloon outside of County Meath, outside of Dublin.
It's a very ambitious, very large scale project and she
has put the ministry behind it.
So yes, I think there's, there's a natural a natural collaboration there
and I would invite anyone listening to try and get your asses over to Ireland
and come hang with us over there with what's going on because it is really good.
You know what we don't have going on much, Kim, is, is stuff in Canada.
But it sounds like you've got it covered, so we don't have to worry.
Kim Barthel: Hardly.
And lots of lots of topper opportunity for conversation.
Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
Kim Barthel: Good.
Thank you.
Rupert Isaacson: Do you need to run?
Kim Barthel: I do.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
They're actually standing
Kim Barthel: at the stop of the stairs.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Kim Barthel: Waiting for me to stop.
Waiting
Rupert Isaacson: for the construction guys.
All right.
Well, I think what we're going to do, Kim, because this is too
good of an opportunity To miss.
I'm gonna have you come back on, if that's all right.
I want to go a little deeper into the neuroscience.
Okay.
So with your permission, we'll do a round two.
Kim Barthel: That's lovely.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay, listeners, we actually had to take a break, in
between the first part of this podcast and this one because, Kim's a busy
lady, and she had to go on a massive world tour doing incredible work.
And now she's back, and she's back from outer space, here to find her
here without that look upon her face.
Sorry, I couldn't, I couldn't resist that one.
she's.
Got some interesting stuff to report, and there's a lot that we need to know
from her, and the people she works with about trauma, but any of us that are
in this line of work, this is a rapidly developing field, and particularly
when we're dealing with, people with neurodivergence, it gets complex.
so welcome back, Kim, what have you been up to?
Kim Barthel: First of all, let me say it's exciting to be back
and have a conversation with you.
one of the interesting things that happens to me in dialogue with you
that is unique is that, you know, when you think about this concept of tuning
forks and you hold one up and one is sitting beside, and if they're not quite
at the right frequency, they don't.
Resonate.
And when, I hear your questions, listen to what you are thinking about,
my frequency just dials up at such a high vibration that it it's exciting.
And, I find myself having to work to contain it so that I can even.
Slow down long enough to think just at the, at the enthusiasm that I have for
what, comes out of these dialogues.
It's quite an honor for me.
So I wanted to start by saying that.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
So what have you been up to?
Kim Barthel: So what have I been up to?
Well, we have been, we, I say we, because, Bob Spensley, who is my husband and
business partner, we have been on the road since the middle, beginning, middle
of August and, sharing, but you know,
Rupert Isaacson: it's, Where have you been on the road?
You haven't just gone like down the road to the shop.
No, no.
Where, where have you, where have you been?
Kim Barthel: Six, six continents.
Rupert Isaacson: Why?
What were you up to?
Kim Barthel: I was thinking about saying sharing knowledge, but
that is so inaccurate because it's a mutual experience.
It's not just a sense of Kim and Bob going on the road, giving a workshop.
It's a holistic gathering of experience that builds on itself.
And what I, what we find is the world has more in common than you can imagine,
you know, despite the context, the culture, the distance, the climate,
all these variables that shape the differences from one place to another,
there is more similarity than difference.
What's
Rupert Isaacson: the main theme that's come out of these workshops?
And for those of us who are working in this equine assisted field, what do you
feel Other resonances that are coming out now that we should all be aware of.
Kim Barthel: It seems that there is a need, a desperate
need, for a feeling and of hope
Rupert Isaacson: that
Kim Barthel: can lead to agency.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Kim Barthel: And, and this theme is pervasive no matter where
Rupert Isaacson: people feeling powerless, people feeling lost,
Kim Barthel: people feeling powerless, people feeling victimized,
people feeling hopeless in their capacity to have any ability to
create a difference for themselves.
And even though we have lived through a pandemic.
And this may, in fact, be partly post pandemic.
It was more obvious than last year.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
is that because of just combined world events?
Russia, Gaza, climate?
Kim Barthel: Definitely.
Rupert Isaacson: Or is it, is it, is it not really event specific, do you think?
What, what's going
Kim Barthel: on?
I think my perception is, is that people hook it.
I don't know.
But it's the event is a moving target of placement of underlying angst.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
And you feel this angst is getting greater.
Kim Barthel: I do.
And there's a sense of Need for increased compassion and connection, connection
with each other as a way of in, in a way that is honoring of each other's
beliefs, values, systems of engagement.
So there, there is a need for honoring connection, but, and,
and being heard and valued.
More than I've ever seen.
Rupert Isaacson: What are the tools?
What's the main tools that you go in?
And again, I'm putting, I'm imagining the listeners.
Probably nodding as they're driving listening to this thinking.
Yeah, actually gosh This is a lot of the people walking through my door right
now This is a lot of my clients set even because I think for a lot of us who
started with Working with say, you know quite severely autistic people and so on
although We still do, but now we've kind of worked with everybody and it seems
that everyone's amygdala is jangling.
and now people are walking through our door who would not have walked
through our door five years ago, I think, you know, pre pandemic.
So when you begin your workshops, can you, can you tell us what's in your toolbox?
What are, what are like the five, six main things that you walk in there
and say, listen, lads, this will help.
Kim Barthel: Well, the very first thing that happens.
In a workshop, in any workshop, in every workshop is story storytelling.
I mean, one of the things I think that I am known for is plugging
into story, which is so different than sharing of information
and through the.
emotional vibration of story, it immediately creates a
sense of I'm not alone.
Rupert Isaacson: Common humanity.
Yeah.
Kim Barthel: Yeah.
And I think that, you know, like, for example, one story I tell all the time is
about a kid that sat in my office for two years, In the Arctic of Canada, who was
an elective mute, he had witnessed his grandmother be mauled by a polar bear.
And he had nine different labels attached to him.
And he was so angry and so dangerous.
And he sat with me in silence for two years.
And I felt like such a failure.
Because I wasn't doing anything.
I wasn't doing psychotherapy.
It felt empty, and I worried about him all the time.
When we left the Arctic, I was concerned that he, in fact, may end
his life or be dangerous to others.
And so five years after leaving this location, I got to see him again.
And he walked up to me in the Inuit Centre in Southern Canada and said, You, Blondie.
I heard his voice for the first time.
And he said to me, want you to know, you stopped me from killing
myself every day for two years.
And I carry you with me in my head and my heart every day.
And the reason that story is so important is because it's not about doing, it's
about being with people from a state of love, presence, connection, and all of us
worry about what it is we're going to say.
Okay.
Hmm.
And so.
That story, for example, leaves people feeling, I can do that too.
I can show up, be present, sit with people, listen, tap into
love, and that has meaning.
Rupert Isaacson: This is really interesting.
you know, I have a couple of boys that come to me from a local international
school, more or less weekly.
And, They
come with certain stories,
and what I find
their great need is, is for space and moving through nature.
And of course I can provide that because I can take off into the forest with them
with a couple of horses so that when they get, initially they actually often want
to walk, but then when they get tired, their legs get tired, they can ride.
And I can provide things like the creek, and groves of beech trees, or
a particular oak, or a place we know where you're likely to see deer, or a
little thing where, a place you have to scramble over some rocks, and it changes
with the season, places we go to gather apples in the fall or in the winter.
Cherries in the early summer or whatever.
And what I find you're dead right is that the stories just come out.
I don't need to ask much except once they get rolling, of course, oxytocin,
rocking the hips, they tend to talk.
once they're on that horse, you know, it's a communication hormone, but then I can
then respond and then what often happens is there's just mutual storytelling.
So the story can be, you know, Me talking about what's going on in the landscape,
that's a story, or why the landscape looks the way it does, and that's a story.
could be history, could be geology, could be, and then maybe
an experience that I've had that matches an experience that they've
had, and it becomes a conversation.
And I think you're right that, that this type of connection
and this type of conversation, funnily enough, can't be taken for
granted anymore, but it used to be.
What do you think about that?
What, I mean, have we, are we, losing?
The, the skill to converse and connect.
Kim Barthel: There are a few, there are some,
Rupert Isaacson: just to talk, yeah, talk to me about that.
Kim Barthel: There are beautiful elements in what you said that are
more than just the conversation.
And it's the concept of holding space, which is bigger than dialogue that
comes with intention, and a sense of willingness to be present to the other.
And that is a skill set because it requires attunement.
So as I listened to you tell the story of nature, which does so much
of the work for us and the presence of the horse, which does so much of
the work, it makes room for safety
for relationship to perhaps be safe for the first time for some of the
people that join us in these spaces.
Safety cannot be taken for granted.
So the elements of nature and the horse and you, what a combination of opportunity
that is active in evoking a sense or a portal to the feeling of safety.
Rupert Isaacson: Is it the feeling of, yeah, so it's, it's not so much perhaps
then, Or is it not so much, perhaps, then, that we're losing the ability to converse,
or we're losing the ability to connect?
Because we seem to connect, you know, whenever we can, and
we're a connective species.
But, is it safety that we've lost?
Is it, weirdly, although most of us live in very, very safe, physically very
safe, environments, why have we lost?
A sense of safety.
Kim Barthel: Well, when you ask that question to me,
I'm not sure I ever had it.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm . Go on.
Kim Barthel: Really?
I mean, I'm right, but
Rupert Isaacson: you're not, the, the bums are not dropping, you know?
No.
Right.
Where you are.
You know what I mean?
It's, it's, so, there's a
Kim Barthel: difference between physical safety
Rupert Isaacson: mm-hmm
. Kim Barthel: And emotional safety.
You can grow up in the most safe home community and feel completely dismissed.
Emotionally disconnected, not valued, not seen, not heard.
You can grow up in affluence where everything is abundant in your
environment and still not feel felt.
By another person.
So safety is relative and we have that dialogue all the
time that what is safe to one.
I mean, there are so many communities where there is danger and there
is emotional relational safety.
Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
No, you're right.
I mean, I observed that among the sun and the Bushmen, whether, you
know, you go out into the bush and there's lots of dangerous animals
out there, but of course people are very competent in that environment.
So they know how to minimize those dangers, but what they're not
afraid of is their fellow human.
At least.
Not their own fellow humans.
maybe some of the ones that come in from the outside, but
given that we have, I mean, okay, there are wars going on and so on,
but given that most of us have more physical safety, I think, than ever,
is that almost like an inverse correlation between that and a
sort of deadening of community?
And does community almost need a certain amount of mutually
experienced risk in order to connect?
Kim Barthel: I do believe that shared experience of danger creates an
interesting sense of intimacy because of the collective collaboration required.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
Yes, we cannot fragment or the hyenas will eat us sort of thing.
Kim Barthel: Exactly.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Kim Barthel: I mean, I will never forget.
I worked on the India Pakistani border during post earthquake.
And these are people that generally day to day despise each other.
And under the conditions of shared danger, they carried each other back and forth.
Into safety the the shared experience at least temporarily brought them
into a space of care for each other.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
And presumably we don't want to create, you know, unnecessary dangers.
Is it that we need to create joint senses of purpose?
Kim Barthel: Correct.
Completely.
And is
Rupert Isaacson: the hopelessness that you're talking about
actually purposelessness?
Kim Barthel: Exactly.
And I think that that becomes revealed.
As the dialogue unfolds, that there is a sense of emptiness, purposelessness,
and a sense of disconnection.
Rupert Isaacson: So, okay, you go into these workshops with story.
Yeah, that's how it starts.
That's your opening that toolbox.
Kim Barthel: Yep.
Rupert Isaacson: What else is in that toolbox?
And then what happens
Kim Barthel: is one story, I call it the sideways approach.
I tell a story, and then the resonance of the tuning fork starts.
And people's light bulbs go on.
And.
We weave back and forth between information.
This is what's happening in the nervous system when, and what the
information does is decrease shame
that when people have a general understanding of their nervous
system, they feel like, Oh my gosh.
It's not that I'm fear, you know, that I don't have enough courage.
It's not that I'm flawed.
It's not that I don't have enough skills.
It's that my nervous system is doing the best that it can with what it has.
And that, that knowledge which creates a sense of self compassion and, and
allows people self understanding.
And I got a great example of that.
I was supporting a veteran, in the Ukraine, doing work by Zoom.
And he had just been in combat and was describing his experience of combat
and all of the bombs around him.
And he said, that's not what I'm having.
flashbacks about.
What I'm stuck on, he said, is the fact that I soiled myself during combat.
Rupert Isaacson: And I
Kim Barthel: feel so, you know, he pooped his pants.
He said, I feel like I'm so, he used not capable.
And then when he understood, this is exactly what your nervous system does.
When you are in these states of self protection.
Rupert Isaacson: Now that surprises me because I know
a few people with that story.
And in combat units, there's often just a sort of running dark humor that,
yeah, the battlefield smells of shit.
Because that's what's going on.
was there no camaraderie with his unit in that regard?
Kim Barthel: I would say definite camaraderie, but lack of knowledge.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Kim Barthel: I mean, this is early on, the onset of the Ukraine conflict.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Kim Barthel: And many of them are not even soldiers.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, yeah.
Kim Barthel: everyday citizens solicited into combat without any prep,
without any knowledge and, and creating a so called platoon out
of without training at that time.
So I think that it speaks to the development.
of connection, perhaps through those experiences
and, and the, the chance to be together as a team.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
Speaks to your earlier point.
Go ahead, sorry.
Kim Barthel: It speaks to your earlier point of shared danger and being
able to work that through together.
Rupert Isaacson: He must also have felt a great sense of pride
at having stepped up to defend
Kim Barthel: his
Rupert Isaacson: country from a terrible aggressor.
So would you say that
his shame was still outweighed by his sense of worth for having fulfilled that
role, or did it actually impact his sense of worth for having fulfilled that role?
Kim Barthel: I love that question, and as I pause to contemplate that
question, the speed with which the shame transformed, speaks to the lack of
its grip on the overall sense of self.
It was more, you know, there's shame in the core self, which is so deep
and this was more shame around action at one time that shifted in its grip
of his nervous system and day to day.
Coping that didn't take long to transform.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay,
Kim Barthel: so your question makes me think that it really, when we think
about the complexity, this is what you're asking is the complexity of trauma and
all the variables in an individual psyche that make it complex, complex trauma.
This person, I would say, did not have.
A history of developmental trauma in his, in his persona that made the
traumatic experience be tagged as more event based rather than holistically
having a grip on his entire being.
It was such a good question you asked.
Rupert Isaacson: It makes me, it brings another question, which is,
is that I think everyone, everyone who's listening to this works with
trauma to some degree and also probably their own at the same time.
It's so interesting.
Is shame a paper tiger?
Is shame a chimera?
Is shame just our psyches and the conditioned colonized psyche,
which for social control, you know, religion, whatever, make us feel
ashamed of masturbating or whatever.
And so therefore we'll go be depressed and fight your wars for you.
Basically that sort of thing, just be, you know, repressed and unhappy and therefore
very happy and willing to pick up a gun.
Is shame actually just
an illusion, almost like a hologram to scare us, and is it even real?
Is it even necessary?
Kim Barthel: Well, I think, you know, the urge in my response to your question is
to think from my neurobiology perspective.
Orientation.
Go on.
In that, we are, I believe, wired for connection.
And any time there's a sniff of rejection, abandonment, separation, difference,
the nervous system notices this and contributes to the box that we identify
as the shame parts of ourselves, because shame doesn't live there alone.
We are each made of many parts.
You described in my vet, the pride, which stands beside the shame.
Right?
So we are not one or another, but our nervous system, for example, our
amygdala, one third of it is designed to notice the non verbal cues of rejection.
And that gets tagged alongside a sensory experience.
So if I'm, for example, poop my pants, and the guy beside
me looks at me with disgust,
Then I'm going to code those simultaneous cues and they accumulate
in my nervous system to contribute to those parts of myself that experience,
I'm not good enough, I'm flawed.
And they can stack up,
which is I think what people talk about when they describe things like
microaggressions or experiences of racism and ableism, things that make
us feel different than others, which the nervous system can perceive as
significant enough to feel traumatic.
Rupert Isaacson: Right, because they carry the risk of ostracism and our
nervous system says, if you're ostracized.
The hyenas get you.
Kim Barthel: You're not safe.
And
Rupert Isaacson: I,
Kim Barthel: and I think, so the illusion that you're talking about,
I think we will give up ourselves to sustain connection at all costs, really.
With our people.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
That's gang culture, isn't it?
Yeah.
Kim Barthel: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Now.
Okay.
There's jumping ahead of myself.
So I'm just, the question that formed in my mind, I'm going to leave for a moment.
So you open your toolbox.
See.
We've gone story.
Kim Barthel: Sorry.
Rupert Isaacson: Action.
We've gone informing people about their nervous system, which can transform shame.
Useful.
What's next?
Kim Barthel: Well, in the moment, it usually, what usually happens
in front of our eyes is activation.
Rupert Isaacson: Tell us, can you define what does activation mean?
Kim Barthel: People in the audience typically have a response to
the story or to the information and That looks like many things.
Sometimes it looks like anger.
Sometimes it looks like, changes in power in their face color.
You can also see dissociation where people, their eyes become empty.
And this is why it's so good to do this work as a team, because it's hard to
see that in large numbers of people.
You, you can also feel it, as I know you know what I mean.
You feel it in you.
Ooh, the energy in the room just changed.
There was more silence.
There was big space in time that seems to require more processing.
So the actual process is in front of your nose of what it is can be helpful.
And so stepping into that, for example, I have a person in the audience
who puts up their hand and either engages in active defense, or someone.
you know, over to my right checks out.
I may then move closer to them in physical proximity in a very
careful, cautious, kind way.
And then I'm narrating what I'm doing.
I see this is really hard, this conversation.
I put sometimes my hand on my own chest.
And validation is critical.
When someone gets angry at something that you've said, which is just
another indication of a stress response, it's a moment of, oh,
I hear you, I feel you, I see you.
And this is what we needed, wanted as children in the attachment,
where the resilience came from or could come from in the first place.
So in a sense, what we are doing is repeating the formula.
Over and over and over again, of the very same thing we wanted as infants.
And, so even though you're talking about the brain, it's
like a portal into the soul.
And the person in front of you, who says, you know, that's just
bullshit, for excuse me, my language, but, and you say, ah, I feel ya,
you know, that, that just hit something there.
And there's no interpretation.
No, my desire to want to fix it.
Right.
You just sit there in the presence of sadness, anger, fear,
like a container for those feelings, which is what often didn't happen for
many of us when we were little people told us, don't cry, don't be mad.
Come on, big boys.
Don't cry.
Or it's more subtle than that.
We get moved on quickly or someone shores us up, Hey, but look at
all the great things you can do.
So that capacity to sit in connection to one's own feelings
is where the resilience comes from.
And that emerges from having somebody do it with you.
Rupert Isaacson: At what point do you explain to the people in the workshop that
this is how they're building resilience?
Because when the amygdala is activated, as you know, anger, dissociation, fear,
the intellect has gone on vacation.
So,
One cannot in that moment appeal to an intellectual or logical process.
So, can you talk us through, through that then?
Amigdala is activated.
You want, yes, you're validating.
And at the same time, you would like to be able to show them.
But look, you're building resilience here.
by allowing yourself to have this emotion and then move through this emotion to
the next emotion, talk us through the skill sets that you help people to
garner.
Kim Barthel: I think I wish the audience could see that I'm smiling because
the answer is it depends, you know, it depends on a number of variables.
The formula is always the same.
Really?
What changes?
is the duration, the timing.
This is attunement,
Rupert Isaacson: right?
The, you get better, better at it, it gets quicker, better
Kim Barthel: at it.
At attuning,
when to move in, when to back out, when to just nod, when to move my body away.
Sometimes it's too intrusive to be up close.
When to actually change the subject sometimes, when to front load with
information, when to step into emotion.
This is 40 years of practice.
Of skill of doing lots of messing up and continuing to
mess up and continuing to repair.
And at the same time, I often, often, not always, but often am narrating
what I'm doing while I'm doing it.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Kim Barthel: So that the audience is like a witness and
an experiencer at the same time.
Rupert Isaacson: So that, does that mean that when someone has had an
amygdala reaction, Within the workshop or session client session or whatever is
the validation followed by the is it the validation that
allows the amygdala to relax?
Kim Barthel: Yes.
Rupert Isaacson: And opens the way to the intellect because is it the
validation that says to the amygdala?
Don't worry.
You're actually not about to be rejected and left out for the hyenas.
We remain connected despite the fact that.
You're waving your arms around and shouting or whatever that
would normally drive people away.
I'm validating you here, so I'm staying with you.
And then some seconds pass and the amygdala deactivates the cortisol.
Kim Barthel: Sometimes it's not seconds.
Sometimes it's hours.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Okay.
So you have that time in a workshop?
You have that time in a
Kim Barthel: client session?
Yeah.
Yes.
And no, here's how, here's how I'm just
Rupert Isaacson: thinking about, you know, some say here I'm in
the arena with my horse, with this person and they've kicked off.
I don't have, you know, a week and you're
Kim Barthel: going to also have another opportunity.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Kim Barthel: Okay.
But, but the validation is needs a little bit of clarity here.
You're meeting people where they are.
You're showing up.
It's like I'm enraged and you stand there and.
Meet me without joining me.
The validation is not validation of the information.
I'm not validating your story.
I'm validating your, your, your, the truth of your experience.
What it is that you are feeling, and that's the, the portal to safety.
Right there.
Right.
And, but in that, I'm not all nicey nicey all the time.
A lot of times, you know, someone is swearing at me, well, I work
with youth, who, you know, swear words are as common for them as and.
And they're in your face.
If I was all nicey nicey and nurturing all the time, they would feel
that that's not authentic, right?
It's, it's meeting you in the vibration, finding it in me.
Rupert Isaacson: So when you're not nicey nicey, then can you
give us an example of that?
Like, okay, I'm effing and blinding at you now, and wanting to get a rise out of you.
so it's don't nicey nicey, but at the same time, You don't want to be too not nicey
nicey, so, yeah, talk us through that.
Kim Barthel: The not nicey nicey doesn't come out necessarily in words.
It comes out in your body.
When you think about nurturance, for example, the non verbals that we draw
from in nurturance, typically, are how you use your voice, melodic, how you
might use your eyes, how you lean your body in, what your gestural system does.
It's A gestural, it's a non verbal approach system, whereas
when there is anger or threat.
It requires boundary for the other and me, that's containment.
So that often demands from me standing up tall, pulling all my energy
up, using my voice in a different tone and saying, this is not okay.
I can.
Be with you in your anger, but I do not need to accept your rudeness.
That would be an example.
Rupert Isaacson: You don't see, what's the reaction to that?
Do they usually,
Kim Barthel: it's usually, yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Kim Barthel: Because I'm not going to go.
And, you know, I wrote, I wrote a book with a, a former
national hockey league champion.
Who survived by rage and you know that I use my greatest teacher
because I would say that my greatest fear was rage and the feeling of
violence and You it takes practice to step in Boundary and not own it
as an example.
Other people are completely activated by crying and tears.
Yeah.
Or they feel manipulated, right?
Or out of control.
We each have our own blind spots.
And to meet the other person where they at means I have to do the
work of being able to have a place for those emotions within myself.
Rupert Isaacson: One of the things which, I try to cultivate, I don't,
you know, Always managed to, but I do try is, I call it the happiness garden.
where,
when I'm in challenging situations or feeling disappointed or
it doesn't have to involve another person, you know, but it can do.
I, the last five years or so, I've tried to make a practice of feeling
like there's a, a happiness garden in my chest and that I'm, when I'm feeling.
Rocky, I'm, I'm st.
I'm in that happiness garden.
I'm still in that happiness garden.
And I find this is helpful, and I find that the way to nurture that
garden and have access to that garden more or quicker is gratitude.
now trauma of course
is the amygdala at, you know, it's, it's the amygdala at work.
It's the, it is the memories of the amygdala.
It's the amygdala, you know, it's all, it's all amygdala all the time.
So.
When a therapist, practitioner of some kind, is experiencing someone else's
amygdala firing, their own amygdala, of course, fires in response, the
therapist or practitioner has their own traumas and triggers, naturally.
Then, let's say you've got a horse involved and you're actually trying
to keep that person alive because horses are dangerous pieces of kit.
and they need you, you talked about standing up tall and finding this
inner resilience and this inner resource to be able to say, I meet
you where you are and I see you and I do empathize with you, but I don't
have to be, you don't have to be rude.
That's taken you a while.
I would imagine to get to that point.
I'm sure you weren't always that
Kim Barthel: good
Rupert Isaacson: at it, right?
A lot of people are coming into this field of work now in
their twenties and thirties.
When we first began with Horseboy, for example, you know, it was all the people
we were training were people who were already being practitioners for a long
period of time and they were just looking to add to their toolkit, you know, they
were already good at what they did.
Now, this has become something of an industry and this is a good thing
because it means more people get served.
But for example, some of the Horseboy centers, now that are opening, we
need to staff them and we need to staff them with younger people.
And, you know, you look at these people and go, wow, yes,
it's amazing and beautiful that you're attracted to this work.
And at the same time, you know, your life experience and your own
traumas are going to, you know, sit very front and center in your mind,
and you're going to get triggered.
and you're not Kim Buffell, you know,
Kim Barthel: with gray hair,
Rupert Isaacson: what do you, what do you, you're going to get some gray hairs
in the course of this work, but, what's your suggestion for people that are
really coming into this line of work?
Because I think a lot of times they get.
caught on the back foot a little bit, by how demanding
it can be this way emotionally.
Kim Barthel: I love that.
I love all your questions and your happiness garden, because
what this work is really about.
Remember, at the beginning when we talked about gallivanting around
the world and You know, we are sharing information, but we're also
gathering information and evolving.
Every minute is a opportunity to evolve one's self.
Rupert Isaacson: And
Kim Barthel: the truth of the work is, calm and regulated is different.
Regulation, and I think I said this last time, regulation is
about being connected to yourself.
And so the, it's not about being perfect.
It's about being authentic.
So for example, I've got a really great example.
my daughter who I adore and love lives here with us recently, and
we have been away for six months.
And came home last night and I came into the studio this morning just to come in
and be with you and it was a disaster
Rupert Isaacson: of the tequila bottles and
Kim Barthel: right.
It was well, not quite like that, but not ready to be in a, in
a, you know, in a useful state.
Yeah, and there's enough security in the relationship and enough.
Security within me now to say to her this is very frustrating.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah,
Kim Barthel: without fear of damaging the relationship
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah,
Kim Barthel: so I had to connect in normally ten years ago I would have sucked
it up cleaned it up been pissed off and it would have leaked out somewhere else
Rupert Isaacson: Mm hmm
Kim Barthel: in the relationship Whereas if I can pause and say to myself,
I don't like this, this, this feels like a boundary violation or I don't
feel valued in this situation or whatever words come, I'm actually
taking care of myself in that moment.
And what's fascinating about that self acknowledgement.
Is it actually changes it?
I found it quite funny in that it took me about two minutes and then it was like,
Oh, this is such an irrelevant thing.
Whereas historically I would have been mad for three, four hours.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Kim Barthel: So that that's the authentic connection where I can
genuinely connect into whatever it is that is activated, whether it's little
or big and not talk myself out of it.
Then it moves on its own, rather than me having to have it leak out, as I say,
in other things that I'm trying to do.
And I've done that with clients.
I've said things like, Oof, I'm sharing this with you right now.
I'm so activated.
Right now, I can't be with you until I'm with me a little bit longer.
I'm very authentically, I don't tell them the story of why
I'm activated, but I'm very
Rupert Isaacson: So that doesn't trigger shame in them.
For sure.
Kim Barthel: And plus they're going to read it anyway.
They're going to read it in my, especially a kindled
Rupert Isaacson: amygdala
Kim Barthel: is going to read the potential nonverbal of
disconnection in a millisecond.
And they're going to think it's about them.
Rupert Isaacson: So what do you, what do you say to, to safeguard that they
don't dissolve into a puddle of shame?
When
Kim Barthel: I will say, Ooh, this one's mine.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
So you, you, you say right up front, this is me, not you.
Or I'm
Kim Barthel: with you in this one.
We're in this one together.
I also use a lot of humor, Rupert.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Kim Barthel: A lot of humor.
I've got a dry sense of humor.
I make it very light.
Rupert Isaacson: For those of you who can't see Kim on the Zoom, she is in
fact sitting here in a pink gorilla suit.
It is true.
That's not true!
But,
Kim Barthel: you know, it's not all gloom and doom.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, that's true.
No, I think this is a really good point, lightheartedness.
So I, one of the, one of the guidelines in Ospoi method, movement method, tacky in
any of our programs is humor, particularly toilet humor, actually, because it's an
act of rebellion, you know, for people who are over therapized and kids who've been
told there's something wrong with them.
And, you know, and you can teach all science through poo, you
know, all the time, but because it appeals to that sense of rebellion.
It restores self respect, you know, someone who's had their, been over
therapized, told that there's something wrong with them every day of their
childhood, you know, it's not good.
and their spirits are often broken.
And to restore self respect, you must rebel.
You have to.
and it can give a really good way to rebut, plus it's actually funny, you know.
And that's connection, and that's oxytocin, and also it's funny, you know.
it's, it's alright to do something because it's funny just
for the fact that it's funny.
Burp.
I do absolutely see that there can be such an over emphasis on seriousness.
Because we're trying to be sincere, we're trying to be authentic.
And we forget that part of sincerity and authenticness is, of
course, when one is light hearted.
And then the diffusion of conflict, through a well timed crack, is
like a gift from God, it's so true.
One of the things I think is, What I find can be tricky is that the world of
therapy can definitely attract controlling or fear based personality types who
want to be therapists perhaps because it gives them a sense of self control of
their own issues and so on and then that can end up being projected and so then
humour goes completely out of the window.
It's not, this is not appropriate, this is not the place for, you
know, and that word appropriate can then be wielded like a weapon.
how do you encourage humour?
Humour.
Because you, you must be dealing with some people taking themselves quite seriously.
Kim Barthel: I, I, I can be quite sassy, I think, and then quite tender.
So, you know, when one of the things is that it's a, it's a moving dial,
and then there's a narration of intent.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay, go on.
What do you mean by that?
Kim Barthel: I'll say, well, if I, if I get a perception, That my humor has
landed flatly or somewhat inappropriately
Rupert Isaacson: by the way Wasn't narration of intent the supporting
band in the 1983 tour of the smiths?
In canada,
Kim Barthel: I have no idea
Rupert Isaacson: Go on anyway, sorry
Narration of intent.
Okay.
So when you find your your your your and let's
Kim Barthel: say I've said something and it landed like, you know, like you just
made me laugh Mm hmm But if I didn't, or if I had done that to you and it didn't
laugh, I went, I would have said something like, well, that didn't go so well.
Rupert Isaacson: Right, right, right.
You take, you take, you take the joke on you.
Kim Barthel: Yeah.
Or, you know, my, my, my humor was not well timed there.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Right.
Well that went down like a lead balloon.
Yeah,
Kim Barthel: exactly.
I'm tracking myself
Rupert Isaacson: as
Kim Barthel: well as other.
All the time.
And so I'm noticing what's going on in here, in me, while I'm also
watching what's going on in you.
And you know, you've got, you've also got the information of the horse.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
Well that, that, this, this all, yeah.
Who's even
Kim Barthel: better than both of us, right?
Rupert Isaacson: It's like, I've been answering some of these questions myself
in my head, actually, because each time I asked him, I was like, yeah, but if
the horse is there, they kind of co regulate for you and bring you guys back
to the present and diffuse a lot of the conflict just by the fact that they're
so awesome and, you know, but of course, then let's say someone's coming to us
for a session and they're with the horse and the horse actually is picking up
a lot of, most of the slack this way.
Let's face it.
They're doing most of the work, of course, but then that person goes
home and they have to have tools When there is no horse around.
Talk to our practitioners and therapists who are listening now What are, for
you, you think, the most important tools that they can give their
clients, families, to take home to sort of keep that positive flow going?
Kim Barthel: You know, you talked about the happiness garden
as your tool.
That's a cultivation of cognition,
Rupert Isaacson: cultivation of cognition, cognition.
They actually supported narration of intent.
I think at the same Smith's concert.
And yeah,
Kim Barthel: there we go.
You got it.
Our bands are together.
So the cultivation of cognition means.
It's a very high order skill.
Rupert Isaacson: Go on.
Kim Barthel: You reflect to know when
you shift out of the predictive brain back into the desire to cultivate happiness, to
tap into gratitude, that's cognitive and
Rupert Isaacson: predictive brain being like pessimism.
Kim Barthel: Well, the predictive brain brain is definitely has a negativity bias.
Absolutely.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, that won't work because blah, blah, blah.
Exactly.
Kim Barthel: And it, it doesn't even come to consciousness sometimes.
Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
Kim Barthel: Just operating like Norton antivirus, running in the background,
producing, reproducing old habits.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
Kim Barthel: Neurons that fire together, wire together.
And, and so consciousness Negative
Rupert Isaacson: neuroplasticity, yeah.
Correct.
Kim Barthel: Consciousness is the last level
of, of true capacity to shift.
And sometimes that happens in a second and sometimes it takes years.
And it's very difficult.
So when, when you, when you ask me the question, what do you give someone
or what does someone take home?
Your, your, your, your gift of home is different for each client,
dependent on their place of entry.
The easiest place to create a shift is in the body, which I know you know.
Rupert Isaacson: Go on though, talk about this.
Kim Barthel: So even something as simple as I'm doing a, what we call
a butterfly tap, which is a rhythmic,
Tapping of the outline of my body with my hands.
Even that?
Rupert Isaacson: I'm just going to describe for listeners
because they can't see it.
So what, what Kim did, and it's funny, the moment you started doing it, I
felt a little oxytocin of connection.
So she, she crossed her arms.
So their hands, let's say you cross your arms.
So one hand would be on each shoulder.
And then she started to tap, Those shoulders and then down her arms
and down her forearms like that.
And it did indeed look like a bit of a butterfly.
That's a cool one.
Kim Barthel: And what it does is, at a very primitive level in the nervous
system, is increase the load of information of the body to the brain,
which really gives you an outline of you.
Like, this is me.
I'm here.
And it, it decreases the disconnection that comes with a flooded amygdala.
And Yes, it gives oxytocin, it also gives dopamine and
serotonin, that kind of activity.
But what its goal is, is to, in a sense, I don't even know if I like
this word, but ground you or bring you back to the present moment.
Like a breath.
So to me, the quick shift game changer, in a moment, can't involve much
Rupert Isaacson: cognition.
Yeah, because the amygdala doesn't allow it.
Kim Barthel: So, if I have a client, or you have a child that you're working with,
and you're giving support to a family, even when the parent does butterfly tap
as an example, then they are modeling that for the child, but as the parent
moves the energy of the child themself, it changes the energy of them both.
Rupert Isaacson: It's so interesting when I, you know, when I was at the
beginning of my autism journey with my own son and was sort of being kicked
around by the behavioral therapists.
You know, one of the things which, of course, they were all obsessed with
was quiet hands and telling my son to stop stimming as if he could understand
what they were on about anyway.
And it seemed to me, That he was stimming to self regulate.
Kim Barthel: Yes.
Rupert Isaacson: And I, when I used to watch him rocking and flapping and doing
that stuff, I would, I would kind of often think, yeah, I do that actually.
When I'm, when I'm.
Anxious I rock because that I'm later on I realized oh, that's about the body
trying to produce oxytocin to get you out of the amygdala So that you can actually
think your way out of a situation.
That's why we rock I didn't know that at the time obviously, but you know,
I would observe my own stims and Okay, they were dialed at maybe four 11.
I remember thinking Why would you
Kim Barthel: stop
Rupert Isaacson: that because that's the clue to a nonverbal person's
emotional state because sometimes the stims are happy stims and sometimes
the stims were and it's often the same movement, but it could be expressed.
Like a flat can be yay and a flat could be you know, but it's the
same movement of the wrists, right?
Kim Barthel: Well, you and I are on the same tuning fork again, because I've been
running around this planet for 25 years, pleading people to see the body as a use
of how we can come back into our, State of ease and please stop making people
stop whatever strategy or need that they have to feel at ease in their own being.
Could we please just honor that,
Rupert Isaacson: you know, back to your point about the veteran pooping
his pants and it's interesting.
I was thinking about a similar experience.
I had myself.
I was once mugged by five guys in a crowd in Africa and I've as the fists
were coming down on me and I was thinking, are they going to kill me?
What are they going to do?
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
I just felt myself pissing my pants and I says, but it's still
a voice in my head just went.
Yeah.
Well, of course I'm pissing my pants, you know, it's just a terrifying
situation you know, how, how normal.
It was interesting, there wasn't a sense of shame with it, but there might have
been in another context, who knows.
The, this idea of physicality in the body and giving people the nervous system
and the body to work with so that they can get out of the intellect which they
can get out of shame and then ironically reactivate the intellect but in a in a
more positive way the body to the mind the thing where we're all brutalized i think
and some early traumas what do you think about this is some really standard things
like when you're first at school you're not allowed to go to the toilet you've
got to sit there and override your bodily need And be sort of shamed if you need it.
Then again, you can then use the trip to the toilet.
Can I go to the toilet, please?
Mr.
Get out of that room.
A lot of kids do.
To flee.
But you're basically being told to override your nervous system.
And Some people might say, well, that's good because that, you know,
means that in those situations where you have to, in life, you can.
But I suspect one would learn that anyway.
These early cumulative unsafetinesses, you're going to be
unsafe if you react to your body.
then becomes, right, a habit of not reacting to the body and Then
constantly living in the amygdala which makes us suggestible and easily
manipulated and easily controlled.
Okay before we began this Recorded part of the conversation you told me that
you had been working with a school in northern Canada So it is trying to do the
opposite of this in an indigenous setting, and we know the indigenous settings
in North America are far from perfect.
And they are trying to actively decolonize education.
So how are they working with the nervous system?
Talk to us about that project.
Kim Barthel: How are they working with the nervous system?
They are trying to begin to move from the perception of
seeing themselves as victims.
So the concept that you just spoke of, Abandonment of self is what I call it.
So any, and this can begin at infant, I mean, first hours after birth.
If I have a caregiver who is doing the best they can with what they have, who
cannot read my cues or is preoccupied with their own suffering, then I,
as an infant at the very primitive circuitry of my brain, will abandon my
own body to sustain the relationship.
Okay.
So I'll dismiss my own hunger.
I'll dismiss my own fatigue.
I'll dismiss my own pain to sustain.
Unconsciously, I mean this is not the baby thinking, I'm gonna do this.
This is happening to ensure that we stay connected.
This is attachment.
And, and so you know, colonization disrupted a lot of what wisdom lived
in many of our indigenous people.
Communities around the process of attunement and attachment.
And so, many of the principles that I know that you subscribe to.
The use of the land, the use of nature, the connect, and
the use is not the right word.
Tapping back into what we know is becoming part of their, they, they have
a process called land and language.
Into the class, like the classroom is on the land.
And in the language, reconnecting to the meaning of what we knew and staying
connected to the presence of attuned learning as opposed to fed learning
in a traditional, that's what they would call colonized way, sitting in
a desk, having someone talk at you.
learning through imparting of information and remembering that
there are other ways of expanding knowing, ways of knowing and being.
Rupert Isaacson: How far in is this project?
Kim Barthel: Brand new.
Rupert Isaacson: Is it all grades?
Kim Barthel: No, it's very difficult.
Rupert Isaacson: Meaning, no, is it all grades?
Is it, is it like K through 12 or is it?
Kim Barthel: Oh, I thought you said, is it all great?
Rupert Isaacson: No.
Kim Barthel: I heard great.
Is it all grades?
Yes, all grades.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Kim Barthel: From preschool till grade 12.
Rupert Isaacson: Any
way that the listeners can find out more about this project?
Kim Barthel: Well, there is if you look up First Nations School Board in the Yukon.
Rupert Isaacson: First Nations School Board in the Yukon?
First Nations School
Kim Barthel: Board in the Yukon of Canada.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Kim Barthel: You would?
See their mission page, their, their endeavors, the
things that they, I can feel
Rupert Isaacson: a podcast coming up.
Yeah.
Kim Barthel: I feel so proud of them.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: First nations
Kim Barthel: school board, F and S B
Rupert Isaacson: school
board.
Kim Barthel: And I can send you the link to their website at the dialogue.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Do you, do you happen to have
URL even on your phone is your phone handy that just so that listeners
could pull over and Write it down because I think for for all of us
who are working We don't just work in therapy work in education, right?
We're teaching stuff
Kim Barthel: correct
Rupert Isaacson: while we're doing these things and You know, we're
actually, we're actually delivering curriculum quite a lot of the time.
And I would love to find out more about land and language, and
Kim Barthel: yes, I do.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
So
Kim Barthel: www dot
Rupert Isaacson: www dot
Kim Barthel: f nsb.
Do CF
Rupert Isaacson: nsb.
F N S B dot C A.
Fantastic.
I'm going to contact them.
Brilliant.
Awesome.
Kim Barthel: Good.
Whoo!
Rupert Isaacson: Mmm.
Kim Barthel: We stuck our toe in lots of different places.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, so many, in fact, that we're going to have to return.
I haven't even asked you what's about the work you've been doing with
Porges and Levine, who of course are, you know, like you, among the sit
sitteth in the firmament of polyvagal neuroscientific stuff up there on
Olympus where you guys have been.
And I'd like to delve into that more.
I'd like to talk much more about how you view attunement and what that
actually is because it's, it's so multi faceted, but people use that word a lot.
I'd like to delve more into the nervous system stuff, but we're,
we're, with the previous part of the podcast, we're probably at
about the two and a half hour thing.
So I want people to know that I'm going to cheekily ask Kim to come back.
And I'm just going to prepare a list of more questions.
Kim, would you be prepared to do that?
Because I just feel there's a ton more here.
I have
Kim Barthel: another, I have another wish on my wish list.
I'm just going to put it out there.
We we'll be back in Europe in the spring of 2025.
What would be really awesome is an opportunity to actually
do some work together.
Rupert Isaacson: Yes, please.
Let's do that.
Do you know when you're coming?
Kim Barthel: Yes, May.
Rupert Isaacson: May.
All right.
I
Kim Barthel: can't tell you the exact date at this moment, but we'll
be in Ireland, Bulgaria, Italy.
Germany's not that far away.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, also I work in all those countries too.
We have many projects in Ireland.
Bulgaria, I've never been to, so that's a great excuse.
, but Italy too, we, we actually run retreats in Italy.
, we run retreats in Ireland.
All right.
Tell what would that look like?
Would that be like a two day thing?
A five day thing?
A one day thing?
What, what, what do you think?
What does a Kim Barthel thing normally look like?
Kim Barthel: Well, what I was thinking is how could I be of service to you?
Not.
anything else.
Like my, my thought was, I need to learn about what you do.
, and how could I benefit from the, just like everything else, what
more is there to collaborate in and learn from in your presence as well.
So it's not so much, what am I bringing, but what can we
create together was my thought.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, absolutely.
I'm just trying to think.
What instinctively do you feel?
Do you feel it's a two day thing?
A three day thing?
I mean, in terms of what people can probably, we
Kim Barthel: could probably have fun in two days.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
All right.
Let's, you heard it.
Kim and I going to do it two days in the pub.
And
you can join me.
Kim Barthel: Because unlike you, I don't have the extensive experience, extensive
experience of hanging out with the horse.
And so that variable to me would be something that
would really deepen the work.
Rupert Isaacson: Well ponies are us.
And what you'll find is you'll bust me immediately.
It'd be like, Oh, I see.
Rupert's just full of it because the horse just does all the work.
Rupert, yes.
Hangs out next to him.
Which is basically true.
But going into the neurosensory stuff of why that is, how that
is, is interesting for sure.
And okay, well, I'm going to put that out there to our people that you and I will,
we'll, we'll do a collaboratory thing.
But I, I want to, I want to learn from you.
So, and I know many of our listeners do too.
Okay.
So we'll announce that.
Kim and I will, we'll get.
Kim Barthel: I'll send you when the calendar unfolds, which should be by
the end of the Christmas holidays.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay,
Kim Barthel: then we will have a clearer idea of our schedule.
Rupert Isaacson: And then just in case you're listening to this, in
fact, in 2027 or something, because these things tend to hang around.
Hopefully, when you get to this part of the thing, then
there'll be more information.
In 2027, more of these things.
So, look us up.
All right.
So Kim, people will want to know how to find your work and contact you.
How can they contact you?
Can people contact you personally?
Can they engage with you as a mentor?
Can you just talk us through all the options, please?
Kim Barthel: So our website, well, the name of our company
is Relationship Matters.
Rupert Isaacson: Relationship Matters.
Kim Barthel: Relationship Matters.
And the website is www.
kimbarthel.
ca.
We live on all the social media platforms under Kim Barthel.
I am tricky to connect with personally.
It's, it's really a nonstop, well, nonstop schedule.
We do do mentorships.
And they are not the most common thing that happens.
Right in our work and really it's about coming and joining us when we
are on the road in a workshop venue.
And
Rupert Isaacson: brilliant.
Kim Barthel: Thank you.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
So will you, will you come back on?
Kim Barthel: Yes.
Rupert Isaacson: And we can keep this conversation going.
Yes.
It's fun.
Kim Barthel: As I said, the tuning fork is resonant.
So let's, let's do it.
Rupert Isaacson: And I'm going to throw this one open to listeners.
Lads, if you've got questions Send them into me admin at N T L S N T
L S dot C O and we will make sure that we hold Kim's feet to the fire
to get answers for those things.
Because I know so many people do have questions for you.
And our mutual friend, Leanna tank, who is an amazing occupational therapist.
He works with the most.
dangerous criminals in lockdown in psych units in, in the Midwest is also I feel
a mentor and she brought us together.
So
Kim Barthel: what
Rupert Isaacson: I might do if it's all right is bring her in actually
on the next podcast and then we could include, make it a three way thing.
Amazing.
That'd be good.
Okay, brilliant.
I'm going to wax her.
All right.
Kim Barthel: All right,
Rupert Isaacson: Kim.
Amazing.
Thank you.
Kim Barthel: Happy holidays
Rupert Isaacson: to you too.
Speak soon.
Okay.
You bet.
Take care.
Kim Barthel: Thanks.
Rupert Isaacson: thank you for joining us.
We hope you enjoyed today's podcast.
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