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, we've got Jane Faulkner.
Jane Faulkner is like everyone who comes on Equine Assisted
World, jolly interesting.
She runs Equine Assisted Therapy Australia.
For those of you who are familiar with Equine Assisted Psychotherapy it's a
Fascinating tool for helping people get to the bottom of their stuff and make
the necessary changes that they need to to get to happier places in life.
And of course, because we're doing, it's being done with horses.
This is not, you know, sitting opposite somebody in a office on a
couch feeling terrible about yourself and sort of compounding the trauma.
The equine assisted psychotherapy work has been well studied for getting really
lasting outcomes and there seems to be a magic with mixing this with not
just the horse, but the movement and the environment that the horses create.
So, but what's interesting about Jane is that she did not come into horses.
As many of us did as sort of initiated cult members as children she came
in a little bit through the side door in a slightly indirect way.
And those of you who listened to our interview with Lynn Thomas, who founded
Igala might see a parallel there in that when people seem to come into the
equine assisted world, From outside of the equine world, often they can bring
with them insights that perhaps we horse obsessed people might not see because
we sometimes can't see the wood for the trees because we like ponies so much.
So, without further ado, I'm gonna hand over to you, Jane, and I'm going
to ask you how you got there because your, your, your story is fascinating.
And.
I think all of the adventures that you've had give you the perspective
to be able to offer what you offer to both clients and the people who
do your two year diploma in equine assisted psychotherapy in Australia,
and this thing of life experience.
In general is so important rather than just, I got a degree in therapy
and I like horses, so off, off we go.
Yeah it's, it's, it's very important that one has this great variety of experience.
So, Jane, over to you.
Can you tell us where you began in life and your early years?
Yeah.
Jane Faulkner: Yeah, sure.
So I grew up in a little town called Waterford in Queensland
in Australia with three brothers and on a river, the Logan River.
So it was kind of semi rural.
We were just on an acre, but we were surrounded by acreage.
So I was outside all the time as a kid swimming across the river playing soccer
and my neighbors actually had horses and so I loved them from next door.
So I remember going over and they used to put molasses in the feed.
I remember being excited about having some of the molasses, but
not really having much interaction apart from a pat other than that.
And I think I, yeah, I never really entertained having horses cause
I just knew that we couldn't.
So, I grew up to an English dad and an Australian mum.
And yeah, my childhood was.
I was quite a responsible kid and so I looked after my brothers and yeah,
just felt really at home outside was pretty bossy and it's true, it's true,
it was pretty bossy and had quite at that age, had quite a strong sense of
self then as a teenager, so I guess.
My dad was quite a very stressed out man and I think as kids,
we were quite scared of him.
So when I hit the teenage, so I learned to suppress a lot and
kind of be a really good kid.
So I didn't really ever get in trouble, did the right thing,
looked after my brothers.
But as I got into my teenage years, I started developing acne and
I think a big part of that was.
My emotions erupting through my skin.
So that kind of led me to really get curious about health and wellbeing.
And it made me, I think, think differently to a lot of my peers.
So I felt really ugly and a lot of shame around having the acne.
So.
I think I focused on I was focused on a career and learning and
yeah, understanding why my body was doing what it was doing.
So for me, I was lucky.
I had some amazing neighbors and they were into meditation and
they were into naturopathy and they kind of opened a door for me.
At 16 to kind of start looking into myself and getting curious about how
my thoughts were creating my reality.
I guess.
And I used to go to meditations with them at the time.
It was spiritual meditations, you know, where you're kind of, you know, Opening
up to the spiritual world and getting curious about all of that kind of stuff.
And I loved that.
I just, that was really kind of my jam.
From there as a teenager, I never really feel felt like I fit in because I, I
was, I look back and I realized I was a pretty deep kid and so, and I guess
feeling so ugly, I was never really into the, the mating game or the party scene.
I was more into learning about taking care of myself and my
health and understanding who I was.
So I was pretty not sure what I wanted to do when I left school.
Mom, mom was a nurse.
She was like, why don't you do nursing?
I studied nursing, and that was a real challenge for me because I could see how
the system wasn't really a health system.
It was kind of, it went against a lot of what I was learning about what health is.
And again, I guess I felt like I didn't really fit in and as a nurse as well, I
yeah, just worked, I think as a nurse, you're taught to not really, if you're
a better nurse when you don't have needs, so not having breaks and just
always kind of giving to your patients.
So, for me, I burnt out.
And because I loved, I loved the people contact, I loved talking with
people, but I just didn't like how people in the system were kind of a
number that people, the system wasn't interested in that person or the
history or why they might've developed the illness that they had developed.
So, after I studied nursing and when I worked as a nurse here
in Australia, I worked in a clinic in New Farm in Brisbane.
And we worked with so we worked with the local prostitutes and the
local transgender populations that were wanting to kind of transition.
So I loved that job and I loved the different people I worked with.
And I guess it was around.
What did
Rupert Isaacson: you love?
What did you love about that particular work in those particular populations?
Jane Faulkner: Yeah.
Thanks for asking me that, you know, I think it was their realness.
Their authenticity, they they were surviving, you know, I remember
having a client who was 13 living in a car, having to prostitute
herself and she was just so real.
There was no masks.
There was no bullshit.
There was, I need these drugs.
You know, she just kind of knew what she wanted, knew what she needed.
Yeah.
And I think.
I really liked that there was no having to work hard to work out
what she wanted or who she was.
It was just there in plain sight and I really loved that about yeah,
working at that clinic and I guess working with people as a nurse.
'cause you are seeing people at their most vulnerable, you know, people sick, dying.
Mentally ill and yeah, it gets rid of a lot of the pretense and the
superficial superficialities of life.
And I really liked that.
But as I said, so I liked the people part, but I didn't like the system part.
So for me, I traveled, I went overseas nursed over there.
And,
Rupert Isaacson: Overseas and over there is quite a large sort of, Sorry.
Blanket.
Jane Faulkner: London.
Yeah, so I worked in London.
I worked in the London Clinic.
I worked in one of the big hospitals in Northern London.
And then I worked as a private nurse.
Whittington.
Say, say again?
Rupert Isaacson: Whittington, by any chance.
Jane Faulkner: No, it wasn't.
It started with an R.
I can't think what it was called, huge hospital.
I just thought Whittington was the
Rupert Isaacson: one closest to me in North London.
Ah,
Jane Faulkner: ah, ah, yeah.
I wondered if I might have
Rupert Isaacson: walked past you accidentally on the street, perhaps.
Jane Faulkner: Yeah,
Rupert Isaacson: quite possibly.
Jane Faulkner: Yeah, yeah.
For me, going overseas was amazing because it gave me a chance to really
work out who I was and being overseas.
Not I went with my brother, my older brother, but we met a whole
new group of people over there.
And I remember having this realization that I can be who I want over here.
Nobody knows who I am and realizing how being at home.
I kind of.
Let myself be boxed into this persona that people thought of as Jane.
So for me, being overseas was really liberating.
I looked into a lot of different natural therapies again.
I was trying to get to the root cause of my health.
So I went and saw different flower essence practitioners.
I worked with an amazing shaman over there in London.
Rupert Isaacson: And what type of name
Jane Faulkner: was Yeah, her name was V.
Mascarelli and she was a French woman and she'd worked with a lot of shamans
through Africa and South America.
So we did a lot of vision kind of questing with the drum.
And yeah.
For me that work, I just felt like I, I'd come home in that work.
It felt very just, I just felt really comfortable in it when we
Rupert Isaacson: requested for someone who's never done that.
Jane Faulkner: Yes.
Rupert Isaacson: And, you know, got to remember a lot of the
listeners are coming out of.
You know, perhaps not quite such explorative yeah experiences.
When, what, describe how, what you saw when you were vision questing
with a drum, how it helped you.
Can you be kind of a bit, just specific briefly about that?
Yeah, sure.
Jane Faulkner: Yeah, yeah.
So for me I remember one particular.
It was like previous lives that I'd had that I went back to.
So, I remember one of them and I was like a crazy woman.
I remember had big hair and I was in a cage and I was kind of being taunted.
And vision questing is kind of weird because you're seeing things and
you're feeling things and you're having ideas about what these things are.
And for me, it was like a realization that I think I'd been a medicine woman
and I'd been kind of persecuted for that.
And that was super helpful for me to understand because a lot of myself
before that time, I'd kind of, Kept under wraps and not expressed to others and
yeah, just never dared share with people or so a lot of my even investigating
into the different healing arts that I investigated when I lived overseas,
I didn't share with my nursing friends that I lived with in a flat in London.
I remember because I was seeing a Chinese herbalist and I would cook the
herbs up in the flat in London and all my friends thought I was crazy and the
herbs stunk so they're like oh my god.
And not just the herbs, all
Rupert Isaacson: the insect casings and other stuff they give you.
Jane Faulkner: Yeah.
So So that was one of the vision, but other vision quests that just
made feelings I have in this life make sense or made decisions I make
or ways that I was in the world, it made those ways make sense.
And so in that way, it really helped me and also realizing that I experienced
that, which led me to do this.
I'm not experiencing that anymore, so I don't need to do this anymore.
So I found it hugely helpful.
Rupert Isaacson: Was it largely about letting go of things
that were unhelpful, basically?
Jane Faulkner: Yeah.
Yeah.
And getting insights into why I was doing those things.
Can I
Rupert Isaacson: ask you just before you go to the next phase
of your, of your life, you said your dad was very stressed out.
Why?
What was, what was stressing him?
Jane Faulkner: He was, so my dad was he was English and he grew up.
Rupert Isaacson: Oh, well that's right there.
Yeah.
Sorry.
Jane Faulkner: I didn't mean that.
I'm trying to.
So I think many things.
So when I think of his life now, like he remembers being eight and hiding
under a table as the bombs were dropping
Rupert Isaacson: and then
Jane Faulkner: his father and then his father died when he was 16.
And then as he kind of grew up, he went through a divorce and then
moved out to Australia and kind of had, I guess, four of us kids.
And I think it was his.
His stress of providing for us and I also think he was a person
that struggled to let things go struggled to yeah, struggled.
So he held a lot of emotion in, he didn't really share his, his
challenges or anything like that.
He just kind of would come home a ball of stress.
And I think he also had high expectations of, of us kids
and how we wanted things to be.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
Jane Faulkner: Yeah.
I was just going to say, he's a beautiful man.
I think it was yeah, just him not knowing how to process things.
And then home being the place where He could let out stress or
Rupert Isaacson: what did he do for a living out of interest?
Jane Faulkner: Yeah.
He was a civil engineer,
Rupert Isaacson: so lots of responsibility also standing on his
shoulders for the projects working for the bridges, not falling down
after they're built, et cetera, which is, which is not inconsiderable.
And as you, as you say, sort of growing up with the war, the blitz happening
around them and then post war austerity.
And I think there was just as, as someone who grew up you know, I'm not
obviously as old as he was, but I born in the sixties central London what's
now the financial district of London did not look then like it looks now.
A lot of it was still bombed flat when I was a kid and we played on the bomb sites.
And we found all sorts of things because of that archaeological stuff that have
been thrown up, you know, from the Iron Age onwards, but also lots of fragments
of bombs and that sort of thing.
And lots of houses still laid waste and shattered.
So I can also see how.
Kids that grew up sort of through the depression and then through the war
and then the post war austerity perhaps coming out to Australia and saying
well, you know you kids have it have it made you're here in the golden land
and the high expectations You talk about you know, you aren't hampered
by the things I was hampered with so therefore my expectations of you are
perhaps Higher than is comfortable.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah, I could see and I just wanted to ask you this because you know As
you know, when any of us are working in the equine assisted world, we
kind of want to know the picture.
We want to know the story.
I always feel the story is where the healing is.
And if we don't know the background story with our clients or the horses
we're working with, let alone ourselves.
It's very difficult.
Do you know what I mean?
Jane Faulkner: Yeah.
So thank you for just
Rupert Isaacson: sharing that because I think that helps inform me
Jane Faulkner: of
Rupert Isaacson: where you get.
So you're in, you're in London and you're, you're cooking up beetle casings and toad.
And you're also going to see a show, but you're also working
in as a, as a nurse in clinics.
Yes.
What happens to you next?
Jane Faulkner: So from there, I go to India and I so in, yeah, in London,
so I used to be a runner and I used to run around Kensington park every day.
And then I got shin splints.
I couldn't run anymore.
And I was like, oh, man, I, I, I'm a person that really
likes to move every day.
And there was a yoga sign and I was like, Oh, I've heard about this yoga.
I might give it a go.
So I went to a yoga class and it was awesome.
And I just loved it.
And so I started going to yoga every day and yoga wasn't cool back then.
And the internet hadn't really started
old back in the old days.
And So I asked the teacher, you know, where can I learn this and
they told me about a place in India.
So I went to India, studied yoga over there which was a huge eye opener for me.
I really wasn't expecting India to be like it was.
I'd been through Europe.
That's
Rupert Isaacson: another big blanket statement as someone
who's lived in India myself.
I want you to go into some details.
Also, what kind of yoga?
Jane Faulkner: So back then to start with, it was half the yoga back then at the
Shivananda ashram and I loved the ashram.
But for me, I remember arriving in India and I hadn't planned anything because
my brother and I had backpacked and we'd just arrived somewhere and pulled
out the Lonely Planet book and gone and got a hostel and anyway, I remember
getting to India and getting out of the plane and thinking in the plane,
thinking I'll just sit in the lounge.
And go through my lonely planet and work out where I'm going to stay.
I remember arriving in India and there was no lounge.
It was just literally.
Rupert Isaacson: And that smell as you get off the plane.
Yes.
The smell of like urine of 8 million people.
You can almost smell the plane comes down.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jane Faulkner: And then all these people, all these Indian
rickshaw drivers just around me.
And I, I.
Totally.
Yeah.
I was terrified.
So I went up to all these other Western women and I was like, where are you going?
Can I come with you?
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
Very, very
Jane Faulkner: wise.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Jane Faulkner: Luckily, one of the women said, yep, you can come with me.
She was a medical student and she was over there to work in hospital.
So I went with her and I remember just the shock.
So it was about 3 a.
m.
in the morning over there.
The shock of
Rupert Isaacson: when the plane got in.
Jane Faulkner: Yeah, yeah,
Rupert Isaacson: dangerous time.
Yeah.
Jane Faulkner: Yeah.
Yeah.
So, and I remember, yeah, just driving through the streets and seeing bodies
on the ground and you know, beggars on, you know, that those wooden slats with
the wheels underneath and, and just that the shock of that in my system.
And.
Yeah, so, and then we were in the local YHA and I didn't leave the hotel
the next day I was so frightened.
I remember just eating like the plainest biscuits and being very scared.
And then Was that in
Rupert Isaacson: Bombay, now Mumbai, or was that No,
Jane Faulkner: it was Chennai.
Mumbai.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Madras.
Yeah.
So, not even a huge venue.
Hot, humid, crowded, crazy.
Yeah.
Jane Faulkner: Yeah.
Yeah.
And then getting the, I think I've got the train down to Kerala,
which was where the ashram was.
And I'm, I remember arriving at the ashram.
I can't remember much about the train trip.
I was probably terrified the whole time.
But I remember arriving at the ashram and they were chanting.
And I remember thinking, Oh my God, this is a cult.
And just being really worried about what I'd shown up to.
And then I think the next day the training started and I just loved it.
It was people from all over the world.
It was a huge group of people in this training.
And yeah, just learning all about yogic philosophy.
And.
just living in that ashram life.
I just, I loved it.
For
Rupert Isaacson: those people who have never lived in an ashram
and don't know what that entails.
Can you tell us, walk us through a day in an ashram and, and with the yoga
practice, when, what is it doing for you?
What's happening in your body?
What's happening in your brain?
Why is this good for you?
Jane Faulkner: Yeah.
So you would, we would start the day early.
So with sunrise and we would go into the big hall and meditate.
So we'd sit in silence for an hour.
And then we would chant.
So, we would chant all these different mantras and kind of,
ah, they're not called songs.
What are they called?
My brain's Yeah.
Well, helping me.
Yeah.
But, but, but different, different kind of, yeah, mantras
mostly and the mantras, old
Rupert Isaacson: Sanskrit language
Jane Faulkner: in the old Sanskrit language.
Yeah.
So we would have a little, a chanting book and we would chant straight
from that book and, and the different mantras have different benefits.
So I know anytime we got in.
When we got into the bus to travel, we would chant a mantra
before we kind of traveled.
But yeah, so we'd start with that meditation.
Then we would.
Do the chanting for an hour and a half, and then we would do
our practice, our yoga practice.
And that I think went for another hour and a half, and then we would have breakfast.
Then we would have Karma yoga, which is like jobs.
Mine was to clean the toilet with a bit of coconut rusk.
That was interesting.
Yeah, it was pretty harsh.
And then we had yogic philosophy.
So we would learn about yogic philosophy.
Then I think we had a few hours off in the afternoon.
Then we'd have another hour and a half chant and then more meditation and
then more of a kind of yogic discourse of an evening and then go to bed.
Rupert Isaacson: So, when people are, the reason I'm wanting to pause
here in India at this ashram for a moment is I think it can be difficult
for Westerners to understand.
That's for example, if you, but if you, one replaces the word mantra
with the word Psalm or one replaces the word chant with the word pray.
And as a kid who grew up somewhat against my will as a chorister in the
temple church in, in London, you know, the call and response of the Psalms
and, you know, God be with you and with thy spirit and all of that stuff.
We can sort of assimilate.
Whether we like it or not as Westerners because we're
familiar with it it's around us.
And then we go out to, we see people in India, you know, with the shaved
head and a dot between their eyes and a body that is different to ours because
they're they're sitting there in a, in a, in a, Doty, you know, a cloth
instead of a pair of pants and, you know, a string that we wonder what that
string means that's around their torso.
And so it all looks very, very different.
But in fact, they're praying, and they're singing and, and, and,
of course, with even within the Western traditions, meditation is a.
has been a thing forever.
To quiet the mind.
Okay, we could see the benefits of that.
One of the things which I think is not talked about much is the benefits
of chanting and singing and mantras.
Why they work, whether it's people talking about, say, law of attraction
and Uh, affirmations, you know, putting an affirmation on your mirror, I am
worthy, or you are beautiful, or I am a money magnet, or whatever it is.
But this other thing about chanting peace into the world, and I know,
you know, like the, the Rastafarians talk about chanting down Babylon,
you know, bring it, chanting.
Evil from the world and sort of putting good into the world and then the
vibrations of within the body of these ways of breathing that create the mantras
and the chants seem to have incredibly beneficial effects on both our brainwaves.
They put EEGs on people's heads and and the immune system and so on,
but this is often not talked about.
And that's why I just wanted to pause here and say, you know,
it's not just navel gazing, right?
Jane Faulkner: No, no, not at all.
And I think of the wisdom of these ancient cultures.
And so I know with the, in the Sanskrit language, the different sounds have,
they believe have a different impact on different parts of our body.
So different sounds correlate to supporting different chakras.
And I guess for me back then, so I was 22 I just know how I used to feel
at the end of chanting, like my mind would clear, my heart would feel open.
I would just feel connected and free.
So, and when I think about it, I thought the yoga asana would have
the biggest impact or the meditation, but it was definitely the chanting
that had the biggest impact.
And especially, I think there was a group of 200 of us.
And so all of us chanting and it was powerful.
It was really, really powerful.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
And was it Nikola Tesla who said, if you want to.
Understand the mysteries that the universe think in terms of frequency and vibration.
And of course, what is that, but frequency and vibration, I guess.
Jane Faulkner: Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think I feel like I'm loving actually that science feels like
it's catching up to a lot of these beliefs and practices that
Indigenous cultures have had forever.
Yeah.
That kind of help us be whole humans.
And it kind of humors me a little bit that Western culture needs to wait for this
to
Rupert Isaacson: yeah,
Jane Faulkner: believe it's real or okay.
Or.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, the Catholic church was a powerful thing, Jane,
Jane Faulkner: wasn't it?
It really was.
Yeah.
I'm I'm realizing more and more each day, just how powerful the systems
that have governed our lives are.
Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
Absolutely.
You know, I don't know if you're aware that in the, in the 11th century in
Europe, there was a huge surge of mysticism within Christianity and figures
like Hildegard of Bingen who was the first, you know, female gynecologist,
the first, she's still the most published female composer, I think, of all time.
All her stuff is still out there in print.
She books on herbalism, but she also had crusades sent against her and her
nunnery and managed to fight them off because the local people were so reliant
on the medicine that she and her.
sisters were producing and then she managed to make friends
with the Holy Roman Emperor and sort of find safety this way.
But it in this sort of went on and then in by the 16th century the church was
actually banning A lot of the chants
Jane Faulkner: that
Rupert Isaacson: were on a six note scale that people like Hildegard Bingen
were using because people were saying, well, with this we feel so connected to
God, we sort of don't need the church.
That was not good news for the church.
So, yes, as you say, the desire for control before you even get
to things like witch burning, and you know you're talking about.
a past life, you know, vision, experience in your shamanic thing of perhaps being
a medicine woman who was persecuted.
And that must be in the ancestral lines of so many women in our culture and men.
We live, we live where I'm interviewing you here.
If I look to the North through the window, I look towards a town called Itchstein.
I'm in Germany, which has a witch's tower.
where they were all kept.
There's a memorial with the names, because they kept the names, of
all the people that were burned, and half of them were men.
But yes, anyone, anyone with any sort of connection to God.
So you're saying, you know, you find it funny that we're having, science is
having to catch up in Western culture, but of course we killed science, didn't we?
We killed science along with spirituality.
Jane Faulkner: Yeah.
Yeah.
The true science where you can think.
And it's interesting as I hear you talking, I'm thinking of the First
Nations people here in Australia and their ways and their connection
to country and their, their deep spiritual connection and insight.
And.
How, when the white man came over here, how threatened white
people were of those first night, that first nation spirituality.
And I was working with amazing first nations elder.
I did some of the, some training with her just on how first nations
people view spirituality and how.
They work spiritually and she was saying how, when the white man came and
started to kind of see the First Nations magic and spirituality, how the First
Nations people actually made decisions to shut down different aspects of their
spirituality to kind of keep themselves safe because it was such a threat to.
Yeah, the white people that had come.
Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
Absolutely.
And I think that's a, that's a, that's a tale that could be told from any
Jane Faulkner: everywhere
Rupert Isaacson: culture that was impacted by the colonial experience.
And the colonial experience, of course, wasn't just white.
You know, it's happened from Asian country to Asian country.
It's happened within Africa, from African to African, it's happened.
But obviously the big one was what exploded out of Europe.
Jane Faulkner: Sorry,
Rupert Isaacson: what
Jane Faulkner: I, what I am loving is in Australia I feel like there's an
awareness of that our systems are broken, so our health school, and I'm loving
that we're getting more and more curious about our first nations people's systems.
And so it's kind of in Australia, we're starting to see this.
blossoming and this curiosity and this an openness now, which, and, and
a respect for First Nations culture and ways, which I'm really loving.
Rupert Isaacson: So, Well, I want to return to this a little bit later because
I, I have a very profound experience with my autistic son, with the cuckoo
langi or up in the Daintree rainforest.
Wow.
A very profound healing.
But, so yes, I'm absolutely with you.
So
Jane Faulkner: before you move on, yeah.
We have a cultural advisor and they are people.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Then we, we, she probably knows the healer that healed my son.
She
Jane Faulkner: probably does.
She's amazing.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
We'll talk
Jane Faulkner: about that.
Quite a
Rupert Isaacson: small world.
Yes, it is.
Okay.
So you're in India, you're, you're finding that the chanting, that quieting the
mind, the cleansing of the body through the chanting, that obviously the yoga
practice is good for your body as well as your mind, you're, you're, but you're in
somewhat of a, ivory tower in an ashram.
One is protected from the seething, you know, milestone of humanity that you saw
at three in the morning when you're coming off that plane and had to humble yourself
to actually ask for help from a stranger.
I basically say, I don't know what I'm doing.
Please help me out, which must have been very humbling.
To a tough Aussie, you know, to actually say, you know, look, sorry,
I'm lost, can you help me out?
I actually, I made a little note there saying, you know, that was, that was,
that was a moment of humility, which is, must have resonated with you.
But then, okay, so you're in this ivory tower, you're having
this wonderful experience.
How do you parlay that then into your next experience?
Jane Faulkner: Hmm.
So from that ashram where I went to another ashram called Alma's.
I, have you heard of that?
Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
Jane Faulkner: So I went to her ashram and that was very different.
It wasn't a protected ivory tower and that was quite a shock.
And what shocked me around that was how indoctrinated the people were.
And that sounded terrible, didn't it?
Yeah, so how how if Amma was somewhere where a crowd just chased to get to
where she was and for me, it didn't, it didn't feel good to see people doing
that, to see people not having their, not in their own sovereignty, you
know, to kind of, and to, to kind of be worshipping this other human, I couldn't.
I couldn't get my head around it.
Did you get to meet
Rupert Isaacson: her at all, Amma?
Jane Faulkner: I did.
I got to meet her and give her a hug.
And she asked me to, you know, she asked people to sit behind her.
So I sat behind her and yeah, and I could feel that.
I could feel that, um, this, her beautiful spirit.
I could feel that.
I feel, I, I dunno, I just, um, what I want to, I feel like I didn't, I,
I didn't feel blinded by it though.
And that's what I couldn't understand with a lot of that.
The other people that were blinded to the humanity around them and they would
do whatever they could to be near Amma.
And for me, I'm like, I was just like, This isn't congruent, you know, you're
chanting and wanting to be like Ama and yet you'll push people out of the road and
you, you won't care how you get near her.
So I couldn't kind of, I couldn't understand how all of that was together
in, in this place, if that makes sense.
Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
So how did you end up,
everyone in India goes through this.
How did, what was the way you ended up coming to terms with
paradox and ambiguity, which India shoves firmly into one's face?
Jane Faulkner: It really does.
Gosh, how did I,
I think I learned to just watch, sit back, watch, get curious.
Get
Rupert Isaacson: curious is a good, that's a good.
Yeah.
Jane Faulkner: Yeah.
Yeah.
Get really curious and kind of not overthink it.
So get curious.
Notice.
And then yeah, make it, make the next decision that felt right for myself.
So I didn't stay in Amma's ashram long.
I, I struggled too much with that.
Yeah, that, how paradoxical it was.
I was just like, oh, this isn't, it just didn't feel right for me.
Yeah, so after there, I went back to London and nursed a little more and then
my brother and I went to South America and we spent three months in South
America, just kind of, starting up in Ecuador and then moving down through
Peru, across Bolivia and through Rio.
And that was another eye opening experience.
I, I realized I'm, I was very naive person.
Like, again, I remember being on the plane, reading the Lonely Planet
and seeing all these warnings for kidnappings and all of that kind of stuff.
But we arrived in Quito in Ecuador and.
I so we learned Spanish over there because people weren't able to speak
English and we went to the very top of Ecuador to the Ecuadorian Colombian
border and we went deep into the Amazon with a guide and stayed in
the Amazon I think it was for a week.
And that was an amazing experience, just kind of staying like really deep in.
Cause I remember it took us two days to get where we went.
And I remember the water of the Amazon river getting clearer and cleaner.
And yeah, and just kind of, there was my brother and I and another
couple, and we stayed with a family in, in deep in the jungle there.
And South America, again, for me, it was.
It was quite shocking and I think it was in a different way to India, India.
Didn't, I think the spirituality of India, I couldn't, it wasn't so much
evident in South America and life felt cheap in South America, you know, people
had guns and I felt a bit like a walking ATM machine, you know, like people would
kind of beg and and it just felt like.
You know, the different drug mafia and stuff like that.
We, we kind of went,
yeah, a little bit off the beaten track.
And so, had a few frightening encounters with different.
People dressed up as the army with machine guns across their
chest and things like that.
And I look back now and, and think, wow, that was an amazing, like
I tell my kids stories and it's like, man, did I really do that?
Cause it was quite an amazing adventure.
I'm really grateful for the experience.
I remember at the time I was reading a book called how to live
this year, as if it's your last.
And it was actually really helpful because every day felt like.
I could have died today.
Like, I remember being on a bus again in the middle of the night and there
was a massive landslide and we were on a bus full of smugglers that had so
they were miners, but they had smuggled a lot of birds into their pockets
and into bags and stuff like that.
And when we'd come to a checkpoint and my brother and I had to get out
and they just had to check our papers.
And seeing the the police or whoever it was getting on with the dog and
walking up and down through the bus and you could hear the birds.
And then just getting off and us keeping on going and apparently one
of our guides had dogged them in.
And so we had the rest of this bus trip with all of these people
that had smuggled these birds.
And we got to this point where there was a massive mudslide.
We had to all get off the bus and walk across and around
where the rest of the road was.
And I just remember the whole time, my senses being heightened, you know,
me really being aware of yeah, life and how precious it was and not having
much else in my mind, but who's around me, what am I doing, where am I going,
it's those basic kind of things.
Survival.
Rupert Isaacson: Yes, absolutely.
I can relate to that having had a few of those myself.
Okay, so you're, you're in you're in South America, you survive it.
Life is cheap but life is wonderful.
It's scary.
You realize that you were perhaps taking some risks that you're a bit lucky you.
Didn't pay for.
Jane Faulkner: And
Rupert Isaacson: then I presume you come back to London or back
to Australia at this point.
Jane Faulkner: No, I came back to London.
And, and then realized I needed to go home.
I needed to feel anchored to something.
So I came back home went back to nursing.
It just didn't fit me anymore.
So I looked into other things.
Did studied Hawaiian massage for a while and then did a two
year long yoga apprenticeship and that was again, every day.
Two hours of yoga, meditation, assisting teachers.
So it was a real life of yoga for two
Rupert Isaacson: years.
Jane Faulkner: And that was life changing for me.
So in a really good way just helped me really become aware of my thoughts and.
It's a process, I guess, of just looking at yourself all the time.
Rupert Isaacson: And you're still making your living at this point as a nurse?
That's how you're paying the bills?
Jane Faulkner: No, then I was massaging while I was doing my yoga apprenticeship.
Okay, okay, so
Rupert Isaacson: you've actually now switched to a full massage professional.
Jane Faulkner: Yeah.
Yeah.
That's
Rupert Isaacson: not inconsiderable.
And doing that in London.
Jane Faulkner: No, I'd come back to Australia.
Okay.
Right.
Rupert Isaacson: Nursing
Jane Faulkner: was London.
Yeah.
London
Rupert Isaacson: is so expensive to live in.
It's not an easy place to pay the rent.
You know, if you're going to just do massage and that sort of thing.
Yeah.
Jane Faulkner: Yeah.
Totally.
It was funny in London.
There was about 10 of us Aussies in a hotel room.
In a flat in Bayeswater,
Rupert Isaacson: I remember those days.
Yeah.
It's brilliant.
Fun.
Okay.
So you're back.
You're a massage therapist.
We still have not got a horse in sight.
Jane Faulkner: No, no horse in sight.
So massage therapist doing my yoga apprenticeship in my yoga apprenticeship.
I started some of my relationship.
Familiar relationship issues kept coming up and I think my skin, I still
had acne and I was like, man, I just want to get to the bottom of this and
I went to a naturopath and he said, Have you, do you ever get angry?
And I said, no.
And he said, oh, maybe you should go and see this therapist.
So, and it was a Geal therapist, so I went and saw this Gestalt therapist.
I feel sorry for that therapist forever because I remember them
asking me, you know, what do you need?
And I was like, I don't know.
I had no real idea about myself.
Rupert Isaacson: Now not everyone knows what Gestalt therapy is.
Can you tell us please?
Jane Faulkner: Yeah, sure.
So it's a type of therapy that was I guess put together by a man called
Fritz Perls and Gestalt is very much about supporting someone to be in the
here and now with their experience.
So someone might be telling you a story of their childhood as a Gestalt therapist.
I might say, what are you noticing now as you tell me about being 8?
So it's very much about what's happening in the here and now and it's.
A lot about getting curious about how someone we call it
makes contact or shows up and how they break contact or disappear.
And so as a Gestalt therapist, I'm always supporting or trying to help
someone make contact with themselves and with me and with their environment.
And I'm trying to support them to become aware of how they break that contact or
how they move away from that experience.
You
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
So you, you, you say when you see clients now, so you went as
a client, but now you become.
Jane Faulkner: Yes.
Yes.
Yeah.
So from that, I studied Gestalt therapy.
Rupert Isaacson: I just want to do a quick, a quick terms thing.
Gestalt is a German word, right?
So, but in English it tends to mean, I'm looking here on my Oxford dictionary,
an organized whole that is perceived as more than the sum of its parts.
Jane Faulkner: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: So are you saying then that Gestalt therapy
is a quest for the full self?
Is that?
Yeah.
Jane Faulkner: Yeah, that's a way nicer way to put it than I put it.
Yes.
That's exactly it.
It's like, who are you and how can we help you let go of what you're How
can we uncover your full self and how can we support you to become aware of how you
stop yourself from being your full self?
Rupert Isaacson: So by now, we're sort of moving into the realm of psychotherapy.
No.
Jane Faulkner: Yep.
That's right.
So
Rupert Isaacson: ponies
Jane Faulkner: not yet, not yet, though, for you to stop training.
In that time, I had my two children which was huge for me because I was sitting
in a group of people talking about how their parents had screwed them up.
And I was, you know, Entering into parenting yeah, so I
did my gestalt training.
I had just finished that was starting to study art therapy
Rupert Isaacson: and I
Jane Faulkner: was doing my art therapy training.
That was a two year training.
Rupert Isaacson: Why art therapy?
Because you haven't talked about a love of art or being an artist up until now.
Jane Faulkner: Yeah, no, I think.
I think someone I knew was doing it and I was curious and I liked
learning and I was like, sure, I, I think I didn't want to stop learning.
I think that's, there's no greater, there's no good reason behind it.
It was very powerful though, that art therapy training, very powerful
work working with your hands.
Some kind of bypasses that
Rupert Isaacson: right.
And creating images that come out of your subconscious.
Right.
So that
Jane Faulkner: what you
Rupert Isaacson: do or what you create.
Yeah.
Reflect something that you're not actually expressing verbally.
Right.
Jane Faulkner: Yeah.
Yeah.
Or even aware of within yourself.
Yeah.
So it was when I had towards the end of art therapy, a friend and I went to a
retreat center and she said, Oh, there's this new therapy, equine assisted therapy.
Why don't we have a go?
Okay.
I was like, okay.
Yeah.
And I was like, Oh, radio.
And I had a session and.
It just got straight to my core stuff and I was like, wow, I want to learn
this and then there was a teacher coming out from the States to teach it.
So I went to his training and I just had a profound.
impact on me.
Okay.
So
Rupert Isaacson: just let's back up here.
What kind of equine assisted therapy was this?
Who was the dude?
Tell us a bit.
Yeah,
Jane Faulkner: sure.
So his name was Dewey Freeman and he, Dewey Freeman.
Yeah.
And he runs the Gestalt Equine Institute of the Rockies.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
The Gestalt.
Is that something we should be checking out?
Jane Faulkner: Yeah, Dewey's amazing.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Jane Faulkner: Dewey and Joni Riga, I think her name was.
Rupert Isaacson: Dewey Freeman and Joni Riga.
Jane Faulkner: Riga, yeah.
I'm, I'm, I'm, I think I'm mispronouncing her.
And
Rupert Isaacson: where are they?
Are they in the Rockies?
Are they Boulder, Colorado?
Where are they?
Jane Faulkner: I think
Rupert Isaacson: so.
Jane Faulkner: I'll look it
Rupert Isaacson: up quickly as you tell us.
All right.
So you, you, you, you show up and now suddenly for the first time since you're
a little girl looking at your neighbor's horses, you've got a pony in the room.
Jane Faulkner: Yes.
Yeah.
And it was
Rupert Isaacson: intense.
Jane Faulkner: So, I went and So it was at a woman called Meg Kirby's place,
and I'm always grateful to Meg Kirby for bringing Dewey out to Australia and
she had a, a large herd and there was some mares and they had some yearlings.
I think that was, that were yearlings and one of the first exercises Dewey
said, you know, kind of go out into the paddock and let's just see what happens.
And these yearlings just kept coming up to me and like nudging me in the chest.
And I, I got started getting really overwhelmed, like, and I must have
looked way out of my depth because he came and stood in front of me.
And he said, cause the mayor then started coming towards me, not looking
very happy at what was happening.
And so he stood in front of me and he said, you know, is this familiar that
people push past your boundaries and.
I think I was a bit out of body, but I was like nodding.
Yeah.
And he invited me to go and stand and put my hands on this beautiful
old gray mare called Stormy.
And he said, I want you to just feel into Stormy and her energy and her connection.
Yes, that was a really powerful first experience of, well, second, because
the first one had been at the retreat center, but yeah, it was, it was.
had a massive impact on me.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay, so how did that then develop into, I'm just,
by the way, looking, Dewey, it's D U E Y, not Dewey, D E W E Y, so Dewey
Freeman, and I just looked up Gestalt.
At Quine Institute of the Rockies.
It's actually just south of Denver, between Denver and Colorado Springs.
So for those, those listeners who are in that area, you might want to check it out.
Okay, so he helps you with, with Stormy.
You, you feel suddenly grounded.
You feel he's he's pointed out to you that perhaps you're someone
who doesn't make your boundaries as effective as you might, because his
yearlings are stomping all over you.
And how does that get you from, how do you go from that?
Insight as a sort of patient, if you like, to where you are, to where you begin to
actually say, I'm going to offer this.
Jane Faulkner: Yeah.
So, from there, I asked the other people at the course, you know,
like, what, how do I get a horse?
How do I know which horse?
And where should I start
Rupert Isaacson: like a rabbit hole?
Jane Faulkner: There was a a man from Tasmania and he said,
your horse will come to you.
And I was like a radio.
I'll just, you know, kind of see what happens.
And I knew I had to learn horsemanship first because I didn't know anything.
So I came back Queensland and I found a woman that taught horsemanship.
And I started learning horsemanship from her and the horses terrified me.
Like I remember her horse, Penny I was terrified.
I remember the first time being beside Penny and her name was Eula and Penny
kind of pinning her ear and cocking her leg and Eula saying, she's kind
of saying, don't bring that here because I was terrified to touch her.
I was terrified to be in her space.
And EULA over time just kind of helped me feel more comfortable around Penny.
And EULA got a second horse called Phoenix, and it was really funny.
I knew as soon as I saw Phoenix, I knew he was going to be my horse.
And I didn't like him.
Rupert Isaacson: I feel terrible
Jane Faulkner: saying that now.
He, he, I think he already pushed my buttons.
And so we worked with Phoenix and then Eula had to go away up to Darwin.
And she said, you know, do you want to have Phoenix?
And I didn't even want to make the decision.
I said to my husband, you know, I've been offered this horse.
Can you go meet him?
And my husband went and saw him and just loved him.
Interesting.
And Yeah, so we brought Phoenix home and Phoenix, he really
scared the crap out of me.
Now, hold on, you say you bring
Rupert Isaacson: him home, but that, we all know that those of us
who keep horses, that involves The infrastructure of a horse type property.
You have not yet said that you were living in any place where you
could keep horses or that even knew how to keep horses or anyone had
mentored you and how to keep horses.
So,
Jane Faulkner: yeah,
Rupert Isaacson: go into those details a little bit.
How did you jump over those hurdles?
Jane Faulkner: So I was lucky in that the woman across so I do live in a rural area.
Now I'm on 13 acres.
We fenced our place off and I was super lucky that the
woman across the road from us.
Laurel was a horse woman and she was very kind and very supportive in teaching
me kind of how to be around horses.
What, what to, because I didn't know what to feed or anything.
I remember you had a mentor,
Rupert Isaacson: right?
Jane Faulkner: Yes.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
And so a mentor with feeding and caring for, but not for, because Phoenix.
A really intimidated me, like he was really sure of himself and I
just, yeah, he could just boss me around with his ears and he did.
And so I went to a really cool horse trainer called Angie Wicks,
and she really helped me kind of learn to work and be around Phoenix
and how to earn his respect.
And that really helped that kind of.
Because I think before that, especially coming through the equine assisted therapy
world, I was a bit a bit of that horses as magical unicorns was a bit like, wow,
they're so powerful and wow, they're so, I didn't kind of, and very much my pattern.
Of worrying about how me setting boundaries would impact Phoenix
emotionally that came into play there.
So that's where learning from Angie was really great
Rupert Isaacson: to actually be around these these creatures.
Yes.
Jane Faulkner: Yeah, and boundaries.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Jane Faulkner: Yes.
Yes.
And not anthropomorphize them, not kind of project my human emotion onto them,
kind of just realize that I'm not going to hurt Phoenix's feelings by asking
him to lunge to the right around me.
Yes.
It's embarrassing to.
Well, the
Rupert Isaacson: reason I chuckle is because I just made a note here.
Do you feel.
Because I feel an insight that I'm getting from this is that perhaps an advantage
if you're going into equine assisted work without a horsey background, provided,
of course, you have good horsey mentors, because for all the obvious reasons.
But starting as a quote unquote patient in an equine assisted therapy gives,
do you think that gives you a better insight Into the patient experience
for clients that don't know horses than somebody like me, who, you know, I've
lived and breathed them for so long.
I can't remember life without them.
So there might be things I miss.
When someone comes in, he doesn't know them.
I mean, yes, of course, I'm aware that someone might be intimidated or
it's just, you know, unfamiliar, etc.
But it doesn't occur to me, for example, to anthropomorphize in
those ways because I was taught.
Horsemanship from a very, very young age.
Do you feel that you're having come in as a late comer like that and actually had to
sort of go up against making these quote unquote mistakes of perception and so on?
Do you think that actually makes you weirdly a more effective equine
assisted therapist because you can empathize perhaps more with the client?
Jane Faulkner: I think it, I think it definitely helps understand how a client's
coming to it and how vulnerable they can feel and how powerful horses feel.
I think it definitely helps teach basic horsemanship.
Cause I think, you know, when you master something to then
teach the basics is challenging.
Whereas for me, I was so worried about horses that, that I read everything.
I, I like did a study of horses and I, I.
Broke everything down and to try to stay safe.
Like I, in my head, I was all these scenarios and what do
I do and how do I do that?
And, and with the lady that taught me horsemanship she was great.
'cause I remember her asking me, you know, what do you wanna learn?
And I said, I want to learn from a horse that's doesn't just know what to do.
I wanna learn how to work with young horses or.
Horses that are frightened or and I wanted to do that for my own confidence
because I felt like until I know what to do when a horse is in this situation,
I'm not going to feel confident.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: And your, your, your husband is in this equation too, right?
So is he working the horse with you?
You say that the horse loved him and he loved the horse.
So was it the two of you going on this?
Journey together?
Jane Faulkner: Not really.
So my husband grew up on a massive sheep farm out west, so he'd grown up on horses.
Ah, so he knew horses,
Rupert Isaacson: right?
Jane Faulkner: Yeah, yeah, he did, but not, so he'd never
had to really care for them.
Right.
He'd hopped on ridden them and And that real old fashioned way of, so
didn't know groundwork only knew horses of, you know, they just eat grass
and they need a dam kind of thing.
So, didn't need more than that.
So, and he wasn't really interested in learning the groundwork.
He didn't have the fear I had.
He was just comfortable.
He would hop on any horse or be around any horse where I had, I had a real fear.
So I wanted to really understand their body language, understand how
to read it, understand how to kind of.
Support myself to feel safe around them and because I really wanted to do this
work, but I think before you asked a question around non horsey people coming
in compared to horsey people coming in, I think non horsey people, the therapies,
you know, More powerful initially just because of the size of the horse and
Rupert Isaacson: the change of environment.
Yeah, yeah,
Jane Faulkner: yeah, definitely.
Definitely as a therapist I definitely have to work harder with horse people
because they see horses in a certain way.
And I'm not as open to seeing how they might impact the relationship
between them and the horse.
Yeah, I think you
Rupert Isaacson: described me.
Jane Faulkner: Well, I think I, I really see this again in our Western
culture where we kind of Have this arrogance of doing to something
rather than being curious of how we might be impacting something and how
something might be impacting us back.
Yeah, so definitely as a therapist, it's different work with someone that's
a horse person compared to someone that's never been around horses.
Rupert Isaacson: Are the majority of your clients?
non horsey people would you say?
Jane Faulkner: No, not, no, not at all.
I would say it's about half and half.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Interesting because when you get a horsey person coming to you as a patient, yes,
they have their own horses and they have their own relationships with their
horses and are getting to some degree therapized simply by Being around horses,
which we all know is very healing.
Otherwise we wouldn't do what we do.
What makes them seek out then something outside of that
relationship that they already have with their horses to go to you?
What do they come with?
What do they say?
Jane Faulkner: So often they've hit some kind of crisis in their relationship.
With
Rupert Isaacson: horses or just in, in, with human relationships,
Jane Faulkner: human relationships.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Jane Faulkner: Yeah.
Just something's not working in their human life and they're drawn to the
equine assisted therapy because horses have always been their safe place.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm hmm.
Jane Faulkner: And I remember Dewey explaining this beautifully
that people that have had those early relational ruptures or
difficulties relation, relationally.
So maybe it was child abuse or abandonment or drug and alcohol abuse
by parents or their parents, you know, being kind of just not great.
human experiences as children that those people are more drawn to the
equine therapy because they are able to trust and feel safer with an
animal than they are with a human.
And he spoke about that power of.
Those people that really struggled to form connections with people, able to
make that connection with the horse and then slowly over time transfer
that connection onto the therapist that's working with the horse.
And so that's kind of what helps bridge, I guess, working with the horses for
different people into healing their relational experiences with humans.
There's that, but also horses.
Help reveal what we do in relationship and give us an opportunity
to try something different.
Rupert Isaacson: I could see that.
It's interesting to think about anthropomorphizing because, you know,
that's such a hot topic in what we do.
And there's a part of me that often thinks, well, we have no choice but
to anthropomorphize because that's the only, we're looking through monkey eyes,
you know, so we're going to monkey.
We got monkey what we see as a way.
Yes.
A monkey looking at us would see, and I should imagine that horses e eifs us , you
know, because they have no choice, because they are looking through pony eyes.
So I, I often think, well, that's unavoidable and actually natural.
Mm-Hmm.
So presumably it could be helpful as well as hindering depending on Yes.
How much awareness we have that we are doing it.
Would you not, would you say when I, you know, I've got horses, I love my horses.
Some of them, you know, were born into my arms.
I've known them forever, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So naturally I, I, I relate to them kind of as family members.
Which as we know, we're not always, you know, wonderfully functional with
our family members and our family members wonderfully functional with us.
And actually, of course, that's part of feeling safe, right?
If you're, if you actually feel safe with your mom and dad,
you can tell them to F off.
And if a horse feels safe with you.
So something I've realized over time is allowing time just because the fact
my horses are working horses, they need to be able to say F off sometimes.
And yes, that was a really interesting dance for me to sort of get into say, Oh,
I see for you to have agency and choice, but also be my colleague when I need you
to be my colleague and keep people safe.
You know, I to some degree have to anthropomorphize because I know
that I certainly need that time.
of telling people to leave me alone or showing up when I feel ready to work.
And then in the old school of horsemanship, it would have been, well,
if you do that, the horse is going to run all over you, which of course is true.
If you don't know horsemanship, that's the paradox, right?
But once you do know horsemanship, you can then begin to discern actually, you know,
in this situation, I should let him go.
He's turning his back on me in the pasture.
I'm approaching with a halter.
What's the difference between when I say, no, I actually need to get you today.
Or, you know what, you're right.
Just, it's not the day today.
In the same way that we would have to do those things with people.
One could say, is that not anthropomorphizing?
And then could one say, well, Yes, but is that anthropomorphizing functionally?
And I'm not saying I have the rights or the wrongs on this.
I'm just bringing them up as, as, as talking points in questions.
But I mean, what do you think?
Jane Faulkner: Yeah.
Well, it's, as you're talking, I'm thinking of, there's a concept in
Gestalt called the field theory.
And it's, it talks about, it acknowledges that we all come with
our own ground or our own experience.
And so we're all seeing the world through the field theory.
And I think a horse, a dog, any being in the planet comes with their own
ground, their own experiences, and that shapes how they then interact
and how they are in the world.
And so, to me, this is where I can get frustrated sometimes because I
think, I feel like we can get hung up on some of these words, like,
oh, don't do this or don't do that.
And it's like, man, we're not in boxes.
You know, we're living beings and we're having these different experiences.
So, and I think as a therapist, I guess I work on or how a person
anthropomorphizes a horse gives me a lot of information about the person.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
Jane Faulkner: And we work on that.
So if someone projects something onto a horse, I get curious about.
That in the person, right?
I think I think that
Rupert Isaacson: that word curious is the word, right?
Isn't it?
So not saying it's right or it's wrong to project something to
somebody you have no choice.
Yes, we projected we just do.
And that's actually how we navigate or antenna, I go out right, we must to some
degree, but how we to be curious rather than to say it's right or it's wrong.
I like that.
Jane Faulkner: Yeah.
Yeah.
Well it's another term is transference or countertransference so when as a.
Therapist will talk about a client will transfer emotions onto you as a therapist.
So say I remind a client of their auntie, they'll transfer their
emotions about their auntie onto me and I'll counter transfer.
So say they remind me of my son, then I'll counter transfer
emotions of my son onto them.
And when this gets unhealthy or, or.
And not good is when I'm not aware of that process, I'm not aware of
that happening, and I feel this is the same with anthropomorphizing.
If I'm aware of it, and I'm curious about it, then I'm less likely to to
do it in a way that's not supportive for the horse or the client.
Rupert Isaacson: Got it.
Yeah.
And of course this one isn't always at the top of one's game.
Right.
You know,
Jane Faulkner: Ah, a hundred percent.
Yes.
We're human.
And my, so my account, my shit's gonna, I'm, I think of, I am seeing
the world through my own muddy lenses.
You know, it's
Rupert Isaacson: really interesting.
When I went through this just yesterday, actually, I was, I was working with a
kid who absolutely pushes my buttons and is like super rude and you know,
but he loves My little dog and my little dog brings out the best in him
and I was tired yesterday and We you know got on a really magical thing.
We go exploring on the horse together So we've gone down to a local a local stream.
He's waiting in the stream and we're just discovering insects Annoyed
and irritated with the insects, but he's also kind of curious about
them and the dog is doing his bit.
My horse is, you know, being there and grazing and carrying him into
this, this beautiful world and so on.
And I remember, you know, finding myself going, Oh yes, I can feel
myself feeling a bit negative here.
Why am I feeling a bit negative?
Well, it's all right if someone presses your buttons.
You don't have to get along with everybody.
But that's also not personal.
Also, you are tired.
I could see I was tired.
So what do I need to do?
And then also, well, hold on.
What about gratitude?
Can I be grateful to this person?
This young person who's brought me up?
Because here I am, nyeh in my head, while standing next to this very
beautiful stream, listening to the music of the stream, looking at
ladybugs flying, listening With my horse and my dog, hold on Rupert,
perhaps a little bit of gratitude might help you in this situation.
So I love what you say about awareness and curiosity because if I, it's so easy to
either fall into a denial pattern, which can make one not behave brilliantly, or
fall into an overgiving pattern, which can make one not, you know, and sort of, you
go into a bit of martyr, you know, mind.
Yeah.
Or if I can just be aware that I'm feeling this emotion, do I have a
chance to gain some perspective and put some tools into play like gratitude
that I'm in this situation at all with that this is what I'm complaining
about rather than something real.
Another, another moment like that in Mongolia with my son.
When it was.
You're 40 degrees of Celsius and you know, he didn't want to ride at that point.
So I had him on my shoulders.
I'm leading my horse and he's putting the point of his chin at the top of
my skull and it's It's going on for a long time and I, and I start to get
this negative loop and then it's like from somewhere else, this voice says,
Rupert, Rupert, Rupert, Rupert, you're in Mongolia with your son walking across
Mongolia to see shamans in Siberia.
And okay.
It is.
It does hurt.
Bone on your bone.
Okay.
But the situation is absolutely amazing.
You know, what are you complaining about?
And what's your, what's your strategy?
So I thought, well, really what he just needs to know that if you put his hand
between his chin and my skull, that's I came up with this thing of the chin
is actually, but the hand is nice.
And we still joke about this today, him and I, you know, when we get into negative
thought loops of how long it can take one just to say, The chin is out of the house.
And what, what's that, of course, but asking for help and I suddenly flashback
to you in that in that airport in India.
Yeah.
Saying, I haven't got a clue.
Please tell me.
This is very difficult as a therapist, isn't it?
Because in a therapist, you're, you're sort of expected to be.
A figure that sort of provides answers and of course, you're just a human.
Jane Faulkner: Yeah.
How do you deal with these moments?
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Jane Faulkner: Yeah.
As you're talking before and you're talking about the negative or
the matter, and I was thinking, wow, in the middle is the human.
And also just what you were saying before about the, that wisdom of, you
know, when what's your son's name again?
Rupert Isaacson: Rowan.
Jane Faulkner: Rowan.
Yeah.
When his chin was pressing into your head and how you realize
this, this pain isn't all of me.
Yeah.
You know, like the pains in my head, but it's not all of me.
I think that's really powerful for us to realize this pain here.
I can put my hand there.
I can change this.
But yeah, I think what helps me is giving myself permission to be
human, giving myself permission to not have the answers, giving
myself permission to to show up and.
Yeah, just kind of, just be real, just kind of be like, yeah,
I don't know all the answers.
I don't, what I can offer you is, is my presence and that I'll walk along beside
you on your journey and we'll work it out.
But I, I'd never pretend, I can't know I can't have someone else's answers.
Okay.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
So, so we're now sort of talking you as you are now.
Where, before we digress there, you were still going through your
education, really, in horsemanship.
And as we know, there's knowing a horse and there's knowing horses and if you're
going to be professional in, by putting people who don't know horses together
with horses, obviously we have to know horses well enough to keep people safe.
So how, how long does it take you?
And how do you get there to graduate from a know nothing, afraid of this horse on
your own property to Being in a position where you actually can confidently keep
people safe around horses while doing a job with a horse as your colleague.
Jane Faulkner: Yeah.
Yeah.
So, with me, with Phoenix and with Angie who taught me, I was really disciplined.
So I worked with him every day doing groundwork and I
went and saw Angie every week.
And I think I started seeing clients.
It's about probably a year after I had done that training with Dewey
and, and then I got offered a job.
That's quite quick.
It was pretty quick.
And I feel like it is very quick when I think back.
I got offered a job and in that job, I would see five people back to back.
Three or four days a week.
Always with this horse,
Rupert Isaacson: Phoenix?
Jane Faulkner: No, no.
With the new herd.
Okay.
And it was a herd of four horses.
And so to start with, it was a lot for me to kind of manage.
And luckily they were well handled, well handled horses generally had good
ground manners, except for Stevie.
Stevie would threaten to bite and would nip.
So I learned so much from him.
And.
I learned a lot about how his behaviors were often a response to the state of the
nervous system of me or the person he was working with, because as the person and
I settled, the nipping would reduce Yeah, so I worked there for a few years solidly,
and I learned so much from those horses and kept working with Phoenix at home.
By then I'd got Java as well and a little mini Sunny.
And I think I've been working there maybe four years and people
started asking me to teach them.
And that's when I kind of put my training together.
Yeah, and
Rupert Isaacson: okay,
Jane Faulkner: feel like I've been learning it very, very cavalierly
Rupert Isaacson: said, and that's when I started putting my training together.
Now, as someone who has this thing called horseboy method and a couple of
other programs we do, you know, movement method without horses and this thing
called TI, which is used to be called Athena which is The groundwork and
the in hand work as its own therapy.
I know that putting together a program is not something you just do.
Yes, it looks that way from the outside, but it's, it's a torturous process.
And you know, a lot of us when we, who've done that sort of
thing when we look back we go.
Wow, how did I think at the beginning that I would be able to, you know, and
the learning curve you go through just like how much is involved in this.
If you want it to be of use to people.
Yeah, talk us through that learning curve, it must have been.
Somewhat steep and somewhat of a somewhat exhausting
Jane Faulkner: it was, it was so for me I hadn't even contemplated training and
then people were asking me to mentor them.
And then someone said, why, why don't you do your own training?
And a decision I came to was, I don't want it.
I want it to be government accredited.
So I looked into what that would, what was involved in that, and I think I'm a very
rose colored glasses person, super naive.
So I thought, okay, I'll become an RTO.
So, what is that a registered training organization?
So it's like a college.
Yeah, so it's, it's like the government kind of says that.
You go through all these processes for the government to approve what you tell us
Rupert Isaacson: in brief, what it's summary, what are the processes
that someone has to go through if they want to be that they
want to be government recognized.
Jane Faulkner: It's huge.
So, you have to have a lot of, lots of policies and procedures in place.
And so you've gotta prove the way you enroll people,
the way you market, the way.
Who do you have to
Rupert Isaacson: prove this to?
What's even the application process?
How do you even begin this?
Jane Faulkner: Yeah, so in Australia, we've got a governing body called ASQA,
the Australian Skills Quality Authority.
So you put together a training and even to do that, so what I had to do was.
Put together a, an outline of what I wanted to train.
Then I had to go to industry body.
So I had to go to the Australian counseling association, the psychotherapy
and counseling federation of Australia and equine Australia, equestrian Australia.
And I said, I had to say, Hey, I want to do this equine assisted therapy training.
Will you.
Agree that we need it in Australia and the Australian Counseling Association came
back to me and said, no, we won't agree.
We don't think a qualification of just equine assisted therapy is enough.
And so I was like, gosh, what can I do?
And someone that was helping me at the time said, why don't you add counseling?
So I added the Diploma of Counseling and the equine handling, like,
And I went back to the Australian counseling Association, and I said, would
you approve it if it looks like this?
And they said, yes, because then your graduates can work in a room
base as a counselor or outside.
In the paddock with horses.
So that was the beginning of the process.
Then I had to, so in the diploma of counseling, you've
got 17 units of competency.
And each of those units of competency have all these assessment tasks that
you've got to kind of assess and teach.
And so I had to kind of go through all of that and create
a curriculum and assessments and do that for the equine handling.
And then for my own equine assisted mental health.
stuff as well.
So that was kind of the process and it was huge.
Like it's when I look back now, I'm just like, my God.
Rupert Isaacson: Another question.
Thank God I
Jane Faulkner: didn't know.
Yes.
Rupert Isaacson: You've also got to put yourself forward, presumably,
as someone who can have judgment and discernment as to whether or not someone
can, is, is, is jumping these hurdles.
So what do you have to prove to the government bodies and the
governing bodies about yourself?
Because you're not a psychiatrist, for example, or, or whatever you might say,
well, I have this qualification here and I have that qualification there.
But yeah, what what hoops do they want you to jump through.
Jane Faulkner: So they needed to see my qualifications.
That I needed to see my experience and then I needed to get different people.
So other psychologists, other people in the industry to kind of sign off
that I was, yeah, yeah, pretty much.
Rupert Isaacson: Did it help that you had the background as a nurse?
That, that, that I think it
Jane Faulkner: definitely,
Rupert Isaacson: yeah, that underneath it all, there was this solid, I went and got.
My qualifications in medicine in this way.
Jane Faulkner: Yeah, definitely that.
And, and I'd worked in the mental health.
So I'd worked in mental health units, adolescent and adult mental health.
So, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So that really helped
Rupert Isaacson: in retrospect that those skills that you learned early,
despite the fact that you didn't like the system ended up being the foundation
from what you could build another system.
Yeah.
Jane Faulkner: Definitely, and when I look back, like the learning, so,
because where I was a nurse in the adolescent and adult mental health unit
is a very low socioeconomic area in Queensland and I learned a lot about
mental health, about keeping myself safe, about supporting people to deescalate.
I learned a lot of skills.
Yeah, that still helped me today.
And I think it's really helpful to actually be in the system and
see the system so that you can understand what people go through.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, no, I would agree.
I would agree.
So how long did this whole accreditation process takes you?
How long?
Jane Faulkner: I think it took about a year and a half
Rupert Isaacson: again.
That's not very long.
I was expecting you to say five years.
Jane Faulkner: Yeah.
Well, it took a year and a half for me to be approved and up and running.
I feel like.
It's taken till now to get it to a point that I'm happy with.
And I feel like, okay, it's finally written and done.
And that's I started in 2016.
So that's 8 years.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
That sounds more likely.
Yes.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
And do you, what do you have to do to prove to your accrediting bodies?
Sort of year to year that you're still that you're not bullshit
that you're still standards are kept up, blah, blah, blah, blah.
What do you need to do?
Jane Faulkner: So they come in and they go over everything.
So, they go over the assessments, they go for student answers,
they go over what I'm teaching.
They ask students for feedback.
So they have a record of who my students are, so they can go directly to those
students and ask them for feedback.
That's pretty much.
Rupert Isaacson: If they get feedback that isn't positive, how does that affect
what, what do they come to you with?
Because I mean, not everyone's going to always say something positive, right?
So are they coming back to you with every single nitpick and saying,
you've got to address this, or are they just looking for patterns?
And they also have manpower problems, right?
How deeply can they?
Yes,
Jane Faulkner: totally.
No, they more look for patterns and they'll say, hey, can you show us this?
And then they'll say, okay, you need to rectify this.
And you've got this amount of time to do it.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: And the way it's rectified would be, you would have
to then say, I've put these policies in place and then they would come
in again and do another assessment and see is the feedback better.
Okay.
So there's a fair amount of stress involved.
I mean, you know, it's possible to lose the accreditation too, I should imagine.
Jane Faulkner: Definitely.
Definitely.
And I know it's probably only been the last year or two that I've learnt not let
that feel like a massive weight before then it felt like a massive weight.
It felt like they could swoop in at any time.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Jane Faulkner: Yeah.
I think I think what's helped is seeing students.
I really see students.
Change and grow over the time they do the training.
So the training's now two years and seeing them be practitioners, and
I think I've learnt to believe in it and stand strong in it myself.
And I think that has changed.
So I'm not as fearful.
I, I know that I can stand up for decisions I've made and why we
do things the way we do things.
with that accrediting body now, whereas before then, I don't
think I felt so strong in it.
Rupert Isaacson: And at the end of the two years, someone who's gone through
the program with you is an equine assisted psychotherapist effectively, is
what they are, or what do you call it?
Jane Faulkner: We say they're an equine assisted mental health practitioner.
Okay,
Rupert Isaacson: an equine assisted mental health practitioner.
Are you doing all the teaching and the mentorship yourself?
Are you now a team?
Do you have other campuses?
Is it all in one?
In one place that you do this.
Jane Faulkner: Yeah.
How
Rupert Isaacson: has it grown?
Jane Faulkner: Yeah.
So, we're in Gold Coast where I am and Melbourne and Sydney, and we have
other trainers that have come in, which has been, I think that's really
helped me stand stronger in it as well.
I think other people to ask questions, other people looking
at the material, other people kind of, giving feedback and adding the.
pieces to it has been really helpful.
Rupert Isaacson: What's your process?
So if someone becomes this, this equine assisted mental health
practitioner from them to go for that, from that was first qualification up
to say, becoming a trainer in what you do, what do they have to do?
Jane Faulkner: Lots of experience in the field.
So see lots of clients.
And I guess generally the people that are trainers now work
with me as a support person.
So they kind of are with me in the training, supporting
me to do the trainings as well as seeing their own clients.
And then there's that transition into them being so it's
Rupert Isaacson: not it's not necessarily a structured series
of courses that they have to do.
It's more that you monitor their work over a set number of years and
see that the results they're getting and it's more an assessment by you.
Jane Faulkner: Yeah, competency
Rupert Isaacson: or
Jane Faulkner: yeah, yeah, more a feeling into whether they fit.
My business, I guess, and the way that I want to deliver this work and
the way that I want to kind of, yeah, support people to learn this work.
So,
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
I know that you've, you, I'm, I'm probably impinging on your time here.
'cause you have a lot.
No, not at all.
You have an evening , but there's, there's some other questions that I'm,
I'm curious about, you said at the out outset that you were moving to, from
Unmounted work towards mounted work.
Mm.
Jane Faulkner: Tell us
Rupert Isaacson: about that.
A y and the, and how?
Yes.
Jane Faulkner: Yeah, yeah.
So for me, this is where I'd love to do your training, Rupert, but
for me, I work very semantically.
So I've done, I was a yoga teacher for five years, full time.
And that massage therapy on top of that, I've always been a person
that is in, it needs to move their body and values the body.
And I see that with certain clients, especially people with.
Those early relational traumas, so complex PTSD, I see that being on
the horse has more of an impact on them than being beside the horse and
being held, learning to be held by the horse, feeling that movement,
you know, just that rocking movement.
So, I'm not sure how.
I'm going to do it yet.
I just know that that's what I'm really drawn to
Rupert Isaacson: really drawn to
Jane Faulkner: that, to that mountain work from a, that real somatic lens.
So before I became an RTO, I had to do some training in
being a writing instructor.
And I had very little of my own experience as Riding horses or
being a riding instructor, but I had a lot of experience with yoga.
And so I taught my writing lessons from a yogic perspective.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Jane Faulkner: And it was amazing.
Rupert Isaacson: Give us an example.
Jane Faulkner: So, there's this old cowboy and he was on a horse and the
horse was stressed and uptight and he was pulling on the reins really hard.
And the cowboy's shoulders were up near his ears and.
I just kind of, I guess ask him to change his body.
Like I would say in a yoga class.
So I was like, okay, I want you to deepen your breath, relax your
shoulders, relax your hands kind of become more aware of your pelvis.
Relax your legs.
And as he did that, the horse relaxed.
And I remember this other old horseman guy goes, wow, who taught you that?
And I said to him, Oh, it's yoga.
And he just looked at me as if I was crazy,
Rupert Isaacson: but
Jane Faulkner: there's just, I, I'm, I just feel that.
Humans have much more of an impact on a horse than we realize,
Rupert Isaacson: and
Jane Faulkner: we're so out of aware, we're so out of awareness of our
body and how, how we're holding a body impacts the being beneath us.
And for me as a therapist, when I'm working with someone on a horse.
The horse tells me about state shifts within the person sometimes before I
can recognize those state shifts in the person and I see that when someone's
on a horse as the horse relaxes, as their stride lengthens, it reflects
what's happening inside that person.
And so.
I can kind of observe the horse and support the person to change
things within their body and then the horse reflects the change.
Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
Yes, no, absolutely.
That makes all makes perfect sense.
One of the interesting things about the old master system of.
Dressage, I'm not talking about dressage as stressage for a judge, I'm talking
about, you know, the, the art of dressing a horse, which is to help it put the
hind legs under the point of gravity.
And that's what collection is.
And the humor and the horse become a unit at that point, and
can move in three dimensions.
And that's evolved over thousands of years.
It acts as whether it's working on the ground or whether it's working
from the saddle it acts as both a yoga and a martial art, because
it's it's designed for both so it can train, but it can also rehab.
It can maintain.
It can also develop.
And I think that if you're coming from a yoga perspective, I think
that's a very easy concept to get.
Whereas I think if one's coming from just a straight up horse
training, I am a monkey that tells a horse what to do perspective.
It is not so easy to get the martial arts perspective might be easier to get.
I'm training this horse to go to war.
I'm training this horse to catch a cow.
I'm training this horse to go for this jump.
Yes.
But of course, as we know, that's only one.
Part of a very big hole and it may not even be part of of it.
So I'm rather intrigued.
I'd love to collaborate with you because I think coming from those two perspectives.
that perspective that you have, again, offers interesting insights to people
when they're having to rethink how they approach horses and horse training.
Which is difficult if you grew up with it because you're, you're just,
you're, you're synapses in your brain are fairly hardwired at that point.
One has an, and your body to unlearn certain things.
When I, when I was learning classical dressage, which I had to do when I
realized that it was soft collection that created the oxytocin in the
child or the adult that calmed down the amygdala, the stress
hormone, cortisol canceled that out.
And of course, it's a communication hormone, oxytocin.
So makes them communicate.
And I realized, Oh, I need to learn more about this and do my deep dive.
And of course, at that point, I was very much more of a sort of jumping
rider, lots of tension in the leg, lots of tension in the body, which you
actually sort of need for that job.
And then I realized, Oh, I had to neutralize.
And that took me about five years.
You know, so when I'm, when I'm approaching and then I realized I
could actually, but all the training has to be done from the ground so that
there can be a neutral rider up there who can just flow with the horse.
When I'm working with people who are coming out of a lifetime of horses.
This can be tricky because no one likes to be a beginner again, obviously.
And also there are, as you said, just these sort of synapses.
Mental pathways that are very hardwired that need to be.
So, so something, the way you just explained it there, I think could
be very useful for someone that is needing to go to that next phase
with horses, but doesn't quite know how that sort of glassy feel.
Jane Faulkner: Yeah.
And what's really cool is, you know, you're talking about needing to check you
needing to change the body, bringing your body back into neutral and you doing that.
Through working with the body has an impact on who you are as a human,
on how you do relationships on how you think on everything about you.
And that's what I love to like, Deb Dana who writes a lot of,
yeah, talks about, you know, change the state, change the story.
And this is what I love about working with the body.
You know, when you bring a sense of ease to the body and a sense of
relaxation and openness the whole way our mind sees the world changes,
Rupert Isaacson: which is difficult to do when you're an anxious monkey
sitting on a moving barrel that has a mind of it and a sense of humor
and you are the butt of the joke.
Yes,
Jane Faulkner: very, very totally.
I, I wanted to share.
I went to Mongolia to my husband and I.
Yeah, we went there.
We did a 19 day.
Horse riding, we went up to the reindeer people.
Rupert Isaacson: Fantastic.
Jane Faulkner: Yeah.
And so it was amazing.
Gosh.
You may well have met
Rupert Isaacson: the same people that I was with, with my son.
Jane Faulkner: What a magical country.
I just loved Mongolia.
Intact ecosystem.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Jane Faulkner: Ah, that.
And, and their people.
Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
Jane Faulkner: Like that.
The people that live in intact
Rupert Isaacson: ecosystems, you know.
Jane Faulkner: Yes.
Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
Tend to be cool, right?
Yeah.
Jane Faulkner: They blew me away.
Just how authentic they were, how even I took kind real, I loved their realness.
Like, cause I, I talked to students a lot about boundaries and how
in Mongolia, there's no fences.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
But
Jane Faulkner: they have a deep respect for boundaries.
Yeah.
So they don't need the physical fences.
Like we don't respect boundaries and we need the fences.
Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
And fences can be broken and climbed over and jumped over.
Yeah.
Jane Faulkner: Yes.
Yeah.
But I loved their Buddhism shamanism.
That was just like, Oh, and not the, not the in doctrine, not the dogma of it.
The living of it.
That's what I loved.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, I'm so with you.
And actually, you know, you were talking about working with First
Nations elder there in Queensland the, the, the, this thing of informing
oneself through indigenous wisdom.
One of the things one forgets is that horses don't come when
you're a white person from Europe.
Horsemanship is not European.
It comes out of what it comes.
It's a bit European.
It comes out of the mixed, mixed liminal space between Europe and Asia.
And, but it went more into Asia first before it came into Europe proper,
it was, it was in Asia for thousands of years because that's where the
civilizations were, you know, people in Europe, Western Europe, particularly,
were just sort of living in forests for quite a while at that point.
And so it doesn't really creep in.
It are like you with a name like Falcon or me with a name like Isaacson.
It doesn't come into the culture of our ancestors until quite a lot later.
And, but it's still an indigenous thing and one of the.
The conclusions that my wife and I came to a while ago, because we obviously we teach
people a lot of dressage as well as the therapeutic stuff is you actually can't
do it unless you do it in a tribal way.
Because it's a tribal system.
It came out of people living in tents who were families who collaborated.
And when you go to.
The Spanish Riding School of Vienna or the Royal School of Jerez in Spain.
What, what do you observe?
You see groups of people collaborating two to three at a time with a horse
to help it understand as quickly and as easily with as much, not
pressure, but moral support as it can.
That's a tribal thing.
So we have this program called Riots Clubs.
We show people how to form Riding is a tribal sport and the difficulty
is doing things in isolation.
It's almost impossible, right?
But of course, this is a message for life, right?
Yeah.
Jane Faulkner: I love have you heard about you know, how we, we kind of swallowed the
Darwin theory of survival of the fittest.
And you've heard of the Russian researcher that actually
kind of debunked that theory.
Tell us all about it.
Yeah.
Tell us
Rupert Isaacson: about this.
Jane Faulkner: I can't think of names, but so around the time that, that Darwin
came to that conclusion of, you know, survival of the fittest the strongest
conquers everything, the strongest wins.
So, a Russian researcher around the same time did the same kind of
research and he found the opposite.
He found that the people that survived or the communities that survived and
prospered were the people that could form relationships, the, the people that could
form collaborations, the people that could be part of communities and the people that
weren't able to make those relationships or sustain those relationships.
And same as the animals, the people or the animals that weren't able
to do that were the ones that died.
Absolutely.
It's just fascinating that we grabbed the Charles Darwin instead of the other one.
Well,
Rupert Isaacson: it suited our world view at the time, right, which was Yeah,
Jane Faulkner: so true.
Rupert Isaacson: But of course, what was colonialism?
Colonialism was groups of people.
Not single con We talk about Cortez, you know, he conquered Mexico.
No, he didn't.
Cortez was in charge of a very, very large group of people, all working cooperatively
to do something psychopathic and horrible.
But nonetheless, it was, you know, the people that conquered,
in inverted commas, the American West were not John Wayne types.
They tended to dive first in the desert.
The John Wayne types who actually sort of made it were the ones who led and helped.
groups of settlers come together.
And of course, outside of the colonial experience, you know, I work a lot
with hunting and gathering tribes, it's those are entirely, and those
are the original human blueprints.
Those are entirely cultures of conflict resolution, because if you have Conflict
within your community, beyond a certain level, your community will fragment
and if your community fragments, guess what you're a mid level predator.
You're not top predator.
So the lions will absolutely eat you.
The only thing we've got is this ability oxytocin connection to strategize.
with a speaking ape, we have the larynx.
So we're very, very good at strategizing, but only if we feel connecting, connection
and feel safe with our community.
That is the only security we have.
And I agree with you yet.
We're sold a myth of the lone warrior hero.
Like say it's CÃº Chulainn, you know, the great Irish hero, the hound of us.
Well, what happens to CÃº Chulainn in the end?
He gets killed gloriously.
What happens to Hercules in the end?
He gets killed.
Okay.
They put him in the staff, but you know, they're glorious deaths.
Perhaps maybe they even think they go to Valhalla, die sword
in hand, but fact is they die.
Jane Faulkner: Yeah.
And not only that, like, I feel like I think of even our industry where we have
this thing of who's the best or be the
Rupert Isaacson: best
Jane Faulkner: and it drives me nuts.
It's like, why does there need to be a best?
Well, if we all came together, The backbiting
Rupert Isaacson: within, within the horse industry in general, within
therapy industry in general, within academia, within therapeutic writing.
We all know that it can be very toxic and the, the, the, the nastiness with
which people treat each other is bizarre.
Always to me, given that we're supposed to be in.
a modality of healing.
You don't have to like everybody working against people.
How, how is that us doing our job?
Jane Faulkner: To me, it slows us all down.
You know, if our whole goal is to help people and to kind of
make the world a better place.
And I don't know, I just think, but if you think about it
Rupert Isaacson: in a weird way.
And we come by these dysfunctions and actually honestly, because we all get
put through a school system where we're supposed to be in competition with our
classmates, and then with other wider people out there in exams that will
say, well, were your exams good enough.
Against all these other people that you've never met to then get to this
university and then at this university are your grades good enough, you know
that you will get this level of degree.
And then when you go out into the workplace, you've got to quote unquote
prove yourself against your peers.
And then if you add horses to that, and then academia.
It's all about defending a position or you lose your job, you lose your funding.
So you got to be right all the time, which means you must attack those who,
you know, who take an opposing view.
Because there's an economic imperative to that.
And then horse people, well, what's the horse?
What's the horse tradition we've inherited.
Most of us that grew up with the sort of pony club, even though there were
so many wonderful things with that.
It's a military thing.
It came out of the 1845, you know, military manuals that were in the
cavalry schools and the people that ran riding schools in the old days
were ex cavalry officers because that's what they did when they retired.
So this whole sort of military industrial thing permeates and someone pops up at
the end out of all that and says, well, now I'd like to use this modality of this
thing I learned through academia to heal.
And this thing I learned with the horse deal, but I've learned them through a
sort of slightly sociopathic process.
How can that not rub off on us?
So I do have compassion for that and I do understand it, but it makes me sad because
as you say, I feel it slows us down.
Jane Faulkner: Yeah.
And I love that now we can at least talk about it and there's an awareness of it.
I just have a question for you, Rupert,
Rupert Isaacson: for
Jane Faulkner: me, I'm the one doing
Rupert Isaacson: the interviewing here.
Jane Faulkner: The horses in Mongolia, there was just something so different
about them to our domesticated horses.
Like, I'm curious about that.
And I'm, I just wonder what you all.
So for me, what was different is they seem to, so even for me, the Mongolian
people not naming their horses, but it was like the horse knew their role.
The human knew their role.
And there was a real cleanness to it.
There wasn't this kind of.
Merging or gray zone.
It was kind of the horse has its job to do.
I have my job to do.
Cause there was, you could see the love for the horse and it was amazing
to watch the Mongolian people ride.
I just.
Well, my husband and I were both like, wow,
Rupert Isaacson: right.
I mean, what, what you're looking at there is of course, one of the
original versions of horsemanship.
And so there's bad and good and there's everything.
Jane Faulkner: I mean, people
Rupert Isaacson: can be incredibly brutal and rough with their horses there.
Jane Faulkner: But at the
Rupert Isaacson: same time, the horses are also largely left alone to be horses.
There are people who absolutely named their horses.
And for example, there's a whole, there's a whole subculture of horse racing there.
And, you know, very, very, a lot of money changes hands and it's not horse
racing as we know, it's, it's, it's, it's the 30 mile races across country
with eight year old jockeys, but nonetheless, it's, it's, it's a very
Jane Faulkner: festival
Rupert Isaacson: festival.
Yeah.
And then when it gets competitive the mounted archery amounted wrestling the
nomad games cock Peru, which is the sort of rugby on horseback that they play.
So, there's like in our culture there's working horsemanship.
Yeah.
Practical horsemanship and then the sport horsemanship and of
course all the interplays between.
But I think what's different there is that it's still a place where people
genuinely rely, like truly, truly, truly rely on horses for their livelihood.
It's not, it's not, it's not a, you can make a sport out of your culture, but
the culture is the culture of the horse.
I mean, to the point that they're wearing them, that they're eating
them, that they're drinking them.
That's so true.
You know, the, the horse is everything in life.
It's not just a thing you ride or it's not just transport or it's not
just winning you money in a race.
It's you, you are drinking it's milk, you're, you know, the whole lot.
Mm.
So the, the, and then of course what I, one thing I really liked about
Mongolia was that they still revere.
the original wild horse.
So their horses are not wild.
They are domestic horses.
They just live very naturalistically.
But there's still the Przewalski's horse and their name for the Przewalski's
horse is Takin, which means honored one.
That one you leave alone.
It's really interesting.
You, you respect, you absolutely respect its independence.
So our, our program that we have, which is doing all the groundwork and
the in hand dressage work as its own therapy, we call TEI, Taquine Equine
Integration, because I liked that word of the Honored One of coming to the
horse and saying, I do revere you.
You, I'm going to anthropomorphize the shit out of this, but I
do, I just have to, you know.
Because horses do represent a big thing in our mythology and in our spirit and
they represent freedom and they represent power and they represent beauty and they
represent transformation and journey.
And they just flat out do.
And that is sort of because that is sort of what they do for us.
So what can we do for them.
We can honor them, we can honor them.
In the same way that we can honor each other.
Jane Faulkner: Yeah.
And I think that's so important because we miss that, don't we?
We do.
Just that I think that's a great thing to bring back in.
But as you were talking and you spoke about their independence, and I think
that's what stood out for me in the Mongolian horses, that I don't see so
much in the domesticated horses here is this independence, this, almost this
sovereignty, this kind of, I can, I mean, they're out living kind of wild and free
for five months of the year over there.
And I remember just really feeling this difference in the horses and in their
kind of just the way their beingness.
Absolutely.
Rupert Isaacson: And there's, there's pros and cons with that because
some of them die in the winter, some of them get eaten by wolves.
You know, some of them,
Dying childbirth or whatever.
And, but one thing I think, I think you're right, that I took from it was, I've kept
my horses in all sorts of different ways.
Yeah.
I've kept them in boxes, I've kept them not in boxes, I've
kept them outside all the time.
And what I've realized over time is my preference is to have horses that
live out all the time, and that can come into a shelter, and in the winter
here in Northern Europe, yes, you have to rug them, and that sort of thing.
But you can have horses working at a very high performance level,
living very naturalistically like that in a herd, moving in and out,
eating at will, moving at will.
And then if you are in a situation where you have to have a horse that's
convenient and clean, like some of our horse boy centers, we have a lot of
those places we'll put them out at night.
And then in the day they might stand in so that you don't have to groom the horse
from mud every single time you're going to put someone on it, which, okay, fine.
So that's the working time of day and they're there and they're available,
but they're also moving a lot.
They're not bored.
They're not standing hour after hour in a box.
They're, they're, they're just kind of chilling.
In between sessions, but then they're outside at night and they
go back to being horses again.
That's my preferred method.
However, you know, I work in so many environments where people
don't necessarily have that choice.
And I've been around a lot of horsemanship clinics and symposiums
where people shame each other and say, well, you shouldn't keep your
horse in a box and you shouldn't.
And someone says, well, I haven't got any choice because, you know, I
bought my horse at this livery stable and these are the rules and I'm
sorry, but I haven't got the money to buy myself, you know, 20 acres.
And so, and what I realized with that is, yeah, what you need to do is kind of.
do it the best you can while honoring the horse's need for independence,
movement, choice, agency, and so on.
But that can look quite different from horse owner to horse owner or
barn to barn or local horse culture to local horse culture because
depending on certain constraints.
And that we have to have some compassion for this and work with people where
they are versus where they are, right?
But I do think you're absolutely right that if you're taking as a sort of a
baseline, well, we would like to be as close to this Mongolian model as we can.
How do we do that?
Does that mean that I have to let my horses free run in the arena for
a certain number of hours in the day or, or what or what, but are we
at least thinking in these times?
Jane Faulkner: Yeah.
And for me, it's not, it wasn't even, I was just curious about, because I could
feel the difference and I was just curious about it and what created the difference.
And then I guess, as you were talking, I was like, Oh, that's what it is.
Cause for me, I totally agree.
Everyone does the best with what they have, with what they
know, with where they're at.
Yeah.
And I would love it if we could all have more generous assumptions and
ask questions and be curious rather than kind of judge one another.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: I feel that we're slowly getting there, you know, I think,
Jane Faulkner: yeah, I agree.
Rupert Isaacson: Organizations like yours are a part of that.
And I think again, that is a, that is a, perhaps an advantage that you have
from coming in from outside the horse.
Culture is that you can bring a sudden lack of judgment which helps we horse
people to be less judgmental because let's forget the humans that we're serving.
You know, the big question is horse welfare.
And.
So my horses need to be happy, and they need to have well being, because
how can they possibly impart happiness and well being to a human if they
don't have that to give, right?
So this is the big conversation, I think, of our time as horse people
is, given the constraints that we have how, how do we ensure that well being?
Yeah.
Jane Faulkner: And I love that we are working that out.
Like more and more like, and for me, clients help me see that.
Like clients in the early days, were really, were right on to
the horse doesn't wanna do that.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, yeah.
Jane Faulkner: And so I had to kind of think, all right, what's,
how, how can I do this differently?
How can I support this horse to still be in the conversation in a
way that it feels comfortable to?
Can
Rupert Isaacson: you give us, can you give us the example
that stands out in your mind?
Most of that where, yeah.
Yeah.
Jane Faulkner: So for me I was working with the herd of horses at
the retreat that I worked in and there was one horse that was just
lovely and very giving and would kind of always come forward for work.
And I was quite early on in my practice, so, relied on a lot
of work with the horses halted.
And I remember going to this horse Jack, his name was, and going to
put the halter on, and he obviously did not want the halter on.
And I put it on anyway.
And I felt like shit.
The whole session, and I remember promising him, I'll never do that to
you again and realizing it meant I was going to look, I was going to let people
down because these people paid a big amount of money for these sessions.
And it meant that I needed to work out a different way to, to work to give people
insights and awareness into what was happening for them without making Jack do
all the work on the halter or with that.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: So what did you work out given that you have to dance
between honoring what the client Is showing up and paying money to do,
which is a real thing, the need for the horse as a colleague, which is a real
thing and the need to recognize their horse's agency, which is a real thing.
What did you do?
Jane Faulkner: So for me, I learned to get really curious about
everything the horses did in relation to what the person said and did.
And I learned to support the person to get curious about that too.
And.
I started to notice like more and more that the horses did give really
clear indicators of and support the person to become really aware of
themselves in a way that was much more profound than if the horse was halted.
So, for example, if the person was really dysregulated and really
Thinking things or had a lot of emotion, generally, the horses
wouldn't want to be near that person.
But then as the person got in touch with their feelings and became congruent, so
became authentic and maybe even spoke to me or the horse about their feelings, the
horses turned in and wanted to engage.
And so the person, the people realize like, because something I'll ask somebody
when a horse does something like if a horse or four horses move away, I might
say to that person, is that familiar?
And the person will go, yeah, it feels like my family.
And then it's like, what's that like?
Can you tell the horses what's that like for you?
And as they tell the horses, something in the person shifts and the horses
respond to that state, state shift.
Often it means the person needs to become more vulnerable or more real
and that's what the horses respond to.
And then the person can join the dogs and they, they realize like,
oh, gosh, when I'm uptight and stressed, it pushes my family away.
But when I own what I'm feeling and I'm honest about what's happening for
me, my family want to come closer.
So they kind of, that's where horses I find are amazing.
They, they give a really tangible indication of where that person's at.
And they give the person an opportunity to try something different and they respond.
And the person feels it in their body.
Rupert Isaacson: I would agree.
And I would agree with that.
Right across every human interaction with horses, you know, whether it's
therapeutic or whether it's Work, you know, working equitation with cow work
or whether it's a sport or whatever.
For sure.
And I think, I think everyone at the, who's serious about any of the
interactions with horses to some degree comes to this realization that you
have to change something in yourself often and frequently, not just once.
Because you're dealing with organisms that reflect.
where you are.
So as you say, if, if it took me a long time, for example, when I am going to do
a dressage type thing to be really okay with it, feeling where the horse is at.
And sometimes they're like, no, it's not what I want.
All right.
You know what?
No problem.
Let's just go in the forest.
And then frequently when we've gone in the forest, they're like, you know what,
actually that dressage thing, I kind of feel like doing a little bit of that.
And that's exactly how I would be, you know, I would be like, look, I want
to just, you know, go chill first.
And then when I've had a little bit of a run around and explore, then yeah,
I'm kind of want to engage in this kind of absorbing thing, you know, but
that totally reflects my personality.
Why would they not?
Jane Faulkner: Exactly.
And it deepens the relationship, doesn't it?
Like for me, it just creates a much more profound, deep
relationship, but it takes humility.
It takes willing to, like for me in front of clients or students
being willing to go, look, I don't know what's going to happen.
They're walking away.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, this is the thing I think what, what people fear.
very, very, for very real and good reasons is that if you know, you're, you're
a horse professional or whatever and your horse doesn't want to participate,
well, you know, you're letting people down and you're not delivering the
service that you said you would.
Or if you're not doing it professionally, but you've just been told you've
got to tell the horse what to do.
You've got to be boss of the horse or the horse won't respect you.
And although there's truths in that, that's not the whole truth, but
there are certain truths in that.
What I found, and I'm sure you've found.
But perhaps this might be useful for listeners is just to inform people up
front, you know, so for example, if I am giving a quote unquote dressage
thing in just the same way as if I'm giving a quote unquote therapy
thing, I'll often say to the clients, look, it could go like this and it
could go like that for these reasons.
If it goes like this, then my suggestion is we go blah, blah, blah.
And if it goes like that, my suggestion, and, or it might just,
we might just go straight to the thing, but are you okay with that?
Flexibility before we begin, and you sort of give them a chance to say to
understand and then to say, well, okay, you know, or no, actually, I'm not
okay with that, you know, in which case we can say, well, perhaps we're not,
we're not the right fit for each other.
That's all right, too.
But I find with most with most people it's it's more about just
giving giving the information if you give the information, give people a
chance to understand I'm the same.
If you give me a chance to understand I'm probably okay with it.
You know what I mean?
Jane Faulkner: Yeah, yeah, definitely.
I agree.
Yeah, that transparency.
Rupert Isaacson: So I've got a last, I've got a question for you.
Jane Faulkner: I
Rupert Isaacson: would like to, I would like to have you on again.
There's lots of other questions I've got for you.
So if you're up for it, I'd like to do a part two or even a part three with you.
And I'm sure that the listeners feel the same.
I, yeah.
I'm thinking back to that girl, the young girl who was living in her car
in Brisbane, who you saw when she was 13 years old living in her car, having
to do whatever she could do to survive.
If she was your client now, how would you help her?
Jane Faulkner: Great question.
So, I would help her
just by being a, an equal human beside her.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Jane Faulkner: And keeping it that simple, just by being an equal human that valued
her and that saw the gold within her,
Rupert Isaacson: that
Jane Faulkner: didn't see what she did or, cause she would bring a lot of shame.
I imagine.
I'm so sure.
Yeah.
Yeah, to honor that shame and to support her to see her light and
to let her know that's what I see.
Rupert Isaacson: To perhaps honor the courage that it takes to go into something
that is going to cause that shame.
That takes great courage, right?
Jane Faulkner: Yeah, yeah, 100%.
And more just to let her know her shame is welcome and it makes sense that
it's there and that there's nothing wrong with that shame being there.
Rupert Isaacson: Oh, okay.
And that she's much
Jane Faulkner: more than
Rupert Isaacson: What does that mean?
That's intriguing.
Okay.
Jane Faulkner: Yeah.
So, I mean, we all Okay, because normally
Rupert Isaacson: we think shame is something that isn't so welcome, you know,
because it has negative associations.
So why is shame welcome?
Tell us about that.
Jane Faulkner: Because shame is trying to protect us in some way.
Shame is trying to reveal something to us in some way.
Shame's part of being human.
And so if I reject it or push it away, I reject or push away a part of myself.
And I don't want a client to do that.
And, and they'll be pushing away the most vulnerable part of themselves.
And I'm more one to say, Hey, I see that vulnerable part and it is so welcome here.
And thank you for showing me that part of you.
And can you let that part of, you know, I'm so grateful it's
shown up that takes courage.
So I never, ever want anyone to reject their shame, but that's healing for me
is learning to pick your shame up and hold it and say, Hey, I've got you.
Yeah.
And accept it, bring it close.
We learned to push it away and reject it
Rupert Isaacson: like, like in a child healing effectively.
Yes.
Jane Faulkner: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Interesting.
Okay.
I think we need another conversation about that
if you're up for later.
Jane Faulkner: Yeah.
I'd love to.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: I think everyone, everyone, everyone.
And
it, it,
I think whether you're, whether you're the person suffering from it, which is
everyone on the planet, or whether you're the first to help somebody with it.
I thought is really from the conversation is, well, what's it, what are the
positive sides of it and why might it be welcome and what might be doing
for you that's helping you and how is it, how is it, how is it helping
you to acquire wisdom and how is it helping you to acquire compassion.
And how has it helped, you know, looking through that the lens of the
heart as if, you know, Kansas Caridine and her work with HeartMath Institute,
but she's, she would say, you know, I feel terrible speaking for Caridine.
Sorry, Kansas.
But, you know, she, she might say, she might say, looking
through the lens of the heart.
And one of the, the, you know, when she said that to me, it hit home immediately.
That is exactly what we are trained to not to do.
Jane Faulkner: Yes, and it's what we all need.
Yes, to see one another through the lens of the heart.
That's such a beautiful saying, the lens of the heart.
Rupert Isaacson: Because it renders us uncontrollable and we're not
going to go off and fight and die on foreign battlefields if we're
looking through the lens of the heart.
Jane Faulkner: It's so true.
And we want to support each other and build one another up.
So governments and
Rupert Isaacson: churches don't have much.
Jane Faulkner: They don't
Rupert Isaacson: have much incentive to help us to see that way.
Jane Faulkner: So true.
And yet we crave it, eh?
Rupert Isaacson: Like, like oxygen.
Jane Faulkner: Mm.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Like love.
Whoa, Jane Faulkner, thank you.
Jane Faulkner: Thank you.
Brilliant.
Thanks so much.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
So, so with the knowledge that we're going to explore some more things
for those, I think we should sign off and let people digest this so far.
What are the resources?
Just give us the web stuff, books, whatever, the way people can find you,
YouTube, the lot, just how do we, how do they find their way to you and your stuff?
Jane Faulkner: Sure.
Website is equine assisted therapy, australia.
com.
au and Facebook is the same equine assisted therapy,
Australia and same as Instagram.
And that's, that's about it.
No books yet.
But the website
Rupert Isaacson: is com.
au chaps.
Those of us outside of Australia, remember it's an AU on the end after the com.
Jane Faulkner: Yes.
Thank you.
But
Rupert Isaacson: I presume if they type equine assisted Australia into
Google, it'll still come up to you.
Jane Faulkner: I, hopefully.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Okay.
Jane Faulkner: Awesome.
Thank you so much, Rupert.
I've loved this conversation.
Thank
Rupert Isaacson: you.
Likewise.
I learned a lot.
So thank you for mentoring me.
And I look forward to the next one.
Jane Faulkner: Awesome.
Thanks, Rupert..
Rupert Isaacson: thank you for joining us.
We hope you enjoyed today's podcast.
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