The Chemistry Behind How You Show Up for Your Horse - Katie Edmonds (F)NTP

So whenever you’re ready, if you want to kick us off by telling us who you are and what it is you do, yeah. Hi, my name is Katie Edmonds. I am a nutritional therapist and I specialize in endometriosis. So I I started out just doing nutrition. This was mainly because I had endometriosis and there was so many things that they did that didn’t help was that I finally started getting healing traction from really specific strategic dietary shifts rather than these like trendy diets.

I was trying to see if, you know, throwing mud at the wall to see what it would sticks, so to speak. But from dealing with diet and having so much success, I went and, you know, worked with like the nervous system, the gut microbiome, all of these things. Delve into the research behind all of this because, you know, as much as we hear, there’s not much information about endometriosis, there’s a staggering amount of really cool research. And I was able to put my endometriosis in remission, which I didn’t know was possible, and it very much is. So I’ve now written two books.

I do a lot of endometriosis education. I have a pretty enormous website platform that’s completely free on endometriosis. So as of now, I’m more of an endometriosis educator, the role I’ve fallen into, which is really wonderful. Yeah, it’s really interesting. So for the listeners, this will be a little bit of a different type of podcast because this was like a little bit of a selfish endeavor because I found you through my own interest in sort of at least minimizing my endometriosis because I personally suffer from it.

My mom had it. And I was just under the impression for a long time that this was just like something that I had. And because I didn’t do well on birth control, there just like was nothing that you can do about it. And then I started getting really, really sick. And as a professional athlete, you can’t like, not train for a week every single month.

It’s a bit too much of A taper. And I was like, there’s got to be something I can do about this. And that’s kind of how I found your back heel endo. But through talking to other equestrians about my own journey and one, I realized that there’s a lot of equestrians who suffer from some type of inflammatory hormone something whether it’s endometriosis or PCOS or hash, you know, just all of these, these things. And there’s not really a good outlet that talks about it in terms of like athlete type women.

Yeah, and that you know, that it’s so much how do I mask the symptoms of this quote UN quote chronic illness and nothing to keep doing what I love. And it’s almost like if the white knuckle it to a certain point until you might actually, you know, that’s when you have burnout, you have health collapse and that’s the things. Oh, really? Sorry my dog. So what for the listener who may not know what is endometriosis and why is it more than just like an ovary prep?

Yeah, well, since you have so many listeners with them, I’m sure a variety of issues. Maybe you don’t have endodiagnosed, maybe you have it undiagnosed. You have, you know, papal menstrual cycles. Maybe you have PCOS, maybe you have Flashimoto’s thyroiditis or another autoimmune condition. I can talk about it under the inflammation umbrella because that will allow any listener who’s who is here to not think, oh, this is just endometriosis.

Because what all of those diseases have in common is they fall under the umbrella of a chronic inflammatory condition. And they all have similar roots in certain ways with the immune system. It’s just different how everything is responding. But when you have inflammation, it’s great because it’s nature’s original antiseptic, right? Like you get caught on the foot by something kind of gross and your immune system comes in and that inflammation is what causes the symptoms, the swelling.

But you want that inflammation because killing the bacteria. So once the inflammation subsides, the second part of the immune system kicks in and that’s the heal and mend part. It cannot heal and mend while there’s active inflammation. So inflammation is absolutely great, absolutely essential. Without inflammation, you would literally die, like you’d get the flu and die.

So inflammation is what keeps those diseases at Bay. The chronic inflammation is when there’s too many factors causing perceived injury. So this is where chronic stress, chronic chemical exposure, chronic and nutrient depletion, chronic blood sugar spikes, all of these things that cause micro levels of damage inside the body. Now your body is trying to fix up this fixer upper that keeps going through proverbial hurricanes. It’s almost like it never ends.

Conversely, your immune system can start to be really confused. And if the issue actually subside, But because your immune system is so used to attacking, the inflammation continues even though there actually isn’t an issue anymore. So there’s different ways you can have this chronic inflammation. And over time, what happens is immune dysregulation is that your immune system is not doing things that should and it is doing things that it shouldn’t. In the case of an autoimmune condition like Hashimoto’s, it’s attacking your very ill thyroid glands.

Like that’s really bad. It shouldn’t be bad. In the case of cancer and autoimmune, it finds a cell that is totally abnormal and bizarre. It should not be there. Your immune system, its job is to clean up those cells.

That’s what it does every day. But instead of cleaning up that cell, it actually mistakenly establishes the cell into either a cancerous lesion or an endometriosis lesion. They’re very similar in the way they establish actually, although very different. I’m just so not sure cancer. It’s just that they behave similarly in that way.

And now you have established the endometriosis or cancer. So these are, you know, the inflammation and the way word immune system is the driving force behind almost all of the diseases today that are your chronic illnesses. And like you were saying, you go to the doctor and you get an endodiagnosis or you get an autoimmune diagnosis or you get a PCOS diagnosis. And they are like, there’s no here, there’s nothing to do. So here’s birth control.

That’s the best we can do. Now, maybe they’ll put you on another medication. You know, there’s a few medications they would get for PCOS. It’s less likely they’d give you many options for endometriosis, maybe surgery and maybe just a hysterectomy, chemical menopause, as every 20 year old wants to be in chemical. Yes.

So unfortunately with endometriosis, actually a lot of these diseases, they’re just not very well understood by your average doctor. And when our doctor is the gatekeeper for this information and we’re told by someone that we hold in high esteem, like you have this great education, there’s something there’s not much I can do for it. And now I feel crestfallen. And that’s when we often do the things like go on birth control painkillers and white knuckle our way through life until we have like you, you just eventually got sicker, right? That’s the same for me.

White knuckle it forward until you really just have that health collapse and you realize that this is not sustainable anymore. So with endometriosis, that’s the problem is if inflammation was driving ahead and you don’t address that chronic inflammation, then your symptoms couldn’t get worse, but still can the endometriosis. So you know, you need this immune dysfunction to which can come from many different factors. I mentioned a few other chemicals, blood sugars regulation, chronic stress, constant triggers, micronutrient deficiencies. There’s so many factors.

And then once you have endometriosis, there’s many factors that go into progressing it into what would be known as worst forms of disease. So if left unaddressed, endometriosis can get worse in ways that actually damage your internal organs. There’s scar tissue and adhesions is adhesions is when your organs get stuck together with this filmy, thick, tacky product, which is the outcome of more chronic infection. Basically inflammation is burning your your inside your peritoneal cavity, causing that scar tissue fibrosis of the tissue and leading to the adhesion. So you don’t want to go that direction.

And This is why when you look at any disease that’s rooted in chronic inflammation, you want to take 10 steps back and say, where’s the chronic inflammation coming from? And I like to tell my clients with Endo it’s you have to stop thinking about it as I have endometriosis and that’s causing all these issues because you can’t reach in there with a magic wand and take out that endometriosis right away with the lesion removal. Endometriosis is more than lesions. You have to say, well, what else is going on? If I had 99 problems, endometriosis is 1.

How can I address the 98 other problems that many may be in my control? And they can give you some bang for your buck in addressing this disease, minimizing symptoms. And what I say you’re really aiming for is remission. You know, there may not be a cure. There’s not a cure for any of these diseases.

They’re chronic, multifactorial inflammatory conditions. But you want to, you know, improve your quality of life, be able to have babies if you want babies, all the the factors that just go into living a joyful, wonderful time on this planet and not letting this disease stop us. Yeah, it’s. I feel like it can sound like a lot and. Sometimes when you’re dealing with it, it is a lot, but I just don’t think maybe now because there’s so much information.

But I know when I started looking into this a while ago, there wasn’t as much information on just all the things that are inflammatory. So it’s like when you realize, oh, OK, this is some type of inflammation. It’s like, where do I even start with solving? That’s why it’s great people have written books and whatnot, but and so why when? I.

First decided to reach out to you. I had actually kind of gone on your Facebook page and saw that you had started doing a lot of stuff about the nervous system. And this has been kind of a fascination of mine for a little while now, and just how the nervous system can shape not just our external world, but our internal world as well. So how? Does like that sort of affect our hormones and just like our our being as a woman woman?

Yeah, So I, you know, I’m humbled to admit I came into more deeply understanding the nervous system after I published my book and after I did so much research on the body. And I talked about the nervous system. We talked about stress, but I just didn’t fully understand it, which is a silver lining because you know, once you go through something personally, you can better understand it and talk about it. So I had, after I wrote my book and my heart, I went through a really, really hard year. It was I lost a best friend.

We had a terrible falling out. I lost my dad, He died from cancer. And then I lost my dog of 14 years old age. They’re always things. I had two really young children and I all of these symptoms came back.

You know, I had eczema on my elbow, like my placebo came back and all these different things. And I, you know, I really started thinking about stress and how that affects the body and it led me to tell them actually to understand it so much more. So I think it’s something your listeners will probably all be able to relate to as well as really I probably high performing women, often athletes. So, you know, competitive, all of those different things that go into really like moving fast through life. And sometimes we really don’t understand what the word stress means because we’ve been like living in it for so long, congregate for so long.

So the way I like to talk about this now is I like to talk about it through two different physiologies, like how your body is living. And then we can move it to how that Physiology actually can dramatically change your health. Like it can create hormonal and metabolic crisis or can create, you know, the opposite terrain for you to thrive. So instead of seeing stress, I now ask people if they are living in can chemistry versus dose chemistry. So those are acronyms can stands for cortisol, adrenaline and norepinephrine.

So your stress hormones that would be living in any of these types of emotions that you might relate to a lot more than if I said, oh, are you stressed? You might say, oh, like nothing to be thought about ever. You’re feeling embarrassed, maybe feeling bored. Are you miserable? Are you feeling vulnerable, real fragile?

Maybe you’re feeling jealous, irritated, frustrated, annoyed. Those are all just so common to be in those categories. You could be feeling kind of shut down a bit. You’re feeling worthless, depressed, really anxious or nervous, worried, insecure. All of those would be can emotions.

Your those are the emotions where your body is getting safe to a certain level. And when it’s feeling unsafe, that’s when it becomes hyper vigilant because your nervous system doesn’t have eyes. It relies on sensations. O if the sensation is unsafe because of any of those, you’re angry, you’re sad, you’re nervous, you’re scared. Any of those tyes of things, your body will prioritize survival Physiology.

And this is when you actually develop systemic inflammation because it’s it’s a strategy for survival. If you’re scared and unsafe because you’re being attacked by a wild animal or a soldier, you want inflammation throughout your body in case you get stabbed or cut anywhere. So inflammation is ready to take on the bacteria that’s been introduced. So if your body doesn’t know that you are feeling the sense of complete urgency and overwhelm because your house is really messy and you have 60 emails before you go to writing practice, Yeah, that is a survival Physiology. And so many of us live in the survival Physiology that can chemistry every single day, and we can actually get stuck there.

It’s almost like when you rehearse for a place. So let’s you know, you, you can start to act like that actor. And if you live in canned chemistry, you have a really hard time coming into dose chemistry, which is really, really, I’m going to say bad. I don’t want to make any stress out, but it’s you ideally want to be in dose chemistry throughout the majority of your day. So dose stands for dopamine, oxycosin, serotonin and adorphins.

This is the I am well, I am content. I am neutral, I am safe Physiology. So this doesn’t mean you need to be happy or joyful all the time. Those are passing emotions. Those are great to have.

But you when you’re not there, you could also just be feeling hopeful. Maybe you feel confident. Maybe you feel totally neutral and calm, like you don’t need to have highs or lows. You’re just satisfied being whatever you’re whatever you’re doing. You could be thoughtful and curious, connected, Then maybe you’re like really into researching something.

That’s where actually I find a lot of calming moments with my own nervous system. It’s something that I love to do. So maybe you’re here when you ride your horse and maybe that’s why you have to ride your force because it puts you in the dose chemistry. This is where we want to be for the majority of our days. So this is when you’re commuting dose chemistry, someone cuts you off while you’re commuting, you’re still in dose chemistry.

Like that’s not a survival moment. Like someone just pulled in front of you, right? Your job, you should be in dose chemistry for your, the majority of your days. Maybe you had a really big presentation, you go into canned chemistry, but afterwards you’re back in dose chemistry. You know, the problem arises again and we can chemistry for the majority.

So when you’re in that survival Physiology, your body pray words pies is survival, dativation of survival over everything. So this is how you can start to develop really big sex hormone imbalances, getting higher levels of estrogen relative to progesterone, which can cause crazy PMS, really emotional, lots of spotty pelvic pain. Think that are, yes, associated with endometriosis, but they can also just be associated with hormonal dolances that are associated with the cycle. They are deeply associated with the metabolic hormones. So, you know, we’re talking about insulin, we’re talking about how cortisol and that helps with when you have blood sugar dips.

There’s so many hormones that go into regulating blood sugar when you’re in can chemistry. Oh my gosh, your blood sugar can just go crazy off the charts. That again, is even more inflammatory. There’s hormones for sleeping, there’s hormones for feeling full and satiated and your body just is not thinking that. Those are important to to figure out right now.

Right now we’re in survival mode. So coming out of that and relearning how to engage with our dose chemistry is basically the most important foundation I believe we can heal from now because you can do all these protocols, right? If you go online and see all these healing protocols and they usually involve some sort of crazy stressful diet, you know, $300 worth of supplements and a 30 day, that’s really not going to move your needle. You might actually feel better while you’re doing that, but you know, doing some crash diet whole life infusion, you know, turning a world topsy turvy to address a chronic condition is not going to last very long. You have a you have a marriage or Fred because you’re right, you have writing and competition.

Like you can’t commit your entire life to doing this thing. Well, you, what you want to do first is shift your Physiology into a healing Physiology and from there really strategically address whatever you’re dealing with head on looking for those root causes. But that’s the nervous system. What I keep finding is even if you’re being strategic, you can have relapse after relapse if you’re don’t address this nervous system dysregulation, which is really at the heart of the complexity of a lot of these. Diseases.

So for people who work with horses specifically, and horses are very interesting because although when we’re with our horses, we might feel really peace and present and and all of that, there is also this element of, I don’t want to say danger because that makes it seem like the horses are out of control. But like, you know, you can only control so much. And yeah, they’re big and they can spook and, you know, do all of that. And so for some people like who do this a lot and you work with a lot of horses, you can tend to get really stuck in that fight mentality and not even because you’re in an aggressive mentality, but because you just like kind of always have to be on and ready to be in action. And that’s where I find.

Sometimes I have to remind myself like you don’t have to rush because like I’ll just be literally like white knuckling my steering wheel driving from barn to barn and like I’m not even in a time panic or what, I just like. You’re talking this and an history, yes. And so I presume it’s a skill to be able to switch from one to the other when you’re stuck in kind of can to be able to get to dose. Yes. How do you start to do that?

Yeah. So there is, there’s a two way St. that really effects our nervous system and one is direct so brain to body like overriding your brain. And sometimes it seems like, oh, that would be all you do was like retrain your brain. It’s an important part of it, but just as important is the body to brain connection.

So if you are dealing with loads of inflammation because you have so many damagers going on inside your body, so to speak, that informs your nervous system and it can actually shift you into canned chemistry on its own. So you’re going to look at the body and see how you could support the body to bring down inflammation. And sometimes this is the best thing to start, especially for people that are having a really hard time with canned chemistry. Like maybe you’re diagnosed with, you’re basically diagnosed with nervous system dysfunction, you know, you’re diagnosed with anxiety, you’re diagnosed with depression or some mental health condition. That just means you’re really, really stuck in canned chemistry.

The point you like you’re needing medication to pop out of it. So you know, infusing A nutrient dense blood sugar balancing diet is absolutely essential, like spiking blood sugar and dropping into hypoglycemic lows every day throughout the day. It’s like boom, high inflammation, boom, low inflammation, boom, high inflammation. What like all day for however 678 times you know, you might eat in a day, bringing insulin resistance down, that’s another cause of inflammation. So there’s that, that increasing your micronutrient content.

Things like if you’re radically deficient in zinc, you cannot address inflammation. Zinc is a critical anti-inflammatory mineral. Iron, you absolutely need iron if you have heavy periods and you’re not eating enough red meat and bringing your iron levels up like that’s going to be essential. So you look at these factors that are really biochemical thinking before I move into the brain part of it. How can I balance here on Earth?

You know, even it’s like if you want a muscle tension, doing something like pelvic floor physical therapy, it can really help detent to your shoulders and you know, lower your jaw tension and suddenly your body isn’t feeling as tense or white knuckled, so to speak. These are all things I talk about them for free pretty extensively on my blog. And in my book, you know, even if you don’t have endometriosis, there’s talk about all these factors that cause inflammation in our head. You know, you know, it’s thrown around so much and it really is my whole book is an anti-inflammatory approach to healing. So look at that.

And then the other thing you mentioned like retraining the brain is of the utmost importance. So before I go into some detail, there are some really great programs that do this. There’s it was at DNRS, which is dynamic neural retraining system, which sounds really clinical. And the lady that presents it, she’s like Bunny clinical. She does these videos and she’s very like business professional with this like Gelbco over.

But you can get past that. The information is really great. It’s like, I think it’s 300 or some dollars for a year and she walks me through retraining and some steps that were so helpful to me. And I think the huge community of people that have been helped by that. And the other one is primal trust.

I think that’s the other one. That one is way. I think it’s much, much more detailed and it goes into a few different factors. To me, it wasn’t that it was way, way too detailed, but other people might really love that detail. So the main thing for you know, you get from these programs is you have to reiterate your brain.

The 1st is to realize when you’re stuck in chemistry. So you knowing that you’re white knuckling between the barns for no reason, like there’s no horse chasing you. It’s like you just are trying to get things done. Realization is the first step. Like I know so many people now understand the nervous system.

I could see they’re so dysregulated and they have no idea they’re even dealing with any level of stress. But they’re the constant state of neurosis or panic or breakout, right? I was there. I didn’t know I was doing this either. It’s once you’re on the other side of the head, so to speak, and see how people are doing it.

So you have to realize when you are sacked. The second thing is understand how you get stuck. So when you are white knuckling like what are you thinking about? It’s usually something that could involve ruminating over the past, ruminating over the present, worrying anxiety all right now or doing these future analogies. Or you’re like imagining yourself in a future scenario failing.

Maybe you’re rehearsing a conversation with somebody you’re annoyed with that you’re never going to have. Basically, your brain is stuck in any of those kind of those emotions. I was talking about rage, being critical, annoyed, threatened, anxious, any of those. And what you want to do is you want to immediately switch that into something else because your neural pathways become deeply ingrained to the same thoughts that you are thinking over and over again. So I can imagine everyone listening to this probably has a habitual worry or rumination that they could list on all 10 of their fingers.

There’s, you know, it’s only about very many thoughts that you’re is constantly going through your head. They think it’s something like 30,000 thoughts a day, but most of them are the same thought and trace. I think they really break it down like, Oh yeah, I was thinking about that same thing that happened 20 years ago. And it doesn’t matter. This could not happen or the the time you were slighted or maybe you did something you’re ashamed of that you need to have an opposite to that negative emotion or that negative feeling.

So it can be as simple as learning a song word for word, you know, having the lyrics down and forcing yourself to sing that song and focus on the lyrics. Where’s the word, You know, learning the AB CS backwards, something that’s a little bit challenging, but you’re memorizing and it forces your brain to leave that neural pathway that feels very comfortable, very well worn. Sometimes, you know, it’s easier to blame someone in our head when we’re feeling self-conscious or really low than to just not think about that thought at all. Like you don’t interact with it, interact with those negative thoughts, go somewhere else. And then the last spin is really doing visualizations that can force you into dose chemistry.

Because for some of us, especially if you have pretty severe nervous system dysregulation, getting into a place where you feel like loving and relaxed or maybe joyful or serene can feel almost alien, like we haven’t been there in a really long time. So doing visualizations where you do close your eyes and you talk out loud, something either imaginary or real that forces your body into the dose chemistry for reals, because your brain is really easy to trick. It doesn’t know what’s real and what’s fake. And this is and chemistry is so harmful when you are visualizing negative things, far too often your body thinks that’s happening in front of you even though you’re writing on your words and it’s a beautiful day in the park. Your body is preparing for war because of this, you know, the negativity feedback it’s receiving.

Conversely, if you can force yourself into this dose chemistry, your body will be reminded just how safe it is. And is that safe zone? Remember that it can say, oh, we don’t need inflammation, switch that off. Oh, we can address that underlying infection. Now we have time to do that because we’re not doing acute inflammation or something here.

We’ll address that overgrowth in your gut. Now this is where we mend tissues and repair. This is like the, you know, the most important time. So practicing getting into dose is so helpful. And sometimes it can feel very sticky and weird if you haven’t been a long time.

But again, there are those great programs that help help you through that. If this sounds like something you really need help with, I would recommend like dedicating your full time to figuring out how to get to dose emotions for you. And once you have that down, you kind of don’t need to do these programs anymore. Now you’re going to move forward with your healing. You say, OK, I have my foundation now I’m ready to go forward and do these other things, but so we can be really, really.

Helpful. Yeah, there’s so many things because I know that for a lot of people who deal with forces, and This is why it’s such an interesting kind of subset of people. They’re really driven and really process oriented. And I think sometimes just like the daily grind of just like training, you know, the sport I do is called eventing, and it’s like the triathlon of horse sports. And as grueling as triathlon training is for humans, this can get to that level with the horse and rider combination.

And just sort of recently this conversation around like rider health and rider fitness has started becoming talked about because for a really long time, the horses would get their whole conditioning routine and they get the chiropractor and the acupuncture and all the supplements and like all of these things. And we really took the care of the horse seriously. But then like we would go home and drink a bottle of wine for breakfast, lunch and dinner and you know, like wake up and do it all again the next day. And I think now there’s more conversation just around overall healthy lifestyle. This idea of like an anti-inflammatory life gets kind of tossed around a lot, but I think one of the things that equestrians are specifically prone to is this idea of overtraining.

And I would assume that the grind of overtraining can really take a toll on the body and. It’s just up. That’s up there with all these guys under training and overtraining. Both affect the body in a negative way. And so I find it hard to find resources that aren’t like, OK, you just need to like go to the gym and lift weights.

Yeah, because it’s like, OK, at the end of my like 15 hour day, let me like go to the gym. And and so not that I don’t think that lifting weights is important, but there’s so many factors that go into it. So what it when you’re kind of talking about this anti-inflammatory life, minus the food, which I think for the most part low sugar Whole Foods deal is going to sue a lot of people who are maybe just dealing with some hormone dysfunction, maybe not necessarily full blown endometriosis or something like that, but they just noticed the some issues that maybe they’ve attributed them. So for people who, OK, we fall off a lot, we are stressed out a lot. There’s physical, mental, emotional tolls.

How would you get someone that’s kind of living in that sort of state, that high performance, physically grueling sort of life, and what changes would you make to just any average person with a bat to start working towards an anti-inflammatory existence? OK, there’s a lot to unpack there. So beyond diet, right? Like you’re really right. It’s like Whole Foods, protein, forward healthy fats, lots of brightly pigmented fruits and veggies.

Like it’s not rocket science for the anti-inflammatory diet. You know, that’s like then we can, you know, add in nuance there. Each person is really is different. But totally if you eat an inflammatory diet, anti-inflammatory, there’s such there’s so much more that goes beyond that. So the way you’re describing equestrians of the sport, and I really think there’s a huge overlap here with women, along with women who deal with chronic illness, chronic symptoms and being an hospital, a highly sensitive person.

Have you heard of that term before? No. So highly sensitive person and I’m just going to refer that as hospital from here on out. And they estimate like 15 to 20% of the population. So the word sensitive is thrown around a lot, like maybe you yell your kids so sensitive he thought about something.

Yeah, like a single moment. But it’s a sensitivity that almost like overflow with the cup. So you’re born like this. You necessarily develop into a highly sensitive person is usually something from birth. And you feel other people’s emotions very deeply.

So like your mom was upset with you as a child, that might have really like impacted your Physiology, hurting other people’s feelings when other people are hurt or when your feelings are hurt, it feels it can feel catastrophic for to a certain level. There’s a lot of deep empathy going on. You can also be highly sensitive to the things in your environment. So maybe you’re much more prone to allergies. You take allergy medicine, you’re much more sensitive to pain.

Your pain threshold is lower. And maybe you, you think, oh, I’m kind of a Sissy about this, but you’re just sensitive. You’re sensitive the textures, there’s all these sensitivities. So when we’re highly sensitive in a non sensitive world, the world can feel very out of control. And there’s almost a time in every highly sensitive person’s life that we say this is not serving me anymore, Like I can’t be this sensitive and survive.

So we started adaptive persona and oftentimes, especially for women, the persona that comes forward can be control of the things we can control. And you know, I was looking at some stocks on equestrians and there’s some, you know, evidence that 46% have disorder eating habits. You know, the factor, the control factor of being an athlete, Like you can control your own thing. You can control things for the force, all of that. But the end of the day, like being a highly sensitive person, just putting like a stronger persona on can be really challenging, especially if they’re you’re a sensitive, a sensation seeking hospital, which is a, which is a type of highly sensitive person that then actually really enjoys like things that are high profile or high performance.

So you’re, you want to be the CEO in the boardroom. That feels really good. You’re like a high-powered entrepreneur, professional athlete, right? Like you are, you are an equestrian woman that wants to be at the top of her class. Like that makes you in a different league of kind of this tug of war between someone who is really sensitive to other people’s feelings and your feelings and being judged professionally judged.

That’s what you are as an athlete, right? Yeah. Wanting to be the best, wanting to. Then you start controlling all these different situations and then you get back into the white knuckling lights because it’s almost like you’re constantly just this. You’re not an even keel.

You’re just veering to the left and the right and holding on to your life, trying to control things. So you asked what’s the best thing that you can do for all of that type of person? And I would say it’s not keep asking how can I be tougher or better or stronger? Because that isn’t the answer to life, especially if you are dealing with symptoms, your body is already revolting. Your body is telling you this is not the way.

I can’t be tougher, better, stronger. But you don’t want to collapse, right? It’s not you don’t want to stop doing what you love. I think you need to start asking yourself, how can I be more responsive? How can I be more responsive to life?

Like you’re saying, the dealing with the horse become the struggle sometimes. Maybe it’s a power struggle. I mean, they’re huge. I’m not the first. Person but the forest and they’re beautiful and I get close to them and I’m like this is a huge animal and it could crush me like lies behind the fence because I don’t know how to do all with horses.

So I have such respect for all of you who are, you know, working with horses every day. And but the cool thing about horses is that they are they’re basically the living embodiment of an HSP. Like they heal people. Like there’s nonprofits dedicated to working with horses because they are just as highly sensitive and in tune with other people and what’s going around them as HS. PS And I do, you know, there’s thoughts on thoughts.

What are the words? You know, there’s terms for like horse people, they don’t like other people. I’m not saying, yeah, the, you know, the horse do. They don’t like other people. They just like the horses much more aligned with horses.

And I’m thinking in my mind, well, how many of them are really HS? PS And you kind of retreat to horses because they are so much more healing. That may be easier to understand than a group of girls who, you know, kind of talk trash about everyone. You don’t know how to deal with that. You’re very sensitive.

And so you go into this this horse world. So when you think of being responsive and how that can help you heal, but it’s also possible that could really help your your professional career, right? If the horse is picking up from you, stress, strain, struggle, unsafe, how’s that horse going to feel who’s just as sensitive as you? It’s going to feel maybe worried and nervous. If you’re being responsive and you feel well nourished, you know that the control of disordered eating falls into a rhythm of I’m feeding my body and my soul so that I can be the best writer and partners this horse possible.

I’m learning to move through life with dose chemistry because that’s what makes me feel well and it improves my partnership with this horse. How much could that improve your writing and your ability to partner when you are performing in a high stress seat And I was watching the Olympics with. I don’t want to butcher her last name Alyssa Liu and. Did you see her in the ice cream champion? Who didn’t see her?

She. Was I know right? So phenomenal and she became so famous worldwide overnight because of the joy she embodied what they can see. And I was watching her thinking this is a fuller figured ice fear, you know, and not the toothpick who is, you know, like he’s a perfectionist who on stage she is has joy on her face. She lights up the ice and she is like art in motion.

And you could imagine that girl nourishing herself, practicing in dose chemistry, performing in dose chemistry, right? That’s where you want to be as an equestrian as well. So I do think it goes back to how can I just be more responsive? You know, I don’t need to be tougher and stronger. I want to bring more joy into this life.

I want to bring more relaxation into my days. I want to bring more nourishment into how I think and what I eat. Those types of things go a long way versus let’s brutalize my body more so that I am more in control of things that feel out of control. Yeah, I think 90% of equestrians are probably massive control freaks. We we really seem to thrive on that counting our toes sort of mentality.

And it is interesting to hear you be able to talk about as someone who doesn’t necessarily know horses on a I’m like a daily seeing your own horse type of level, just the ability to know that they do sense and heal. And I think people who end up with horses, you know, there’s a piece of us that we feel like we can find in the journey we get with these horses. And a lot of the times, I think a lot of at least professionals, they really only had horses and some of these like pivotal times of their life. Maybe it’s when they lost someone, maybe it’s when they got bullied in school. But there’s a real sense of safety, like emotional safety amongst the horses.

And I think that’s what really makes the sport. When the sport is cohesive and artistic, you know, you just, it’s the same as when you’re watching Alyssa figure skate, right? Like you just go, wow, this person was meant to be here doing this this time like it just was meant to be. Now that’s not because a lot of hard work doesn’t go into it, but just the presence and joy they can bring to their their skill makes art, right? Like that’s the glory of these athletic endeavors is that when our when everything aligns like it really can be art, even in these big pressure filled moments.

That’s the living in the dose chemistry and moments that you thought had to be stressful. You know, it’s like, what if your goal for the next show wasn’t just to survive the round or like make a period win, but it was to be the most regulated and joyful person in that arena? You’re saying the joy isn’t just a feeling, it’s an art form. When you are dancing with another creature, you’re in, you’re In Sync with each other. Really beautiful thing.

And if you don’t win a gold medal in that moment, did you do something wrong? Like, no, it’s just, it’s the goal is of course I’m sure to win. I’m sure there’s lots of money in winning as well. Maybe there’s not. Is there money in winning?

It depends on the discipline, but yeah, there there can be big prize spots. Right. And for an expensive sport like that is really ideal, important. What if you also are rehearsing, you know, you’re practicing with your horse, that place of joy. I just think that comes across.

It’s not like you have to work less. You know, me saying it would be tougher, stronger, harder. It’s not saying be lazy and go drink wine, watch the sunset like you. Discipline is important in a sport, but discipline and grit and gruel is, you know, it’s different than fostering a beautiful art form between two amazing orgasms. Humans are incredible to have a relationship with another animal, but it’s not as human like, it’s just profound.

And if you can show that while performing, I think that sets everyone up for more success anyways, for professional and then for healing. Yeah, I think that’s a great place to start sort of winding down this this podcast. I typically ask the guest because typically they’re forced focused how we best show up for our forces. Do you have any thoughts on on how we best become or how we become better partners for our forces? And maybe it’s or our partners or whatever it’s, it’s kind of all the the same thing.

Yeah, you know what, I’ll I’ll say I have kids. So kids aren’t horses, but they do crazy things. Just need your reactions. You don’t know why they did that. We’ve been training you to not do that.

And again, and I said, you know, I was a mom with pretty significant nervous system dysregulation. I was showing up for my kids every day, keeping them alive, right? Like eating them, doing the things, doing the rounds. But I wasn’t there in like, let’s be together and this is fun. It was grueling.

It was hard for me. I didn’t have like an easy entrance into motherhood the way some people do. So if you maybe relate to that, like are you rushing from your job and you, you don’t take the seconds you see your horse stays, you show up, you seem angry and stressed horse being a highly sensitive horse and HSH doesn’t know if your man can or her doesn’t know what’s going on, feels the anxiety and attention. What if you could show up for your horse every day for a place of dose chemistry and react to the force when it makes mistakes the way you would want a friend to do the same, right? Like show up for you, work together, be the deepest kind of partner possible.

And you would do that through literally healing your own traumas and your own soul through re regulating your nervous system. So now not only are you helping your force, but you’re only helping your horse through helping yourself get to that moment because you can’t pretend to be in dose chemistry, right? Like plastic positivity. And the only sense a person will know that you’re very unhappy while you have that smile plastered on your face. And now you’re extra worries.

You don’t know what is going on. You’re picking up all these mixed signals. You have to be really honestly well in balance. So for me that would be a really easy recommendation, you know, to show up for your horse in that way because I presume all your listeners are really taking care of their pores professional realm. Maybe that’s a different a different opportunity there.

Yeah, no, I mean, it’s definitely, I think for professionals, you know, maybe being able to take a moment in between the horses to reset and for someone who works in a stressful or busy environment and then does the horses after or as a hobby, you know, taking the moment in the car when you get to the barn to just be present before you go and greet your horse I think is such a good piece of advice that a lot of people don’t hear enough. You know, you hear you need to show up well for your horse, but you don’t hear the like. Sometimes it’s it’s hard and just take a moment and give yourself grace. Yeah, right. Like take take 10 minutes before you get out of your car to put on like some something to put you in that just chemistry.

If it’s breathing that you like, you know, box breathing or if it’s a visualization or you know, recorded meditation. And the other thing that’s really great that helped change my life. It’s something I like to educate about is its pacing. And it’s a word that is pottering. I don’t know if you’ve heard it, it’s kind of like pottering, but it’s the English version of it.

But it’s pondering through your life and your chores and your roles versus rushing with urgency. So when you get out of the car, walk at an A a comfortable pace to the bar and don’t rotten over there, rush over there. You know, speed walk when you get to the horse, take your time opening the gate. Like if you have to muck out stalls, do that. It’s almost with grace and and presence versus rushing.

If I swear you will get just as much done. It’s not. I’m not saying move so slow. Yeah, yeah, it was frustrating. But when you start to realize how much you’re rushing through everything and by the time you’re done rushing, your shoulders are actually tense.

Your breath is in your upper chest, you know, if you slow it down to a neutral pace. Imagine have some sort of avatar like a farm whites in the 1800s who singing, humming a tune and enjoying her time being outdoors, you know, smelling the hay, those types of things. Because you have to do barn chores every day. You might as well learn to like them and not them. They’re the bane of your existence.

Do them with love and care and see as you infuse love and care into even your chores. Your horse is watching you, and I guarantee he’s going to be impressed with hi. You’re putting love into every bit of your life. And I started changing diapers with love. I started doing the dishes with love.

I can’t tell you how much that changed the literal energy inside of my house without me doing any discipline, without me doing anything else. It was my infusion of the change of the pace of my soul. It changed how people interacted with me. And that could be the same with professionally, with how your horse rides with you. Yeah.

No, that’s, that’s great. That’s a good piece of advice. Thank you so much for joining me for this conversation. How do people find you? Follow along with what you do.

All of good stuff. Yeah, I am. At huendo.com. I really brought blogs pretty regularly now, so that’s the best way. I really don’t like social media.

I feel like way to develop nervous system dysfunction, have it and make it way worse if you do this. So I try not to post often because I don’t want to participate in people thinking they need to like see my posts. Oh, he was basically post blog. So sign up for my blog, go to my website, sign up. You can check out so many free resources on there just about Women’s Health in general.

And then the book is like the goldmine piece. If you want to learn everything. No one ever told you about endometriosis like how it develops, how there’s 65 different types, how it’s multifactorial, all the things. It’s just on Amazon. Heal endo and anti-inflammatory approach to healing from endometriosis.

And it’s an audible which I find very important. Yes, I just recorded the audible and yeah, sales are like pure the roof on that. I didn’t realize how to have missed opportunity. That was like I’m the same. I listen to a lot of Audible so it’s definitely on Audible.

Yeah, no, it was a good listen so well, thank you so much for joining me. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on. I’m really honored to talk to you.