Why Horses Say No - Kate Neligan

So I typically kick the episode off by having the guests tell us who they are and what it is they do. Yeah, I am an equine partnered life and business coach and animal communicator, speaker and author. And what I do is essentially pair horses and humans together for personal and professional growth, spiritual growth in particular. And so we’re working on emotional intelligence qualities and leadership training and really the way of the horse, how we can be in many ways like them, because I feel like they have a lot of systems that work pretty well. And how do you get into something like this?

Like how does life lead you down this path? Yeah, it was a big surprise. It was a big shift and change because I was working in corporate America. I was doing movie studio marketing. And so this was really different and unique in that I found it because I’ve always loved horses since I was a little girl.

And then I was introduced to it at a ranch where I was leasing an Arabian who I was riding. And I found out that the woman running the ranch was doing equine therapy with addiction centers, addiction treatment centers. So that’s when I got introduced as a volunteer and I fell in love with the transformation that I was witnessing and said I need to do this myself. This is something that I need to pursue. So there are certifications in this and I have my own now as well.

I’m training others to get started. It’s just something that found me. I think sometimes Our Calling and our purpose in life is always in us when we’re little because this is what I loved when I was a kid. I always loved horse as an animal. But then it unfold did as I got older and I got to really experience ways that the horses can really heal besides riding.

I grew up riding, I grew up competing in college and this was totally new to me that the horses were working in this sort of capacity. So I’m grateful that it found me and it was. It’s a very big different type of lifestyle than what I used to have. I’d imagine and horses are just so I compete pretty much full time and it’s still like even in the midst of competing, you’re always like just learning lessons about life through just being with the horses. Horses and I always, it’s always so hard to explain to people the connection that comes with just being with horses.

Do you speak on that and just how, because I’d assume you’re working with people who aren’t inherently foresee maybe in the beginning and yeah, I have different. Types actually, I have the clients that don’t know the horses who come in for coaching and that’s beautiful to watch because them just being eye to eye with a horse is so potent for them because they normally don’t get that. They might have to say hi to a horse out like driving around farms and through a fence and they’re not close or they’re riding on a organized trail ride and they’ve never have the connection eye to eye on the ground just breathing with a horse. So it’s really it is more of spiritual experience. It is just a deep experience.

The other type of clients that I have is obviously the equine coaches that are getting started with their work. They’ve had a lot of them have horses or been around horses, but this is a new way of seeing horses. It’s a different type of connection because we’re working with animal communication. So we’re working and actually listening to them past just body language. And then they also, I have in the animal communication world, it’s people who have horses or other animals, but they are wanting to also understand their animals better.

They usually have great intuition on their animals, but there there’s layers. Even with my own animals, I feel like I do not know every single one of their layers. I know men, but like, how do we get deeper with knowing our animals through relationship? And that’s we talk about connection a lot and there’s so much I think in writing of just sitting on their backs and knowing that we they allow that like they could take us off at any moment. The fact that we have the connection of trust off of that, to be able to get on them to me is huge.

Like that’s a huge gift that they’re giving us that I think we know, even if we’re not consciously thinking about it. It’s in every cell of our body that this is like a very precious experience to be riding a prey animal. Yeah, for sure. I know. I always tell people I’m like it.

I do a lot of groundwork with horses and a lot of, although I compete my personal horses pretty much full time, my job with horses is working with a lot of anxious horses and problem horses. And I’m always telling the owners or whoever I go, you have to understand, like we’re a predator handling prey. And they’re saying, OK, I’m going to allow you to be in my most vulnerable position, IEA predator on their back. And I’m going to deal with it. And I’m actually going to form a relationship with you.

And so many times a lot of problems happen because when things start to go wrong, people don’t process that as communication, right? Like they go, Oh my God, this horse is acting undesirable. It’s it has issues. It’s not they’re talking that this is just how they communicate. And you just need to learn to look within yourself to say, usually you know what they’re trying to tell you.

Either you don’t want to admit it or whatever, but they’re communicating. And so I just think, I don’t quite know where I was going with that tangent, but something along the lines of we as humans have evolved on the backs of horses. There is an inherent connection and I feel it with dogs too. Can you speak on if you do either maybe question your instincts with horses or question yourself leaning into the instincts that we do have? Yeah.

And I love what you said that it’s not, we can’t deem that as issues that they are communicating because a no is just as important as a yes for all of us, especially women. And the amount of women I work with on boundaries is its significance because we’re not always role modeled that we’re not always taught that. And horses are great at that and they’re, I think to me, the horse that’s always a yes horse and it’s shut down and you don’t actually have a full relationship with that horse because they’re more insular and they’re a little bit stoic. And then you have you don’t actually know how that horse is really feels. So my mayor came to me and I and she had been given away a couple times.

And my sense was that there’s a lot of people that will not want to deal with some of who she is. But I love her nose because the only times that her and I have had issues, it’s because she was trying to say something to me and I wasn’t hearing her. I wasn’t getting it. So I’ve gone back and apologized to her, which I think is really important for us to actually apologize to horses when we do make mistakes because we do. And we have to do that in human relationships.

100%. I have. I think your question was like doubted or not always trusted my own instincts with horses. I feel like I am always seeing horses differently. My mayor has said to me there’s so much we still don’t know about horses and I think we have to keep leaning in to wait.

What is this really about? For instance, I’m currently in the middle of a situation I’ve never had before, which is my horses are not eating the new hay delivery. And it’s bringing up a lot of my like, oh, I can’t, they just do it. It would make my life easier. They just eat it.

But I have to get curious. And I think that’s the thing. Having goats has actually helped me develop my curiosity because they’re endlessly curious. But I have to get curious and pause and slow down and go with it and work with my intuition. What is it about the, hey, what actually is going on here?

Because the node is communication and there’s something that I’m I don’t want to miss. And that’s the thing I think we miss a lot of with horses. And there’s so much in subtlety, which I love riding and training for. You get to really be in groundwork. You get to be with a subtlety and in communication, when I’m in that space and I’m hearing that through clairaudience, I get a lot of the subtle, really like subtle messages, which we don’t only see just looking at them eye to eye.

We have to go into these deeper intuitive spaces. But yeah, it takes a while to build that trust and sure that wow, I really am hearing them. And I, I help animal communicators learn as well because they want to grow that skill. They want to have a deeper connection with their horses. And that’s one great way to do it.

But it takes a minute to have the confidence in the beginning and then after a while it’s OK. I am getting the hang of this. So there’s ways to test our intuition and our instincts as well. But we have to get out of our heads a lot, and we have to get more into our hearts and I think into our intuitive centers, which can be our gut or our third eye. Yeah, I see that.

You mentioned when you’re starting to question things and starting to be curious, you take a pause. And it’s so funny because I feel like as people were never willing to give ourselves the pause. Like I know when I’m working with horses, like you can see when they’re fighting a release or holding on to a release and you go, OK, I’m just going to sit here with you for a minute while you work with it. Like you’re so willing and quick to give them the pause, but we’re just not the same with ourselves. And yeah, I don’t know necessarily where that comes from, but maybe it is just from like a lack of presence and being present.

Yeah, it’s. But I wanted to chat with you today about some of this. I actually found a TE DX talk that you did on perfectionism, and I am. I’ve actually just realized that I’m a perfectionist. And in this, I’ve taken a step back from competing and everything to figure out what I really want to do with forces.

And I’ve realized I really love competing, but it’s very expensive and very hard on my body and their body. And so taking a step back and giving myself that pause has been really beneficial. But I’ve realized that now that I’m starting to get back into getting ready to compete, I’m constantly waiting to be ready. And I’m like, what if I was on a client’s horse? This horse would already be out learning the environment and doing all this stuff.

And but like, it’s my horse. And if I go out there, just bringing me back to something you said in the beginning of like how working with horses can sometimes change the way horses, going from not being a pro to being a pro has really changed my relationship with, like, pressure overall. And it is just such an interesting mechanism to deal with because you’re like, all of a sudden you’re like, what is going on? And it goes back to the, this is the journey that I have to be on and the horses are showing me this and whatever. But yeah.

Can you just chat about what your definition of being a perfectionist? Is. And also how you deal with your wanting this for things to be correct. Great question I’m so glad you asked. I love talking about this topic and it’s so interesting our timing because of us talking because I have a new competitive rider client that I’m working with and I’m not a sports psychologist and I’m clear about that.

I don’t have training in that. I have an undergrad in psychology and a graduate in spiritual psychology and the trainings that I’ve taken with both horses and with in the personal development space. But ultimately, I do see the pressure and she’s young and I see the pressure in that. And I saw the pressure that I put on myself when I was riding. And that often comes from trainers or even just people around us.

And so I love that you’re taking a step back because I think it’s so easy for us, especially as women or just in society, for us to get caught up in the noise. Like my intuition calls that you’re in the noise right now. And the noise might say you need better gear, you need a better horse, your horse has to be performing better, You need to try the latest this or there’s the colleagues, competitive energy that you can feel, right? And if you’re certain we’re sensitive when we work with horses, we wouldn’t be drawn to horses, I think, if we didn’t have some of that sensitivity. So you have all that competitive or pressure energy from colleagues, then you have it from trainers or mentors where they want you to be better.

But we’ve all learned through this like patriarchal be better or American Dream be better through pressure, through harder work, right? And we’re pushed by pain, whereas we can be pulled by pleasure, but we don’t have a lot of role models showing us it can be pulled by pleasure. But guess who is the best role model of being pulled by pressure pull, Excuse me, pulled by pleasure. It’s the horse. They follow what feels good.

They don’t this hey does not feel good to them. So they’re not interested. It’s like they are following what feels good. They are in these instinctual survival that allows them to thrive systems. They are in the feel good and not in the bus or the have to, but through the feel good.

They actually do really well with surviving and thriving for they’ve been here longer than we have. And so I think there’s a lot of you finding your own voice. You know, how much of that perfectionism is actually me or is that everyone around me that I’m feeding into? So that that pause is huge. So we can hear our own truth, our own authentic, like, yes, no, maybe right.

And getting clear on that within ourselves. And I love studying human design for knowing how we respond to stuff too. But to answer your question, the piece of that’s so interesting also about our timing is that I just this morning was reading, I got asked to blog for this group again, then I’ve blogged for before. So I looked at my last pose and it was very much about the perfectionist piece of enjoy the journey and don’t make it so much about the destination because that destination made me a ribbon. It may be the win.

And if it’s just about that and we’re so attached to outcome, which is how I used to be, then we lose the actual enjoyment of it, right? We lose the fact that there’s this gorgeous horse next to us or underneath us and that soul connection that’s there. And the best riders, the ones that I always see when I’ll never forget going to Along Lines tournament and just seeing this rider beautifully take the jobs. And I’ve never seen like a more smooth ride in my life. And it was because she was in union with her horse.

It was like looking at yoga posed as big as it was like full union, full embodiment of the two of them together. And forces enjoy that through a place of energy and joy and intention and breath versus pressure. Because what does pressure do? It constricts it allow our bodies will actually literally constrict so we don’t or tighter, we don’t ride as more fluidly and we don’t have like our hearts fully in it. It’s our minds are in it and there’s courses don’t care about outcome.

So I think there’s such great teachers of releasing the attachment to outcome and the perfectionism. It’s just that we’ve there. We I think a lot of people who see courses have a lot of control issues. I certainly had a lot myself. All right, I’m sure you see this a lot.

And so it’s such a beautiful way for us to be like, OK, how can I relate to control differently? How can I have a different definition of success? How can I enjoy pleasure versus pressure and pain? And how do we just keep flipping it and noticing I’m in it right now, but I don’t want to, I don’t need to be in it. And my definition of perfectionism, there’s lots of different definitions, but there’s different layers.

Like one of the perfectionism things that I still have is this desire to complete stuff. Like I like have to have my To Do List. I have to cross the Bob. That’s actually a form of perfectionism needing to complete thing. Other perfectionisms is like you can go to the level of what people would call anal attentiveness, where everything has to be perfectly aligned and perfectly mentored and not, you know, everything has to lease completely clean and all that.

And I see that in some of my clients. And some of those people. Right. And it’s like, what happens in that environment? You’re afraid to make a mistake.

You’re afraid to be yourself. You’re on egg shells and there’s no connection. When we’re not in authenticity, we have to have the like. And so I flipped it to, can I bless the mess? Can I laugh at myself?

And I know what’s enough for me today. Can I acknowledge myself? Because then like for me, my inner child shuts down if I go too hard into perfection. And just like this isn’t fun, I don’t want to do it. And then I lose my motivation.

So I have to go into, OK, let’s acknowledge ourselves for doing XY and Z today. Even if it wasn’t 10 things that we wanted to do today, we did 3. Let’s focus on the three. So it’s little like I play games with myself now to keep it lighter because otherwise it just gets heavy. There’s so much external stuff going on that we can’t control.

So what can we control ourselves? But when we focus too much on that perfectionism, it’s like too much control. So then none of life feels fun anymore and right? And like my concern for competitive riders is that they’re going to start to dislike it. The second you don’t like it, you don’t really want to do it anymore.

Yes, fun is actually proven to be a huge motivating factor. So it’s important to to know that like we can win and have fun. We can lose and still be learning and definitely not and but it’s a different world. It’s a world that I’m not in anymore, except for now having clients in the space. But it’s something that I think is we have to start re scripting and really work with ourselves when we notice like the flare ups.

I definitely notice when I go into my flare ups and I’m like, I really need things to be a certain way right now. Let me let me go, just chill. I’m going to take a day off. Let me do let me rest. The my new thing is rest because that will train the body to say I don’t have to be productive to be loved, right.

Mine used to be. I had to work hard to be loved. That’s not true. That’s just not true. So.

Yeah, that’s definitely been the because I think it goes back to that you mentioned your inner child. And I know for me personally, it’s like when I was a kid, I was super successful as a junior and you go what was different and I go, I didn’t really care. Yes, I cared, but like I was competitive. But at the end of the day, like I was just happy to be at a horse show with my friends and not really the fact that I won was just a bonus some, you know, and then I. Become a professional and I go, Oh my God, if I don’t get a new personal best, all my clients are going to leave me and no one is ever going to give me a horse to ride, even though I own all the horses I ride and whatever.

It makes no sense. But yeah, you go back and you’re you just need to have fun with it. You need to make it a game again. And I do it with the horses now where I have one day dedicated to play and that’s literally what I call it play. And sometimes I just get on them and I let them take me for a hack or whatever.

But it’s the same. Funny enough, I used to not be into the groundwork at all. And I had a super competitive force and she, her career finished and then I got this other horse and like this horse bucks me off of three horse shows. And I was like, something’s not right. This horse is not enjoying this.

And I know when I practice, she enjoys it. She’s not enjoying this. And you realize we put so much pressure on them and they’re like, what is this for? Like, why are you? I just want dinner like give me a cookie like.

You’re right, that’s exactly what I said recently in an animal communication session. I’m like, this source does not want to do this anymore. And I know that’s hard for you to hear, but let’s find this or something that he wants to do because this is hard to watch. And then he’s not going to stop doing this and see you really listen to him. It’s their form of self-expression.

And they do say, what is it for? He literally said something very similar in a session. What is this for? Like why are the ribbons this important? What does that really mean?

And I’ve talked to one of my friends who is being in the holistic health world with horses, and she used to be very competitive and was a trainer. And I’m like, how did it change for you? What happened? And she just got to that point where she said she realized a lot of why she was doing it or why others were doing it was very status driven, that it was external. And so I think that’s the biggest thing I got from my master’s program was success was always external for me.

Ted X was my initiation of graduation, of love and approval all comes from outside of me or other people are going to define my success. And I still had a bout of that this year where I was like, this one person is making me successful. And I had to really let go of that and that it’s myself, like my own like mission here that will drive that. But it was it’s so interesting because we do we think so often that I think is the greatest American lie is that all of our success and the stuff we want is outside of us. Instead of like really getting in touch with how much is inside already that we already have access to that we can be with, that we can talk to that we can nurture that we can play with and have fun with.

And then when that we it’s the whole fill your cup up. But what does that mean? It’s like taking that time and having the self-care and really being with ourselves and seeing all of the feelings, all of the emotions, and then knowing, oh wow, like I really have so much. I’m so rich inside. I don’t necessarily mean all of this from the outside.

If I get it, great. But like the ribbon should be the icing on the cake that celebrates how great of a relationship you and that horse have, right? That the ribbon should just say, look, we see you how beautiful your relationship is. That’s all that is, is an external, almost like a photo that’s a mirror of how great your relationship is. It’s but it’s not.

We got this through half do’s and should’s and mass and exhaustion and pain on our bodies and force and because it breaks the spirit, it’s the whole gentling horses versus breaking horse. It’s a very different energy. And I think what we’re going to see shift in competitive sports in the future is competitions fun. I’m still I have a competitor heart, but what is like how is competition? How are the judges now reflecting how beautiful your relationship is versus how?

But how will the bio mechanics look per SE or the form looks like they’re going to actually look at the energy instead of the form. They’re going to look deeper than just what they see and feel into. Wow. Those guys are like fluidly, beautifully enjoying that. The horse is like happy, the humans happy.

They ride well together. I think it’s going to change. I think we’re moving in that direction. You’re an example of it shifting. Yeah, no, I definitely agree.

And I was actually listening to a podcast the other day of I so I event and eventing is a grueling sport, right? Like it there are it’s physically demanding on both the horse and the rider. And it really takes a special kind of course and and a special type of rider for sure. But I think almost anyone can have fun at the lower levels of eventing, but upper level it gets tricky. And someone mentioned there’s a whole movement right now to disparage the use of whips on in the sport.

And it’s been this really polarizing thing. And I heard this one rider who is a top rider and she said, I almost sometimes think that when there are the issues, when you would go to use the whip or whatever you actually like, taking the time to really fix the issue and work on the relationship and view it as a relationship task almost makes it worth it to go slower and not use the weapon. So you’re definitely seeing more people understand that horses don’t necessarily have to be just work. Beast difference. And So what you’re making me think of is this whole like connection between corporate America and the competitive course.

And I have an ex barrel racer and an ex off the track. I have an off the track. They’re red. He was very great at her racing and I see their competitive stuff that they each, they still have competition and I do too. I rose up to MPE at 31 years old and I have that and I see this desire for performance, but it’s also so connected to pressure.

Whereas now I love when my horse will challenge my other horse to race. She knows she’s going to win. Yeah, but she has that competition in her. But it’s up to her and she’ll go faster because it’s her will to do so being forced to do so through win or through, you know what I mean? So there’s a lot of like, how do we actually go back to working with will and motivation and pleasure and like that intrinsic motivation energy versus this pressure.

Or there’s a reward. There’s always just a reward or there’s not. Because the thing with competition is there’s someone who loses and someone wins. And I understand that mentality. I don’t love the new mentality where all the kids win ribbons either because you want to have, we live in a polarized universe.

We live in the space where you want to have some of that. And it’s also like we always have to remember why we got into something because even when I see burnout in business, it’s like it’s just because they started to be in a pressure field could burn her. And it’s go back to your why, go back to your mission. What is it that’s actually driving you to do this? Because I have found that if you make work fun, people will show up.

They don’t care as much about their salaries. They want to go and be with their friends at work. Like when you take these employee engagement surveys, the big motivating factor for them staying is feeling connected to their employees or to their bosses. Feels like a family, right? If you feel like a family with your horse or family at these competitions, this whole thing in itself can be part of the pleasure so that there isn’t imperfectionism.

Yeah, no. And it all goes back to that something you said in the beginning of, oh gosh, I’m recovering from a concussion. So my memory is just, but it’s OK, totally lost it. Oh, welcome back. I wanted to you bring up burnout.

And funny enough, like I subscribe to some of these business people on Instagram and their burnout doesn’t exist. If you are doing the thing you’re passionate about and whatever and it’s no burnout still exists. But why are you feeling burnt out if you’re doing the thing you’re passionate about, which is where I think a lot of horse people get to, is that we are doing the thing we love. And yet there are so many points, especially in competitive where, you know, even if it’s you breaking a leg, right, you’re it has nothing to do with the horse. And it’s still this hard thing that even when you’re not doing anything, you’re, you feel like crap because you’re not out there pursuing the thing you want or whatever.

And yeah, I remember working with a sports psychologist a couple years ago and I don’t know if I was burned out, but we got talking about burn. And he goes, you can recover your way through burnout, but you can’t recover your way through being overwhelmed. And sometimes I think so many people in the competitive space specifically like especially with social media, they can’t, they’re so often in the state of comparison. They’re I think the beauty of of course, sports is that even though you’re pinned based on in the jumpers, who was the fastest to who was the slowest, it’s still you against the clock. It’s not necessarily you against another person.

And so I think it inherently creates this like ability to say, even when you’re losing, I can still get better for viewing. And there the competitiveness is never tied to if I just beat Jessica, I would be complete. It’s all if I could do this 2 seconds faster, I’m going to be a top five. And then you just start working towards that thing versus feeling like I’m never going to beat Jessica or no matter what I do. That is the burnout zone of it doesn’t matter what I do, I’m never going to get better.

Yeah. How do people, one, realize that they’re heading towards burnout and two, how can they either give themselves reprieve or deal with it when they’re in? Because with horses, you can’t just like, go on vacation for three weeks because who’s going to feed them and how am I going to afford to feed them? And you know what? So it’s, yeah, I think as much as burnout is such a everyone talks about burnout, I do feel like it’s so prevalent.

Yeah, I love this conversation so much and I love what you said because there is such a big myth that we can’t, we won’t burn. If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. And it’s like, I don’t often feel like my work is where it doesn’t feel like. It’s not like how it used to be in corporate America, but it definitely feels at times like overwhelming, exhausted, pressure filled or stressful because it’s life. And the first thing that we want to like, really remember and be gentle with ourselves about is that in 2020, we all went through a collective trauma.

We’ve all had secondary trauma from seeing what other people have gone through or stuff we’ve gone through ourselves. There is way more that we know about now than ever before, which creates overwhelm because of social media. And like, I remember recently, like why I feel overwhelmed because I went to the store and there was like 45 different types of ketchup that I just picked out. And I was like, ketchup, please. And it is there’s, it feels like there’s less time in the day than there used to be, but more to do.

So that creates overwhelm. Interestingly enough, I love Doctor Bradley Nelson’s emotion code work because overwhelm can be a stuck emotion. And it’s something I clear a lot for myself and from others so that we, we don’t feel because overwhelm can get once it’s in your body, like it’s there, but you can clear it through energetic and emotion code practices, which I love to do so that that takes off stuff. Another one that I find a lot in the horses and also in, in competitors are in myself is lack of control. This feeling like what you said, no matter what I do, I can’t beat this person or I’ll never be the top.

And I really would love to be the top. When I first, when I first started coaching, I had like a larger ego than I have now. And I was like, I’m going to be the best. I’m going to be the best of everyone in the space. And that actually motivated me to try things and do things differently and be an innovator.

So it was great motivation until it became the I will never be better than so. And so they’ve been doing it for 34 years and I’ve been doing it at 15. They had a bigger following below the I’ll never catch up. So that my first coach ever taught me comparing is despairing, right? And the second you go into comparing, you might as well just get yourself boxed tissues because you’re going to be sad, you’re going to be going to be upset.

So I’ve tried really hard to look at, OK, they’re in their lane and in mine. What is it for me to create and I look at what can I create that will make me happy that I want to exist as I created the card deck because it’s like I want to, I wanted to have Oracle cards or about the horses and what they teach for myself. So it made me happy to create it. So then it makes others happy to have that as well. And then I feel like we’re creating from really more of that true north, that enjoyment and the love versus the I want to have something better than so and right where I want to compete with so.

And it’s a very interesting role because I worked in a movie studio where it was, we want more market share. Everything was more like we have to be, we have to make the best this and competition can serve you until it doesn’t, right? And I think pressure is OK, but look at what you know, the movement in the horse world right now too is OK. If you’re not doing pressure and release, what else are you doing? Positive reinforcement and both sides can battle.

And my whole thing is, what if there’s even another way past that, which is becoming congruent, asking from a place of confidence and then also working with the energy of joy. Because my horses will always say, if you work with the energy of joy, we’ll do whatever you want because it’s fun. That’s why people enjoy each other is because it’s fun being with them. Otherwise, it’s like anything can feel heavy if we let it. So how do we know we’re getting to burnout?

Usually the body holds score. The body does not lie. We’re more tired. We might feel like, what’s the point? So we have some of that like heavier energy or depression energy.

My whole work is no matter who I’m working with, horse or human, can I get them to feel lighter? Because if you feel lighter, you’re back in your truth, you’re back in your authentic self. And then you can choose better from that space, right? You can choose something that’s more conscious and more honoring than something that’s a shoulder have to. So I think it’s listening to the body and knowing, are we more tired?

Are we physically drained? Are we hurt? Are we just wanting to stay in bed longer? What is it that is actually, are we going to a more of our addiction stuff like sugar or alcohol or whatever it might be. So really watching the body and what choices it’s making because it’s the one that’s holding that stuff.

Ways to get the body physically lighter and healthier and rested and restored. And then it’s easier. The mind then is not when we’re tired, the mind is even crazier in my personal experience and from what I’ve seen with people. So then the mind is, oh, wait, what if I could do this? Or we’re more open and receptive.

And that’s like when the card deck came in, it was I was open and receptive and I got this great beautiful idea and I wrote it down and I took action, inspired action. So I think it’s that when we’re in the flow states, which is what we all want to be in, we are aligned and we do make better choices. We call the person that we feel all of a sudden we need to reconnect with. And then that leads to something much greater. And so work becomes more effortless.

And it’s not such a grind. It’s not hustle culture. It’s very instinct or intuitive based because we’re in flow. But we can be in flow when we are burned out because burnout has one message and one message only, which is rest. And I think rest is going to be a success metric in the future.

But I know so many people, myself included, that reached a level of success in what they thought they wanted. And then was like, now what? Because we keep moving the line. You can beat Jessica. But then what if so and so shows up on the scene and now you’ve got another Jessica.

Yeah, exactly. We keep moving this measuring stick and I really my experience as the inner child eventually just says heck no, stop. I don’t want to do this and will cause trauma and drama and all this stuff in your life to literally get you to go into a stop. And and we need to start listening to, I think looking at ease when we’re in ease when we’ll, we’re in flow when things move more quickly. This morning I was actually just thinking, I’m like, wow, 3 or 4 things are really stuck in my life right now.

My laptop not working or whatever it might be. So I was like, OK, what do I need to do? Because that’s not a flow state. And my first thought was let me sit down on the earth and ground and really get into intention around shifting that, like really sit with, I don’t want it to look like this. How do I want it to look?

Visualize it and then see what energies need to be cleared Because I’m a huge fan of that, whether it’s on land or in my body and my house and my animals around me. That just needs to be. We all believe in detox, like lifting toxins out of our body and our homes, but we also have to do that with energies. And so we have to get, I’m looking around going, OK, where is this funky energy until I resolve it. But we have to really get things.

It’s not just a mindset. It is also these different layers of how our emotion, how’s our body doing, what’s going on in our environment. Because I was recently reading the book Triggers and he says most of like behavior change comes around needing to change our environment. And I may be in a place where my environment’s actually not working for me anymore. And that’s what’s contributing to my burnout.

And it may be the same with you, right? So yeah, there I we could have 8. 100 podcasts but it I. What is your? Relationship like with meditating?

Do you meditate? Do you do breath work? What? It’s hard. Meditations hard, Yeah.

I yeah, it’s it’s. Funny, because as you’re talking, I’ve recently gotten into quantum physics and whatever because at some point you get so desperate that you go. The universe is just energy. And as you’re talking about that, it’s all I wonder because I really struggle with meditating and I do find the horses very meditative and they force you to be really present. But funny enough, my Beyoncé works in tech and he’s a software programmer, developer, whatever.

And so he’s so in his brain, and he to. The point where like he. Can work through hunger signals and institute. All day, no hunger. Yeah, yeah.

And I go. I was listening. To something about how people have not necessarily autoimmune diseases, but think certain diseases will show up in in yourself and they do this thing where they’ll have you sit and stare at a wall for 30 minutes and you’re not allowed to move. And they go the amount of people, that one, I mean, he even just getting up to the 30 minutes is incredible. But they have these like huge emotional breakthroughs because all of a sudden they’re forced to be with themselves and be.

And I go, it’s so funny because I was telling my fiance this and he goes, yeah, I think I’d be pretty good at that because I can just go into my brain and I go, it’s not about beating right? Like it’s about having the experience and working through. Whatever. Comes up which is virtually meditating or whatever, and it’s so often with the horses all have the same issue of they get so in their head that they’re out of their body and that’s all the work becomes getting them back into their body and it’s all about. Regulation, yes, and so many people.

I was just having this conversation with someone of I’ll get horses that come to me and oh, this horse flipped over six times or this horse has a rearing problem or whatever. And by the time I swing my leg over them, I’m not even worried that’s a concern anymore because there are so many things that I noticed. I go, this horse can’t even cross tie and yet you’re cross tying it and putting the tack on. I go, it doesn’t even know what it’s doing here. And I think humans are the same way.

We’re like, we just, we set a goal or whatever and we’re working externally. We’re not working internally. And I think that’s what taking this break from competing and the pressure has shown me is that, Oh my God, like I can give my horses all of this stuff. Like I’m not doing it to myself. So it’s really only 50% as good as it’s going to get when the horse does it and I’m not doing it.

And yeah. And. So I think. Yeah, just learning to sit with a my thing is sugar. So all of a sudden I’m like, oh, I need to get an ice cream or I need to and it’s oh, no, like you’re trying to like self smooth or you’re trying to.

There’s something that’s coming up that your body doesn’t want to deal with or your brain doesn’t want to deal with. And so it’s going to distract you. And it’s it’s the same thing with the horses. Oh, my horse is so spooky. I mean, your horse doesn’t want to feel feeling beautiful, yes.

So true. So yeah, I love. What you shared. And do you have meditation? It’s not always easy, but again, I think we need to.

I’m a huge fan of having our own definitions for things, right? Like what is our own? What is our definition of meditation or success or, or pressure? Because some people really love pressure and they’re good with it. Like I write better under pressure and I’m fine with it.

But I think what’s interesting is meditation can look like laying at the pool and not reading, just laying there or just going through your day quietly while you’re showering it. It doesn’t necessarily need to be the clear your mind for 20 minutes. Yeah, there’s so many different types of meditations. Meditation can be laying in bed just listening to music. It’s the cool thing is that stuff that allows the nervous system to down regulate so that you’re not like feeding your brain a lot of candy or noise or information, Hence the staring at the wall.

Actually love staring at walls, which is something like I don’t ever. I never said that publicly to anyone, but it’s something that I started to do when I was in burnout and after corporate America and it was my way of just being able to like with all the stuff. The other thing I love is I do like tech Shabbat. So I take full 24 hours with everything off and it is all of my stuff will surface. So I’m journaling and I’m like, OK, I’m processing this relationship from 10 years ago and I’m and I’m like dealing with stuff that I maybe never fully dealt with.

And it is a great way to allow the mind have a filtration system to get into process. And I like Matt Kahn’s work of love what arises because that’s a lot of what it is option. Fear will go away if we sit with it and anger will go away if we sit with it and we get to actually express it in a healthy way. So my master’s program has this right stuff out like anger and then burn it because we’re not meant to stuff it. And we do keep so busy so that we don’t feel because we’re afraid of our feelings.

But what I always tell myself is your feelings are not going to they’re not going to kill you and they will feel better out than in and and you know, my whole thing is grief doesn’t really have a player on. I was about to session start a session the other day and I walked outside and I saw the neighbor’s cat and it, I just sat down with this cat and it was so loving. And it just, the tears just came pouring out because I was, I’m still processing loss of my own cat and just the feeling of like how beautiful animals give love and how humans are so guarded with that sometimes myself included in the past. So it’s, I just felt so like this was the time to grieve and, but I sit with it and I let the tears come fully out because how I feel after tears are out is fantastic. And it’s like getting a great massage or whatever.

So I know there’s a, there’s a benefit to it, but a lot of people don’t like stay with it long enough to really feel into the benefit that it’s just energy and motion. It just, it needs to move and we can’t stuff it because that is where the autoimmune and the stuff calm or the addiction tendencies calm. So if we allow ourselves to feel stuff it, it can truly just be dealt with and move through. And I’m not a huge fan of overrocessing because I’ve done that. And that kees us in that there’s always an issue.

There’s always something to talk about. O it’s in balance without a doubt, but I do love breath work as a very I was scared of breath work for a long time, but then once I started I it’s so intense for me still, but it will get me into every single one of my stuck whatevers and then I’m like physically moving it through my body like my body shakes and I will he has a process where we scream and it’s a whole thing. Yeah, I’m cut after I’m done with it. I’m like, I’m back to blueprint, Kate. Like I feel like my divine essence and who I truly AM.

And then I’m like come walk around in the world and be easier in all of my relationships. So I try to have a breathwork practice and just other practices like sitting with the horses and just seeing what comes forward. Not having any agenda with them whatsoever. There’s nothing we have to do or just being with each other. That’s for most of my my true connection with horses has come from and the assignment I give to everyone that I I teach, which is go, just go sit with them, do nothing but sit and see what comes forward.

Yeah, no, it’s horses are. Just such a safe place. And I always try to like, take a moment to be like, I’m just so grateful that this is the life. And even when it’s hard and whatever, it’s so worth it just to have these moments of like, yeah, when you’re a little girl and something hits the fan, shit hits the fan and you get to go cry in your horses stall. Like it’s just that comfort.

And I saw a quote the other day that was like how grateful I am or whatever to have horses show me that love is not conditional. And it’s. And it’s so true, you know, that so many of us go through life. I think girls specifically a little bit more than boys. But like we’re told that if we are something them we’re worth being loved and we’re just works being loved because we were born and like that just is, you know what it is.

And horses don’t care. They’re like, OK, yeah, good vibes, cool. Or oh, not good vibes. OK, then why isn’t that horse coming up to me? Oh, I need to deal with that because showing me something and and yeah, it’s all we’re all.

We’re just so lucky to be able to work with them. And this has been an excellent podcast. I feel like we could talk for 10 more, I guess odd, odd things. But yeah. So how do people find you follow along all of that good stuff.

Yeah. Thank you. I. Think probably the best way is my website itskatenelligan.com with 1L and it can grab you the link it also I’m on Instagram and Facebook. Kate, Nellie and Equine coach And then the Awakening with Equine’s Facebook group is a great spot, too.

So yeah, any of those ways are fast. And yeah, I’m so glad we got to do this today because there’s so much, There’s so many things I think we can learn from each other. And I just really appreciate we come from different worlds, the horses, but we see things similarly in a lot of ways. And I think we need to have more of these interdisciplinary conversations. Like I love what you’re doing with the podcast where you’re like, OK, let’s look at this from a different land and also show people that there can be a different way inside of the competition world because I love corporate because it wasn’t going to change in terms of the pressure current.

I wanted to be outside, but I still work with corporate groups and the biggest. Thing they need is to. Slow down to value slowing down. But it’s the same thing in the competitive course world. How do we value the pause?

How do we value slowing down? And sometimes we can, when we pause, we actually are able to have more of those creative solutions come forward. So I love what you’re doing and I think it’s really important and needed. And I would love to see that industry change the way I’d love to see all of the horse world evolve. And it is, it is, I trust that it is.

And people like us are doing our part for sure. Thank you again, this was excellent.