How Intuition and Knowing Yourself are Linked to Creating a Better Life

I hope you're one of them . I hope that this podcast inspires you to be more connected to your intuition. And I hope that by doing that, we make the world a better place. Thanks for coming on this journey with me Before we get started today, I would love to share some tools with you to help with stress and feeling overwhelmed, especially for the energetically sensitive person. Feel free to go to my store on my website at www dot healing , vitality.ca .

Thanks so much for coming on this journey with me. So I'm super excited today because I've just connected again, through social media, with another really cool person and how they viewed a particular aspect that gets greatly stereotyped in the horse world. Just struck me as so beautiful. So thank you so much. Lockie Phillips for joining me today. I so appreciate your time.

I've lived in a whole bunch of countries all over the world and by myself, wanting to settle in what will be, I hope Northwestern , Spain. So yeah, you are kind of tuning into me at what is the end of what I hope is a chaotic and nomadic period of my life sort of the last 15 years have been really full on . And I'm just about out to start throwing down some roots and cooking with gas with my business and my future.

So it's a really exciting time , uh , for me , uh , despite what's going on in the world. But yeah, I run what I call the emotional horsemanship, which is a horse training and handling protocol that prioritizes how horses feel before we prioritize, what horses do we prioritize feel, which is emotional awareness, emotional expression, and emotional health of the horse. Before we prioritize behavior and performance.

The result is a horse that behaves better, but also feels better about those behaviors that they do. It's really focused on priority boarding for recreational horse owners, private recreational horse owners, because private recreational horse owners are in a unique position. Be able to afford horses, a level of consent and autonomy in their , uh , in their work with people.

Uh, they are able to bond and connect with a small handful of people rather than having to perform for people that they don't know . And a pro rabbit horse owner can really facilitate an individual animal unique characteristics and quirks and not have to make them fit molds that they're not supposed to fit anymore. So that's really what I'm focusing on.

And then I have a hoof care aspect to my business as well, where I really focus on teaching again , private horse owners, how to take charge of their own hoof care, if not completely, but at least supplementing their local professional with a focus on , uh , their foot trimming. But I also employ a lot of booting glue on shoes , um , additional protection strategies and device cetera . So that's really what I focus on at the moment.

So I guess that's who I am right now, or at least what I do and where I've come from.

What I can say is I'm really clear about who I am. I'm only well compared to most horse professionals, I'm young at 31, almost 32 years old. I feel like I've lived on this planet before. And even during this lifetime, it feels like I've had three or four lifetimes, but I'm really clear about who I am. And I know who I am. I've got a really clear internal compass and I apply this to all aspects of my life, whether it's personal or professional.

And it enables me to really navigate a variety of scenarios and this isn't something I was necessarily born with. So something I learned and developed from some really wonderful mentors of mine who helped me develop that. So that would be a little bit more of a personal answer.

And that's an essential part of knowing who you are, I guess, is being aware of your ignorance and if possible , releasing yourself from it as quickly as you can.

Thank your dad for me because nobody's talked about that perspective on our podcast before, and it just opens the conversation up to questions more than conclusions.

I mean, studies of the brain have showed us that whether you imagine an experience or you do the experience, the brain processes it in exactly the same way. And actually these interactions we have online are real and the added tune of thinking well it's online. So it's not real life. It doesn't count. That's, what's given rise to the social media troll and that negativity you see online because people think they can get away with it.

They think that morality doesn't serve us when it comes to online interactions. But you know, my business is 99% inducted online. Not just because the , the pandemic forced it to, but because there is no local community anywhere on the planet, in which a business entitled emotional horsemanship could thrive and function. There are lots of people out there interested in what I'm doing and what I can do for , for them and with them.

But they are all fringe dwellers out there in the countryside on their own. They're usually outsiders or they've got a couple of friends like them and we are able to find a global community in an online space. And so I take that seriously. And what happens online is real life.

And the people I work with and the people I've met through online, like yourself, I take that as the same quality interaction as I would, as if you were standing in front of me, they just got a different feel to it, maybe a different flavor when you meet someone in person, but true heartfelt and genuine interactions online , uh , absolutely normal and valid in this day and age.

And it , that sounds strange to a lot of people, but to me, everything is energy and it's all connected and it doesn't matter whether you're three feet away from me or in Spain, there is the ability sense and connect and know , and, you know, do that in a respectful way that is creating safety and awareness and all those things that are absolutely so important to create that connection that is genuine. Like you say, so, yeah. It's beautiful.

And I think the world actually is recognizing that because families and friends and all those connections have been able to be maintained through technology. Yes . And so nothing is a hundred percent evil. Nothing is a hundred percent good. You know, the yin yang , symbols have black and white in them and proportions. Yes . And all that kind of thing . So it, it is interesting to, because I work with the fringe too, probably more than more than the, the full on mainstream 98%. Yeah. But it is,

You wanna off and abuse a 600 kilogram flight animal with rocks for feet and then get on their back. Are you okay? Is everything okay? Like, have you really logically thought this through? And they call me crazy for talking about consent and safety and slow and you know, not using pain to control animals. I'm just like, yeah, I'm not reinventing the wheel here. I'm just sort of saying what a lot of people have been saying four thousands of years, maybe in a slightly different way.

But yeah, the mainstream equestrian community is wild. And as soon as I went out, I went, oh, I need to protect myself from this garbage. So I'm gonna make sure I have a curated community that I pay attention to what's going on in the mainstream, but I don't get involved at all. It would just be too hard for me too hard for me. I tried, it's too hard.

Because if I was waiting to find a tribe in order to find permission, to follow my instincts and follow that gut feeling and follow the little stage directions from the universe, you know, when the universe is at you and kind of says, Hey, a little to the left. Ooh , a little to the right. Ooh , Nope . Don't go there. Come here. Right. You've gotta listen to those things.

And some folks, not everyone, some folks feel that they shouldn't, or can't follow those hints in life, unless they've gotta tribe behind them that says, oh yeah, we do that at two , come with us. And I realized I was never gonna get anything done with my life, if that was what I was going to do. And if I was constantly seeking external reinforcement. So I really sort of dove into personal autonomy practices and self-awareness practices and really said, I've gotta be my own best friend.

I've gotta in my own cheerleader. I've gotta be my own motivator. And cuz I'm the only person I'm gonna be able to rely on here for quite a long time. Now I'm really happy to report that that's slowly changing. And I am starting to find myself amongst Ken , around people who see eye to eye . And I am finding a tribe, but it's not coming from anything else except knowing who I am from knowing who I am, then I can find people that are right for me.

But if we are looking to find our tribe, but we are looking for that tribe to define us before we have to find ourself, I think that's dangerous territory. And I would counsel against it

I mean, I don't know about you Heather , but have you been out in the world recently? It's wild out there. It's

Cause it's hard enough as it is without adding to it. Personal insecurity. It's hard enough.

It's sort of like you look at something and you go , um , or you walk into a room and you go, mm , what just happened in this room before I walked in? Like when you know, people have been talking about you just before you , you, you like walk into the room, it's sort of this. Um, I guess it's a form of hypervigilance really that has been developed over years of working in various different environments and just being really aware of your environment. That's one way intuition shows up.

And that's usually what helps me navigate the here and now, but in the bigger sense of the word , um, ah , I'm gonna be really annoying and I'm gonna say, I've always just followed what my heart told me to do that. I think I came out of my mom and said, this is who I am. And this is where I going. When I was five years old, I turned around to my parents and said, I wanna do dance lessons, completely unprovoked and uninspired. They never took me to a dance performance.

I had never seen it on television. I had didn't have books about it. Totally unprovoked. And out of the blue, like a bolt of lightning from blue sky, I decided I wanted to become a dancer at the age of five and six months later. I'm continuing to ask my parents, when are you taking me to dance lessons? And they said, oh crap. He's he's serious. So I've always been someone that knows what I want and I just go after it. And I don't look for permission to follow it.

I think if I stopped to ask permission more often, I think that would disturb my sense of intuition. Because again, it's about that, knowing yourself, it's about having that internal compass and on a really selfish and childish level. It's like, well, I don't like that. So I'm not gonna do it. I'm not good at it. So I'm not going to do it unless I have to. I don't have an aptitude or a sense for this thing. So I'm not going to waste my energies, trying to make the square peg fit around whole .

That would be another way intuition shows up for me. I also have a weird thing that anytime I get dejavu about a memory , so I'll go through my day and then I'll be reflecting on my day about what happened three hours ago. And I'll have really strong deja about that, how that memory has formed in my visual brain, what it looks like, what that memory looks like in my brain. And I go, oh my God. I've seen that before. Anytime I have deja AVU I know I'm on the right track in my life.

And if I go long periods of my life without dejavu, then I think, mm I'm either stuck. I'm being held back. And when I find myself having an episode of dejavu, I go, I relax . I go, okay, great. I'm on the right track again. And I don't know where that comes from. It's just, yeah, maybe a little superstitious thing I've developed. That's another way intuition shows up for me. And another thing is just that emotional awareness aspect.

When it comes down to my work, like working with horses, the thing that really interests me about horses is let me give an example. When you're riding a horse at a walk and you can feel that the horse has asked you nicely, can we trot now? Can I trot now? And you just say in plain English, yes, go on. You. Don't put leg on, you don't do the , the traditional, you know, or giddy up or whatever voice cue you don't do. The specific voice cue they've been trained for.

You've just felt them through their movement and through their expression and through tiny, subtle shifts in their movement expression, their emotional awareness. You feel these tiny, subtle kinesthetic, somatic , emotional shifts, almost imperceptible to the naked eye. You can't cause I've filmed myself. When this has happened to me and you it's very hard to actually see it happen.

But when you're on the horse, the physical somatic feeling is so overwhelmingly and abundantly clear to me, the horse asks for a TRT . And I just say in plain English, yes, go on. And HR and people say, oh , it's that mind reading moment. Well, they're not reading my mind and I'm not reading their mind. I just think that's the language horses speak. And it's the language, all animals speak.

But unlike most animals, human beings with our heavy prefrontal cortex, our abstract human brain , which is only maximum 4 million years old. And the rest of our brain is minimum 150 million years old. We've got this very immature brain that overrides our ancient intelligence and says, no, don't listen to that feeling. No, no, no. That's an old ancient primitive feeling. No, we are human beings. We are, we are better than the animals know we are supposed to be clever.

So you become clever about your intuition and that's when it all goes to. So I really tried to ride my horses from a sense of feel or what is basically instinct or intuition. I can intuitively sense. I've been in situations where I've asked for trot and the horse has said it , I would like to trot , but I can't. And then my job is then to discover why they can't. Are they not fit enough? Is the footing too rough? Am I not balanced?

Is there too much going on in the environment like this, this like feel and intuition, it can become like a really sophisticated language. And I , I think it is the quote original language of all animals and human beings have just sort of evolved past it into something very clever and very mechanical in the former spoken language and abstract thought. But I really try to tune into that animalistic part of my brain as much as I can. So that's another way I guess intuition would show up for me

It's just, when you start going through puberty, you come out the other end and you're like, oh my God, I've got a vastly different brain. And then you sort of spend the rest of your life trying to go back to that childlike , uh , instinctive intelligence. But I have to be really clear that living your life every day , all day through that part of your brain can be really D difficult . And there are certainly times like I couldn't run a podcast interview or join a podcast interview.

If I was that way, we wouldn't get anywhere. I have to turn on my clever brain and just communicate verbally. Right. But when I communicate verbally or when I write posts on my social media that people respond to, I'm just using a specific part of my human brain to describe what is a very animalistic and ancient experience in my body that has no words.

But I have been given the ability to describe that through words and then also develop training techniques, which enable people to get into that place with their animals and with themselves as well when they desire to be there. But you know, what it can happen is when I come home from, you know, the paddock from the horses, my partner will say to me something, and I find myself responding.

But without words, I think I've responded to him, but I actually haven't said verbal and I almost have to like click myself out of it and be like, oh, use your brain, use your brain, use your words. Cause I get so stuck in that intuitive, instinctive field based brain that when I come inside, it's, it's difficult for me to make a shift over.

So that's where I really enjoy doing the online coaching I with with horse owners, because that's like my tool to shift my brain over into that other part and give the feel and intuition part rest because you have to rest your intuition as well, the same way you have to rest your cleverness sometimes.

But most of what I do is teaching people to rest their cleverness and every now and then I will come across a wonderful horse person that is so deep in their intuition and their feel that they have totally lost the trees for the forest. And I have to show them how to come back to their brain, to their logic and disconnect from their feel and rest it for a little bit. Cuz it can be overwhelming as well.

If you are someone who's like really fixated and very conclusion driven and very clever, you need someone who can just be like, whoa, whoa , come home to your body for a second. So it's about finding that balance

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