(intense country music)
- So today, these sessions for these horse expos,
they give 'em to you, you gotta
put 'em out six months before,
so it means you make up somewhat generic stuff.
Oh, here's a horse, jolly good.
Let me go have a chat with our lovely lady here.
Hello!
How you going?
I'm gonna let you get drug around here
for about five minutes, is that all right?
Is this your horse?
- Yes. - Have you been drug around
by her before?
(woman chattering)
I've got a microphone, you don't.
What's that?
- He's never been anywhere for me to get dragged around.
- [Warwick] Oh, he's never been anywhere
for you to get dragged around? - He's a baby.
- [Warwick] He's a baby.
How old is he?
- He's just turned five.
- Just turned five, okay.
He's never been in a situation like this?
Oh, okay, perfect.
So, but you know him, so what I want you to do
is just keep yourself safe for the next five
or 10 minutes maybe.
And I've got this horse all day,
so I'm not in a huge hurry to just jump
in the middle of it.
I like to set this situation up.
So for you guys watching, I've got this horse
for three sessions today, so.
Normally, I have one horse each session,
and today we're gonna have this one horse the whole day.
So we really get to hopefully see a change in him
from morning till this afternoon.
I think it's quite late this afternoon.
I think we finish at 5:45, so he'll be here all day.
This session is supposed to be about
the principles of training.
So a few years ago, I had a TV channel in America
called Farm and Ranch TV, contacted me
to do a horse training TV show.
And a lot of times on those horse training TV shows,
it's like, "Hi, I'm so-and-so, and this week,
"I'm gonna show you how to load a horse on a float,
"or we're gonna show you how to teach a flying lead change,
"or we can show you how to pick up a horse's foot,
"he's never had his foot picked up."
One of those sorts of things.
But doing clinics over the years, I have been,
I've had a lot of people come to clinics who have received
some really, really, really good instructions
from really, really, really good trainers,
but they still don't get it.
And the reason they still don't get it
is because the trainers said, "Do this right now.
"Now move your left foot here and your right hand there.
"See it works?"
But they didn't know why, where, when,
how do you adapt to that if the situation's different?
And so, doing clinics, there you go,
there's a change already, doing clinics, I started to,
"So you know what we're working on here?
"Remember what we worked on another horse out there,
"that's kind of the same."
And I kind of put a name to the principle.
And so when I filmed that TV show,
it was called "The Principles of Training",
and each of the episodes was a principle.
I was watching Dan over there before,
and I'm thinking, "Yeah, that's the this principle,
"and that's the that principle."
But there's two probably really most important principles.
That's very good.
Out of all of them, and one of the principles
was called "work with the horse you have today".
Which means you have to be responding
to what's going on in front of you right now.
Not because it's a thoroughbred mare,
or it's a warmblood, or it's an Appaloosa,
or whatever it is.
And not because, "Oh, yesterday he was doing this
"so that means today I've gotta respond in a certain way."
You've gotta respond to what's going on in front of you.
And the other principle that we're probably
gonna talk about a lot here was a principle
I call the "don't go to bed angry principle".
Is anybody here married and got told at your wedding
by an older, wiser family member,
"Now the secret to a happy marriage
"is don't go to bed angry."
What that means is, if there's any tension built up
between the two of you during the day,
before you go to bed, get all that stuff sorted out.
So you wake up the next day, it's a new day,
we're all afresh.
Because divorces will happen,
or big, knock-down, drag-out arguments will happen
because of a buildup of stuff.
And where this is relative to horses
is a few years ago in England.
Boy, he's beautiful, isn't he?
What a nice horse.
A few years ago in England, I had a lady
that was watching one of my clinics,
and she says, "Can I ask you a question?"
I said, "Sure."
She says, "What you do with a crazy horse?"
I'm like, "Oh, I don't know,
"what kind of crazy is your horse?"
She goes, "Well, I'll go hacking out."
You guys call it trekking here in New Zealand,
and in America they call it trail riding.
"I'll go hacking out, and we'll be riding along
"and a rabbit will run out of the wet grass,
"and he'll kind of look at it, and kind of step sideways,
"but doesn't really do anything.
"And I go a bit further, and another rabbit jumps out,
"but he doesn't really do anything.
"And we go a bit further, and another rabbit jumps out,"
this accent gets more and more cockney the more I tell it.
(audience laughs) "And I've been hacking out
"for two hours, he's seen 12 rabbits,
"and none of them really bothered him,
"and then the 13th rabbit jumps out,
"and he freaks out and bucks me off.
"He's crazy, what you do with a horse like that?"
(audience chuckles) I said, "Well, first of all,
"he's not crazy.
"What's probably happened here
"is you're walking along that, something happens,
"the rabbit jumps out, and he gets a real fright,
"and he hold onto that fright,
"So now, he's carrying one rabbit's worth of worry,
"and then two rabbits worth of worry,
"and then three rabbit's worth of worry,
"and four rabbit's worth of worry.
"And apparently, your horse has a 12 rabbit limit,
(audience laughs) "okay?"
He can contain that much concern, or anxiety, or worry,
or whatever it is, but over that limit, (sputters)
it's all gonna come out.
And it's the same with us, it's the same
with the whole "don't go to be angry" principle.
Whose married, or in a long term relationship,
has had a knock-down, drag-out argument
about something really, really simple and small?
Like it could be where the toilet seat
faces the sky or the horizon,
something like that, okay? (audience laughs)
And it doesn't haven't of everybody the toilet seat,
but raise your hand if you've ever
had a knock-down, drag-out argument
over something simple, okay?
Think about this: did you have that argument
with your spouse the first day of your honeymoon?
Meaning is it a non-negotiable thing?
No, first day of your honeymoon, it wasn't a big deal.
But after about 25 years of the same thing happening,
"You're just not listening to me,"
it becomes a big deal, okay?
And that's the same thing with horses that explode.
Usually the explosion is not what happened there,
it's all the build up.
And so, the whole "don't go to bed angry" principle
is about relieving tension, and horses relieving anxiety.
This horse looks like he's a little bit anxious today,
and so what we're gonna do is start
to help that horse relieve some of that tension.
'Cause you can't, you wanna do dressage with him?
Yeah?
You can't teach a tense horse anything,
or you can, actually you can teach him a lot of stuff,
but then that thing then contains an element
of tension to it.
And so, we don't really want to,
I organized for that sign to come in
to get him really distracted by that.
(audience laughs) So, what I want you
to do right now is just look at his ears, okay?
Look at his ears and look at his head, okay?
Now, he's fine right now because his ears are over there,
but a minute ago, he was trying to,
so his thoughts are over there, he was trying
to follow his thoughts, and she wouldn't let him,
and all that head slinging was there.
Where she stopped arguing with him
letting him think over there, he was okay.
But so, I'm gonna talk a lot about anxiety today.
And
in 600 BC, a Chinese philosopher named Lao Tzu
said, "If your are depressed, you're living in the past.
"If you're anxious, you're living in the future.
"And if you're peaceful, you're living in the right now,
"the right here."
This horse, if you watch his ears a lot,
he is living in the future.
He's standing here, but he's mentally over there.
Is that thing gonna affect me at some point in time
in the future?
Is that gonna have something to do with me?
What I'd like to do is get him to think here,
'cause guess what's going on here?
Nothing exciting, all the exciting stuff's over there.
So what I wanna do is work on his focus.
And so what I wanna do is get him, when I get a hold of him,
is I wanna try to get him to where he can stand still
and be present, okay?
But I can't just go, "You have to stand here
"and think here," right away, 'cause it'll be
too much for him.
So what I'm gonna do is has anybody here ever meditated?
Okay, so when you meditate, initially,
when you first start meditating at least,
you have what they call an anchor.
So meditating is not not thinking about anything.
Meditating is controlling what your mind thinks about,
and for the most part when you first begin to meditate,
they will teach you to use your breath as an anchor, okay?
So you'll close your eyes, and you're thinking
about breathing in, breathing out.
You're not changing your breath,
you're just being aware of it,
that's what you're thinking about, okay?
And then, your mind will get distracted
thinking about lunch, "I'm itchy, what's for tea?"
That sort of thing.
And then, "Oh, I'm supposed to be thinking
"about my breathing."
It's you're trying to bring your attention back here.
And so, in meditation initially,
your anchor is your breathing for the most part,
that's a pretty common practice.
What I wanna do is I wanna have
this lead rope be his anchor.
So if the slack comes out of the lead rope,
I want him to think that way.
Right now, especially when there's arguing going on,
the tension comes out of the lead rope,
and he pulls up, and he's thinking over there, okay?
He mentally can't leave what he's thinking about
in coming over here.
And this is perfectly normal.
Whose tried to meditate, and just struggled with it?
Everybody does that at the start,
because your mind is like this horse.
Your mind is trying to think about something,
and you're like, "Come here, come here!"
And your minds like, "No, no, no!"
And you're, "Come here, come here!"
So I'm basically gonna do a little bit
of a guided meditation with him.
So I've kind of introduced the whole thing,
so now I'm going to start messing with him.
So what's your name?
- Marie. - Marie?
Thank you so much for bringing him along.
He looks like he's gonna be a great horse for this demo.
Did you breed him?
- Oh, no sir. - Oh, no, no, no,
I know this story!
This one had an owner before,
and a few people got tipped off him, didn't they?
- [Marie] Well, no, no, I don't think that's the case.
- No?
- I've been tipped off him. - Oh, you've been
tipped off him? - Yeah.
- Okay. (audience laughs)
And what happened when you got tipped off him,
what was going on?
- Oh-- - He was standing
perfectly still and you just kind of slid off the side
and went thud? (audience chuckles)
- [Marie] No, I got nailed into the ground.
- You got nailed into the ground, but I mean,
what happened to get you nailed in the ground?
You look like you got the right riding clothes
like you know how to ride, so you didn't
just slip off the side.
- [Marie] No, he got really wound up, and--
- He got really wound up, he got really wound up.
We got to the 13th rabbit, and then it happened.
It wasn't, it didn't happen when we got on
and he was standing perfectly still.
I got on off the mounting block,
and he was standing there, and all of the sudden (sputters).
Okay, so what, if you guys can see
that rope halter, it's (grumbles).
I'm not gonna say it's wrong, I'm gonna say
there's a better way of tying that,
but in order for me, I wanted you to make aware
that I'm aware of that, I'd like to fix it.
And in order to fix that, I've got to undo it.
(audience grumbles) And now, energetic warmblood
right here is in a electric taped arena
with not electricity on it, and it's--
- [Audience] And the gates open (chuckles).
- Oh, and yeah, be observant, Warwick,
and we do happen to have a gate open.
And he could probably step over this,
he wouldn't even need to jump over it.
So I'm gonna leave that rope halter tied in a way
that it's, I would want to change it.
And I've don't this before, and unfortunately,
put the thing on YouTube, and the explanation about that
doesn't come up.
So what's the first comment?
"Whose this idiot?
"He's working with horses, and doesn't know
"how to tie a rope halter?"
I didn't tie it, (audience chuckles)
I'm aware it's tied incorrectly,
but I'm gonna make a good decision
not to fix that now, okay?
Because if he stands still, it's fine.
But if he doesn't stand still, and something happens
halfway through the middle of it,
they take the Trans-Tasman sign from there
and move it to somewhere else right in the middle of that,
he runs off, he runs into somebody,
they get hurt, he gets hurt, whatever.
And then, we go, "Oh, we had an accident."
If I elect to take that, undo that halter to fix it
'cause I've got this halter fetish right here, right now,
and something happens, it's not an accident.
Accidents are unavoidable.
That will be inevitability.
This horse can't stand still.
I'm not gonna choose to fix that halter right now.
(Announcer chatters)
I'm talking so much I can't remember your name again, sorry.
- Marie. - Marie.
So, I'm trying to wait and see
if Marie can get this sorted out
so it's a bit of an easier job for me,
but that's not happening.
So anyway, I'm gonna take a hold of him.
But the instant I take ahold of him, I am,
so, what we're doing right now,
I used to do a lot of what Marie's doing right now
is pull on the lead rope to control the horse.
And you can see that doesn't work quite so well, does it,
when they're a lot bigger than us?
The reason we're having a struggle with that
is because his thoughts are elsewhere,
and his body is trying to catch up to his thoughts.
I'm not trying, I don't wanna control his body,
I wanna try to get him thinking over here.
So what I'm gonna do, I'll explain it all in a minute,
what I'm gonna do here in a minute
is I'm gonna take ahold of the lead rope
and I'm gonna allow him to explore a little bit.
But if he gets the slack out of the lead rope,
as soon as that slack comes out
of the lead rope right there, I'm gonna use this flag
somewhere towards his rear end.
Now in the past, I use to do a lot of disengaging horse,
pushing that hind end over with this.
I'm not doing that. (audience laughs)
What I'm gonna do with this flag,
(audience laughs) what I'm gonna do with this,
I don't know what happened there, but everybody laughed so,
what I'm gonna do with this flag
is use it to redirect his attention back this way, okay?
And I wanna have good timing, so what I wanna do
is as the slack comes out of the rope
and he hits the end of the rope,
I wanna redirect his attention.
And after a while, hopefully we can see
he'll go to walk off.
And as he feels the slack come out of the rope,
his mind will come this way,
his body will bend in the middle,
and he'll be back here without me having to pull on it.
(flag pole scratching)
But, I'm going to have to be very, very careful
with this particular horse (audience chuckles)
'cause if I move this flag too quickly,
he might kick at it, he might hit the end of the lead rope,
and run off, okay?
So, there's a lot of judgment that goes on in with horses.
And like I said, this whole, two of the principles
I'm gonna talk about here
are the "don't go to bed angry" principle,
that would be me helping him with his anxiety.
But the other one is "work with the horse you have today".
I'm letting Marie stand over there a bit
'cause I'm kind of summing up what decisions
am I gonna make once I talk ahold of the lead though,
'cause I wanna have a bit of a plan.
I've got to be adaptable when I take ahold of it,
but I wanna know, I pulled the flag out
and waved it around from this distance,
and I got a rough idea he's aware of it from this distance.
So that's gonna make sure I'm gonna
be terribly slow with it.
Different kind of horse, I might be quicker with it.
Anyways, so Marie, you ready to have a break?
- Sure. - Sure?
So,
okay yeah, so I'll just have you hand me the,
hey, sweetness!
If he wants to say hello, how you going?
Are you having a tough time today?
It's a lot of scary stuff here isn't it?
Yes, it is a lot of scary stuff.
So, can you just hang onto him for a second,
'cause something really strange just happened,
and it's been happening a lot,
been happening a lot with me
for the last couple of years now,
and it didn't use to happen, okay?
These days, I don't read horse training books,
I read, I don't know what you call them,
self-development books, okay?
I started a meditation practice a couple years ago.
I'm a bit more mindful about things.
And there's something about doing that
that changes something about you.
And I used to, whose been to some of my clinics in the past?
Okay, you would've heard me say, "I'm not talented,
"because people who are talented,
"I have a process, and I do step one, step two, step three.
"And if you follow the process, I can get things done,
"but I'm not talented.
"I've seen people who are talented,
"and they didn't seem to have to do as many steps as that
"and they get things done."
I'm starting to realize now,
talent is a lot about who you are here.
'Cause right then, he's like
(Warwick anxiously groans) and I went to have
take ahold of the lead rope,
'cause I was gonna get ahold of this horse,
and I was actually gonna teach him something,
I was gonna work with him.
And the first thing I do is like, "Hey, how you doing?"
In the past, I use to take ahold of a horse
and do something to them to make them feel better.
Right then, I wandered over there,
and all the distractions went away,
and he kind of like, "Hey, how you going?"
So I just wanted to make note of that.
And I didn't do anything then, okay?
I didn't do it then.
And that there didn't happen in the past.
So it's not something I did then,
and it's not something that's always happened.
It's not like, "Oh yeah, I bet horses just like him."
And so, it's something to do with what I've been doing
the last few years, and none of it's horse training.
So Marie, I'll take ahold of him here in a second.
Okay, thank you.
So the first thing I wanna do is
if he wants to engage with me, right now, he's peaceful.
He's not mentally over there, is he?
He's right here.
Now, he's gonna walk off, and right when
he hits the end of the lead rope about there,
I'm gonna redirect his attention back
with as little flag as possible.
Helps if you have the flag pointing the right way.
Did you see that?
I had it upside-down.
Okay, and right there, he's peaceful again.
He hit the end of the lead rope, right?
Now he goes, "Oh, nope," comes back.
Hey, how you going?
You having a good day?
There's a lot of scary stuff there, isn't it?
And then he has a lick and a chew, very good.
A lot of scary stuff here.
What I don't wanna do is try to control him physically.
I only wanna control him mentally.
Hey, how you going?
And I don't mean I am doing the Obi-Wan Kenobi
with him right now. (all laugh)
I don't mean that, and there's a part of that to it
which I'm not doing right now.
But what I wanna do is if he walks off,
if his thoughts get so far away from me
that his feet follow them to the end of this lead rope,
so if he walks around me, I'm gonna leave him alone.
But if he gets so distracted that he walks off
and hits the end of the lead rope,
as he hits the end of the lead rope,
I'm going to just bring this out probably to about that big,
enough for him to go, "What's that?"
And I'm gonna time it with that.
What's this called, Marie?
- [Marie] What's that?
A loose rein. - It's your rein aid,
and when you pick up on a rein aid,
you would like him to connect to that rein aid.
You don't want him to fight that rein aid.
Right now, I've got nothing to work on,
so him and I are just hanging.
He's allowed to look around, you know?
I don't wanna be the focus going, "You gotta look at me,
"look at me, look at me, look at me!"
There's nothing to fix right now.
And I'm gonna shorten this rope so he doesn't step on it.
(Warwick clears throat)
So notice I've got that knee there
that if he flings his head up,
he'd make contact with my knee and not my nose first, okay?
I'm aware of that.
Hey, how you going?
You're beautiful, aren't you?
It's a scary place here.
Yeah.
And so, I'm setting some parameters,
and the parameters are right now if you, your,
like I said, his thoughts are over there right now.
I'm not gonna interrupt that.
But if his thoughts get so strong,
his feet follow his thoughts to the end of my lead rope,
as he hits the end of the lead rope,
I'm not gonna pull him back to me.
In the past, I used rope halters a lot,
I still use 'em a lot, but I used to use 'em
'cause I was using 'em.
Like it's nice and thin, and if he pulls on me,
I can pull on him with a bit more.
It makes the power ratio a little easier.
I know, the way I'm going about things now,
I don't care really what halter I've got on him,
'cause I'm only using this as communication,
this is not to control him.
Hello, how you going?
(audience chuckles) Yeah!
You having a good day?
Yeah, it's beautiful out here.
You think the rains going, or it's gonna come back again?
Yeah, hello.
Yeah. (audience chuckles)
So this didn't use to happen in the past,
but okay, I haven't done anything.
But I think in the past, the reason,
one of the reasons this didn't happen
'cause I had this personal space wall.
I had that whole dominance dogma going on,
like, "I'm the leader, you are obedient.
"I can come into your space, you can't come into my space."
And I think they can feel that.
These days, I'm a bit more, it's a bit more
of a two-way conversation, so I think they can feel like.
Ooh, you've got a knee cap!
Didn't notice you had that before, did ya?
And so, who was here yesterday, saw the demo yesterday?
Yeah, I had a horse that wasn't doing anything yesterday,
and like, "Tomorrow is gonna be good.
"I've got a wild one."
We had a wild one, and how many corrections I made?
One, and he's hit the end of the lead rope once.
He's pulled on this lead rope once.
And so,
I haven't shown you much of this.
What I think you've seen a lot here
is all the stuff I've done for the last couple of years
that wasn't to do with horses.
And so, he's having a lick and chew.
If he wants to engage with me, he can engage with me.
The thing I don't want him to do though
is move my feet, okay?
If he comes close.
Now, right here, he's engaged me with.
If this shoulder comes up, even when he was pushing you
quite a bit, Marie, if his shoulder comes over,
he's not engaging with me.
He's mentally over there, and he's physically over here.
Hey, how you going?
I will do something about that.
But if I do something about that,
I'll do something, I'll create some energy.
I won't direct any energy towards him.
I won't tell him to get off me.
And if he does it, I'll show you
what I'm gonna do here in a minute.
But when I do it, it's not gonna be telling him
to get off me, it's gonna be trying to get his attention.
Right now, I'm not worried about getting his attention.
Okay, here comes a pony.
I'm gonna tell you guys, I'll have to tell you a funny story
about the last time I was working with a horse
that saw pony.
So he walks off, right, oh, now I didn't have
to do anything. (audience laughs)
He hit the end of the lead rope and came back.
Right th, he still hasn't pulled on the lead rope.
And you noticed I just switched hands.
If he's going this way, now he's gone this way,
I'm gonna switch hands, because I want the flag
in the opposite hand.
Now see, I kept that flag behind me?
I want to flag in the opposite hand to what he's going,
so when he hits the end of it, this is all about timing.
I wanna be able, as that slack comes out,
now he's pointing that way, so I'm gonna switch sides here,
unless he goes that way, of course.
Now right now, he's getting a bit,
what I would maybe call pushy.
So I'm gonna raise this flag up
and create a little bit of energy,
and he steps back and looks at me.
So I got him to get off me, but I got connection.
A lot of times with our horses,
we're very good at teaching obedience,
and I have a lot of people at clinics these days
their horse is too close, and they go, "Get back, get back."
And the horse backs up.
But it's ears, their ears don't pin,
but the ears are like here, and they eyes are kind of flat,
and the horse actually moved back but didn't connect,
didn't full, didn't come out here and the open.
Kind of, "Yeah, I'll do whatever you want."
Is anybody here, any of you ladies ever had a haircut?
You come home from having you haircut,
you're in the house, you're in the kitchen
talking to your husband, and you say, "It's garbage night,
"can you take the garbage out?"
And he says, "Sure."
And so you've had a conversation with him,
you asked him to do a particular thing, he does it.
He leaves the room, puts the garbage out,
and he doesn't notice your haircut.
Ever had that happen?
(audience chuckles)
You've had that happen?
Okay, what does that tell you?
That he wasn't, boom, right there with you.
He was in the same room as you, but he wasn't right there,
there was no connection, okay?
I kind of want him, anything I do with him,
I want him to notice my haircut.
And so, if I have him step back away from me,
I'm not going to physically, I'm not gonna
put pressure on him to get him to move away from me.
I'm gonna create some energy that he steps back to look at.
Hello, how you going?
You're a handsome boy.
And so, right now, this atmosphere
is adding a fair bit of concern to him.
So I don't wanna add any more concern
than that's already going on.
(Warwick breathes deeply)
And right then, did you hear that in the microphone?
I'm talking like blah, blah, blah, blah,
like an auctioneer, and I've gotta slow down.
I get all excited about telling people about this stuff,
and I talk a million miles an hour,
but when I'm talking a million miles an hour,
I'm not breathing very deeply.
And right then, I (Warwick breaths deeply)
just took a big, deep breath.
Hey, how you going?
So, you with me so far, Marie? (horses whinnying)
Okay, this is the,
this for me is the beginning of the whole stuff.
He's gotta be relaxed.
And so, these days, I used to be a horse trainer.
These days, the order of way I do things
I wanna get relaxation, and then I wanna get connection,
and then I wanna train the horse, okay?
All this here is about getting relaxation.
His heads getting lower, his head moving slower,
he's licking his lips a lot more.
If he hits the end of the lead rope,
I get him to connect back with him.
If he's too close and I get him away from me,
I get him to connect back.
Oh, hello, he's pushing on me like, "Hey, hey,
"what ya doing?
"How you going there?"
And then, eventually, I would wanna train on him.
But when I get to training on him,
what's one of the things I want the training to do?
To respond to this lead rope.
While in getting the relaxation and the connection,
I'm already teaching him to respond to the lead rope,
but my reason for doing it is not training.
My reason for doing any of this stuff at this moment
is not to train this horse.
My reason for doing any of this stuff at the moment
is trying to get him to a bit more relaxed,
(horses whinny) and connected.
So he's very, very, very sensitive.
Horses like this are easy to train
if you have their attention.
And so right now, I am, if anyone watched Elsa Sinclair
this morning, or yesterday, she is fascinating.
She's got relationships with horses down to an art form.
And she talks a lot about in the showing,
she's got eight different types of leadership,
from dominance leadership, to passive leadership.
I kind of call it assertive leadership,
and I've got two, 'cause I'm not near as advanced as her,
are assertive leadership and passive leadership.
And assertive leadership is where I ask,
I make the first move, and I'm asking the horse
to do something.
I'm not doing that now.
If he walks off and hits, I'm doing passive leadership,
which means I'm the leader, I'm allowing him to do things.
He's not taking control from me,
I'm allowing him to do things.
So if he walks off and hits the end of the lead rope,
he's calling the shots, I'm allowing him to call the shots,
and I'm gonna respond to that.
I'm gonna wave this flag when he hits
the end of the lead rope.
The only reason I do anything is because
he does something, okay?
If he stands perfectly still, and hasn't got an idea
to do anything, and I go, "Okay, now I'm gonna ask you
"to do something," that's when I'm
taking over the assertive leadership,
or what I would call assertive leadership role.
I'm not doing that yet.
I'm allowing him to call the shots.
I'm gonna respond to what he does,
but I don't have an agenda yet.
(Warwick breathes deeply) Hey, how you going?
You are a cute little man, aren't you?
Where's Marie's horse?
You know the one I pulled the flag out over there,
and he kind of was snorting around backwards some
about 10 minutes ago?
Where did he go?
So these days, I've found, and you know,
I think along our journey with our horses,
we're always trying to do better.
So, he hits the end of the lead rope,
I'm gonna wave this flag right here until, oop,
there he goes, his attention comes back.
(flag pole scratching)
Along our horsemanship journey, or our horse journey,
I think I don't think anybody's trying
to do worse than they were.
I think everybody's trying to do better than they were.
And when you do that, you've gotta look back
at what you used to do and forgive yourself
because you're only doing what you know.
And so, a lot of the stuff in the past
I did with horses was purely about obedience,
'cause my background's in the reining,
and reining is an abject lesson in obedience, really.
But that's where I really learnt
about the whole "don't go to be angry" principle
because in the reining, there's always a fast
and there's a slow, but it's all done on loose rein, okay?
So your horse has to be able to
make a mental transition from relaxed
to really as responsive, (Warwick breathes deeply)
back to relaxed again.
But, you can't do that if you don't have
a good starting point, and your starting point is relaxed.
That's the only thing we're working on here is relaxed.
There we go, that's the lowest his head's been here
pretty much the whole time.
Hey, how's it going?
And so, he hasn't been out much like this, Marie,
so the first thing that I wanna do,
like the first instant he gets relaxed,
I'm not gonna go, "Okay, there's a crowd of people,
"I need to keep them entertained,
"so I'm gonna start chasing you around
"and getting you to do stuff."
No, I want him to be able to dwell in this place right here.
I want him to dwell in a relaxed place.
I've got him all day.
But these days, even if I didn't have him all day,
I'm not here to, I'm here to educate you,
but I'm not here to impress you.
So, if you're bored, that's not my problem.
I don't think you're bored yet,
but let's say not much was going on here,
and you started to get bored, I'm not gonna do something
to keep you guys entertained.
Here you go, there's a big ol',
that was a longer lick and chew than he had before.
So right there, I'm gonna shorten that lead rope
just so he doesn't put his foot over it,
'cause he gets a fright, we have an out.
He starting to push on me here a bit,
so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna create
a little bit of energy right here.
Oh, now he's not moving.
So now, I create a bit more, and a little bit more,
and a little bit more till he steps out of my space
but connects with me.
So notice he backed up like that.
I want him to think here.
I'm basically, if anybody's ever done any guided meditation
and I've got that Head Space app, so he's a pommie bloke,
and he says, "If you've noticed that your mind is wandering,
"that's okay, that's what minds do.
"just gently bring your attention back to your breathing."
Basically, that's what I did right then,
I brought his attention back.
'Cause he was not connecting with me,
he was standing on top of me.
Like when his nose comes over, and he's connecting with me,
that's not too close.
But when he's standing on top of me,
and his thoughts are away from me, that's too close.
It's the same distance, but is he mentally here?
If he's mentally right here, I'm good with it.
But if he's standing on top of me,
and he's mentally over there, he's forgotten I'm there.
And someone jumps a clear round over here
and anybody claps, where is he gonna jump away from?
The clapping onto me.
But he won't jump on me if he knows where I am.
(Warwick clears throat)
So what I might do right now is see
if we can go for a walk together, okay?
So when you came in here, was he leading you,
or were you leading him?
- A little bit of both. - A little bit of both,
wasn't it, yeah?
There are times when you were leading him,
but there's times he took you for a walk.
So what I might do is might just gonna go
for a bit of a stroll here.
So I walk, he walks, I stop, he stops.
Right now, I've lost him again.
He is not connected with me, he was standing on top of me.
Do you guys see the change he made that right then?
I walked off, and he was with me,
and I stopped, he was with me, and then, I lost him.
And now, he's kind of, he's not pushing on me,
now I'm not gonna, he's not electing to push on me, okay?
And this is where you really wanna think
about your judgment about things.
'Cause how you perceive, I did a session yesterday
called "When You Change the Way You Look at Things,
"the Things You Look at Change."
And how you perceive something will tend to determine
how you respond to it.
And horses are really big readers of your energy,
so if he does that, and I think it
as it's a personal affront to me,
he's pushing on me, I'll have a certain energy about me
when I get him off me.
Within a sensitive horse like this might be too offensive.
See, now he's connecting with me, I'm good with this.
How you going?
And so, I'm very, these days,
I'm very, very cautious about the words I use,
and the way I look at things,
because I really started to realize
that they're really read what's going on inside of you.
So, if I have someone in my Facebook group
and say, "My horse is being a bit
"of a jerk lately, and (grumbles)."
My first response is, "Okay, let's change your terminology.
"You think your horse is a jerk, he's a jerk,
"because you're treating him like a jerk.
"You're creating that, and it kind of takes two people."
Hey, how you going?
"Kind of takes two people to fight."
Oh yes, I know.
Yes, you're beautiful, aren't you?
He says, "My nose is getting wet from the rain,
"can I get under your hat?"
How you going?
Yeah.
So, he just didn't that, then he had a lick and a chew.
Now,
I'm not sure what he did right then.
It may be the rain is kind of blowing
from a certain direction, I'm not sure.
I watched to see what it was, I didn't make a rash decision.
Like in the past, I would've been like,
"Don't you point your hind end at me,
"because I'm the leader of this whole thing here."
I just kind of waited to see what's was going on then.
So, I was hoping he was gonna move his feet a lot more
like he was at the start, because I was gonna
get to show you that he hits the end of the lead rope,
and I redirect his attention back.
When you're working in tandem,
he feels this halter pressure,
and when he feels that, I'm gonna use this flag
to bring his thoughts back along where
that halter pressure is.
(horse sighs) Ah, big sigh.
Okay, he's not moving around near as much
as I thought he was gonna do, but he did it once.
Walked off, hit the end of that lead rope, came back,
and he's kind of been, now, he's kind of pushing on me here.
Now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna brace my feet.
In the past, anybody whose known me from the past
would've said, "The Warwick I knew before
"would not let a horse rub his head on him."
But something I learnt from,
I took a clicker training course a few years ago,
and this clicker training course,
one of the first things they had you do
was teach you how to give your horse a treat
without the horse being there.
I was like, "What do you mean
"how to give the horse a treat?"
This lady that I learnt from, her name is Alexandra Kurland,
and she says you have to be able to do,
what she calls, a joint lock, meaning you have to be able
to brace your feet, brace your shoulders,
brace your elbow, brace your hand,
to where I could push on my hand and it doesn't move.
And if the horse takes treats out of your hand like that,
it's gonna be good.
But if your horse takes treats,
and as they take the treat, they're pushing on your hand
and making you move your feet,
that turns them into maniacs.
And so all I did, if he's gonna rub his head on me,
I'm gonna set my feet like this
and let him have a little bit of a rub.
I'm not gonna say, "Don't do it."
I'm choosing to not, you know?
I might do it differently in different situations,
but I'm not gonna say, "Don't do it."
But I'm just gonna say, "You can't move me around."
Does that make sense then?
Who here was over at Elsa's thing
either this morning or yesterday?
Yeah, so once you see that, now I'm like,
I'm trying to talk to a crowd of people about what I do,
and I'm trying to go, "What would Elsa do in this situation,
"'cause that meant something.
"I should be shifting to a different spot," or whatever.
But I don't know it well enough to try to learn something
with this horse in front of you guys.
I know what I'm doing with this bit,
so I'm gonna do this bit, but I have got that Elsa stuff
in the back of my mind.
If you guys haven't seen it yet,
go watch one of her demos today, it's fascinating.
Yesterday, there's a lady sitting in front of me
that I talked to a bit before when I was watching Elsa,
and at some point in time I reached down
and tapped her on the shoulder, and she goes,
"What?"
And I said, "I don't know anything about horses."
(audience laughs)
It was fascinating.
Anyway, this is the change I wanted.
This is what I, this is step one, can this horse be here
and not over there?
Now, nothing's changed, nothings changed, has it?
The Trans-Tasman sign hasn't gone away,
these horses didn't go away, the crowd hasn't
got bigger or smaller, but he's in a much,
he's in a much better place.
Hey, how you going?
- You still got 20 minutes. - I still got 20 minutes?
Yeah, I do.
So, I might just go for a little stroll over here,
but I'm not gonna go very far.
I like that, 'cause I got to move, now here we go.
So, I'm starting to call the shots.
What I might do here is, you know I said right at the start
he walked off, hit the end of the lead rope,
that was his decision, and I redirected
his attention back here?
I might just, no, I'm not gonna do it now
because I don't have to.
But what I was gonna say is I might walk off
in this direction, and if he doesn't notice I've gone,
if he doesn't come with me, I might redirect his attention
back to me.
So, hey, how you going?
I know, yeah.
Hello, how you going?
You're a funny thing, aren't you?
You're a funny boy.
So what I might do is I might just walk this way,
and right about there, I'm just gonna
wave this flag a little bit and get his attention.
And then he comes where that lead rope is.
Now he wasn't looking at me, he couldn't see the flag,
so I waved it enough to make a little bit of noise with it,
a little bit of energetic noise, okay?
Sometimes with this flag, you can take the flag,
and they look at it because they can see it.
But there's no use me, him not being able to see it.
If he can't see it, sight was not gonna,
sight was not gonna work.
So I just made a tiny little bit of noise with it.
I'm just gonna wander off over here, let's go.
Then, he stops and connects to me.
So he's drawing a lot more comfort from me,
and less concerned about the surroundings.
It's kind of like, imagine you guys are,
we're on a plane somewhere flying across the Pacific.
Maybe you're gonna go to like Fiji, somewhere like that.
And you're flying along, and the captain comes on
and says, "Hey, there's a really big storm."
Oh, no, no, he comes on and says,
"Hey, we've lost the radar contact, okay?
"We'll be fine as long as we don't have to deviate path,
"they won't lose us.
But then, "Oh, there's a really big storm.
"We've gotta go around it about 2,000 kilometers
"around this storm.
So now, we're not on the radar,
and we've changed direction,
so they don't really know where we are.
As long as we get to where we're going, we'll be good.
But then, (sputters) the engines have a bit of a cough,
and (imitates plane engine) down you go,
and you hit the ocean, and you manage to survive this.
And you get washed up on shore.
Now, he's starting to push on me here a bit,
so I'm going to do something little.
Now right there, I didn't something little,
and he came back.
I didn't have to do little, bigger, bigger.
He's thinking away from me, he's thinking away from me,
now he's thinking towards me.
So you get washed up on the beach.
And you know the worldwide airplane watcher guys
don't know where you are 'cause you're 2,000 kilometers
off course, and they didn't have you on the radar.
So there's not gonna be, whose ringing me?
There's not gonna be anybody coming to help you.
So you get washed up on the beach,
what's your first thought?
So it's this little deserted island, okay?
Little mountain, some rainforest, a little bit of stuff,
what's your first thought?
"How am I gonna survive?"
So you're in a situation, and you're really worried
about surviving this situation, aren't you?
Could you all, can someone give me a nod, hello?
Is this working, hello?
You're thinking, "How am I gonna survive?"
So you're worried about this situation.
And then, right next door to you,
someone else gets washed up on the beach, it's a bloke.
And he rolls over, (coughs) coughs up a bit of sea water,
and you look over at him, and he looks at you,
and you go, "He looks familiar."
Then you go, then he's fixed to you,
and he's got a bit of a pommie accent, and you go,
"You're Bear Grills, aren't you?"
(audience laughs) And he goes, "Yeah."
How do you feel now about exactly the same situation?
"Hey, we're gonna be all right.
"Someone knows what they're doing!"
So the situation hasn't changed here,
but I've kind of become a little bit
of a Bear Grills right here.
I've kind of given him some idea
that I could take care of things if I needed to.
So what I'm gonna do here is see if I can get him
to step away from me and connect with me.
Hey, how you going?
And all, pretty much everything I'm doing here
is his idea, okay?
I don't really wanna, I've got all day with this horse,
so I don't wanna be telling him
what to do here, there, and everywhere else.
I wanna kind of tell him, "Hey, I'm allowing you
"to make decisions."
I'm gonna respond to those decisions in certain ways,
but I'm not calling the shots.
So the first thing I don't wanna do
is tell him how bossy I am.
Whereas in the past, has anybody here,
about four years ago, I had a bigger version of this horse
that couldn't stand still in that main arena?
Yeah?
What happened?
I chased that poor thing around for an hour and a half
until it stood still.
And what did it do?
It stood still.
But looking back, and I've still got it on video,
I've still got it on YouTube.
I've got, on my YouTube channel,
I've still got a lot of stuff I use to do,
I've left it up there,
not because I would do it these days,
but maybe this doesn't appeal to you.
Maybe you do have that mentality
that you wanna be a little bit bossy,
and I can show you a way to do it.
But the other thing is it's a reminder
that hey, we're all, we're all on a bit of a journey,
and there is no right and wrong.
'Cause the way I look at what I use to do now
is kind of, I wouldn't do it now,
but when I was doing it, it wasn't wrong for me at the time,
and it probably wasn't wrong for a lot of people
who were doing what I was doing at the time.
What's funny is now I do clinics,
and people come to the clinics, and they do,
they're having troubles because they're doing
exactly what I use to have them do.
And now we can see deeper truths in all these little things,
and now we gotta undo it.
And so I go, "Congratulations, you did exactly
"what I taught you to do.
"Now, let me."
From my experience, I use to be very good
at teaching a horse to be obedient and stuff,
but then I realized there's a lot of things,
a lot of the stuff I use to have to do training horses
was actually undoing things I created
while I was teaching them stuff.
So I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna wait for that.
So these are big ol' releases, those big ol' yawns,
that's like releasing stored up trauma.
And that's really what I'm trying to do here,
that's my first thing.
I'm trying to get to ground zero,
I'm trying to get to the first day
of that honeymoon, you know?
First day of your honeymoon, nothing I do bothers you,
you're completely relaxed.
It's after 10 years of leaving the toilet seat up and down
you have a problem.
What I'm trying to do here is I'm trying
to have the honeymoon, I'm trying to get
to where we are just really cool in each other's presence.
And right then, he's starting to just let go a little bit,
he's getting a little bit cooler in my presence.
(Warwick sighs)
So, I haven't done much.
Now right now, he is not, he is standing on top of me.
Why?
'Cause he's standing very close to me
and not aware of me, okay?
Now, he can stand away from me
and not be aware of me, that's fine.
But as soon as he comes in here
and his attention goes over there,
I'm gonna get his attention back.
But I haven't, I basically, when I,
so I use this flag, I use it towards him,
and kind of redirect that, but I created some energy here.
If you guys were watching Elsa Sinclair
this morning or yesterday, horses got a bit too close,
or one of Ellie O'Brien's got too close
to Elsa this morning, and so Elsa,
I'll see if when he does it here in a minute.
I'll see if I can do what Elsa did,
I think he's sensitive enough for it to work.
But if he comes too close to me here in a minute,
and he's not connected to me, he's not terribly aware of me,
how I'm gonna get him off me.
(heels thudding)
So I jumped up.
Now, I didn't direct any energy at him,
I just created some energy here.
Oh, there's a, see, big ol' release from that.
But it was energy, and it was enough energy
for him to be aware of and look at,
but it wasn't overwhelming 'cause I didn't direct it
at him, okay?
It was straight up and down.
It wasn't about, it's just me hopping up and down.
It wasn't me telling him, "Get off me."
It wasn't me telling him, "I'm gonna tell you what to do."
And everything I'm doing here,
this is what I'm trying to get.
I'm trying to get this horse to (sighs).
In humans, they call this trauma work, okay?
Trauma is not what happened to you,
trauma is unresolved feelings about what happened to you.
We should be able to get over what happens to us.
We're actually set up to let go of that stuff,
but we tend to hang on to some things.
And that's where like, if you go
to a trauma therapist or whatever,
the things they do with you, they're not trying to fix you,
we don't need fixing.
Reach into my pocket, get my flag, get ready.
I'm not gonna wait till he hits the end of the lead
where I'm gonna go, "Hold that thought.
"I'm gonna reach in my pocket and get my flag out."
But you notice when I got it out, where is it?
It's behind me.
I know where this thing is at all times.
This is like, anybody here's ever carried a gun, a firearm?
When you're carrying a firearm, you never not know
where the muzzle's is pointed.
Same thing with this.
When I pulled this out, I know where it is,
and it's always here unless I plan
to do something with it, okay?
Anyway, human trauma work,
it's all about releasing
past, past trauma.
So, does anybody look like this horse could be rideable?
Anybody think this horse looks rideable?
Did this horse look rideable when he came in?
No.
I didn't do anything to him, really.
I didn't train him to do anything.
I, and there's a lot of stuff I didn't do,
that I did do but I didn't do.
I didn't do much, but we've got a bit of a change to him.
So, this should be fun today,
should be able to build on this.
Hey, how you going?
But a lot of the stuff I did, I didn't do here,
I didn't it in the last two years.
'Cause that first thing where you were
hanging onto him, Marie, and I walked up,
and I was gonna take the lead rope,
and instead of him not knowing I was there,
he was like, "Hey, how you going?"
And I was thinking, "Well maybe it's because,"
'cause I've seen horses that whoever's got ahold
of the lead rope, they ignore,
but everybody else is interesting.
And so, what I was thinking, see, I don't think
this has anything to do with me.
This horse keeps turning and facing the same direction,
and where's the wind coming from?
I don't think that is to do with me.
I don't think he's pushing into me,
he's just turning himself around to face into the wind.
So what I could do, if I wanted to make sure
he wasn't pushing into me is I could stand over here.
Now he can face into the wind, I'm in front of him.
If I stand over there, he's kind of facing the wind,
and he's got me at the back of him.
But I determined that he's not telling me
to go to a certain spot, he just wants
to happen to face the wind.
I have no idea what I was just talking about
before I talked about the wind thing.
What was I talking about before the wind thing?
Oh, that's right, I was saying a lot of this stuff
I did with this horse today, I didn't.
Oh, that's what I was saying.
Some horses, if you got ahold of the lead rope,
they ignore you.
I had a girl at a clinic in Australia this year,
and she's holding the lead rope,
and her mare would look anywhere but at her.
I was standing over there, and the horse
is looking at me like this, like,
"Hey, how you going?"
And she goes, "She just doesn't like me."
I said, "Well, let's not judge, let's figure it out.
"Let's swap places, I'll take the lead rope,
"and you stand over here."
When I took the lead rope, the horse wouldn't look at me,
but she over there, she's really interesting.
So that horse has had a lot of negative experiences
with the person who had the lead rope,
so everything else is interesting except this person.
Like, "Eh, I'm not paying attention to you."
I thought that might be the case with him, okay?
I came to get the lead rope, you still had it,
and he wasn't looking at you, wasn't interested in you,
and then, he sniffed me, and said, "Hey, how you going?"
And I was thinking, "Okay, I'll remember that.
"When I take ahold of the lead rope,
"and you walk off, he's probably gonna wanna follow you
"and not wanna connect with the dude
"on the end of the lead rope."
That's didn't happen, he stayed connected to me
when I took the lead rope, which tells me,
okay, it's got nothing to do with the person
who had the lead rope, it's more to do
with all the stuff that I've been doing
for the last couple of years that's not horse training.
And I wish I could give, this is not you, Marie,
this is everybody, I wish I could give you the secret.
Like, "This is the plan."
I can't do that, 'cause I don't know what the plan is.
But I can make you aware, and you guys saw it
in front of your own eyes, didn't ya?
I can make you aware that when you change
your thoughts, your beliefs, your judgements, hey,
all of those things, it does make you feel different
to a horse.
'Cause like I said, this,
this whole, "Hey, how you going?" without me doing anything,
didn't use to happen.
How much time have I got, Tyler?
- You got about six minutes. - Six minutes.
So, I may as well whip through this really quickly
if you guys are gonna come along for the ride today.
So, really quick, there's a lady named Brene Brown,
anybody ever heard of Brene Brown?
If you haven't heard of Brene Brown,
look up a TED Talk called "The Power of Vulnerability"
by a lady named Brene Brown, B-R-E-N-E.
And someone told me about it a few years ago,
amazing, amazing lady, has about six books.
But in one of her books, I was listening to it,
and it said in this book,
"You cannot selectively suppress emotions.
"If you suppress the lower emotions,
"you'll automatically suppress the higher emotions.
"You don't get to pick and choose which ones you have.
"You either have them all, or you have none."
I'm like, "Hm, that's interesting."
Now for a male of my age, growing up in my generation,
we're taught boys don't cry, okay?
You don't cry, you don't show fear, and I'm my family,
you don't show grief, okay?
Oh, he died?
Yep, he's dead, life goes on,
that sort of thing.
And so I thought, "You know what?
"Hm, that's interesting.
"I know I've got the lower emotions suppressed.
"I wonder if I could experience more joy,
"more happiness, whatever."
And so, I asked a therapist that I knew
that a horse person, "What sort of thing should I do
"if I wanted to work on this stuff?"
And she said, "I would go to a thing
"called dialectical behavior therapy, they call it DBT."
And it was originally started for people with,
for people with, adults, highly suicidal adults
is what I was originally for.
And, you just take care of yourself there, sunshine.
Highly suicidal adults is what it was originally for,
but now they do it with anybody
that's got emotional regulation problems.
So I went, so I started going
and seeing a therapist about that.
And at the beginning, I told her what I wanted to do,
she goes, "Oh yeah, this will be easy.
"We have group therapy, but you won't need to go to that."
Anyway, after about three months,
after about three months of having individual therapy
every two weeks, she said, "You know what?
"You probably should go to the group therapy, too."
So I started going to there group therapy.
I didn't really get anywhere the whole year
because I don't have enough emotions for that to work, okay?
I think that if I had more emotions,
that would be a good therapy for me, it wasn't for me.
But I learnt, I love this, see how her neck,
you see that neck's there?
This is the stretching over the top line
part of our dressage, right here, Marie.
Anyway, there was a lot of homework we had to do.
But one of the homeworks was, "This week, the homework,
"you're going to count your judgmental thoughts, okay?
"So keep a little clickers and your pocket, or whatever,
"and every time you have a judgemental thought, click it."
Then you put little rocks in your pocket, or whatever.
And I'm thinking, "Well, I'll probably
"have three judgemental thoughts during the day,
"so I'll put three rocks in me pocket,
"and I'll switch 'em over at the end of the day,
"I can go, 'the number's three, okay?'."
See then, he went to leave, and he came back,
he's controlling himself.
I had 21 before breakfast the first day.
(audience chuckles) And the thing about
counting judgemental thoughts is when I do that,
you become aware of how many you have, okay?
And if become aware of them, then you can reframe them
instead of being so judgemental.
But you can't do it unless you know you're doing it,
I didn't even know I was doing it.
But the other thing you become aware of
is how many you have about yourself,
and that's a game changer right there.
Brene Brown, she's a shame researcher,
but she says there's a difference between guilt and shame.
Shame means, "I am stupid."
Guilt is, "I did something stupid,
"but next time, I'll try it differently."
You live with shame, you don't live with guilt,
you know what I mean?
Guilt is, "I get another go next time."
if you do something stupid, and you say, "I am stupid,"
you feel shame about, "I am stupid,"
it's in there.
So anyway, reframing, so I got a lot of practice
with my judgementalness reframing it.
So, and I think that's helped me with the horses,
'cause I've been doing it with everything, you know?
And so, you get to reframe and look at
the bright side of things instead of being
so judgemental about stuff.
And I travel quite a bit, and walking through airport,
here's another big sigh, walking through airports,
I people watch.
Anyone people watch?
- Yeah, I guess. - I don't know about you,
but when I people watch, I'm judging, okay?
I'm not looking at the best thing about you,
I'm looking at the worst thing about you,
like, (audience chuckles)
"Bloody hell, another Kiwi wearing gumboots in public.
(audience laughs) "You know,
"they wouldn't do that in America."
You know, that sort of thing?
But these days, I've changed that.
When I walk through airports,
I walk along through the airport,
instead of looking at people going the other way
and picking something about them that I wanna judge,
I look them in the eye, and I don't say it out loud,
I think to myself, I think, "May you be happy,
"may you be," (horse whinnying)
Let's go this way, dude.
"May you be happy, may you be happy, may you be happy,
"may you be happy, may you be happy, may you be happy."
And what I've found is I get to the other end
of the airport and I have this light,
airy feeling inside of me
which is the opposite of the feeling
I've always had inside of me that I didn't know was there.
- [Announcer] mumbles.
- Which is like that, there's a heaviness,
or a negative, there's something in there.
For me, I was so use to having that,
I didn't even know I didn't have it,
I didn't know I had it, until I started
doing the opposite of that,
and doing the, "May you be happy," thing.
Now I get to the end of the airport,
feel like I'm on drugs!
(audience laughs) Okay?
I have a friend of mine that's really
into the horsemanship-y stuff, and she also does dressage,
and she went to her first big show recently,
and because she has a bit of a different warm up routine
than the rest of them, she thought they're all judging her.
Now, I don't know if they're all judging,
but she felt they're all looking down their nose at her.
And so, I said, "Okay, when they look at you,
"instead of thinking about, 'They're judging me,
"and they think I'm stupid, or they think
"I'm doing something weird,' I want you
"to look them in the eye, and think to yourself,
"'May you be happy, may you be happy, may you be happy,
"may you be happy,'."
Half and hour later or 45 minutes later,
she messages me back on Facebook, she goes,
"I feel like I'm on drugs! (audience laughs)
"And all of these people are looking at me in a nice way!"
So it was just her perception of how people
we're looking at her at the dressage show,
they we're looking at her, but she doesn't know
what they're thinking.
But because she knows she's a bit
of an outlier in this dressage world,
and she feels a bit self-conscious about it,
then that self-conscious stuff, hey, I'm here,
that self-conscious stuff made her
have all these negative thoughts about herself,
"Maybe I do look stupid (grumbles)."
She just changed the way she thought.
And I think the little whatever that magic in the forest was
that happened here at the start, I think that practice
that I have at doing that had a lot to do with it.
And you can do it all the time.
'Cause you'll find when you start doing that stuff,
it doesn't just change how your horses are,
it changes how your whole life is.
But anyway, Marie, I'm gonna hand him back over to you.
Hello, and hopefully, he gets a bit out of control with you
so that I've got some more stuff to fix next time.
So, sorry?
- [Tyler] 12:15 now.
- 12:15 in the Horsemanship thing?
Oh, hang on now, what's that?
What's different here?
The whole, when I brought him in here,
he was not engaging you at any point in time
when you first brought him in here, was ya, was he?
Was ya?
Oh, good language, wasn't it? (audience chuckles)
So, I don't want you to feel all self-conscious
like you have to do something different,
do whatever you normally do.
But did you kind of see a bit of a difference
in him, right then?
- Yeah, absolutely. - Yeah, yeah.
And so,
very good.
So I'm gonna let you do whatever you normally do,
but 12:15, we're gonna be in the Horsemanship Arena
which is down there. - Right down there.
- If you guys wanna come and watch that,
we'll hopefully go a bit further.
Thank you so much for bringing him,
he's perfect for this, because there was enough of a change.
He's come in here, he was a certain way,
and then he was quite a bit different.
And the big thing I hope you got out of it
was I didn't do anything.
I use to think I had to do something,
especially with a crowd of people, you know?
You've got to have a bit of dust flying.
I'm realizing now that dust flying's
not the best thing for them.
So thank you guys so much for coming,
thank you, Marie, for bringing him along.
(audience applause)
He's wonderful.
(intense country music)