If you'd like to support the podcast and all the work that I do then you can! Just head on over to patreon.com/comealongfortheridepodcast and sign up. From as little as a cup of coffee a month, you can help me keep this podcast going. There are many tiers that you can choose from and if everyone who listens gave only $5 per month, it would make a massive positive difference to me. There is a tier in there for a small business subscription just like the one Peter Papp took up from Peter and the Herd, this is the one where your business gets a mention each week on the podcast. Peter works with equine behaviour and trauma recovery. Equine communication. Human and horse relationship building. Peter has had communication with my mare Gypsy, who is the mare with me in the podcast picture and he was spot on about everything so I can highly recommend his work personally. Click here to connect with Peter and the Herd. In this episode I spoke with horse trainer and behaviouralist Chris Irwin. Thanks to Nina who on Instagram told me about Chris, once I took one look at his website I asked for an interview, I knew he'd have some gems for us all. Chris grew up in a home that was not safe and as a sensitive child honed his skills in reading body language like so many of us have done from these types of upbringing. He also learned that the lack of congruence was not safe either, what people are saying and their actions were not aligned, this does not allow us to relax, we cannot rest in our nervous system, we are living in our fight flight mode. We have choices in this situation as a child, fight, leave or shut down. A lot of people I know chose to shut down. Chris was brave enough to leave and this is what eventually led him to a life with horses. When Chris started working with horses people told him that it was not like he was learning to train horses, it looked like he was remembering horses. I believe this is the skills that he honed in his early life in a not safe environment about body language. Horses spoke his language and he spoke theirs. I have always believed that as horse people we are doing the best we can with the information we have, this is why I started the podcast, to get more information out into the world so that when we know better we can do better. There are some great gems in this conversation from Chris about body language that can help us do better. To connect with Chris please follow these links website Facebook