Interview with Linda Tellington-Jones - Tellington TTouch

Interview with Linda Tellington-Jones.
I'm very excited and pleased to announce an interview with the delightful Linda Tellington-Jones.

Not only is Linda an amazing horse woman, she is also a very intuitive lady who has carved her own path in this world.

Her skills and knowledge she has developed over the years was (and still is in parts) way ahead of her time.

The more I listened to Linda talk, the more I  realised what an amazing lady she truly is, and so humble in the process.

So sit back, relax and I hope you enjoy this episode, where you will hear all about her work with horses, humans and so much more.

Linda Tellington-Jones.
Founder of the Worldwide Renowned Tellington TTouch Method
Linda Tellington-Jones is a world-famous horse expert. With her innovations, she has significantly contributed to the horse world for more than five decades. But not only the horse scene profits from Linda's ideas: The Tellington TTouch Method is just as successfully applied to domestic, wild, and zoo animals as well as humans.

Linda Tellington-Jones has published over 20 books and 10 educational films in 15 different languages over the years. There are over 1,700 certified Tellington-TTouch trainers for horses, dogs, and people in 27 countries who use and teach the methods.

In 2008, Linda Tellington-Jones received an honorary doctorate from Wisdom University in California for her services. Linda Tellington-Jones lives with her husband, Roland Kleger, in Hawaii and still teaches TTouch worldwide.

In 1975 Linda began her 4-year long training as a Feldenkrais teacher at the "Institute of Humanistic Psychology" in San Francisco. At the same time, she began to develop the Tellington Method for horses. In Germany, she published the book "How to educate your horse" together with icon Ursula Bruns, which has become a classic among guidebooks for horses.

In 1983 she invented the famous circular touches, called Tellington TTouch. She holds lectures at veterinary congresses in Europe and in the USA. In 1987 a research project on the effect of TTouch on the brain waves in humans was started, marking a breakthrough for her method. 

For any further information on linda click on the links below.
People Linda mentioned in this episode:
https://feldenkrais.com
https://greggbraden.com
https://judeegee.com

https://ttouch.com/
https://www.facebook.com/TellingtonTTouchWorld
https://www.youtube.com/@T

Video version (alongside applicable podcasts) can be viewed on facebook and YouTube.
https://www.facebook.com/equinevoices.co.uk
https://www.youtube.com/@equinevoicesuk
https://www.instagram.com/equinevoices.uk

Contact Ronnie.
mailto:equinevoicesronnie@gmail.com

Transcript

Interview with Linda Tellington-Jones - Tellington TTouch

Ronnie: [00:00:00] welcome to Equine Voices with Linda Tellington Jones, I am so excited to chat with her. First have to just say a little of how this came about. So for my regular listeners, you know that intuition guidance is a big thing with me and how this came around was I was doing something on Facebook and a post came up from Linda on one of her group pages and I was looking at it and then I carried on doing what I was doing and something just said, send Linda a message. 

So I thought, okay. So I sent her a message saying, hi, my name's Ronnie. Would you like to be a guest on my podcast? And a bit more information so she could see who I was. So I did that. Then I sat down because this was one evening and the phone started ringing and I looked at my phone thinking it's an American number it's a state's number. So I ignored it. And then when I went back to listen to the voice message, it was Linda she left me a message saying that she'd love to be a guest. 

So that's what happens when you listen to your [00:01:00] intuition and here we are today. So without further ado, I'm going to bring Linda in so she can introduce herself we're going to talk about her work, about intuition and that's how, how that's been a big influence in her life. So without further ado, and I can catch my breath then, I'll bring in Linda and here she is. 

Linda: Thanks, Ronnie and hi everyone. This is really fun for me, particularly to address the subject of intuition, because it's not something that we, you know, necessarily comes up every day.

It's the fact that I'm here with you and I have developed this body of work that we now call Tellington Method. It's due to intuition and I just want to tell you some stories. First of all, for those of you who don't know me, I've had the blessing to have a long life with horses.

I'm 86 and I started riding when I was 6, which is quite late for many of you. But it was six years old because [00:02:00] my father had to go to a riding stable and buy a horse for me to carry me to school in rural Canada. We were outside of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and we didn't have school buses in those days.

And it was a couple of miles to actually walk to school, and I was only six. So my cousins also rode to school, and they were up the road like a... A quarter of a mile. So my dad went to the stable, this sales guy, you know, pulled out a horse and put me on it, and the horse, it was in the arena, and the horse promptly just walked back into the stable with me, and my dad bought the horse, and I rode to school, you know, for the next six years of my life.

It's so interesting, because nobody ever, I don't ever remember anyone telling me anything. I rode bareback. I'm sure. My dad must have bridled my horse from here in the first, in the beginning. But we would ride to [00:03:00] school, we had a barn, horse went in the barn, and just waited for the day, and then I rode home.

And then I'd ride more with my cousins. And when I was nine years old, I had my very first riding lesson when we moved to, closer to Edmonton, and we drove by this stable that had a big quadrille of horses practicing for the Edmonton Horse Show, which is a huge You know nine day horse show, day and night, and I started riding there, and I just I asked if I could trade for lessons, but the riding teacher asked, you know, had I ever ridden a horse, and so she put me on a horse, and when she found out, you know, I'd been riding every day I, I was the kid who got to start the ponies, and she had a lot of really good ponies, show, show ponies, so anyway, I went on, and I I was very blessed to have a nine month residential school for writing instructors and trainers from 1964 [00:04:00] until 74.

And in, I, this little book right here has to do with intuition. I wanted to bring this up because for my 30th birthday in 1967, I saw an advertisement in the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper that said for five dollars you can get a this. It's called an astrological psychoanalysis of you. By Fritzi Armstrong.

And it was said that this computer was in the basement at Stanford University. The first astrological chart done on a computer. So this is actually, like, mimeographed. Remember, some of you, of course, you remember this. It's 98 pages of mimeographed stuff. But what stuck to me is the statement that in my lifetime, I would develop a form of communication that would spread around the world and in order to do so, I would have to learn to trust my intuition. So I [00:05:00] immediately went to our library and my husband was 20 years older than I went West Ellington and had a deep interest in science and spirituality. And so I just reached up in intuitively but not thinking that was intuitively and just pulled down a book and it would actually happened to be a Rosa Cru book which my husband was studying at the time, and I looked up the definition of intuition, and it was unlearned knowledge. 

Now, today, I understand that in a very different way, and it's the fact that it's out here in the quantum field. Everything that was ever thought is right here, available to us all we have to do is just listen. 

And the definition that I love of intuition is it's pretty simple. And it's in a little book called Intuition by a woman named Judy, J U D E E G, [00:06:00] G E E. And it's intuition is the manifestation of divine consciousness within you. Receiving and accepting its messages will change your life and help you find your true path.

So all these years as I have moved around the world, The fact is that prediction certainly did come true because now the work that is known as the Tellington Method, we know of it being taught by our teachers in 37 countries. And when we're online now, thanks to COVID, like many of us are online a lot, teaching online, I often have like 15 or 20 countries represented.

And I'm quite sure if I hadn't really paid attention to that and listen for the small signs of, okay, when decisions come up, which way do I go? How I used to feel about it is I feel like I was[00:07:00] like a fairy and I had these little antenna. Fairies don't have antenna. I don't know where I got that part but anyway, that's what came to me, Ronnie and I'd say, okay, wait a minute. If I go that way, what's the feeling? Or that way, and I would try it on, you know, what the decision was, and one of the big decisions that is behind this Tillington method, and I guess I, because I'm sure there are many of you who don't know what it is.

This is a body of work that works. I first developed it for horses. And at the time, and when we first presented this with my sister, Robin Hood it was known as Tellington equine awareness movements, because we were first doing it with movement. And then when we started, I brought in, which again was an intuition that I'm going to share with you when I brought in the Tellington T Touch, which is that one and a quarter circle that you [00:08:00] do anywhere on the body.

And what it does is connect with our cellular, with intelligence and so once we brought that T Touch, it's one and a quarter circles, into the work. What happened is we decided to call it the Tellington Equine Awareness Method, not movement, because it wasn't just movement. And then, when we started working with dogs and many, many other animals in zoos, and I've worked with many animals that's when we changed it to, Tellington, every animal method and then over the years, we just shifted to the Tellington method. 

 Some of the movements along the way that. That really stick out in my mind is first of all I had a wonderful school for writing instructors and people came to me from nine countries and 36 states in the years between 1964 [00:09:00] when we started it to 74 when I shut everything down and went to Europe and started teaching there. 

And so we had this wonderful school and What started to really bother me, this is in the, in the late 60s, I started to have this feeling that holy mackerel, nobody's listening to the horses, and all this stuff that we still have a lot of, this running the horses around until they're tired.

I certainly did it in the beginning, to some degree, because I could get a horse to come to me that way. But what we wanted to do was develop a way that a horse would learn to think instead of just instinctively respond. And where that came from. Was the fact that in 1975 I [00:10:00] enrolled in a course at the Humanistic Psychology Institute with Dr.

Moshe Feldenkrais, and it was a course to learn the Feldenkrais method for humans. If you don't know the Feldenkrais method, there are many in the UK that do this work, and it's beautiful, incredible work, too. It's known for its ability to help you move more effectively. And I was interested in it for my writing students because I had done a session.

Just one hour session of the Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement session, where when I got up off the floor after being led through these really gentle movements, I had a completely different relationship to my pelvis. And in those days, before Centered Riding and Connected Riding, and some of the Riding with Awareness that you now have available you know, depending upon what discipline you were riding, you kind of be in one [00:11:00] position. And my husband, who graduated from the last cavalry class for officers, the year I was born in 1937, his way of teaching students to get their shoulders back, and he certainly gave me a lot of lessons, was to put a stick, like you put your elbows back and put a stick there, and it would keep your shoulders back.

Not a very organic method. And it certainly does things to your back, which is not so good. Anyway I enrolled in this Feldenkrais training with Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais. And in the very thinking, I would help my writing students become more... Mobile. And in the very first day of the training, we were all lying on the floor doing what's called an awareness through movement, a Feldenkrais awareness through movement.

And Moshe Feldenkrais made a statement that I was lying there and that made my ears prick up. I felt [00:12:00] like a horse. I thought, Wait a minute, if this statement is true for a human, which is what we were learning, could it be true that it also works for a horse? Because he made the statement that it's possible for a human to learn using one, in one experience, moving the body in these gentle, non habitual movements that activate new neural pathways to the brain, Allowing us to have more capacity for learning, because that was his real passion.

And so I was thinking, what can I do with a horse that would move them in a way that. They wouldn't move themselves, that would be gentle and so, that afternoon, I went out, and I had just met a guy who brought down a bunch of horses from Montana and I called him and I said, do any of these horses have habits that you would like to see changed?

And he [00:13:00] said, well, I brought this 16 year old broodmare, and it's so annoying, because every night when I go, To bring her into the stable for the night and to eat. I have to chase her down to catch her. Not logical, but that's the way it was. That was her habit. So he chased you down, caught her up, and brought her to me.

Now, I want to show you something here. I should have pulled it down before but it's a little booklet that we wrote at a research farm in 1965, and it's Physical Therapy for the Athletic Horse. Because we had already written a book, as far as we can see, it's the first book in English on physical therapy for horses. And it was based on the work of my grandfather, Will Cable and it had to do with these short little strokes done over the whole body of the horse. And what it allowed him to do was to be... a very successful racehorse trainer. [00:14:00] 

Another long story, Ronnie, because he was an American taken to Russia at the time to ride the horses of an Austrian racehorse owner and he liked it so much he stayed on and he won the prestigious award in 1905 of leading trainer at the Moscow Racetrack with the most winners and he said that he was successful in this way because first of all, two reasons you'll really get a kick out of this, because we think that animal communication is something fairly new, but he says that he never entered a horse in a race unless it told him it was feeling fit enough to win and the second thing was that every horse in the stable was rubbed, what they call rubbed, with these short little strokes over the whole body of the horse. So my husband interviewed my grandfather, and we wrote this booklet. On this physical therapy for athletic horses, and we used it with our endurance horses because I did a lot of a [00:15:00] hundred mile endurance riding.

And in 1960 I set a record for you'll laugh, for those of you who do endurance riding, this will make you laugh. I was the first person to ride 200 mile rides in one season. I mean, it's normal now I know of horses that'll go seven, 800 mile endurance ride, but I placed 1st on the Tebas Cup ride and I won the Jim shoulders ride and the best condition for the 160 kilometers on that ride and that was certainly due to our feeding and our training. And a really great Arabian horse that I have. 

 The thing that's interesting, we caught this mare up, this horse that had a bad habit, and we wanted to see, could you really do something on the body that would change behavior? Because [00:16:00] although we did all this work on the bodies of horses to help them recover faster after a hard sport, it never crossed my mind that you could actually change the behavior.

Of a horse by working on the body. And so I thought, okay, let's see. What we can do with these gentle, not intentional, non habitual movement. So, they caught the horse up and I'm thinking, okay, how can I. Move her body, not run her around in a circle, you know, like, used to take me two weeks, I would lunge a horse to get them to go at walk, trot, and canter on the lunge line.

And it would really make sure that was set. How can I do something? How can I change a habit in one time? And so. We had already been doing, moving the legs for improving performance, but never [00:17:00] with the intention. And this is what we're talking here about, I believe, is energy. Because it was the intention, how can I move this horse so that it will give her a new awareness of herself and activate new neural pathways.

And so we've done lots of stuff with legs and heads and necks, but I started doing it with a different intention. And I'd like to introduce this to you all. You see this is all about energy. The intention is all about energy. What was my intention I could visualize these new neural connections and a new awareness.

So. I just was exploring and I didn't have the intention of changing this horse. I had the intention of giving her new information and let's see if this makes a difference to her and so I maybe worked for, I don't know, maybe 30 minutes all [00:18:00] over the body, just in ways that she accepted and was okay to her and the people watching me thought I'd hypnotized the horse. 

And so I went home, didn't think anything more about it. And the next day, this guy named Ted called me and he said, you know what, I don't know what happened but when I went out to catch it we turned the horse out after, and when I went to catch her she came to the gate for the first time.

And when I let her into the stall instead of diving for the hay in the corner. She just kind of stood by me like, do something. And I thought, that's pretty interesting. And that summer after our classes as we had like four. Mondays through Thursdays, 10 to 4, we had the Fallen Christ work, and then we'd have the time off, and I would go and work on horses, and all these different ways of moving their body.

That's where the labyrinth came up if you saw that demonstration, Ronnie, I don't remember it when you [00:19:00] saw it so many years ago, but I would have been sure. Twenty eight years ago. It's a long time. It's a long time, and I certainly would have been featuring the labyrinth, because laying out the type of Tellington labyrinth that we do, it's not really a labyrinth I don't know why we call it a labyrinth, but that's just what it is intuitively came up for me and so what we found when we take the horses and of course in the boundaries of this form that we make that what happens is suddenly they're focused. 

I love it when somebody brings a horse into me, sometimes horses come into me into an arena with two guys leading them and they hand them over to me and it's the horse can be, like, focused everywhere else, all over the place, and if I just have my wand and the lead and walk in that labyrinth, as soon as they get in that labyrinth, there's focus. 

Now, you were at the demo, Ronnie, that I think you were at [00:20:00] I wish you could remember this, I have pictures in one of my books of this, but one of the horses that I was working with was there, was a Grand Prix dressage horse and it was very, very spooky. Actually, it wasn't a grand prix, it was an intermediary. And so it would shy at any movement in the crowd, which is a real problem, and, or the waving of flags. And when I brought him in there and he saw the poles on the ground, and he wouldn't come anywhere close to them. So what do we do? We don't push the horse to go through. 

We say, Oh, I see this horse is really nervous about this. How can I help him understand what it is that we want that you can look at a new situation and instead of wanting to spin and run, you'll have the trust to stay grounded and stop. And to do that, we just stroke them all over the body quietly with these white dressage whips.[00:21:00] 

We use white because we find that horses can see them easier. And they're a little stiff. They're not whippy at all. So it gives them a smooth, It's like a, an extension of your arm and you reach out and you just stroke this horse all over. Now in many horses, ha, when I start to do that, you can't do it at all. You have to let them move a little because they're so afraid of that. And if they're terrified, I use something easier to start with doesn't frighten them and anyway, with that horse, what you would have seen we had to widen the poles instead of four feet. Between them we had to spread them out three times wider in order to him, either even to approach because he was so afraid of things on the ground, which to me means like he was really tight in the neck and I believe that affects the optic nerve and the head would go up with anything new. How many of you seen this? Of course, you recognize when your horses start over the head goes up. And [00:22:00] not only does it put extra pressure on the optic nerve, so I think they don't see as well, but as soon as that head goes up in that way, they're into the sympathetic nervous system state of fight, flight, freeze, faint, or fool around.

And they can't think. It's that control of the amygdala. And as soon as you can bring the head down quietly, so you're not tying them down, because that won't work, but to bring them and invite them down so that they can lower the head, then you can get them to come into the parasympathetic state of rest and recovery and think and it shifts the person that shifts you from the connection with the amygdala to the forebrain so you can actually think and learn and the same thing happens with the horse this is when they can think and learn instead of running around until they're sweaty and tired and you [00:23:00] think they're going to learn from that you don't learn through fatigue. 

It's just quiet movements and so because I've had so much experience and because I wound up catch riding as a teenager in these big shows, riding horses of other people who weren't confident in riding on big shows. I could do a lot with horses that other people couldn't do.

And my interest was, how can we chunk this work down so that anybody Can take their horse and start them on the saddle, for instance, never without bucking, never running around out of fear. And that's what we've come up with with this method, it's really exciting. 

So, I would really like to give a little space and see if you have any comments or questions from what I've said.

Ronnie: I do, but first of all, so this is Linda's book that I bought 28 years ago when Linda came to the [00:24:00] UK to the NEC Centre in Birmingham, I think it was, which she kindly signed and I I think I remember the horse that you was talking about yeah, I do remember vaguely what happened there.

Linda: So let me just say something about that. when we get very cross, that's aggressive, isn't it? And something that I want to tell you that changed my life with Horses and All Animals, was a statement in the Course in Miracles that I was teaching that course, in the

1982, and I came upon a statement that said aggression comes from a place of fear and is a cry for help. And when I read that, I, what flashed through my mind were horses that, a horse that I had really buttoned up with just like one whack for bucking and I thought he had a [00:25:00] reason for doing it was what this person was doing with her feet in his ribs.

And I really apologize and at that point I started thinking of dogs, dogs that I had punished for, you know, attacking another dog and I thought, wait a minute. It's not intelligent. If I'm being aggressive and that's coming from fear, you're not learning anything. And that's when we really started digging even deeper to break down this work so that when a horse has a behavior or something that just doesn't work for you, it's not safe. It doesn't work. Instead of doing harder, faster, which is typical in the horse world sit back and say, wait a minute, how can I make this clearer? What it is I'm asking us to do and it's just resulted in a body of work that makes it possible for people with much less experience of the [00:26:00] thousands of horses that I've worked with to be successful and stay safe and that's my really big thing. And I want that horse to enjoy being with me as much as I enjoy being with him. That's what this has all brought me to. 

So it's very exciting to always to share this work and I wish that people could go on Facebook on Tellington T Touch world you can write comments and I'd be happy To respond to them or write your experience. It'll be fun. 

Ronnie: Do you want to tell people Where you are today, what you've got planned and what's coming up. 

Linda: Well when I do want to say is that over all these years what we discovered is that we can reduce fear in horses and pain in horses and dogs and humans and ourselves and all this time It's been my question. Wait a minute. How is that possible? What's actually going [00:27:00] on and it's so much with this like first of all I'm talking about the one and a quarter circle and I'm going to step aside a little bit and tell you that that form of body work that we do with the Tellington method, this is only one part of the work. We also have the work that we do with horses on the ground and dogs. Horses on the ground, working through different elements that we call in German, it's a learn parkour. It's about learning in English we call it the playground for higher learning because it is a way of getting horses grounded, giving them boundaries, safe boundaries game to go under things, but not pushing them.

It's learning with respect. And it's not just this concept you hear, well, the horse must respect me. We must respect our horses. And what does that mean? The respect comes from the [00:28:00] word to see. When a horse says, No, I'm afraid of that. Instead of saying, come on, you can do it and push them through, which is the tendency in the beginning.

All we do is make them hold their breath more and get tighter in the body. So when we can use our breath and say, wait a minute, how can I show this horse what it is I want without getting faster or harder or tougher, more disciplined? Why can't I just get smarter so that horse understands what it is and can do it?

And that's what we do with these work that we do on the ground, the labyrinth and many different surfaces. And and then it's different equipment that we use, our balance ring it's a line that we put around the neck and use it in conjunction with whatever bridle you're using. So that it's not just on the head that you're, you're communicating with your horse, it's [00:29:00] also just touches on the chest so that they can come back into their body and it's really brilliant. And then we do a lot of riding also at a stage with what we call a liberty ring is simply putting a ring around the horse's neck and getting them to turn, stop, do everything without a bridle on their head. And that comes to a place of trust. It's really beautiful to see. And speaking of trust, the second T in T Touch, it's called Tillington T Touch. The second T in T Touch actually represents the word trust, because that's what this is about. So, besides those elements of the body work, the work under saddle with different equipment that we use, and what we call a promise wrap, it's an ace wrap, elastic wrap.

It's [00:30:00] not something hard. It just gives the horse a sense of themselves. Now, people have been copying this for years with various tarot bands and things, but it's that doesn't give them the same. intention of support to get them to move themselves instead of the band moving the horse. So we do all of this stuff and what's also really important is the aspect of observing.

Watch your horse. What is the level of the head? How are they standing? Are there four feet under them? And if not, you can change. And if you've got a horse that has a behavior that elk on it, it's really you're wrestling with it. Check to see is that horse standing laterally or diagonally. When they're standing diag Laterally, it's like left front forward and right and left time forward, then this gives them a whole [00:31:00] different way of being.

And you can change that with what we do with the leg exercises with the lick of the cows tongue from the belly to the back with so many things that we do just with this very. Gentle work on the tail that gives them a connection behind and all of this is something that you can do like 10 minutes a day and the beautiful thing is the work is accumulative. That's what I love about it. So besides observation, body work, equipment that we use, riding under saddle that we do with various equipment, and the elements to give horses boundaries and grounding and connection.

There's another aspect, and I have not been teaching this until recently. Because I kind of set it aside and it's really essential, and that is energy, the word energy. And the [00:32:00] reason that I quit using it, it's in my very first book. I talk about how you can affect your horse by just what you think and looking at them and affecting this in a way, but what stopped me over the years, when I did the four year Feldenkrais training with Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais, one of the things that he said, it was in San Francisco in the summer of the first year, and everybody was doing energy work and he forbid us to do that, to even talk about it, because in those days, there was no definition for it. But now, thanks to quantum science, we do understand what energy is.

And one of my favorite definitions of energy is in a book called Spontaneous Healing of Belief by Greg Braden. It's so clear. He says that energy is every thought we have. How many have you heard people say, oh well that horse bites. Once a biter, always a biter. I've heard this by people with a [00:33:00] lot of experience who should know better because we can change them. So every thought we have, every feeling we have about that horse, every emotion that we carry, and every belief we have. The belief is, yes, we can. Helpless or not, or that horse is stubborn, or these labels, dominant, these labels we put on him that's all energy and it really affects the horse. 

So, when you know that, that's what takes practice, is say, Wait a minute, what can I do to help this horse do what I ask in a safe way that's comfortable for the horse? That makes the horse feel as good as I am, as I do. And that's, that's my big thing. So, my dears, that's a little touch into this work.

 I would like to tell you two other times in my life where [00:34:00] intuitively I knew that that's my direction. It's totally intuitive. One was in the second year of my Feldenkrais training in San Francisco. Dr. Feldenkrais recommended a book that we read, a book called Man on His Nature. It was written by a Nobel Prize laureate, Sir Charles Sherrington and Sherrington made a statement that completely directed my life. It's, it's changed my life and that is that every cell in the body Knows it's function in the body and he wrote in such inspiring ways about the function of the cells and wow I mean that intelligence is just so incredible and I Couldn't remember where I was sitting at the moment I was sitting in Morphine Pick restaurant in Stuttgart, Germany on a winter day in February Cold, rainy.

And I remember putting the book down [00:35:00] and sitting up and looking at my hands and thinking, wait a minute, when I don't yet know how to do this amazing Feldenkrais works that we've seen Moshe Feldenkrais do miracles with people, a woman who had had a stroke like years before and couldn't use her hand effectively and in 20 minutes could have a new way of functioning and actually moving.

We didn't yet know how to do that. But I said, okay, now all I have to do is say cells to myself. Just remind this body, whether it's a horse, a person, whoever I'm working on, of the ideal function at the cellular level. And because what's known now is, it's been known for quite a while, is that every cell has hundreds, Like tens of thousands of functions, and they know specifically what that function, how that function is, how it works.

[00:36:00] But, what isn't known, and this is the miracle you all, I think intuitively should really catch on to, the miracle is that nobody, none of the scientists can say what's behind that intelligence, that cellular wisdom and in the latest book I've read called The Song of the Cells, it's a It's a book about research through the centuries on cells.

Cellular intelligence. What they all agree on is that there's some form that is behind this. It's a level of consciousness or intelligence. And in this little book, I love this little book. It's called Uncommon Prayer. By Ruth Miller, and the concept is, that she writes about, is that in between the stuff that makes up the universe, in the quantum, is not just empty space, [00:37:00] holding it all together, the stars, everything in the universe, is a wonderful, rich, quantum field, out of which emerges in orderly patterns, all energy and all matter.

Matter is everything that looks to be solid, but they know it's not really, from a quantum science point of view. And then most scientists call this intelligence or consciousness. Not many scientists, not most, many. And the rest of the world calls this God or source or divine consciousness. And when you look at yourself and start to ask yourself, okay.

How come I can see? How is this that my blood flows? What is behind that? And when you recognize that this is like universal source divine consciousness, nothing to do with religion, it's just we're miracles is the truth. Our horses are miracles. And [00:38:00] from the energy point of view, and from the Tellington philosophy point of view, when you look at your horse and you see, Oh my God, this horse has a problem with doing this or that.

Instead of thinking that, negative thoughts, think, what can I do to help this horse function more effectively, through the body, through its mind. And so our real interest, my interest is bringing balance, mental, physical, and emotional balance. And it starts with us, you all. Because when we come into a place of balance, then this is a reflection for our horses.

And when you start to lose it, you know, lose your temper sometimes because we're frustrated. That can happen if you haven't really practiced stopping yourself and saying, Take a deep breath, stretch your lips and a smile, think of something for which you're grateful. Might not be at the moment, but think of something for which you're grateful because [00:39:00] gratitude overrides fear. And when you can think, and I just had a nice discussion with Ronnie before, she was talking about having to walk a long time because your car wasn't working and instead of you know, moaning the whole time about it. Okay. What can I do that's useful in this time, I can think of this beautiful nature I'm in, I can think of the fact that I have the blessing that I can walk, that I have those horses that I have the seed to feed them, that's where she was going and, and just shift to think of, wait a minute, how can I shift something that isn't working into a place, a state of gratitude? And that's what's behind all of this.

And so one of the things I realized I've been asking myself over and over all these years, how come we can reduce pain and fear in ourselves and [00:40:00] animals with this one and a quarter to touch? And one of the reasons that I understand now is it's like moving the tissue and one and a quarter, two touches is like taking a key and unlocking a door that allows us a connection with that cellular intelligence in every cell in our body that knows its function within the body. That divine intelligence that we are, that our horses are, that are all a part of us and we have found all these techniques that we have with the different ways you use your hands and the different contact and pressure that activates, supports, That cellular intelligence in the body, so, that's one of the aspects. 

Ronnie: 

That was so beautiful, Linda. Even with all the technical stuff going on and trying to do things, that was beautiful, absolutely beautiful. [00:41:00] Now I know why I wanted you to be a guest on my podcast. As you were talking there, so When I'm talking to people sometimes I get information that flows through or it's just a sense of something, but as you were talking about the connection about the slight movements, what was coming through was the heart resonates with such power and such beauty and such strength and such energy that some things cannot be comprehended and the intention of that moment can do wonders and that's just what has flowed. 

So the intention, because you were talking about this different ways of touching and Different people have different techniques and I understand that some people have to have a certain technique because that's their, that's their patent, so that's what they use and they describe it in a certain way but the intention and the heart energy that flows and the [00:42:00] vibration that comes with that is very, very powerful, but in a gentle way too. 

So I don't know why I needed to share that, but that's just come through. 

Linda: Well, it's a great thing to share actually, because it's been studied for years by Heart Math Institute and shown that the heart intelligence is greater than our brain intelligence.

The heart has more outreach and more intelligence than our brain. Yes. Yeah. So when we come from the heart centered emotions and Intentions, magic happens.

Ronnie: And I've just got the key to that is each cell, each molecule, recognizes that signal, recognize that resonation and it's like, I'm listening. I wasn't expecting that to know. 

Linda: That's beautiful. I just want to share one more thing for those who are interested in the Tellington message.

Please do. Please do. I [00:43:00] want to tell you I had this nine month residential school for riding instructors and trainers from, from 64 to 74. Then I shut down and I sold the horses and I went off to Europe because I felt I had to do something else with my life just because of so much misunderstanding that I saw in the horse world and then I signed up for the Feldenkrais method, thinking it was going to help my riding students, not realizing that it would actually completely change the way I looked at horses after all those years of successful showing and competing and training. And then. In 1985, I had another, like, aha moment when I was doing a weekend workshop at a veterinary clinic in Delaware in the usa and one of the vets had a hunter, a mare, a 12 year old mare that they [00:44:00] used in the hunt field, but she was really puzzling because they couldn't figure out why she was so reactive. With the grooming equipment she would pin her ears and try to move away and, with a saddle, it was the same way, and she was really resistant.

And in those days, we're talking 1983, veterinarians didn't have what they have now. They didn't do osteopathy and all of the stuff that's done. Very little acupuncture, it was just the beginning with horses. And so all they had done with this mare was, is x ray her from the knees and hocks down, and they couldn't find anything going on.

Nothing to do with the neck, back, you know, all the stuff that's checked now. And so I was asked to look at this horse and see what I felt from the Thalnicas going to do. Because the head vet, Dr. Matthew McKay Smith and Dr. Danny Marks both knew me. Quite well from, for years. [00:45:00] And so when I put my hands on this horse, just quietly, just walked up quietly and she was in the cross tines, putting my hands on her rib cage. And she just got really quiet. And her owner said, okay, wait a minute. What's your secret? Why is this horse not resisting you? And I said, intuitively, Ronnie, don't worry what I'm doing. Just walk. I would put your hand on the shoulder and push I said. Push the skin in a circle. I didn't say a circle and a quarter, which it ultimately came to, but push the skin in a circle. And when I did that, I thought, okay, what's that supposed to mean? Because I had no idea if it would work. I certainly had never done it before. And she walked up and did it, and the horse stood really quietly and so I said, just move on a parallel line. Just follow that line back along the ribcage. And she did that. And then we did another circle along the [00:46:00] rib, just, you know, long, running parallel to the spine, and the horse stayed really quiet, and in that moment, I thought, holy mackerel, it takes four years to just begin to understand this fabulous Feldenkrais work, and for people but anybody can learn the circles, and so, I started following the path of the circles, and what we came to was, wait a minute, if you do it on yourself, just try it on yourself, if you imagine a face of a clock, and you catch the skin, and, and you put, take the clock off the wall, and just put it here, and catch the skin like, at six o'clock.

Sorry, I've got to get my little horse here off my neck. So, you take this imaginary clock off the wall and from the outside, look at it here, and put 6 o'clock toward the ground, and then 9 o'clock is toward the right [00:47:00] shoulder, and 12 toward the chin, and your 3 is toward your left shoulder. Now, Very gently move the tissue from six, tiny, tiny circle because your skin's tight here, six, a little arc up to nine, another quarter circle, little arc up to twelve, over to three, and then to six, and stop.

Take your hand away. Now it feels like there's no end to this. And then we just started saying, wait a minute, what if you go a little farther? You just go six and go around to six and a little more. So we started saying six and a little more. And then eventually, after, I don't know, a few years, I started writing six to nine.

So it was one and a quarter circles. It was way easier to describe. And then, years ago, we found out that 1 1 4 [00:48:00] circles, really paying attention to the roundness, it's called a golden schnitz or golden cut and it's the spiral that's in all of nature. In our DNA, it's in everything, is that 1 1 4, it's almost 1 1 4 circles, it's five degrees short of 1 1 4 circles and I believe that when we do this, that we're entering this intelligence that's in every cell in our body that you so beautifully caught on to. 

So I want to give you all something to take away and that is something that we called the T Touch Heart Hug. And you can use it, do any of you get this sense, you know, you start having you're a little stressed, and you have a song that you know, a song that keeps coming through your head, and you can't get rid of it, or you're really stressed, and stuff is going on, and you don't feel well, and you don't know what to do, it's when you're in the [00:49:00] sympathetic nervous system state, and if you want to get into the parasympathetic, What you do is take that imaginary clock off, put it here, and then just put one hand over the other, whichever hand, it doesn't matter, and gently catch your skin with some part, I'm just catching it with this little point right here, it can be any part, I can do it like this, and just one circle and a quarter, take a deep breath and smile, just try it, everybody, watch it catch the skin, right now I'm catching with this part, and lightly, very lightly, one and a quarter. At the quarter point, stop, and then take a breath, and ease, just let the skin ease back down to the six. Try it again. One circle in the quarter, deep breath with a smile, and then think of something for [00:50:00] which you're really grateful about your voice. Let's do another one and ease it back down. And you can be in really a state of agitation and not be able to get out of it and do this a few times. Very light contact is important. Now, and what it will do is take you from the control of the part of the brain that fight, flight, freeze, faint, fool around, amygdala, and activate your forebrain so you can actually come to a place of thinking and it brings it into heart coherence, and that is the work of HeartMath Institute. And if you don't know it, look it up because they have some wonderful free Zoom sessions to watch all the time that's really, really helpful. 

So, I want you to know what that's got to do with intuition this one and a quarter circles in the heart hug. The reason I [00:51:00] imagine that clock is anything I imagine activates the right brain. The part of the brain that controls our feeling. We really need this after COVID. Our compassion, which we also need. Our creativity and our intuition. That's the right brain imagining anything to do with imagining with music, dance, art that activates our right brain, including the intuition and the reason we put that imaginary clock here is when we put these numbers on in this logical way, numbers activate the left brain and Ronnie you couldn't be sitting there doing this podcast, this streaming if you didn't have that left brain activated. And you certainly couldn't be getting these beautiful, intuitive knowings if your right brain wasn't activated and when we do this one and a [00:52:00] quarter circle, that activates both hemispheres and brings us to a place of balance. 

The reason I say smile, the smile activates our serotonin, our feel good hormone and the reason you want to do very lightly, Is the lighter contact activates the most oxytocin, which has been shown with huge studies with massage therapy, and the light contact is what activates the most oxytocin, and the oxytocin is now being called our trust hormone.

Go out and play with your horses, explore, and it's about moving the skin when you do the t touch, doing some t touch. It's not going over the skin. It doesn't get you the same effect at all. Gratitide Roni. I'm very grateful that you were so patient with me with all my technical stuff going on. 

Ronnie: I'm just really sorry for the people [00:53:00] on Facebook because it hasn't gone out on Facebook but I will show it again because they can come on and ask questions. There are some comments. Okay I see there. I can bring it on screen. So, Yeah, let's do that. If you want to answer, so for the benefit of this as an audio afterwards my horse has asymmetry due to an old pelvic injury his spine rotates to the right during movement and there is an injury to the back of his head what can I apply from T Touch? 

Sorry, I was reading the comments and not listening to you. I just read it out loud because this is going to be a podcast for audio only, so for the benefit of that I read it out loud.

Linda: Well, first of all, look at the beauty there instead of looking at the problem. Start with the energy of that and think, wait a minute, what are all the things I love about this horse what are all the things that he can do right aside from the [00:54:00] spine and then just start talking to the body because this takes, of course, there's much more that you can do with all of your physio work and all of the stuff that people do with horses that you can do. But from the T Touch point of view, start with gratitude and just start moving on all areas, find areas where that horse doesn't particularly feel comfortable about being t touched, or touched at all, just running your hand to start with. And then go to the places where the horse is, okay I feel not safe, and start moving very gently the tissue. In one and a quarter circles, because T Touch is not massage, it's a message to the cells, just what you said, Ronnie, just getting that wake up call to the cells. That's a start. And I have to tell you, Ronnie, you may not realize this now, but we have a lot of practitioners in the UK who have been doing this [00:55:00] work with horses for many, many years. No, I know, I know. 

Oh, good I didn't know if we did. Three days ago, we just had our first meeting for a new guild. And it was so incredible that we had people who've been doing this work, like for 30 years, teaching and working with horses and now many new ones too, so that's a really nice thing. 

Ronnie: Were talking earlier, it just reminded me because I haven't looked at this book for a few years and some of the practices, the techniques that you was describing, I thought, Oh, I remember that. I was going to say something as you were talking, something else came through. 

So when we're doing anything slowly when we're connecting, it's almost like you're going into that in state, you're just relaxing, you're slowing everything down, what happens is your consciousness has a chance to communicate with your body without the mind's influence. So it's like the consciousness and your body are communicating because sometimes I say to people, [00:56:00] you don't always have to know what to do because you don't need to, because you're intelligent, your consciousness knows what to do.

If your intention is, I just want to connect to that animal, I want to feel them. Then that intention will start a process and their energy, their consciousness will also recognize that signal too. It goes a bit deeper than that, but what flowed through earlier. 

I must get a list of all the books that you've mentioned so I think what I'll do is put them at the end of this interview and also when it goes into the podcast because I'm sure lots of people will be interested. 

Linda: Yeah, I was talking about the Spontaneous Healing of Belief by Greg Brayden, that's one of the books I was talking about. These are all on Amazon, and this little book, Uncommon Prayer, I love this little book by Bruce Miller, and it's about quantum science. It's science and spirituality. I am so blessed now, I have 22 [00:57:00] books in 16 languages. Unbelievable and it's not because I tried to get them out there. It's just I do one and then my publisher would say, Linda, you know, we've got to do this one. The one that you had there, that's about evaluating your horse's personality. That was looking at the shape of the face. But my goodness, I have so many books since then and you know, it's great to intuit because you can do so much with just intention to the horse, feel yourself and hold that there's something about having techniques besides the spirituality of that beautiful prayer with your horse that gives you another possibility to help others who don't have that potential for that feeling from the heart.

Ronnie: It's also nice to do. I'm quite a touchy person. I'm a tactile person and I like to touch sometimes I'll show clients that you don't [00:58:00] always need to touch and they can see things, but the touching you know, you'd get our mate just hovering above a horse's spine for 20 minutes, but to touch the horse can also connect deeply to you. And that's such a lovely feeling. 

When you was talking about, don't see, don't see the obstacles and don't see things That are always presented but look beyond that. What can you see in your horse? What do you like about your horse? What can you see the horse doing clearly. That's really important because you can focus on the negative but it takes practice because it's something that we do habitually. We always look, even if we don't think we're looking, we're looking to see, are they walking okay? We're always looking for something and then we go, Oh, Oh, what was that? What was that? It's like a video that plays 24 seven. And if you don't catch it, then you get involved with that video. And then you see it getting bigger and [00:59:00] bigger and changing.

Shall we share a little story? It's not a story, it's quite serious, but about your friend, is that okay, Linda? The one you was worried about, yeah, do you mind sharing that? 

Linda: No, I don't. Actually for the last week, I've just been beside myself because I was looking at the fire, the picture of the map of the fires in, hawaii that I had been in that area that was burned and I thought that's where my friend Lili lived and I was certain that she was gone and then I suddenly woke up this morning. I thought that is crazy. We create a reality. Sorry, but I'm going to hold it she's totally all right. And stop focusing on this. And so I called her and it's true, I was putting myself in this state and she's totally all right. She wasn't in that area and just what you said, Ronnie, it's really hard not to. I could so easily have said from the very beginning, wait a minute, she could have been away on the mainland even if her house was burned down. [01:00:00] That learning to look for the gratitude and look for the positive in something, that takes practice, especially in the times that we're in now and looking for those places of gratitude, because gratitude overrides fear, and that's been something that's been known since I first read about her in the 14th century. Thank you. When that was the norm thing, looking at your horse and say, wait a minute, yes, it may have this, but how big is that in a picture of things?

Let's see, what can I do about that? How can I make a positive difference? Just by focusing on the parts that don't have the pain that work so.

Ronnie: One of the things it's similar to yourself, you talked about the smile if you smile. This is a little while ago, I haven't done it for a while. I need to start doing it again. And I thought, right as soon as I get in my car, I'm just going to smile. It doesn't matter how I'm feeling. I'm going to smile. So as soon as I started my car the smile [01:01:00] came on and the little voice was going, what are you smiling about? You've got nothing to smile about today and then it becomes a muscle memory. So as soon as I sat in the car, I didn't have to think I need to smile, it was like, smile. And That really changed a lot of things, but it's a simple exercise, but it starts with having to maybe do it it's a muscle. Then it became where it was doing it automatically and then I would find my cheeks would hurt by the end of the day because I was smiling most of the day. It was like, what are you smiling at? Does it matter? Yes, it does work, it does work, but it is like a muscle. 

Linda: Love what Claire morris wrote, she just wrote that she's reading the book Body Keeps the Score, which talks about the importance of the effects of serotonin and that feel good hormone yes, absolutely, beautiful, thank you.

Ronnie: So, Linda would you like to come back and chat again because I think we should do a part two because of what happens [01:02:00] tonight, would you mind coming back another time when it suits you so we can have an in-depth chat about intuition as well? 

Linda: Yeah. I don't know what I would say about it, but I'm sure a lot more will come. Definitely. The thing is that time we'll get it up on Facebook. 

Ronnie: Yes, we will, is there anything that you'd like to say before we finish off?

Linda: Well, I would like to invite people before they go to their horses or just sitting here right now listening, do this heart hug one quarter deep breath, and either pause at the nine or go back lightly to the six and try the other direction. Because some of you, there are people who prefer the other direction, it's whatever, which direction you prefer. It's not one is better than the other. It's for you and just keep counting your blessings. Every day before my husband and I go to sleep, we share [01:03:00] three blessings of the day and send that out to the universe and just know that every thought we have has an effect on that quantum field. So we all do matter and I want to say, you know, one of the biggest parts of this work is about forgiveness because we all have those times when we do things that we wish we hadn't or we have thoughts that we don't like them. Just catch yourself, thank yourself, forgive yourself for having and thank yourself that you caught it and that you can shift that from the place of gratitude and know that you can do all of this work from a distance. It all works as well but as Ronnie says, it's lovely to actually have it on the body, but you can affect that horse from a distance, just where you're sitting at home. You can start working on that and holding that possibility for that horse with that spine issue. Wait a minute, find a way to come into the body and celebrate this [01:04:00] phenomenal divine intelligence in every cell. 

Ronnie: Do you know a spider's web? They're telling me to describe it like this, I'm sure there'll be people that understand this anyway. If you can imagine a spider's web, if you don't like spiders, I'm sorry, the spider's spider's web is beautiful and you can see it glistening in the moonlight or the sunlight and each web... It's so thin, it's so fragile and delicate but yet so strong and powerful that when you touch one part of that spider's web the vibration of that can be felt right down to the core which is your core so when you're imagining or you're thinking about a person or an animal and you can imagine cuddling somebody hugging somebody That vibration is going down that spider's web and getting to where it needs to go and it's like that. It's very, very [01:05:00] quick. 

So for people that can't imagine that, if you think of it that way, or a way that's more More comfortable for you, but a beautiful spider's web that's glimmering in the moonlight and you can just see it. You touch one part and it goes straight to the core and we're all capable of doing that, everybody is. Even if you think it's your imagination, it doesn't matter because what you get back, you'll feel, you'll feel that nice feel. Even if it's the tiniest bit and that's what you're working with. So I thought I'd just share that. 

Linda: It's so beautiful. Thank you so much. 

Ronnie: You are welcome. Thank you. I am so, so blessed, so humbled, so grateful that you have agreed to chat with Melinda and I definitely would like to have you back again so that everybody that wanted to see you could see you live and ask you questions. Thank you for the people that's joined on the YouTube channel.[01:06:00] Linda if you'd like to say bye. 

Linda: Thank you. Bye everybody. And I want to say also hi and goodbye to Anka, who's here, and to the Russian, because I've spent so many amazing hours and days and weeks in the former Soviet Union in 1980 4 until 87 I think was the last time I was there 10 times working as a citizen diplomat sharing with Russians And we've had our work taught there. We actually have a Website in Russian.

Ronnie: Thank you, Linda. Thank you. Bless her that was lovely, it was so lovely. She's got such a big heart I could have chatted for ages, but we were late and yeah, I think we can carry on this conversation at the time. Once again, I do apologize for the people that didn't get to see this live. I tried my best. It's really difficult because I don't want to not pay attention to [01:07:00] Linda. I will pass any information on any of the books that we talked about. I'll get a list and then we can share that with you. 

Have a lovely evening and, yeah, give yourself a hug, be kind to yourself and remember it's a muscle and the first thing you have to do is just be open to start using it. 

Intuition, working with horses, whatever it is. 

Take care. Thank you for being here.

Bye for now.