Your Horse Knows You're Not Okay — Josh Nichol

So I typically kick the episodes off by having the guests tell us who they are and what it is they do. Sure. My name is Josh Nicole. My life with horses has been kind of all over the place. I was raised with horses.

We had horses right from the very beginning in a small town in northern Ontario, actually. And then when I was 12, we moved to Alberta. The horse culture in Alberta is much bigger than that in Ontario and that’s kind of when things got kicked off for me when I was younger, when Ontario being with horses was just kind of being with them. We didn’t really, I had no understanding of training or whatever. We spent time with them and I would ride, but it was, it was just more of an organic experience.

You know, it’s kind of SAT into me a sense of connection or it wasn’t that they were just for me to, to do things with necessarily, but, you know, kind of builds, I don’t know, a different base then moving to Alberta. It was like, OK, training thing, you know, and doing stuff and disciplines. And it was this massive overwhelm of content and information, a little bit like what the Internet has done for us. And I was super excited about it. You know what?

But at that stage I kind of had a sense of a desire to connect and A, and a feeling of what that was like because I’d spent a lot of time with them kind of in a different, again, organic way. So then right away there was times when things would happen and people would do things certain ways that didn’t kind of resonate with me. But I didn’t really have any confidence in it because I didn’t have any sense of training. I just had feel. So then throughout my time, you know, I ended up just trying to, you know, I got very intrigued by the concept of training and being able to do things with horses.

And you know, you weave your way through a variety of different people. And I was able to ride with some pretty cool people throughout from about 14 to about 22. That’s pretty much all I did was just travel around and, and ride with different people. And it just really deepened the base of, you know, you can have a connection with a horse and then there’s a way to go about doing it that can actually consider the horses and consider them mentally and also physically. From there, I started training for the public.

I never intended to, but I had met so many people in my travels and then people wanted me to start working with them. So that that was something I really pushed off. I’d never intended to help anybody. I just wanted to be better. And I, you know, I wanted to work with horses more of kind of a cowboy and lifestyle.

I wanted to go and do jobs and train dogs and horses and work with cattle. And so I kind of started doing that and the phone just kept ringing and ringing and people wanted me to come and teach. So inevitably over time that just developed. I started training for the public first. I switched from training from the public to then starting to only train for my students, which was super cool too, because it was then a more resonant community of, you know, people intending to think about the horses the way I was.

And it took this false sense of pressure off me of 30 day horses, the certain physical product that people were demanding, you know, on horses that maybe weren’t ready. And that was a massive weight for me because I kind of felt it initially that I was supposed to, you know, I’m the trainer. I was supposed to turn that product out. So those inner forces started forming my teaching style. So then I was teaching people and training horses and trying to blend those two together to get people to a place where they would start taking more responsibility of how they showed up versus putting responsibility on a trainer to confine the horse into a lens that work for their ignorance, which is the biggest struggle I feel like is faced with training today.

And the root of most negativity in the industry is we’re trying to, instead of instead of bring people up to where a place where they can learn and be with horses, we’re trying to dumb horses down to handle the ignorance of people. And I think there’s somewhere there’s a balance in that for sure, like a horse has to get to a place where they can kind of handle our blunderings a little bit. But on the same level that it shouldn’t be put on the horses all the time that any physical expression they have or what seems like a behavioral issue, it’s just immediately looked at as disrespect and disobedience. Rather the horses allowed to have a voice and you know, they’re going to actually express where you have qualities and where you’re struggling. And so then that really propelled my teaching space and, and from, I don’t know the point in my 20s to now, my teaching has just taken off.

And it’s kind of blended into an element of understanding the mind of a horse. What do horses need from us so they can be OK? How do their how does their body move when they’re OK? And how can we shape the work that way? And then this heavy kind of focus on resilience.

What does it mean to develop a horse that can handle the challenges of the world? And those are those are a lot of like kind of the three pillars that I work inside of. Yeah. So I’m I’m happy to kind of share any of those pieces if you’re interested in in me unpacking those more. But that’s kind of the the frame that I’ve taken.

Yeah. I want that to be OK. I want to know how they were intended. They intend to move or need to move to actually carry a rider. And then how do you develop resilience in a way where it doesn’t primarily focus in submission if you’re?

Yeah, I as I was doing some research for the podcast, one of the things that just kept coming up was this idea of vulnerability and vulnerability for the rider to feel the things that they’re actually feeling, and vulnerability for the horse to be able to feel the things that they’re feeling. And I think in both ways, you know, you kind of touched on it a little bit. We want our horse to be perfect and we want ourselves to just be ourselves, but the ourselves that we put out there, which may not be the ourselves we actually live with internally and bridging those two things together. And and I like that you talk about resilience. I call it adversity.

You know, you and the horse need to handle adversity together and you need to be able to handle the pressure, but also your horse needs to be able to handle the pressure. So how, how do you start by I even identifying sort of the emotions that horses and people are feeling? Yeah, that’s a good question. I kind of look at it in two pieces initially, one of the you kind of touched on it there, but one of the big struggles I find for most of us when we’re starting to work with horses is that there’s very little self accountability on how I show up in the world. The thing about horses is they resonate.

They resonate an energy and a frequency that’s a lot bigger than ours. So when they feel something, it spikes faster and stronger, which actually pushes on our triggers with more intensity. So then in the process of this, you’re going to learn a lot about yourself based on your reactions and based on your tendencies. And the first thing that I’ve spent time doing with people is a lot of times we’ll work with a horse maybe loose or on the line in the groundwork, but more so for a person to start discovering what their their energetic tendencies are. And most people, as soon as anything happens, we go into a contract and react kind of a space.

And the problem with that is then what happens is, is that a horse feels us disappearing over every little uncertainty. So what that does is then the horse is less able to draw from any confidence you did have because they feel you actually doing the very thing they’re tempted to do, which is to run away and hide and protect. So then we’re actually mentoring our horses inside of a very negative mindset. It’s a little bit like hanging around a really critical person and it just starts to impact you. I talk about the law of intensity a lot, which is, you know, if I come on here and I’m a bit grumpy and you’re really happy, just hanging out with you is going to lessen my grumpiness because the energy that you’re giving is greater than the energy that I have within myself.

So it’s really important for us to get to a place where we can start taking self accountability and to recognize what our triggers are and do our own work on our triggers. That that’s where the leadership work kind of comes into this because that and actually it becomes your greatest restriction to relationship if every time certain things are said or the horse does a certain thing, it triggers you. Now you are, you are now unable to lead the horse based on frequency because horses are such feeling creatures. So then they’re this side of doing the work and kind of feeling a person’s reactions to different questions and when the horse has different responses, where you can Start learning what your own tendencies are. So I really spend a bunch of time I think about as empowerment, not therapy, because I think it can kind of go that direction.

There’s lots of great work out there, but what I want is just for people to start recognizing what their patterns are. And through recognition, we can become very accountable. And then from the horse’s side, I think that, you know, horses have certain needs. And the three needs that I prioritize are mind space and pressure. And your horse needs to know how to live inside of those places to keep track and feel safe.

So the mind needs what’s happening in my world and who’s taking care of it? Where is my hurt and where do I feel safe? The space need is what is the exchange of energy allowed? How? Who develops the confidence in the exchange of energy?

So if every time the horse engages me, my energy recedes or runs or reacts, now I’m actually out of control of myself. So getting to a place where we can become mindful of what this exchange is saying ends up really having to do with my own level of self, self growth, self-awareness, because they have to be able to read how I’m responding and how I’m showing up. So space is a very big piece. And a lot of times we just think horses need to be out of our space and we need to get them away. But really that would be like not ever having any kind of a connected relationship with somebody.

You’re always just pushing everything away. So that’s a big deal to a horse. The exchange of energy in the play of space is a big deal. And we see that in the herd dynamic. And then the big one, which I think is hard for people and horses, is what you do with pressure.

So the things that inspire uncertainty, the things that come up in your life that are trigger you or or cause response, are you aware of yourself personally, how you respond to that? And then are we able to mentor our horses, actually control pressures in a way that empowers the relationship instead of triggers it through fear. So the horse comes to us with their default setting as I’m going to run first, that’s how they come. So we should never then get emotional or bothered with a horse when they think of being scared, when they think of running off, when they think of bucking or doing these things because they don’t have any other information. And that awareness is a big deal because now all of a sudden, your emotional interpretation of what they’re doing can just diminish.

Yeah, that’s what I start with. So one of our big jobs is to not desensitize a horse, not to sack them out, but also not to use their natural fear response to get the things we want. So just using their desire to run away, if that’s the way I’m asking them to move off and they’re moving off in fear, maybe I got my trot transition. But I’m also using the fact that they run away from things that scare them, and I’m utilizing that kind of negativity. So then I also shouldn’t be surprised when they spook because that is no different.

I’m getting away from the things that make me nervous. So it’s kind of a process I go through of helping horses understand how to control pressures by connecting, by softening, by using their thinking brain rather than their reactive brain. And one of the most important parts to this, and I look at that with people too, is, is if you want to be successful and you have to transform these pillars into mindsets that build connection and not control or you will need dominance and submission to take their body from them when they never change their mindset. Yeah, no, it it’s so fascinating because as I’m listening to you, I’m just thinking of, I got this horse a couple years ago and she kept bucking off her adult amateur mom. And my competition horse at the time had a career ending injury and I was kind of working with the horse and I was like, I’ll take the horse and she likes to jump, I can handle the bucks, whatever.

And that started my journey into personal development because up until that point I had been able to, I think I’ve been very lucky. And the horses that I had thrived in the pressure that I put on myself and that I put on the relationship. And they showed up well within that pressure. And then I got this horse who was pushy, labeled pushy chestnut mare. And you know, I just, it’s like there’s got to be a way to get the source or what had happened was I would go and do the dressage and I am a, an event rider and I would go and do the dressage and I would just be so disappointed every time I left the dressage.

God, I, I don’t know if we’re ever going to get it. And we weren’t even doing that bad, but like just comparatively, we weren’t doing as good as I had done previously. And then it would just always come out a little worse and a little worse and a little worse to the point where I sought out a sports psychologist. I said I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know where my tension is.

I don’t know. And he was a non horsey guy and he goes, you know, I don’t know much about horses, but I think you really lack being emotional. And when you are emotional it’s these very negative feelings. And I realized that as I’m working with this horse and going and competing this horse, she is trying harder and harder, which is making things harder and harder. And then I’m feeling more and more disappointed.

And it’s this downward spiral of like, no one’s getting what they want. And it. So as I’m listening to you talk, I go, Oh yeah, my triggers not being good enough, you know, wanting, I’m very much so a showman and, and I want people to be like, oh, look at that. And, and I think I needed to have this mayor come into my life to be like, hey bro, take the pressure off. We’re just here to like live and have a good time.

And you’re like trying to go to the Olympics at beginner novice right now. And so I so where do you find getting people to a point where they can even feel the things they’re feeling? Because I think, you know, I mean, I literally sought out a sports psychologist and he was like, you’re not feeling anything. And I had no idea. And I’m living in my body.

And so I think it’s so common for people to especially when you add in things like pressure, they just have no idea what’s going on it internally, sometimes even externally. And so how do you kind of thread the needle of getting them maybe more present or or more understanding of what’s going on physiologically? Yeah, it’s, it’s a big deal. I think it starts the way I, I kind of spent time on 2/2 mindsets. The first, the first, really focusing on the mindset that you have within yourself about how you’re interpreting the world around you and the mindset that you have with your horses.

Because most of us have gone through no struggles and we’ve had enough stuff happen in our lives that we’ve actually retracted our bubble, our space into a protective state. So now there’s nothing that people feel or interpret that’s not either a defensive or be building walls. It’s like we’re ready to be protective because we’ve had enough stuff happen. And I think we can all relate to that. But the problem is now is that we don’t even know that that’s happening.

And now it’s just the lens that we’re interpreting the world. So the first thing I start with is trying to shift people’s perspective around the horse. You know, like maybe there’s more to what your horse is saying than that they’re trying to be offensive, they’re trying to be bad, they’re trying to get away with stuff like these are all human interpretations of the world. And the more defensive we are, this is a The thing is that we have to realize that the way we look at the world is our our problem. Like with the way I have interpreted the world, it doesn’t have anything to do with truth.

It has to everything to do with how I’ve built the experience based on my own nature and my interpretation of how I’ve handled the pressures and the pains and the struggles that have come up in my life. So then it’s very easy for me then to say, Oh yeah, when the horse did that, that’s what they meant. And they were doing it for this reason. And now I then feel justified with my pressure to act because I felt this, you said something, it made me feel this. Now I feel justified to strike out when that was just based on my own truth.

So the first thing I try to do is I try to bring people to a place where we can start just talking that through. And then people, number one, have to start taking a level of self accountability to recognize that, wow, maybe the way I thought that it could be thought different. And then I start trying to get people to think a little bit more that So I look at I look at the world in these threads and threads are are feel and what what these threads will do is they’ll help you feel the truth in association with horses. It’s the thing that draws, you know, any heart centered person, the working horses, it will like it’s like something to feel right or oh man, that felt amazing. Why did it feel amazing?

Because there’s these threads that actually are pulling us along to help us understand what relationship is and how to connect. So I feel like for myself, I’m trying to follow that. Whether I get it right all the time isn’t even the point, but it’s like I’m trying to follow that. And when something feels off, instead of then blaming everything around me is to kind of like become more introspective on trying to process through that. So then there’s always going to be a mindset that has to shift.

And then I’m also going to have to become a little bit more vulnerable and opening up to possibly something different being true. So then the thing about horses, which is awesome is, is that they resonate into truth and then they get defensive when they feel self protective, like when they feel self preservation, they’re going to protect themselves. So they become a really great lens of what works and what doesn’t because nobody said to them, I want you to make sure you can make Samantha look bad today, you know, or make her look good today. Like they don’t have that. They just feel, they interact.

And so we can really use that to amplify the quality of our relationships because they’re just feeling. So then that leads to the second part is, is then once you start to recognize that maybe, you know, OK, I’ve got to drop my walls, I start feeling the space. And So what I generally do with people is I’m going to start them on the ground to a place where they can start interacting with the feel of a horse in the space of a horse. So I talk a lot about receiving state. And receiving state is, you know, when your walls are out, there is no receiving state.

You’re not receiving anything and you’re really not giving anything off. You’re just protecting yourself. If you don’t ever change that. All training is is technical. It’s like I put my hand here, I put my leg here and there’s no connection.

But horses are energetically connected creatures. They they want to feel each other and they want to interact with the space and. And it’s very true and it can be very intense sometimes, but there isn’t an, a negative emotional attachment to it. They’re just interacting. And now the problem for us is that every energy we feel, and you mentioned that earlier, I feel energy and it immediately goes to a negative emotion because most of us have been taught feeling, you know, we’re not supposed, you know, we’re all supposed to play our role.

We’re only supposed to have, you know, do the right thing, show up the right way. So just basic expression of energy is not really acceptable. So then we hold, hold, hold, hold, hold, and then we pop. So now we think more energy is negative rather than energy just being an expression of communication. You know, like right now I’m trying to do with you.

I’m just, I’m just trying to allow my words to be felt in a way where you can understand me more so you can play with the energy in tone and in frequency and in feel. That has nothing to do with emotion, but it could like I could then put that energy into anger or I could put it into excitement. So when you start recognizing you’re actually quite a bit more free to play in that space. And if you start practicing it on purpose, like what would you like your horse to do? You would like them to trot?

Well, well, how much of you as trotting or did you just think it and then whack the stick? So when we, when we have certain practices like that, we’re actually practicing closing off. But what if you were to allow yourself to like let it out of your body more, like really allow the horse to feel you. And that’s what I call the universal language. So the universal language is, is that all creatures can feel energy that leaves you and will feel slightly guarded by energies that don’t.

So if you’re holding back like this, there’s going to be a level of skepticism and any kind of interaction because you’re holding back. And that kind of creates this little bit like what’s going on here? Animals are super sensitive to this. And it kind of triggers for them more of that predatorial stance, like, like you’re hiding stuff. So when you can really let it out and you can just show and allow yourself to be felt, which is the vulnerability.

And this is the reason why most people don’t show up in space. Now all of a sudden, you’re readable. But that’s where the hard part comes. We don’t want to be readable. We don’t want anyone to know what we’re thinking.

I don’t want that person to know that I don’t like them or that I do like them or, you know, that I’m angry right now or whatever. So that’s kind of where the personal growth piece comes in because you’ve got to get to a place where you show up and let yourself be felt. And there’s, you know, I always think that for every vulnerability I ask of my horses, I have to be that genuine to create that same vulnerability of myself. So if so, if I’m going around all plugged up and I’m reacting to pressures and I’m striking out and I’m getting mad and I’m spewing on social media or whatever, like you’re acting in the very way that you don’t really want your horse to act. But we divide it because we’re saying, oh, the horse is freaking out.

I’m not really freaking out. I feel justified. So the goal is to say horses communication is based on frequency. Now my mental interpretation changes my frequency. So then can I allow myself to be seen?

Can I show up in the space? Can I let can I practice letting my feelings out of my body so my horse can read it and then get to a place where I’m recognizing that the frequency I’m gaining is actually the connection that I can produce. So if I can’t have it in me, let it out, then it’s very challenging to get an animal that that doesn’t understand your verbal language to actually trust you. So then, then I play a lot of stuff in the ground work, whether it’s on the line or loosen around pen or wherever. It doesn’t, you know, it can be anywhere.

Just to start reading what a person’s spatial tendencies are for them to start becoming accountable, seeing it, and then just starting to grow their capacity to actually the horses. Because if you are always holding back and then going to your stick, your horse is probably going to swish their tail at you every time you move your stick because they didn’t have any reading before the stick moving. But the more you start emanating an energy and allowing the horse to feel you, now you gain that synergistic flow of movement in association to your thought and then their action. So that that’s the bridge for me. It’s like if that’s the place.

So we just spend a lot of time just in the groundwork initially until the person can start gaining the ability to move inside of that languaging and show up in a way that the horse can trust you because you’re not hiding anything anymore. Interesting. Yeah, I it’s funny, I had this relatively seasoned horse few months ago. She to me randomly stopped wanting to go forward and I had her checked out by the vet. I was you know, I was like oh maybe ulcers.

No, no ulcers checked out by the body worker, no issues, you know, besides the normal stuff. And I’m like God, why would this start happening? So I start thinking back and I realize, you know, we had kind of had a few instances. We were hacking one day and a dog rushed the fence and freaked her out. And then I was wondering her one day and she kind of came in on the circle and the lunge line got stuck under a ground rail and it moved.

She freaked out. At which these are all like rightful freak outs. The chickens flew out of their paddock as she was crossing the corner. She freaked out. So we had a lot of these instances where to me, they were just kind of like these one off things that I think to her accumulated to a point where she just fully shut down.

And I it gave me a lot of information about her because she’s not really when I say freak out, like she like scoots forward a little bit and then she like resumes her normal. She’s not a big like I’m getting the heck out of here kind of girl. So I’ve realized she’s a freezer and that’s her emotional when she doesn’t know what to do. That’s where she goes And I was like, OK, that’s fine. Start doing a little bit of groundwork with her reapproaching.

OK, when I say try and I raise my energy like do we try and and really restarting it? But it I really badly wanted to pick up a whip because I knew in my head I could fix this problem immediately. And I realized that when I’m holding the whip, that’s my most readily available tool. So I use it. But when I’m not holding the whip, what other tools do I have to get this horse?

And then you realize, oh crap, I like don’t even know how to ride without this like thing and energy and emotions are just tools that kind of need to go in the toolbox. Not to make it sound like super scientific, because I think they’re more than that, but they’re also a part of that where I think so many times we’re told, you know, emotions don’t belong in the saddle or just it like I’m, I’m a really grounded person and not because I don’t fly off the handle sometimes, but I think my just natural state, it’s like pretty low energy. And so I, I get along with a lot of horses that are high energy because we kind of meet in the middle of it, But sometimes I get a horse into training that’s super low energy. And so I had to learn to like become a little bit more exciting and, you know, make the training a little more exciting. And so I, I think there’s this thing happening in horsemanship and, and in training where we’re realizing that our energy and our emotions, our tools and, and guides.

And, but also sometimes I think there’s this thing where I’ll be working with a horse and, and my immediate thing is I’ll get angry at something, but how do I not react from that place of anger? Does that make sense? Oh, it’s only so there’s kind of two things that come up for me. The 1st is again, just kind of like when you recognize that most of the time when our horses are not responding, it’s because we went offline. So like our energy, it is not common for us to think about utilizing just an open flow of energy.

Like here’s what I wanted, mostly because we have big brains. We think it in our heads and then it goes to our aid and the horse didn’t feel anything. And, and a lot of times, because pressure hasn’t been kind of mined out of horses to not mean become tense and scared. Then we apply our our pressure and it kind of builds a little tension, a little bit of uncertainty, a little bit of fear, a little bit of something. They still went forward.

And the problem is, is we released when they moved in tension because they moved and that’s what our head wanted. So this kind of goes back to just to recognize the most important spot is that emotions are emotions. There’s seemingly negative emotions, positive emotions, but I like to think inside of me, I have an energy generator. It’s like its own organ. And I can build up energy on trot.

I can bring energy down in trot, I can build energy up in happiness, I can bring energy down in anger. You know, like it, if you think of it, that your energy generator is actually its own thing and you can lift it and raise it again. It’s just that we’re so used to it only coming up when we’re pissed. And that’s the problem. Like we get mad and our energy comes up.

So then we think energy up is actually bad. And that’s not the case. Energy, an intensification of energy is actually clarification. And that’s how I look at it. Like I want to be very clear on that.

I’m saying trot. And as people, we have to get to a place where we recognize we actually need to up our energy to get clearer because it’s not our first thought to be clear energetically. It’s our first thought to think and problem solve. So the most of us are always kind of like trying to solve problems from the center of our eye, which is our logical brain. We’re not using our senses and our field.

So that I’m just trying to get anybody like just experiment, have fun with it. You know, like you want to, you want to ask selling of your horse, what does it mean to just build your energy up before you move that whip, but before you do anything, you know, like, what does it mean just to experience your own energy in your field? And if you were free to do it, like there’s no restrictions, it’s no emotion, it’s its own essence. Play around and have fun. OK, So that freedom is actually really important because now it’s not so linear that if you’re building up energy, you’re starting to get mad and getting mad is wrong.

You know, it’s like, you know, then we then we’re like shutting our energy down all the time because we’ve made it linear to 1 experience. So that freedom again, like I try to do it all the time because I feel like this conversation is better when you can, when I can really let my feel out into my words, not just kind of like spew words. OK. And then the second part is there’s a difference between softness and lightness. So lightness is how responsive a horse will be to pressure physically.

So I applied pressure how how responsive are they to go from A to B Softness is how the pressure impacted them internally. So this is where you know the feel of your contact and sensing their muscles and feel it. So then I guess I’ll just back it up a moment and say how a horse interprets anything is all stored in their muscles. So a horse could go forward and have interpreted that that pressure was something they’re slightly worried about. And now they tighten, OK, which will slow horses down.

It will make horses run. It will also invert their back. So super important to get to a place where our contact can feel what’s going on in their muscles and not focus on a frame necessarily, but a feel of what’s going on. So I like to think that my hands are surgical. What you’re doing with your hands is, is like you’re feeling how horses experience life through the fabric of their muscles.

So I have something I call body mapping and it’s, it’s a little bit of like, it’s this exercise where you use certain little exercises to feel the neck and then angles to feel the shoulders, the barrel and the hips so that you can sense what the horse is has programmed in their muscles, not just how those tensions move. So then this this really sets a very positive stage for that because now you’re removing the reason they stopped going forward. OK. And then finally what has to happen is you have to actually feel those muscles and then help a worse understand when they feel pressure. The actual answer to pressure is to let go of those muscles, not to tighten and relocate them.

And I would say probably in most people that are trying to do stuff with the horses, that’s biggest struggle that on the planet is we are using pressure to motivate the horse to do what I want, but we’re sacrificing how they felt. And that’s the root of behavior. So I say that tension is is dormant behavior. It’s like if tension stays in a horse long enough and enough pressure comes up and their natural mind deals with their tension, that produces behavior every single time. So the goal is feel the tension, kind of hang around there until you can feel the tension soften, but then mentor them.

When I use a whip or I touch a flag or I put my leg on as I’m connecting to that tension, they learn that the pressure is actually released when they let that tension go. And what happens is now you’re building a mindset with your horse, that pressure, something we can think through, it’s something we can deal with, we can process it and that starts to, that’s like a fork in the road. Now when a horse starts to learn that they can control pressure by softening and thinking, that’s where empowerment begins. When a horse believes all they’re doing is tightening and getting away from pressure, you’re still using their fear based mindset to try to motivate response. Yeah, it’s so interesting.

I I have this client who has a small breeding program and all of the big horses were out at competition, so I was scheduled to go to the barn that day. I ended up doing some just like basic groundwork stuff with the young horses and she has this 2 year old paddock and I’ve handled them a bit. I wouldn’t say I’ve worked with them, but like I make sure that they can get their hubs picked out and like they handle brushing and whatever. And there’s this one mare and I always do this. I always throw my lead rope over their neck so that it’s kind of out of the way of the feet, but I can still have my hand looped through it.

And she was great. I go to pull it off and it touches her back and she freaks out and cue me getting like dragged across the paddock. And I kind of took note because I was like, you know, at some point I’m going to be riding this horse. This is a good thing to know that this is how she reacts. But a few days later I go back to the barn, same sort of thing.

I needed to go play with the 2 year old. So I got her in a little paddock and I’m just kind of running my hand over her back and down her legs and I not necessarily in a way to overpower her, but I kind of let her run away. I just don’t move. I stay touching her and it’s always so fascinating to see them when they stop and the pressure comes off just their face and they almost go, Oh my God, I just like overcame this thing. And it was so just raw because she’s never like, it’s not like this is a horse that has gone through any part of the starting process.

Like she’s really, she’s been pretty good with the beat picking up and everything her whole life. So this was really like the first thing she’s ever had to overcome this like fear of this thing on her back or her butt. And and it just was this pure moment of like, I just could feel her chill like through her body, this like sense of just oh, like wonder almost. And I just was like, oh, like how many horses either get scolded, not even because they necessarily do anything wrong, but because it invokes fear in US. And that horse never has the opportunity to like, use their brain to overcome that thing.

And back of my head, I’m just like, hopefully she remembers this when she’s a 3 1/2 year old and I’m like getting on her. But but yeah, I just was like, I think so often and it goes back to kind of what you were saying in the beginning of these behaviours get seen as disobedience or bad quote, bad behaviour. But a lot of it is just like self preservation and not necessarily anything negative. And I do think it can be easier for us. I guess maybe for me, I will look at a horse and kind of anytime they do anything, I give them the benefit of the doubt in terms of why that behavior is happening.

But I don’t give that same grace to myself. And I’m very much so like you’re apos because you’ve thought this thought or you had this feeling. And so yeah, it’s just always fascinating to inflect and then reflect sort of all of these things that happen. I how I suppose you deal with a lot of of horses and people for a short amount of time because you do a lot of the clinics and and how do you in that space deal with or mentor people and their horses to even start the process of like just dealing, I guess is the yeah. There’s something, there’s something so beautiful about the horses, especially with people that are drawn to horses from a heart center where they don’t always have the answers, but they’re pretty open to try.

And most of the time when people come to me, they’re already, you know, I have, I’ve, you know, I, we are in so many environments, like from rodeo to, you know, Chopins to cowboy and to trail riding, like if the horse’s mind and the horse’s body. You know, and so then we’re influencing that in so many different levels. But what I find is it’s that when people show up and they’re then when they come to me at this stage, you know, I’ve kind of known as that that’s kind of my deal. They’re pretty ready, you know, and if they’re not ready, they they don’t come. So then I already have a certain ability to succeed with them because they’re kind of realizing something’s not working, whether it’s their horses running off or bucking or not going forward and they’re, they’re ready for it.

So then, you know, I’ve spent, I don’t know, more than 25 years now just kind of like greasing the wheel on my ability to kind of like get in there and help people figure people out, figure the horse out. I think about it like marriage counselling initially, you know, like you have to listen to the person. Then I talk to the horse and then I take both of those scenarios and I help the person understand their horse. And then I want the horse to Start learning how to handle their person. But yeah, yeah, the goal is, is to, I find with changing our perspective, like I think life is all about perspective.

Mindset is so powerful because it’s going to move your energy and it’s going to move your emotions. It’s going to motivate your pressure mostly. When you can change people’s perspective around how they’re seeing it and why they’re doing what they’re doing, that transforms a lot because all of a sudden you’re not reacting with your pressure the same way. You’re you learn how you retract with everything and now you’re staying present and you’re showing up. So there’s some pretty big pillars that you can show people pretty fast that actually transform a lot because of how much they mean to horses.

I think we live in an interesting culture right now because everybody is, we’re still living. So we’ve changed the title of my newsletter and it’s called The Middle Ground. And the reason is, is that we very much so love polarization. And you know, we don’t want to be a dominant based aggressive horse people anymore. We’re swinging way over here to where it’s like people almost don’t even want to do anything because they don’t want to look wrong or be scolded on social media or, you know, it’s like almost been become debilitating to experiment and and figure things out and and kind of feel forward a little bit, you know, like you’re not going to you.

You would. I’m sure you would agree with this that my wisdom has come through my mistakes. It isn’t like I was just granted a capacity, but we need to have a certain bravery or commitment to move with a good heart and then experiment and just keep adjusting. So there’s certain things that I that I tried to do with people to kind of create a more liberated space where you know your horse can feel your heart. You need to work at making some mistakes.

You need to get yourself out there a little bit more. And then we have to start preparing our horses better rather than just hoping that if we get quiet and calm enough, the horse will be OK. Because those are two separate things. Creating a regulated horse and then empowering them to handle hard things, those are two separate conversations. Because removing any stimulus list can help you become quiet.

Not necessarily calm, but quiet. So you’re not being triggered. But because it has gotten quiet doesn’t mean they aren’t still going to be triggered. We have to gain greater capacity to learn how to move through pressure, to feel pressure. And that’s kind of the empowerment or the resilience piece for me.

Like we’ve got to start talking about how we respond to pressures in our own lives and we’ve got to take accountability. And then when people start doing that, it starts to change their frequency Because, you know, in a lot of times what ends up happening is is, you know, like people will have a bit of an experience or a moment where it’s like, holy smokes, like I’m, I’m living that, you know, I’m doing that. And then very quickly it takes them to why the problems happening. It’s mindset, it’s the movement of energy. It’s the way I motivate my aides.

It’s not understanding the need of my horse, you know? And now we’re crashing up against each other, continue really doing the same thing, looking for a different outcome. So, you know, I just kind of try to weave that thread a bit for people. And then I’m amazed honestly, how much change happens because you just see it different. Yeah.

No, that’s so. It’s so true. And I think it’s so it’s so true that I think, you know, although things are very polarized, it is kind of forcing a lot of horse people to look at themselves and say what what have I been doing that’s working and what have I been doing that’s not working? And that’s always, I think the best place to start is where, where am I right now and what is going on right now? And then from there, you can untrain and then retrain or start building some new blocks.

But yeah, just where am I right now? What is what is happening that is causing me to feel this way? And and what is happening that’s causing my horse to feel this way? And, and how do we help each other kind of overcome these things that are happening to us? Because it’s now no longer a me and them, it’s us.

But yeah. It’s an interesting thing. And because I am, you know, I do all over the place and I see lots of people. And what I recognized is that so many of the, the swinging philosophies around like maybe thinking about things different and maybe changing the approach and maybe not so dominance based, that mindset is actually really necessary for the more dominance based minded people. But what I’ve watched happening is, is you take these really good hearted people who are already trying really hard and now you say, Oh, you can’t do this and you can’t do that.

And this is bad. And, and what happens is now they were already trying really hard to not do anything wrong. Well, now they don’t even know how to do anything because it’s like immediately. And so I, I’ve recognized this big swing of really great hearted people actually don’t even know what to do anymore because they’re so debilitated by this almost the ideology of relationship. And it’s like a rule now.

So it’s like, I can’t do this. I can’t do that. Instead of it being a Free State where we can connect and be together, it’s actually this ideological system that’s pinned them in a corner and they can’t even leave the farm anymore. Is that for risk of making some deep rooted mistake that’s going to leave my horse traumatized for life? Well, then what happens is all of a sudden you have horses that can’t leave the farm because they’re not, they don’t know how to be empowered.

But just an interesting thing, you know, I would love it if you know, some of the people in the world that are maybe recognizing they’re trying a more dominance based approach doesn’t feel right. Some of these principles will work really well for them. But I’ve actually noticed I’m trying to empower good hearted people to make some more mistakes and try some stuff because the horse can feel your heart, you know, like they know, they know you don’t want bad for them, but you need to step out there and risk a little bit more so that you can get your wheels up. Because the less you do and the less you try, the less confident you feel when you’re doing it. And that’s that’s what the horse feels.

So now every time you try something, the horse feels like you’re shivering in your boots, you know, And so then the horse doesn’t isn’t get confidence from that. So it’s just an interesting thing, you know, and I find myself, yeah, really trying to inspire good hearted people that are never going to whip their horse, they’re never going to do that, totally triggered by that. They’re the ones living most confined by a lot of these principles. And so now they’re no longer guiding relationship. It’s actually a prison.

And so anyways, that’s just an interesting thing for me. I find that’s why I say the middle. It’s like, I’m not saying sometimes abusive and sometimes relationship. I’m saying there’s this sweet spot in the middle where we can use pressure and we can ask hard questions and we can take steps back and we can move inside of that space. But the only thing that I think needs to happen is you just have to be able to be more objective with the results of your efforts.

So if you try something and it didn’t work, make an adjustment. Don’t disappear nor don’t whip your horse for it. Yeah, you know what I’m saying? It’s like, you know, it’s like it doesn’t have to be so polarized. And again, I think of that just like a normal working relationship.

Like when I think of the relationship that I have with my wife, you know, it’s more so about just being able to have a reverence for each other while we do hard things and fail each other quite often. Yeah, I really resonate with what you were saying because I over COVID, I got really into like the David Goggins and Alex for Mozy and the people that are like push harder and go never sleep and you’re lazy if you don’t. And my husband actually like, you know, I sometimes I think he just wants to shake me and be like, take a day off. And he’s like the people that I listen to this podcast actually not too long ago. And he was talking about the Me Too movement and how it was great for women to finally be able to, like, stand up for themselves.

But the guys who needed to hear the message of not pushing women around aren’t going to hear it. And the guys who are already, like, backed off and shy towards women use that. They really heard that message. So they retracted even more into that space. And I, I never even thought about it with worse people.

But yeah, there are the people that are going to hear the message of don’t ever whip your horse if you do any of this, like you’re abusive, and they’re going to hear that and go tenfold in on themselves. And the people that actually maybe really need to hear the message aren’t going to hear it in terms that it resonates with them. And yeah, that’s a really interesting thought because I think, you know, it’s like someone calls it like, insecure overachievers, people who really want to do like, exactly right. And they’re willing to do everything it takes. But yeah, maybe they actually need to, like, take more risk or layoff or, you know, whatever that thing is.

But the message on social media is you’re doing too much. 100% and those are always coming from people who are doing too much. So they’re sharing their own personal journey on like doing too much is wrong. And then that lands on like the seeds are spread on the field of good hearted people and they’re like, OK, OK, then that’s going to fix all my problems. But they’re the people that needed to show up more.

So it’s, it’s this interesting, this interesting dilemma. And I, and I think that as well, you know, when I watch the climate of social media and you know, we’re so tapped in now that my encouragement always to people, you know, when, when you want someone to do something different, you have to do it by your example with no desire to convince anybody of doing anything. Because people that are already defensive, they’ve got like these systems developed to know they’re being pushed and they’re already guarded. They’re already, they’ve already learned how to defend themselves from being twisted by manipulation. And, you know, and they’re just so it’s like what ends up happening is in our heart or attempts to kind of like isolate the people that are doing what we might call the wrong thing.

You’re actually just building deeper roots in the camp because it’s harder to change now, you know, whether it’s as team roping at a rodeo or working on classical movements in the dressage ring, you know, which I which I all think are important to bless each other. The biggest thing that I’ve kind of set into is, is just to judge nobody and do your thing and do it with, with this kind of like inner desire to just get where you want to be and let the chips fall where they may. But in a sense, when we, we get too kind of like aggressive to kind of like get after people that are doing their best actually and failing, but fail, be careful if you fail in the eyes of those that have the stick, you know, to, to decide what is good and bad, because now we then feel justified to actually be very unrelational in how we handle them, you know, which actually polarizes the industry even more. So I feel like that’s always my people come to me and say, how can you do that, Josh? And how can you do this?

It’s like super easy actually. I just, I just let them be them and I be me and let the chips fall where they may. But my, but the world doesn’t change unless the people that have the heart aren’t out there allowing it to be seen. And again, that’s where they again, this great polarization where, you know, the people that have the heart are getting pushed into this tiny little corner and they can’t even leave their yard. And then judging people that are trying.

You see, that’s the, that’s just so risky because they’re not really putting themselves out there. And the, the less you put yourself out there, the bigger your voice gets on what’s right and wrong because you forget. I actually see this in rodeo quite a bit because there’s so much failing. Like you’re, there’s so many things that have to go right. The faster you make something happen, you know, like whether it’s your horse or catching or whatever.

You’ve got like my, my kids high school rodeo for for quite a long time and and you know, we go down the road and we have our events and I think the kids totalled 9 different events together on a weekend and it didn’t total more than a a minute and a half entirely of all their events combined together. It’s so ridiculously fast. And I find that actually that space is one of the most empathetic environments I’ve ever been in because they’re trying and no failure, which creates. So anyways, I find that the less we put ourselves out there, the more critical we become. And it could become so important to keep putting yourself out there and empathize with those that are trying.

And if you want to have a positive impact, then just keep putting yourself out there so that they can see the different fruit, like fruit has to be observed for it to have any impact. Yeah. It’s even kind of going back to sort of what you were saying earlier of when you’re clinicing with people, they’re already in the space to want to change something or become aware of something. That is not my clientele. My clientele comes to me because it may be a little bit different now because of the reputation through the podcast and things, but it was very much so like I have competition goals for my horse and I want them to make, I want it to happen.

And I have this one client and like, God love her because she, her horse was like completely shut down. And when like my #1 pet peeve is when people call horses stubborn. And maybe that’s just because I’m a stubborn person and I, I, but I view it as a very positive trait. And the so when, when people call their horses stubborn, I couldn’t know, there’s, there’s something that’s not right here. And this poor owner has been on such a journey, like with her horse overcoming this like sense of shutdown.

And now she’s at a point where the horse has really done a turn around. And, and I was chatting with her in the arena, I think like yesterday. And I’m like, I’m not over here because I’ve been perfect my whole life singing. This is the way we do things now because I’m perfect and I’ve never made the mistakes. Like I’m the person that had shut down your horse 15 horses ago, you know, like it’s so new to to me, to everyone to be nicer and softer and kinder.

And you know, and I totally went through that. Like I went from this super intense. I never, I love horses and horses have always been my safe place. So I’m not the type of person that like spurred them until they bled or like anything like that. But like I definitely have gotten 2 and 11 to make something happen that maybe it really only needed to be at like a six.

And and I go where I get concerned is through on social media, I will see the people that are like they’re really bastardizing horse sport. I go, I hear what you’re saying and I hear that things should be better and they can be better and we should all be working to make things better for our horses and for ourselves and all of that. But also, I’ve never seen you try to gallop your horse 470 meters per minute at a four foot 6 table that doesn’t fall down and do it perfectly every single time. And I don’t even know that it’s possible to do it perfect every single time. And that is where I think the conversations like I’ve loved this conversation that I’ve had with you today, because not once has it been like positive reinforcement this and negative reinforcement that and escalating pressure.

And but it’s, it’s just when you’re in the weeds with it, what’s going on? And I think we just can all sort of relate to showing up not as our best person and trying to figure out like how to deal when we’re when we are that person. Yeah, well, and one thing I find too is that I always ask people that if you had never had a bad experience with the thing you don’t like, would you be so grounded in the thing you think you should do now? So, so a lot of times when you hear people that are like no positive reinforcement or no negative reinforcement, they’ve often had a bad experience with the opposite. So instead of observing it in its fine practice, it’s now judged based on its negative.

And you know how it goes. Like anybody can find the holes of positive reinforcement and the holes of negative reinforcement if you look hard enough. And so I call it it’s a little bit like, right fighting. It’s like this person’s looking at what they’re right, not embracing their weakness. And this person’s looking at how they’re right not embracing their weakness.

So they’re both right. And there’s just no winning now because they’re focusing on the negative of it, not the positive. So the way I look at it, it’s like, yeah, everything has a pro and a con. And the key, the horsemanship Ness of it, like the art of it is to learn how to wield the right thing when it’s necessary. Like sometimes, you know, you want to draw more inspiration in a horse, sure, positive reinforcement’s going to work great.

But helping a horse learn how to process pressure, that doesn’t happen with the treat. That’s going to happen by learning how to have those harder conversations, but doing it in a very positive way. Like you can, somebody can help you learn how to handle something hard, OK. But that they’re generally going to do that in a way that you’re going to be able to hear them. And I think that’s the same with how we, you know, be an example in the world is you have to do it in a way where people can receive it.

You can try to shove good things down someone’s throat and expect them to think it’s tasty, you know, like, so I find that I actually have this little story that I tell about, you know, if you were to have never known anything about horses. And then you’re standing with someone who who knows lots. And you walk into this castle and inside the castle is a master. And he has all the equipment that could be used by the entire world of horsemanship laying out on tables. And the person that doesn’t know anything is like, oh, that’s kind of, well, that’s kind of, well, that’s interesting.

And the person who does is like, oh, bad. Oh, good. Oh, bad. OK. But then the master all of a sudden has this power to release your minds.

So you knew nothing from your past. And then he showed you how everything was supposed to be used in its masterful way. If that happened to you, how much of your brain would now be motivated in a different way? So it would reveal to you how much of you is motivated by Nope, I can never do that because of this, and I can only do that. Many of us, the motivation that we have is entirely motivated by what we don’t want to be.

It’s not motivated by why we’re on the earth. What is the whole purpose of this? You know, like we want to know how to be better. We want to connect. Yes, in the process, there’s going to be some bad stuff and there’s going to be some slightly bad stuff and I’m going to make mistakes.

But if the goal is is to have in our minds, how do we master it and get better at it? We have to stop being motivated by all the negatives and just seek the truth. Like just seek it and then shed our brains from those negative pillars. Anyways, it’s kind of a, a little soapbox for me. But you know, it’s, I find that so many people get so restricted by what I will never do, rather than maybe understanding how that could have been handled by a master.

But because we live in a climate, you know, that’s probably 95% amateur, you can expect to hardly ever see things handled right because they’re, they don’t even know what they’re doing yet. They’re just like, they don’t know how to handle a snaffle versus a, a Shank or a, you know, a spade bit and a bull salt. Like they don’t even know how it’s supposed to be handled. So there’s going to be a lot of view vantage points that are going to be like, oh, that thing’s that bit is horrible. You know, when it actually had nothing to do with the bit.

And again, people always will often say, I know there’s a 2% fringe of AIDS that probably should just be boat anchors, you know, But generally the theory stands. Yeah, I know. It’s so funny because I have this horse right now and she goes in a nape with no noseband, right? Like she’s very soft horse. And I was trying to explain to her owner, I was like, although she’s a very light horse and I, I think this horse would really like the feel of a double bridle in her mouth.

She’s just giving me this feeling. I go not because she needs a curb. She honestly probably never even used the curb ring because she’s so and she’s just very naturally uphill and, and built well. But I was like, she just seems to like having something there that she can really like grab onto and feel secure with him. And, you know, and the woman was kind of like, oh, you think she needs this like big bit.

And, and I was like, this is really the purpose of this. And this is and I go and, you know, reiterating the point of like, it’s not because she needs the extra pressure. I just think in her mouth she would like the way the setup feels. And it, it was one of those moments of like, oh, we just have so many predispositions about things. And even if you don’t have experience with the thing, I’ll never forget the first time I saw tell them.

And I was like, holy crap, who’s using one of these things? And then five years later I had a horse and they freaking love that thing. And it’s so it, it’s, and I always find it so funny when people become dogmatic about things and horses because like, I swear to God, as soon as I feel like I know this thing, I’ll get a horse that’s like, no, you don’t because I don’t respond to that. And it’s like, Oh yeah, we we’re all just like flowing through this thing and we’re all just trying to figure out like how to be as happy and comfortable within this thing as possible. And yeah.

And so it’s just, it’s funny to be like, yeah, what if we had no predispositions? What if we had no things of oh, I, I think this is how this would feel in this moment. So that must be the end all, be all of how it works. Right. Or I’ve seen this be used poorly.

So then that must mean, you know, and this, this really speaks to what I was talking about earlier when I talked about a thread. Like my goal is to find the thread of how, of how this horse can be successful. What do they need? And I can’t be the judge of it. But the problem is, is most of us are always moving through our own judgement about what’s good and bad, right and wrong, without even asking.

So this is where I really prioritize listening. Like you have to listen past yourself. You have to listen like I’ve had some horses. I had a guy coming to click one side. It’s a story that I often tell.

And I honestly had never seen a Shank this long. It was, it had to been about like 14 inches long. Like it was, it was crazy. And so this guy comes in, he’s all saddled. He’s actually riding his horse.

You know, he just comes in and this mirror was a so soft and she loved this guy and he had super soft hands and people were like, oh, how long is it? You know, they’re taking bats. How long is Josh going to take before he takes that archaic device off of that mirror? And, you know, really all I can tell him is is I was like, OK, your mirror looks amazing. She’s super happy.

I have to share with you, though, you’re going to have to be mindful of the power you have. And even I would risk taking her on trail rides because she could catch that thing on a stick, you know, like, but I couldn’t fault him when I listen to the mirror. And that was a really great lesson to talk about because they had this beautiful connected relationship. And he was using it in a way that should demonstrate how that thing should be used, even though using it wrong would would seem a lot easier than using it right. But it was such a beautiful lesson.

Like she adored the guy and she was soft in her mouth and, you know, like soft eyed. And they would just drop and lope around. It’s like, I cannot take that away from you. I cannot, you know, I would have to be leaning into all the negatives of how that could be used to then wreck this beautiful relationship in front of me. So anyways, I’m, my whole goal is, is to just try to listen.

I really want to try to listen to people. And a lot of times you can hear very quickly when they’re speaking through a negative imposed lens from some negative past. They’re not actually in the moment. And then you do the same with horses. Can I just keep working at trying things and working at this until I can find what’s going to bring success out of this horse?

And I’ve just truly loved it because it keeps pushing on my ability to mine out of me negative impositions that I’ve created. And I just want rid of all of them. I want rid of all of them. I want to know how to use tools. I want to know the pros and cons.

So I talk about the pro con insight, like each piece of equipment is going to have a pro and a con. And you want to try to develop the insight to mine out the pro, but then also find if that pro works for this horse. And that partly takes competency. And unfortunately, because we live in an amateur climate now, that competency is risky because you have to maybe fail to get to it. And failure is like someone’s going to take a picture of your failures.

They’re going to post it and now you’re done, you know, like, and that’s, it’s unfortunate, you know, yeah, I would say, I would say most of the horse climate is not aggressive. They they generally want to just do right. They’re using the information they’ve got. Some of it’s not great, some of it’s good, but most people just want to get by. But we end up getting polarized by, you know, the horse that had some blood from somebody’s spur, which is not right.

You know, I get that or a mouth that’s over foaming or, or like whatever it is. And that’s not, that doesn’t actually demonstrate the basic climate of horsemanship, but we get motivated by these extremes and it’s like going to stop doing it. Like we got, we got to try to motivate by the way we are be an example of good horsemanship. Share with whoever wants to listen and don’t try to change anybody’s mind. Just go do your own thing, you know, like do it and do it with as much heart as you possibly can.

And what I find that’s another thread, because then the people you’re here to help will show up and the people you’re not here to help, they’re either for someone else or whatever. Like let them do their thing. We get too consumed by the rights and the wrongs. Just let our horses out for that. Well, I think that is a great place to end this podcast.

So how do people find you? Follow along with what you do? All of that good stuff. Yeah, so I have we have a big social media presence, you know, just Josh, Nicole on Instagram and Facebook. We have some YouTube stuff as well.

And then I have my website. We have a membership site that I share. We try to stay pretty interactive, you know, my, my goal is to continue developing relationships with people. And so I’m pretty interactive on that. And then my clinic.

So we clinic, you know, will be we’re all over North America and yeah, just doing my thing and and trying to share my message. Excellent. Well, thanks so much for joining me. This was. Great.

Thanks for having me.