Leana Tank

Summary

The Journey On Podcast: Episode with Leanna Tank Release Date: August 2, 2025

Hosts: Warwick Schiller
Guest: Leanna Tank, Occupational Therapist

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Introduction

In this compelling episode of The Journey On Podcast, host Warwick Schiller welcomes Leanna Tank, an experienced occupational therapist specializing in neuro rehabilitation and mental health. The conversation explores the profound parallels between Leanna's therapeutic work with individuals facing severe mental health challenges and Warwick's horsemanship practices. This episode delves into themes of personal growth, empathetic connection, and the universal principles that bridge human and animal interactions.

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Leanna Tank's Background and Role

Warwick begins by introducing Leanna, highlighting her extensive background in neurodevelopmental treatment, sensory integration, trauma, and working within intensive residential settings. Leanna explains her role in a mid-sized nonprofit organization that provides residential programs for adults with serious mental illnesses, developmental disabilities, and autism. Her work often involves supporting individuals considered "criminally insane," who have been found not guilty by reason of insanity and require specialized care outside traditional prison systems.

Notable Quote:

"OTs are kind of these magical beings who work with all different kinds of people in all different settings at all stages of life." — Leanna Tank [03:46]

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Parallels Between Human Therapy and Horsemanship

A significant portion of the discussion centers on the similarities between Leanna's approach to therapy and Warwick's methods with horses. Both emphasize the importance of attunement, neutral responses, and meeting the individuals (whether human or equine) where they are. Leanna shares anecdotes illustrating how mirroring behaviors and creating non-threatening interactions foster deep connections and healing.

Notable Quote:

"It's kind of doing it without expectation of the result you're going to get." — Leanna Tank [56:02]

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Understanding Psychosis and Perception of Reality

Leanna provides an insightful explanation of psychosis, describing it as an altered state of consciousness that disrupts an individual's shared perception of reality. The conversation touches on cultural perceptions of mental illness, the historical treatment of the mentally ill, and the importance of understanding the underlying causes rather than stigmatizing behaviors.

Notable Quote:

"It's an altered perception of reality... people just become very detached from reality." — Leanna Tank [23:48]

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The Importance of Attunement and Neutral Responses

Both Warwick and Leanna emphasize the critical role of attunement—being fully present and responsive without judgment—in fostering trust and effective communication. Leanna shares techniques like matching steps and energetic dialogue, which mirror Warwick's methods with horses, highlighting how these practices can de-escalate tension and build meaningful connections.

Notable Quote:

"It's about being present and attuned, not judgmental, and not trying to control anything." — Leanna Tank [65:55]

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Philosophical Insights on Connection and Reality

The dialogue extends into philosophical realms, discussing indigenous wisdom, interconnectedness, and the limitations of human perception. Both guests reflect on how expanding one's awareness and embracing a more holistic view of reality can lead to greater empathy and effective healing practices.

Notable Quote:

"There's something very universal about it... when you see things that work over multiple species and multiple places, it speaks to underlying universal truths." — Leanna Tank [104:35]

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Personal Experiences and Techniques

Leanna recounts personal stories that demonstrate the effectiveness of her therapeutic approach, such as connecting with a non-speaking autistic individual by mirroring his actions, leading to a breakthrough in communication. These narratives illustrate the practical application of attunement and empathetic engagement in complex therapeutic settings.

Notable Quote:

"I just kind of was like, oh, I'm gonna just kick the cupboard with him... and then within 30 seconds, he's turned and he looked at me." — Leanna Tank [16:54]

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The Broader Impact of Their Work

Both Warwick and Leanna discuss the ripple effect of their work, noting how changing perceptions and behaviors in one area (horse training or human therapy) can lead to broader societal shifts. They highlight the importance of personal development, compassionate leadership, and the integration of mind-body approaches in creating positive change.

Notable Quote:

"You are out there doing amazing things in the world... changing the world more than one person at a time." — Warwick Schiller [104:25]

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Conclusion

The episode concludes with reflections on the continuous journey of personal and professional growth. Warwick and Leanna affirm the significance of empathetic connection, attunement, and understanding across different domains. They encourage listeners to embrace these principles in their own lives, fostering deeper relationships and meaningful transformations.

Notable Quote:

"It's something to really hone in yourself and let people have their meltdown without trying to fix it." — Leanna Tank [67:56]

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Key Takeaways:

• Attunement and Presence: Central to both human therapy and horsemanship, fostering trust and connection.
• Understanding Behavior: Viewing challenging behaviors as forms of communication rather than problems to be fixed.
• Non-Judgmental Approach: Meeting individuals where they are without imposing judgments or preconceived notions.
• Interconnectedness: Embracing a holistic view of reality that acknowledges the interdependence of all beings.
• Personal Growth: Continual self-awareness and emotional acceptance are crucial for effective healing and connection.

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This episode of The Journey On Podcast offers a rich exploration of the intersections between occupational therapy and horsemanship, providing valuable insights for those interested in personal development, mental health, and the profound lessons that emerge from empathetic connections.

Transcript

[Warwick Schiller]

Journey on the magic lies within the trails we ride.

[Podcast Announcer]

You're listening to the Journey on podcast with Warwick Schiller. Warrick is a horseman trainer, international clinician and author who helps empower horse people from all over the world with the skills, knowledge and mindsets needed to create trusting partnerships with their horses. Warrick offers a free seven day trial to his comprehensive online video library that includes hundreds of full length training videos and several home Study [e-mail] just because.

[Warwick Schiller]

You see what is sure. G' day everyone. Welcome back to the Journey on podcast. I'm your host, Warwick Schiller and my special guest this week is a lovely lady named Leanna Tank. And so Leanna is an occupational therapist. She's been practicing since 2009 and she works primarily in what she calls neuro rehabilitation and mental health settings. So I'm going to read a little bit about her bio right here. There's a lot of big words in here, so strap yourself in. It says her background in neurodevelopmental treatment, sensory integration, trauma and the nervous system have deeply informed her current practice working in intensive residential settings with adults with severe mental illness, autism, challenging behaviors, psycho ksychosis, sorry. And complex trauma. And so Liana, I've, I've known of her and I've met her once before, but I've known of her for quite a while and she's kind of interested in working with horses in the way I work with them. But what's funny is there's a lot of parallels between the work I do with horses and the work that, that Liana does with humans. And some of these people in this intensive residential settings are actually what is termed criminally insane. So these people have been found guilty. Sorry, they've been found innocent by reason of insanity. So they've, they've committed some, some of them pretty horrific crimes and they've been found guilty of insanity. And Liana works for these people. And what's so interesting is the parallels between working with horses and working with these people. And so a big part of this conversation is about those parallels and also about Leanna's journey, about how she got to doing what she's doing. But yeah, one of the reasons I wanted to have Leanna on the podcast is because I have heard anecdotally from her that, you know, the work I do with horses and the work she does with these individuals are very closely related. So had a great conversation with Leanna. I thought it was fascinating and I hope you guys enjoy this episode. As much as I did recording it. Liana Tank, welcome to the Journey on podcast.

[Leanna Tank]

Hi. Thank you. Thanks for having me here. I'm really excited to be here.

[Warwick Schiller]

Yeah, I'm excited to have this conversation with you about what it is you do and how you got to get there. So why don't you tell the listeners what exactly it is you do?

[Leanna Tank]

Yeah, it's a little complicated, and so, yeah, it'll take me a minute to kind of go through all the different layers of it, because I, first of all, I'm an occupational therapist, which a lot of people don't know what that is. I mean, people have heard about it, but they have no idea.

[Warwick Schiller]

And then I what's an occupational therapist, Leanna?

[Leanna Tank]

So OTs are kind of these magical beings who work with all different kinds of people in all different settings at all stages of life. And the heart of it is really the person and what is important to them. It's helping people participate in the things that they need to do that they want to do. Like, an occupation is anything someone might want to do. So it's very broad, so it can look really different depending on who you're working with and what the setting is. So it could be working with someone who's had a stroke, helping them get dressed. It could be working with someone who had a brain injury, helping them play chess again, because they love chess. It's looking at the holistic person and the environment and the thing they need to do and kind of looking at it from all the different angles and saying, like, okay, what is the barrier? Is it in the environment? Is it in the activity? Is it something we can work on within the person? Or can we use the thing that they love to do to help heal some kind of disease that they're going through or system? You know, so maybe they have a brain injury and they loved golf, and we can use golf to help rehab their brain injury. So that's kind of generally what it is. So it's very, very broad. I happen to work in the mental health world. World, which is actually where ots got their start. They, as a discipline, we started in the asylums back in the early 1900s, working with people with trauma and mental illness. They found that when the people could get out and, like, do meaningful things, like gardening or making pottery or just doing functional, meaningful baking and things, they got better faster. So that is where OT started. They kind of moved away from working in those settings as the mental health field evolved. So I'm a little bit of a rarity. A lot of OTs work more in hospitals and schools with kids or older adults, rehab settings, things like that. And I have worked in those settings before, but about 10 years ago I found my way into the intensive behavioral health residential world. So I work with a mid size nonprofit that runs residential programs for adults with serious mental illness, developmental disabilities and autism. We have a large number of programs, they're all a little bit different and they work with the folks that are pretty significantly challenged. They're really on the extreme end of the spectrum of mental illness and autism and developmental disability where they need a lot of support to be safe and live outside of a secure hospital setting. So we get people from the prisons, we get people from the state psychiatric hospitals, we get people who, their families can't really take care of them safely at home anymore. So folks with things like schizophrenia, autism, bipolar, fetal alcohol syndrome, cognitive impairments, complex PTSD and developmental trauma, a lot multiple diagnoses. So like a whole lot of that, all of that going on at once with a cognitive impairment. One of the programs that I work with, probably one of the primary ones are folks coming from the criminal justice system. So they have committed crimes and been found not guilty by reason of insanity. So in that case they don't go to prison, they come to us. So, and we work with them and help get them, you know, help them progress with their mental illness. Those, that's our only secure setting that's actually locked. All of the other ones are more community based. We have a lot of staff support, we have social workers, we have nurses. Me, I, I started as the only OT there, so I kind of got to develop my role to be what I wanted it to be. And I float around and work with people, work with the teams, work with the staff. And I've been doing that for about 10 years now. Just, it's a little bit different all the time. I'll give a little, just sensitivity warning as we get into things. The folks that I work with do struggle with pretty extreme behavioral challenges. So for some people that can be, you know, triggering or hard to hear if you have people who have committed violent crimes, problematic sexual behavior, serious self injury, things like that, you know, so I'll try to be pretty mindful of how I talk about those things. But those are the kinds of things that the folks I work with really struggle with. A lot of them in and out of psychosis. So yeah, but they're, it's actually really fulfilling, meaningful, great work. I'll also say too, like, even while many of the Folks that I work with, you know, do struggle with, like, aggression or property destruction and violence and things like that, or they've been in prison. It's actually people with mental illness are much more likely to be victims of violence. You know, the folks that I work with are more on that extreme end, and it's really quite rare. So I don't want to give the impression that people with mental illness are dangerous or violent or anything like that at all. Like, that is typically really not the case. They're usually our most vulnerable folks. And there are folks who are kind of the ones that have been the most kicked around by society. You know, they're the ones that grew up in the foster care homes. They're the ones that grew up with abuse or maybe they were born with their parents, you know, abused substances while they were in the womb. So they just, you know, are from the get go, have kind of maladaptive wiring in their brains and nervous systems. But I do, I do find, and have found that the kind of polyvagal, informed, developmental, sensory, informed lens has been incredibly helpful in working with the people I work with. So I think as an ot, I kind of take first, take that person and like, what they love and what they want to do. Because sometimes the folks don't want to do anything with me. They're like, get out of here. I don't want to be here. I don't want to work with you. And then I can use what I understand about the nervous system and attunement and trauma and find that little window into what they might want to do, whether it's cooking, baking cookies or taking a walk outside or playing chess or whatever they want to do, and then use my own self with attunement. And I also really like to get people moving as much as possible or even kind of, I can see where their nervous system is at by like, how they hold themselves in their posture and then just provide that co regulation and support to help them change up those patterns that they get stuck in and, and bring them into a more cohesive, integrated state.

[Warwick Schiller]

So, you know, it's so. It's so interesting listening to that because one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the podcast, not only are you fascinating, but from what I know is a lot of the, the ways which, with which you help these people with these challenges is very similar to the way I work with a lot of horses, because a lot of times, you know, when, if a horse comes to a clinic or whatever, a lot of times, you know, I'M a bit of an outsider maybe in the horse world. So a lot of times I'm the last resort, not the first resort. And I was just thinking about, I was, I was going to ask you the question you mentioned something about, you said something about where these people are at. And I was going to say how do you find a good starting point? Because for me with the horses, finding the right starting point is, is the key because then it's all uphill from there, you know. And you just said finding out what do they want to do? What, what's, what's on your mind. And one of the, you know, one of the first things I tend to do with horses is, is basically say, so what's on your mind.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Warwick Schiller]

You know, not verbally but like I allow them to tell me what's going on and then you can figure out from there where to, where to start.

[Leanna Tank]

Yeah, that's so key. Like being able to show up without an agenda. Because the people I work with are so controlled all the time. Like they're in institutions, someone's always there telling them what to do. A lot of times the staff are kind of telling them what to do. And to have someone show up and just be like, well what do you want to do? Like what are you interested in? What do you like, let's do more of that. And a lot of times I'll get a referral that is like they don't take showers. Right. Like some, or some, the staff have a complaint about them and I kind of just have to throw that out the window and be like, well actually I'm going to show up and hear from this person what they think is going on with them. And I can think of so many examples of that. And it honestly too, like, because I've, I've worked a lot with your like attunement and, and like practicing with that. And that really teaches you how to show up and tune in in that way with someone who can speak and even someone who can't speak.

[Warwick Schiller]

Are you trying to tell me that working with your horse has helped you work with the patients you work with at work?

[Leanna Tank]

Absolutely, yeah. Oh, 100%. 100% total game changer. I'll give you like an. I can think of like five examples, but I just had one yesterday that I think is, is general enough because I do have to be careful how I talk about people, but this is pretty general. Working with a young man, non speaking autistic, this is especially helpful with that population. We have a whole branch of homes that really work with these adults, because there's not really a place for them if they have significant behavioral challenges. So he was very much in his own world, listening to music right on his ear, not listening, paying attention, not really engaged with anybody. And I was just kind of hanging out watching him, and he was, like, bouncing between closing the garbage can, like, five times, and then he would do a little spin, walk up and down the hall, and then he would kick, like, gently kick the cupboard and gently kick another cupboard. And I just kind of was like, oh, I'm gonna just kick the cupboard with him. I don't know. And I went. The next time he went to kick the cupboard, I kicked it, too. And then I went and kicked the other cupboard, and I just kind of, like, followed him and did what he did. And then within, like, 30 seconds, he's turned and he looked at me, like, right in the eye. And then he, like, took my hand, and he started jumping up and down, and he wanted me to just jump up and down with him. And so I, like, jumped up and down with him. And then from there, it was just like a game. He was like. He wanted me to go kick the cabinets with him, and, you know, and he just, like. It was just a connection with where there was no connection before. And the way in was to just join him in whatever little, you know, game he was.

[Warwick Schiller]

Do what he did. Do what he did. Yeah. You know, it's funny, I imagine the. The clients you get to work with a lot of times the horses that might come to clinics for me is by the time they get to you, they have a perception, and, you know, they've always been in trouble. They're always doing the wrong thing. And don't do that, don't do this, don't do that. And you've got to figure out how to get them to actually start to be receptive to things coming from you. You know, you're trying to help them, but first you got to get invested in something you might have to say. And I. For me, a lot of times with horses, that's. That can be not the hardest part. I don't think it's hard, but a lot of the work is undoing their perceptions of humans in this, you know, with horses, undoing their perceptions of humans so they'll let you in. And. And there's something that I. I don't do it as much probably, as people think I do, but there's something I'll do with a horse called Matching Steps, and it's just doing what they're doing with no judgment about how they're doing it. And it sounds like that's kind of what you did with this guy was you just basically, basically mirrored him and you joined in what he was doing. So what he was doing was not wrong. You weren't trying to fix anything. You weren't trying to tell him what to do. You just. And, and, and it sounded like sometimes, sometimes there'll be a horse and like they just basically block people out. Like they, they're not taking in what person's doing and they might just kind of turn their head. This is on the ground. They might just turn their head and kind of walk off. And usually the person says, stop, don't walk off. And a lot of times with those ones, I'll match steps with them. And after about 10 steps, they'll start, they'll do exactly what this guy did, they'll stop and they'll look at you and they're like, you're gonna let me do that? And that's, that's the, the way, the way in.

[Leanna Tank]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That, I mean, that has worked for me so many times in so many different situations. I think it's just always the best way in with these folks I can think of. You know, it also works very, very well with folks who are kind of in a permanent psychosis. So a lot of the folks I work with are like, maybe older, they've been in institutions almost all their life, you know, have schizophrenia. Long term psychosis is a really interesting thing. And a lot of times, like early on when people have schizophrenia, it's kind of a short term thing and they move in and out of it. But with the progression of schizophrenia, folks can kind of just become very detached from reality. And a lot of what they say can wind up being pretty nonsensical. Like examples might be, I, you know, I will work with people and they'll just be offering me a million dollars. I'm a millionaire, I own McDonald's or I am a m. Jesus. I, you know, like things like that. And they'll call me in to work with them for whatever reason. And I had another man I've been working with a very long time and just very generally pretty disconnected from reality, but also, again, just matching steps. You know, I had an experience where he was just kind of staring off into space, totally ignoring me outside, and I just looked where he was looking. And it was the clouds and they looked like it looked like it was going to rain. So I just was like, looks like rain. And he was like, yeah, looks like rain. And I was like, ooh, that's like reality. And from there, he would go take walks with me, and we could. The only reality thing he would talk to me about is, like, nature. So we would check the trees for buds, we would look for animal tracks and, like, and. And, you know, pick the flowers. And then I would add in, like, music, maybe into music and. And build from there. And, like, just the other day, we. I brought some. I found some little pine cones, and we were, like, planting trees. I'll get him, like, things to grow in his room. So, you know, you just build from there. But, like, that was my way in. And the only way I kind of figured it out was by just where are you looking? You know, like, you're kind of catatonic, staring into space. So, yeah, yeah, it's. It's very effective. And if you try to go in and be like, well, I'm here because you haven't showered in a year. Let's talk about showers. They're gonna, like, show you the door immediately. Like, they're not interested.

[Warwick Schiller]

And see, that's. That's kind of like with the horses. A lot of times people come, like, if that was the problem with the horse, like, my horse hasn't showered with a year for a year. How do I get into showers? Like, that is not the problem. That is what you. You know, it's. It's like, I love the Albert Einstein quote, trying to solve a problem at the level of the problem is the problem.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yes, yes. Yeah.

[Leanna Tank]

And it's. That's very OT too, because a lot of time, the problem or, like, the behavior they're having is just an indicator of all of these other things that might be going on. And you have to, like, learn how to be a good detective and really look at all the different dynamics and factors and figure out what. Know what's going to support the person. But otherwise, it's just like playing whack a mole with behaviors. Like, it just like, pops up and pops up and.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Warwick Schiller]

I always say, like, with horses, solving the problems, solving the problem is easy. Figuring out exactly what the problem is and what's causing it. That's the bit that takes, like, you mentioned the detective work.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Warwick Schiller]

You know, you've. On my Facebook group and you, you know, you would have seen me stand there a number of times. If someone asks a question on here, before you answer them, you need to ask at least one clarifying question. Don't assume you know what the problem is. From a, a two sentence question with a, a sentient being as complex as a horse.

[Leanna Tank]

You know, so complex.

[Warwick Schiller]

Yeah, yeah, tell me. Oh, sorry, interrupt. I was just going to say you were talking about psychosis before and I think you, you may have used the term permanent psychosis. Is that what it was? Or.

[Leanna Tank]

Yeah, I don't know if that's a.

[Warwick Schiller]

Okay, what, what is that? What does that look like? And, and maybe can you even explain to me exactly what the term psychosis actually means?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, yeah.

[Leanna Tank]

It's, you know, a psychosis is really, it's like an altered state of consciousness really. And I don't even know that it is very, very well understood from a medical perspective, honestly, because it can be caused by a lot of different things. It's really like an altered perception of reality. You know, people get, you know, there's kind of the shared perception of reality that we all have. And I think it's also very, it's kind of a cultural thing too how people perceive psychosis. I think in the US psychosis is like this very, very scary thing to have any kind of loss of control over your sense of self, your sense of reality. I've heard it described too, of even you. You lose that part of your brain that is able to question your own perception or question yourself. That kind of meta. Meta communicator. I heard it in, in a book I read recently that can, can say like, oh, am I right? Am I wrong? And you're just like, nope, this is the reality. And your brain gets this, not a shared perception of reality from other people. And it can be caused by older adults get a uti like a urinary tract infection and they can go into a psychosis. People with bipolar can move in and out of psychosis when they have a manic episode, can be part of schizophrenia. But the person really like loses touch with like who they are and, and the reality around them. They can have delusions which are thoughts that don't have a basis in reality. Like I'm Jesus, right? Or, or I am covered in. I don't have a body. I've worked with people who don't feel like they even have a body. They can have hallucinations, they can have auditory hallucinations. They hear voices. That too is very cultural. I read a study that in the US when people hear voices, they tend to be very harsh and critical. And in other countries like Africa and India, they can be perceived as very supportive and friendly. So a lot of these things are, are very informed by the culture. You know and how the culture is perceiving people who are different.

[Warwick Schiller]

Well, that's what I was going to say when, you know, I asked you what psychosis is and you said it's, it's. What exactly did you say?

[Leanna Tank]

Complicated about, about altered perception of reality.

[Warwick Schiller]

Perception of reality. So if you think about the, the way, I mean, you are quite familiar with me, if you think about the way I view horses and the way you view your clients, we both have a level of psychosis. If that's the, if that's how you quantify it, which is, which is different from the shared perception of reality. And so, I mean, and so, you know, where's the cutoff point? I remember, I remember reading something, hearing something about when, when Eckhart Tolle was on Oprah Winfrey's Super Soul Sunday and they had this, it was live YouTube event and I think 12 million people watched it. And they, and this was quite a few years ago now, but they said it could have been the world's largest spiritual gathering. And then like 12 million people all watching this one thing at the same time. But they said the things that Eckhart Tolle was saying on that YouTube special 15 years before. If he stood on a soapbox on a corner in downtown New York and was yelling that stuff out, he would have come to see you. He would have been institutionalized. And I wrote down, you said something before. I wrote this down in my notepad. Asylums in the early 1900s. Think about the brilliant people, the people who were ahead of their time who were actually locked up in asylums in the 1900s.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yes.

[Warwick Schiller]

You know what I mean?

[Leanna Tank]

Absolutely. Women, you know, women would be labeled as hysterical.

[Warwick Schiller]

Hysterical, yes.

[Leanna Tank]

And locked up anyone.

[Warwick Schiller]

Was there, what was the. There was, wasn't there some very strange treatment for hysterical women?

[Leanna Tank]

There are so many strange treatments. Ice baths, you know, they still do ect. I don't know what, I don't know which one that might have been. They had so many very, very.

[Warwick Schiller]

But think about asylums in the early 1900s. The people were probably just advanced and then. But the things they did to them in there is what created the real problems.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Leanna Tank]

I mean we can, there's definitely something to be said for that. Even today, you know, our, the west is very heavily reliant on psychotropic medications and antipsychotics and they can be extremely helpful for some people, but they can be really damaging too. And they can cause a lot of long lasting side effects that are pretty, pretty rough for folks. And they're used quite a bit even with like autistic people. So. So yeah, there's something to be said for the way we treat these people today. You know, I, I've. I've heard that, you know, in, in other countries, like in Africa, they can identify some of those folks who are showing this psychosis or signs of schizophrenia early on and they train them up to be their shamans and their healers.

[Warwick Schiller]

Right, Yeah, I was going to say the shamans are always the ones that have that sort of stuff. And I was thinking about these people in the asylums in the early 1900s in this country. They'd have been locked up in Africa. They'd have been like, oh, you're a healer. You have.

[Leanna Tank]

And they train them how to kind of use it and shape it and you know, they're not othered. They're not told that they're sick and wrong and bad and there's a place for them in society and, and they can be their, you know, wild selves and they're totally accepted and, and integrated. And yeah, it's, it's a really beautiful thing. I just learned about this country or this, this town in Belgium called Gil G E E L and they have a history that dates back to I think the 1200s of taking in the mentally ill and housing them within their communities. And it still lasts to this day. It's a whole really interesting history. There's like a legend of a woman who is like her father was trying to marry her and she ran away to this town and her father found her and beheaded her. And then she became kind of a saint because they found that that, or there was. It was told that the mentally ill would come to that place, would be healed. So people just started bringing their mentally ill to this town and the town would just take them in and they just were housed within the families and taken into the families and totally accepted within the community. And it's like a UNESCO World Heritage site for their culture of just integrating the mentally ill. And it's just a really beautiful model. I think. I wish that our culture was more accepting of people who had different perceptions of reality because the vast majority of them are not dangerous. Any danger that comes is part of that really natural. Like everybody has their sympathetic nervous system activation. Right? When they feel afraid, when they feel threatened, they're going to defend themselves and go into a fight response. The folks that I work with, just their fight response might be really easily triggered or if they're in psychosis. And that psychosis is very, very Fearful. The people that I worked with who have actually become violent had psychoses that were very focused on like the demonic and things like that evil and, and it was very, very fearful. So in their minds they're like protecting people. That is.

[Warwick Schiller]

Do you think that comes a lot from, do you think that comes a lot from their, their upbringing? Like, you know, the, the dogma that was planted in their head at an early age. And then, and then they also possibly had some mental health issues. But you combine those two and then you got that problem.

[Leanna Tank]

It could be.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Leanna Tank]

I mean, it's kind of baked into the culture, you know, to have that a kind of fear based fear of demons or evil or that, that good versus evil battle mentality is just kind of in the zeitgeist of our culture. And there's a lot, I mean, I worked with a lot of people who, that spiritual psychosis, delusions around angels and demons and things like that are a huge part of their mental illness. But then when you, you know, I went to a pretty like fundamentalist church and like people have beliefs that are like, this is not far off from what my folks, you know, who have schizophrenia are believing. They just take it, you know, to a whole nother level.

[Warwick Schiller]

So you grew up in like a fundamentalist.

[Leanna Tank]

Yeah, yeah. Pretty fundamentalist Christian home.

[Warwick Schiller]

And so tell us about, tell us about that. Because the, the interactions you are having with your clients to help them get along better in the world. Probably very far removed, I'm guessing, from the judgmental. You're bad, you did bad things, whatever upbringing you had. And that's, that's the fascinating thing about the journey on podcast. It's like people who have a different perspective from the, you know, the cultural and societal upbringing that we have. And you, if you grew up in a fundamentalist family, I imagine you had some stuff really drummed into you. So what's. Tell us about the, tell us about the progression of that, you know, the, the shedding of some of those, the, some of that conditioning that you had.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Leanna Tank]

It was a process. I mean, part of me, I think has always been very like loving nature, loving horses, kind of questioning that whole. Oh, there was a whole mindset that was very like anti environmentalist and things like that. And I always was a little.

[Warwick Schiller]

So this is like the dominion over the beasts type thing. Like there's, there's the pyramid and man's at the top and everything else is below us and. Yes, and we're in charge of everybody and everything.

[Leanna Tank]

And it's very much A system that teaches you to not trust yourself because, like, the heart is wicked and sinful and the body is wicked and sinful, and also the world is also wicked and sinful. Right. So you're very disconnected from all those things.

[Warwick Schiller]

I gotta. Ooh, ooh, my hands up. Miss, Miss, can I ask a question? How do you get. How do you get more fundamentalists if the body's sinful and wicked?

[Leanna Tank]

What do you mean?

[Warwick Schiller]

Don't you have to, like, get two of those bodies together and do that wicked stuff to make another fundamentalist? I mean, why don't they. Why aren't they.

[Leanna Tank]

Warwick?

[Warwick Schiller]

Why aren't they extinct? Sorry.

[Leanna Tank]

Only if you're married.

[Warwick Schiller]

Oh, oh, oh, okay.

[Leanna Tank]

That's the only time it's okay.

[Warwick Schiller]

Oh, okay.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, yeah.

[Leanna Tank]

So I think when I went to college, I went to a very, like, fundamentalist college. Like, we were not allowed to dance. I got in trouble for dancing at my friend's wedding. I got.

[Warwick Schiller]

This is like, the original Footloose.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yes.

[Leanna Tank]

I got turned in and put on social probation for dancing at a wedding. And.

[Warwick Schiller]

Let'S not get ahead of ourselves here. What year is this?

[Leanna Tank]

This was, like, the early 2000s. So like 2001.

[Warwick Schiller]

Really?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yes.

[Leanna Tank]

Not that long. I mean, 20 something years ago.

[Warwick Schiller]

So the. Okay. Wow.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yep, yep.

[Leanna Tank]

Lots of stories about that.

[Warwick Schiller]

Okay.

[Leanna Tank]

There's. There's actually, I just watched a documentary on Netflix called Shiny Happy People and two about kind of that whole movement. And two of the people on it I went to college with were, like, people I knew. Actually, one of them was in charge of the. The committee I had to get kicked off of for dancing.

[Warwick Schiller]

So really, I had an experience recently in Utah. I did a clinic in Utah, and the night before the clinic, I go to this. I'm staying in this tiny little town, and I go to probably the only restaurant in town, and they said, you want to sit at the table or sit at the bar? Like, I'll sit at the bar and I'll order some food over there. And there was a guy sitting at the bar, and I got in a conversation with him, and he looked like. Like a diesel mechanic or something. Like, he had workman's clothes and now, you know, greasy and dirty and whatever. And he was just sitting there having a beer, maybe after work or whatever, and we got to chatting, and this guy had, like. He could have been a podcast guest. He had some views on the world that were like, whoa, you must have lived some life to. To do that. And he just seemed like this fascinating guy who'd Lived some stuff. And at one point in time we get talking about families. And I said, oh yeah, my dad's one of 16 kids and I've got 58 first cousins or dad's side of the family. And this guy said to me, yeah, I've got 123 brothers and sisters. And I thought, yeah, now you full of crap sort of thing, you know. Anyway, we had a chat and then he decides it's time to go. He finishes his beer and he leaves. And I said to the bar, mate, I said, that guy's fascinating. I said, do you know who he is? And she goes, oh yeah, I know he is. And I said, what's his story? And he goes, well, not. She said, not far from here is a town called. I think it's called Colorado City. But it was a Mormon, so it was the flds, it was the Fundamentalist. And, and she, and she said, I want you to look up the barmaid on her little check stub thing wrote me a name of a Netflix show to watch when I got home. So I came home and watched it and it. And she said something about he was one of the Lost Boys. And I didn't know what that meant, but these guys in this, this Mormon fundamentalist community would have, you know, 10, 12 wives or whatever and all these kids. And this guy did have 120something brothers and sisters.

[Leanna Tank]

Oh my gosh.

[Warwick Schiller]

But because the older men were marrying all these younger girls, they couldn't keep younger men around because competition. So that actually they'd kick him out of the society. And he was, Turns out he was one of them. They called him the Lost Boys. And I was like, I didn't even know this stuff existed.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Warwick Schiller]

Until, until I met this, until I met this dude. And there's a whole, there was a net. The Netflix series is called Pray and Obey, something like that. I forget what it was called, but it was fascinating.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Warwick Schiller]

Yeah. So this, this sounds somewhat similar. And that's when you, when I said, what year was this? Like 2000. It sounds like 1942. Yeah. Wow.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Leanna Tank]

What.

[Warwick Schiller]

What part of the country is this in? What part of the US is this?

[Leanna Tank]

Was it while the, the college was in Indiana and I'm in Michigan? I was in. Grew up in Michigan, so.

[Warwick Schiller]

Okay.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Leanna Tank]

I guess it doesn't, it doesn't sound that wild until I tell someone else who's like, oh my goodness. Really? And yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Leanna Tank]

But even then, like, I, when I was there, I wound up studying psychology and literature and philosophy and the philosophy really got me because I think that just learning other ways of looking at the world, other perspectives, learning how to question and critique worldviews. I remember reading an article, somehow I got my hands on that question the existence of hell. And like, for me, that was like, the end. That was like, oh, okay. Like, I can't really wrap my head around a God that would create all of, like, humanity just to send most of them to hell. And so, yeah, I mean that. And I also. I did. While it sounds very sheltered, you know, it was. But it was also. I was kind of protected from, like, the frat culture. You know, it was very innocent. And I made friends that were like. The friends were like, the cool ones. Like, we would sneak out to the woods, maybe with beer, because beer was not allowed even when you were 21. But we'd go out and, like, read poetry and drink beer and stuff, you know, like, it was just. But like, we felt rebellious. And, you know, I got exposed to, like, some pretty cool ideas and kind of figured out who I was. And I think by the time I left college, I'd kind of, like, walked away from that worldview. I really tried, and I think I really took to heart, like, the part that of, like, Jesus's teachings of, like, caring for, like, the least of those, you know, and the most. The.

[Unknown Speaker]

The.

[Leanna Tank]

The poor and the ones that are really on the margins of society. And I think when I was kind of deciding where to go with my life, I was like, well, that seems like a good place to put your energy and time. Like, that seems, like, worthy. So I did, you know, take some of that away with me, those values.

[Warwick Schiller]

Yeah, I don't think that one's stressed a lot with.

[Leanna Tank]

Seems to be not forgotten about a little bit.

[Warwick Schiller]

It's funny you mentioned hell before. And I went to Catholic school. I grew up Catholic, but I. I grew up what I would call culturally Catholic. Meaning, you know, you went to mass every Sunday, and then you went to mass on Easter and midnight mass at Christmas and whatever, Ash Wednesday, all that sort of thing, but it was only for that hour during the week. You weren't. You know, being Catholic didn't really affect the rest of your life. And I think half the people. Half the people sitting in mass on a Sunday were. Were thinking, let's get this over and done with so I can go to the pub and have a beer. You know, it's. It wasn't. They weren't true believers of any.

[Leanna Tank]

Alternating you with the values.

[Warwick Schiller]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I used to. So In Catholic school, I used to sit there and they'd be talking about hell and I used to think, what about those, what about those kids that live in the jungle in Africa? They don't even have a chance. Like they don't know, they don't know about this. So they, they're going to go to hell. How's that? That really. I don't know. It was a. We're saying. Yeah, that was really a question that was on my mind. Like questions like, isn't it, it's not fair that they go to hell if they didn't have a chance, you know? Yeah. That was seven year old me pondering that sort of stuff.

[Leanna Tank]

Right. We're all the Muslims that are equally as dedicated to their faith. You know, there's millions and millions of them. Like, I don't think they should go to yoga.

[Warwick Schiller]

Yeah. The thing about, the thing about Muslims, I feel like they are very dedicated to their faith way more than at least the Catholics I knew, you know what I mean? Like they actually believe in it. We went to Morocco a few years ago and we're fortunate enough to stay with the British ambassador in the British ambassador's residence. But he used, he was the British ambassador to Egypt and they fled when the Arab Spring happened. But he was telling me that in Egypt he would go and pray in a mosque. Anybody's. Any denominator, any religions allowed to go in a mosque. And I said, what's the energy like in a mosque because you can go to church as a Catholic. And like, like I said, half of them are thinking about, want to go to the pub for a beer after this. I said when you go in a mosque and he goes, oh, the energy is off the charts because these people are connecting with their divine. You know what I mean? They're not sitting there thinking now when's this crap I ever want to go what, whatever it is, you know what I mean? So it's. Yeah, it's interesting. But that hell thing always kind of puzzled me as a, as a kid. I'm glad that you had that thought too, Dad.

[Leanna Tank]

I did.

[Unknown Speaker]

So, yeah. Yeah.

[Leanna Tank]

I mean from there I think I. Pretty quickly. I got. One of my first jobs was working in group homes with people with like developmental disabilities. And I really loved that and kind of found my way into OT from there and I don't know, it's been, it's been an evolution, I think. And I think I went from being pretty like a religious and like just kind of not worrying about it, not thinking about it, like Cool with just not knowing and being agnostic or whatever. You know, I don't know that you necessarily even have to, like, it's very American or maybe even very evangelical to be like, you have to know what you believe and have your belief system and, like, have it totally clarified and identified and ready to share with people, you know, like, and I. I'm kind of okay to be like, I don't know. Like, I've evolved to. I really do like, the. The. More not necessarily, like, indigenous way of looking at things and not necessarily one specific group, but just that idea of humanity as being, like, embedded within that, like, wider web of nature and energy and consciousness of. Consciousness of, like, everything and being more and more interconnected and authentic and coherent with all of that. Like, I like that.

[Warwick Schiller]

I think if you look at. If you look at indigenous wisdom from all over the world, it's very similar.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Warwick Schiller]

Because it's, it's rooted in, you know, it's rooted in the earth. It's not rooted in someone else's dogma sort of a thing. You know, they all have different creation stories and, And. And things like that. But the, you know, there's an interconnectedness between pretty much everything. You know, like, if you think about, like when I had Jessica White Plume on the. On the podcast, and she's talking about the other nations, there's the, you know, the Human nation. I forget what they call that. But then there's the Horse nation, but then there's the. The Standing Star, Standing Silent Nation, I think.

[Leanna Tank]

And that's the plan for the trees.

[Warwick Schiller]

You know, I mean, but, like, it's, you know, the. It's recognized as a nation. And Robin and I were in Bali last year, and the Balinese, most of, most of Indonesia is Muslim, but the Balinese are Hindu. But they're like animists, and they believe that every solid object, everything, has a spirit to it, and they interact with the world that way. And it is a. The Balinese people are absolutely amazing.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Warwick Schiller]

And just, Just the energy they have because they. And the cat, the traffic there is just chaotic. It's crazy. And when I first heard it, you know, there's lots of horns beeping. They must have ride scooters there. But the horns beeping are not. Get out of the way. They're like, oh, please be aware of me. You know, it's. It's. For us Westerners, a honking of a horn is, screw you, idiot. You know what I mean? Then the honking of the horn is, oh, please don't Bump into me. Yeah, it's a totally different thing. And it took me a few days to not have. Not. I wouldn't say it was triggering, but to not have that. Oh, shut up. To a honking horn.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Leanna Tank]

Good defensive.

[Warwick Schiller]

You know what I mean? Yeah, I had a defensive response to a honking horn, but after a few days, it's like, oh, yeah, I see you. You're okay. I'm not gonna run into you.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Leanna Tank]

They're just saying, see me here.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Leanna Tank]

That's so interesting. I did. I just. I. I met a group of Maori people from New Zealand, and they were telling me the same thing, that they have that animist perception of everything having a spirit, everything having a consciousness.

[Warwick Schiller]

And I think the Maori out of any. Sorry to interrupt. The Maoris. I was almost going to mention them when I talked about that, because the way they view things is like, wow, it's so cool.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Leanna Tank]

Actually, I distinctly remember having this feeling of, like, intense, like, relief reading. I read Raiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Cameron's book, and she talks about humans as, like, having this place in the world of, like, actually participating in that, like, cycle of making things better. She talked about, like, doing studies on sweetgrass and the. And the Native Americans harvest sweetgrass and use it for their ceremonies and finding that the. The beds of sweetgrass that were actually harvested by the tribes flourished more than the ones that were left, you know, untended to. And that's like, our place in the world to actually help it flourish. And before that, I think I had seen our place in the world more as, like, consumers, you know, that we were just like, taking and taking and destroying and like, par. Parasitic almost. And that's. That's kind of a very, like, you know, I had a lot of grief around that and just feeling like, okay, like, we do have this place, right? And, like, we can just participate in this way to. That is reciprocal to the world around us, I think was really healing for me. So. And it. I mean, it's. It's. It's something to aspire to. It's not easy to always do.

[Warwick Schiller]

Yeah, for me, that it's, you know, especially through podcast guests like, say, Jessica White Plume or Jordana Anawalt or, you know, Rupert Isaacson talking about the hunter gatherers and how they view the world sort of thing. And then like, Kelly Wendorf and then probably mostly Emily K's daughter. You know, it's. It's. It's like an in. It's like a collaborative view, you know, it's, it's like as Kelly puts it, it's a care for perspective rather than a domination over perspective. And it almost feels for me like that's what you bring to these folks that, that are your clients. And I imagine a lot of times the institutions that they've come from, that hasn't been, that hasn't been the dynamic, you know, they've kind of been treated as less than and, and problematic rather than being attuned to and understood.

[Leanna Tank]

Yeah, absolutely. I just, yeah, I just kind of had that same thought and I do. It is a lot of effort to move systems from more of a dominance control based system model to one that's more collaborative and based on communication and care and like reciprocity like that. And even though like the place that I work does like, it values working with people in that way, you still are dealing with individual staff who are bringing their own crap and kind of the way they were raised and their own ways of working with people into the workplace. And it's those like direct care staff that are with the folks like eight, 16 hours a day, five, seven days a week that makes such a difference in how they do. Because, you know, I'm one person. I can come in for like an hour once a week, once a month and have a great time with them, connect or whatever. But like, I'm only going to do so much. So really a lot of my focus is on working with the staff that work with the people and trying to support them, trying to teach them how to work with people in this way, which is really hard. It's a really hard thing to teach and give them, you know, strategies for working with people in a positive way. So that's, that's a bigger challenge for me almost than coming in and like having a lovely session with someone, you know, is like getting these staff to treat them in the same way.

[Warwick Schiller]

You know, this so much, it feels to me like it parallels so much what I do with horses and working with the horse. Like, you know, at a clinic, doing the thing with the horse is easy. Trying to, trying to get the person to. And it's not the doing, it's, it's not how they do things, but it's almost like getting them to change their perception of why they're doing things. You know, it's almost like if you, you can do the same action out of, you're trying to fix the problem, but if you do the same action with the intention of you're trying to help them, it comes, it Comes out of you differently. There's a different, there's a different energy to it. It lands differently. It's accepted differently. Do you find that?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, yeah.

[Leanna Tank]

It's kind of doing it.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Leanna Tank]

Without expectation of the result you're going to get. It's kind of being able to come to them more open minded to what's going to happen and what's going to show up and ready to respond to it, you know, rather than coming. I think as a therapist, usually my best sessions have been when I just kind of see what the person, what the person's idea is and then I'm like, oh, let's do that. You know, like, and just being ready to like see it and catch it and respond. So. But you have to be very, very present and attuned.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Warwick Schiller]

And you. I was gonna go, I was gonna go to after college, but let's go to the horsey thing because you have a horsey connection too. Have you always had horses?

[Leanna Tank]

Yeah, I mean I, I loved horses from like little, little kid. I was, you know, the only horse person in my family. Begged for horses, begged for one forever. Started riding at 8. Got a horse in high school, you know, a great quarter horse that I just did everything with and I kind, I did like equestrian team. They did have an equestrian team at that college. Did that, but didn't, you know, after. I kind of was interested a little bit in the therapeutic riding but didn't really get into it. And then right after college and after grad school, I pretty much like right away had a baby and got married and then got sucked into all that. But I got back into riding actually after my mom passed away. She, she, she died from cancer when I was like 26 and my daughter was like 2. And then I, I knew a woman who had like a therapeutic riding center and she had a horse that I could ride and I just got back into riding. So I rode for a while, leased him for a while and kind of like worked my way into more and more and more. I, I fell in love with fjord horses. I went to a training at a therapy center in Seattle and they had some fjord ponies, Norwegian fjord ponies that they were using for therapy. And they did a little like dressage demo with it and it was just so cute. It was like a really cute little mover. And I kind of was like, this would be a cool breed to just kind of do all kinds of stuff with. And so I wound up getting one who Suniva, who's just amazing. Just like just the Most incredible Buddha teacher horse ever. And I've had her for like 10 years. Super talented. Put a 5 year old on her and she'll totally take care of them. But I can get on her and do like flying changes and third level dressage and she's just amazing. But during COVID I got. And this is actually how I got into your stuff because I had a six month old fjord kind of fall into my lap. Toasty. And she was not like sunny, she was tough. She, like, from the get go would like, she knew exactly how to like the angle to take to bolt away from you to just whip the lead rope out of your hand. But first she would shoulder check you. And I would try to do the natural horsemanship or whatever where you maybe like shake a whip at them to get them to back up. And she would just come at me and she would rear and she would bite and she was like, she would not care like what I did. Yeah, she was tough. And I was just like, I don't want to get harsher and harsher and harsher with this horse. I don't want to like put a chain in her mouth and whip her harder, like, what do I do? And. And so your stuff actually wound up being super, super helpful with her. And that's when I started listening to your podcast. And I listening to those was like, this really aligns with the way I work with people because I had been working in my setting for about five years at that time.

[Warwick Schiller]

It sounds like you were primed to hear that with the horses because it wasn't. You weren't hearing it for the first time. You're just hearing it maybe for the first time in relation to horses. But you were like, yes, this is. And you think about your. Fjord didn't come out of the. Your. What was. What's her name?

[Leanna Tank]

Which one? The naughty one or the good one? Which one?

[Warwick Schiller]

The. The quote unquote naughty one. The naughty toasty, toasty, toasty didn't come out of the womb knowing those little things right there. There was some suboptimal human interactions that led to that. Quite possibly very similar to most of your clients.

[Leanna Tank]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I do think it was. It was the first time I was connecting the dots between the horse world and the way I was working in the mental health world and like some even in like my own life. Because for me, I think I had really resonated hearing you talk about feeling very in your head, you know, and just not very connected, like mind, body. And for me, I think I went about like that quite a bit too, because that was my upbringing was very much like dismissing of emotions. You know, it's very logical. Very much like, don't listen to your. You know, the heart is evil, the body's evil. Right. So I kind of realized that that was going on for me too. So I got to really start practicing that kind of emotional awareness, emotional acceptance, and lots of those somatic techniques worked really well for me. At the same time, starting to practice the attunement stuff with Toasty, I did a lot of the flowchart with her. You know, once I actually. I worked with her over the fence first. I think he told me to do that, which was helpful. And even that, like, working on boundaries with her was so. Had so many parallels with, like, the people I would work with. Like, she so sensitive to your energy, and she would come up, you know, if she would bite, bite, bite at you. If you got strong back to her, it was over. Like, she almost wanted you to do that because then she knew just what to do.

[Warwick Schiller]

Yeah, I really think those. A lot of times I talk about horses that, you know, when they're nipping, they're not trying to bite you, they're trying to go, who are you?

[Unknown Speaker]

Like, yes.

[Warwick Schiller]

Like, show me who you are.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yes.

[Warwick Schiller]

I just want to know. All I need to do is. All I want to do is know. And then we will go from there 100%.

[Leanna Tank]

And I have folks I work with who are just like that. Like, they will poke, poke, poke, and they have their little things they do to see what you're gonna do. I have one that would. One guy non speaking, who would come up and just grab your hand and pinch you. And I actually, after doing all that with Toasty and doing some of that, like, engaging the muzzle stuff to his staff, I was like, he's just seeing how you're gonna react. And I think he also just, like, wants to connect, but doesn't know how to do it. So just like, make it a game, like, hold his hand and like, he likes you to, like, tap, tap, tap, here, do that, tap, tap. And. And they started doing that, and it worked really well. You know, they just. It turned this kind of yucky interaction into a really nice connection moment.

[Warwick Schiller]

And see. But isn't that the key is the only thing that changed was the person receiving. It was their perception of what they were receiving. Is he trying to interact with me? Is he trying to hurt me?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Warwick Schiller]

You know, is he trying to inflict pain on me, or is that just his Way of interacting and how you interact back with that.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yep.

[Warwick Schiller]

And then you determine. Yeah. And then, and then you interact with him and he interacts with you. And I feel like it's this. The same with horses, but that takes, that takes a perspective change because, you know, almost our society hardwireds that into us to react to things like that and, and that they're trying to put it over you and they're trying to. Yeah, those stories that, those stories that we have about the things that horses do with this. And I imagine it's the same with the staff that you're trying to help. They have these stories in their head about what that means.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yep, yep, yep.

[Leanna Tank]

They're just trying to get attention. They're just trying to bother me and they're just being. Yeah, yeah, oh yeah. There you hear all kinds of stories that the staff tell and then they respond by yelling at them or getting more aggressive and it just, just increases that cycle of anxiety and aggression. It usually causes big explosions and meltdowns and stuff.

[Warwick Schiller]

Yeah, yeah, I see that with the horses a lot of times. So really it's just a, it's, it's a lack of connection. It's like that's their attempt to connect and instead of, it's, instead of responding to it like it's an attempt to connect, you responded to it like it's something they shouldn't be doing.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Warwick Schiller]

That's, that's what the horse is all over.

[Leanna Tank]

Yep, yep, yeah, totally, totally. That was a huge aha moment for me with her. And it was the same with her. If I could just kind of give her more of a neutral response or you know, just respond in a way that wasn't angry or mean or treating, you know, then it kind of just went away.

[Warwick Schiller]

Well, see, that's one of the reasons I suggest working with horses like that over a fence. Because you can be neutral and be safe at the same time.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Warwick Schiller]

If you're with her and she's going to body check you, you can't be neutral.

[Leanna Tank]

Right.

[Warwick Schiller]

If you want to stay safe.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Warwick Schiller]

But the non neutral interaction actually causes the problem anyway. So that's why I really like to work with those horses over a fence. So that you can be in their presence and have zero going on in your body. Like you can be completely neutral and, and no matter what they do, you can just kind of smile at them and go, is that so? That's, that's nice. You know, not in a smart sort of a way. Lay on you. That's nice. But you can get. Okay, yeah, yeah. And I feel like that's a non confrontational energy to where they're allowed to do what they want to do and. But it just, it doesn't land on you, you know, it doesn't make your energy reflect back something back to them.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Leanna Tank]

And I think that it's such an important skill to have with anyone and such a gift you can give someone to be able to be in the presence of a negative emotion and just let them have the emotion and not make it about you and not make it something you have to fix and not make it something you know, just to kind of be a witness for it. I think that can be really, really powerful too. And I've, I've been able to do that with the people I work with and you know, family or even like raising a teenager. That's a really helpful skill to have to let them have their meltdown. Right. Or like anxiety or whatever their negative experience and not have to like try to fix it or change it or personalize it or anything like that. I think that's, it's something to really, really hone in yourself.

[Warwick Schiller]

Yeah, that's a skill somehow I picked up along the way. If I was around somebody who was crying, I would have to, I would have to fix it. Because you know, as a child, if you were crying, you're supposed to stop crying, you know. And now if I'm around someone and you know, something comes up and they're crying, I can, I can just sit there and, and be completely neutral about it. So it doesn't trigger me, it doesn't make me get all jittery and also don't want to stop it. I can just. And at some point in time, I don't know when I learned this skill, but I remember one time someone crying and me sitting there just holding space for them. And then I had the thought like, this doesn't bother you anymore. And I'm like, I don't know when it happened, but yeah, it's not bothering me.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, yeah.

[Leanna Tank]

I mean I think it's. Maybe you learn that skill from the horses too. You know, it kind of, it all seems to really translate really beautifully because I found working on the attunement with Toasty and then I moved on to doing like matching steps with her and things. And she's one who just like would never stand still. Like standing still in present took so long to get to for her because she would just be moving, moving, moving. So matching steps was really helpful and just kind of working with her in that attuned way was then translating over really, really well to working with the people I was working with. You know, it just kind of puts you in this mental space where you are showing up very present, not judgmental, not trying to control anything, meshing in with where they are reflecting. You know, you're, you. You're not just like mentally listening to them. You're kind of using your whole body to show them that you see them and get them and understand them. So you can kind of show them in a non verbal way, I guess. So you kind of just become this like very safe person. And I'll let people be like, are you reading my mind? Like, how. How do you know that about me? You know, but you're just like really paying attention in a very embodied way. So it's a great practice. I want to use it to like, teach clinicians how to be better therapists. I think it's totally transferable.

[Warwick Schiller]

The term I love for that would be energetic dialogue.

[Leanna Tank]

Oh, I like that.

[Warwick Schiller]

One of the. And I got that. My favorite podcast episode I've ever listened to. Listened to was a Tim Ferriss podcast with a guy named Boyd Varti. A South African guy named Boyd Varti. Have you heard of.

[Leanna Tank]

Oh, I think I heard. I think I did listen to that. That was very good.

[Warwick Schiller]

But he was, in that episode, he was talking about lions and. And Tim Ferriss said something like, have you ever been charged by a lion? Or whatever? And he's like, oh, yeah, a lot. And he's like, how are you still alive? And Boyd Varti says something like. And it was with a lioness. I think he says, and I might, I'll. Don't go out and try this with a lioness. Okay, I might get it wrong, but this is the gist of it. But he said when you come face to face with a lioness, you are now entering in an energetic dialogue. And he said they will squat down and maybe they squat down and they're snarling at you and their tail is swishing. You have to stand still. And I think their energy kind of will come up like they, they start to act more aggressive. And as you, as they do that, you have to bring your energy up too, to basically say, I'm not scared of you, but I'm not a threat to you. And then they will charge at you, and you have to stand your ground as they charge at you. And they will charge you. And about 10ft in front of you or whatever the distance is, they will stop and Skid to a stop. If you run during that charge, you are dead. And he says, but then they will stop, and then their energy will start to slowly go down, and you have to match their energy down. You can't go down before they do. You can't go down after they do. You have to match their energy. And as their energy goes down, your energy goes down, and then they will look at you and they will walk away.

[Leanna Tank]

That is so wild.

[Warwick Schiller]

But he said you are in an energetic dialogue.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Warwick Schiller]

And that's really what it is, isn't it? It's a.

[Leanna Tank]

It is, yeah. It's kind of a way of engaging with the whole world. And I just wonder if that's kind of an original communication system, you know, that people have with the. All of nature that we're somehow, like, tapping into. It reminds me of. I listened to, like, Rupert did that podcast with Craig Foster from my octopus teacher.

[Warwick Schiller]

Wasn't that amazing?

[Leanna Tank]

So amazing. And the way that he would talk about tracking sounded to me so much like those attunement exercises and attuning with people and attuning with horses. Because he would say, like, you have to kind of put your mind inside the mind of the animal that you're tracking, you know, so you're kind of putting, you know, you're resonating and you're, You're. You're so tuned in with all of your senses and.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, yeah.

[Leanna Tank]

I just think there's something very universal about it, I think.

[Warwick Schiller]

Yeah. Listening to Craig Foster, when I haven't listened to the second one, but the first one that Rupert did with him, I was thinking, this guy views the world exactly like Emily K's daughter does. He just can't. He got to that. He got to that perception of the world. Different path. I'd love to get those two in a room together.

[Leanna Tank]

No kidding.

[Warwick Schiller]

You know what I mean? But, yeah, arrived. Arrived at that. That point from a different direction, but they. They arrived at the same point. Yeah. That. That podcast with Rupert and Craig Foster. Have you read his book Amphibious Soul?

[Leanna Tank]

I haven't. No.

[Warwick Schiller]

I should.

[Leanna Tank]

I should.

[Warwick Schiller]

It's like.

[Leanna Tank]

Really?

[Warwick Schiller]

Yes, yes. It's one of those ones, like, he'll say something that's going to stop and stare at the wall for a while. Something I was gonna go into a bit more about is the, The. The clients of yours that come from the. The criminal justice system, they have been. They found not guilty by reason of insanity. Is that what you call.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, is that what it's called?

[Warwick Schiller]

So you would call them criminally insane, is it?

[Leanna Tank]

That's a term for them.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yep. That's okay.

[Warwick Schiller]

Because what I was saying a minute ago is you were, you were talking about with your horse, working with his horse, and I was gonna, I was gonna blurt out at the time. So you're telling me that what you, what you're doing with your horse and working with the Kremlin, sane is the same thing. But I didn't want to blurt it out. Cause I wasn't sure criminally insane was a, was a, was a term used. But that's, that's fascinating, isn't it? That's. That's fascinating. And, and the people you're working with and you obviously can't talk about specifics, but the little bit I think I do know, and correct me if I'm wrong, but some of the, some of the things that. Some of the crimes they may have committed might be like. If you want to give a name to a movie character, they might be like Hannibal Lecter types.

[Leanna Tank]

A few.

[Warwick Schiller]

I don't mean, I don't necessarily mean types because I'm not even sure that guy was insane.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Warwick Schiller]

But committed crimes that, that, you know, that they'd make a movie about sort of thing.

[Leanna Tank]

Yeah, a few, you know, and it. And in those situations I've worked with a few who've done some pretty intense sounding things. Usually in those cases it's under like a state of psychosis. So like very extreme state. Very extreme. I feel like with people like, I don't know it. That's very unrealistic. The Hannibal Lecter types. Like, that's like a 1 out of 10 million. I honestly can say I don't think I've ever actually worked with someone who wants to hurt people.

[Warwick Schiller]

I didn't mean the intent. I also, I more, I more meant the type of crime rather than the like, that guy seemed like he was.

[Leanna Tank]

Personality.

[Warwick Schiller]

Yeah, that guy seemed like he was intent on doing that. I was talking more about the things they do rather than the reality.

[Leanna Tank]

It's. It's very rare, you know, So a few I. Others, you know, a lot of them, it's altercations with the police. You know, they just are out doing their thing. But they maybe got in a situation they shouldn't. Police show up and they don't have the ability to control their emotional reactions and they get violent and they get arrested. Some of them problematic sexual behaviors. Actually we have a lot of people like that. And that's, that's usually really sad. That's usually folks who grew up quite abused.

[Warwick Schiller]

That's really the reason I was going down this line of questioning, because I was going to get to. I imagine most of these people, it's like, imagine, you know who Gabor Mate is.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Warwick Schiller]

You know, and Gabor Mate talks about addicts, and he says, you know, you can have trauma without addiction, but you can't have addiction without trauma. Like.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Warwick Schiller]

And, like, say, the way I grew up, like, if there was something on the news about an addict, you know, my parents would be like, he's a bad guy. You know, he's. He's a drug addict sort of thing. Whereas my understanding these days is people who end up like that, there's a reason.

[Leanna Tank]

Oh, yeah.

[Warwick Schiller]

That they end up like that. And it's not necessarily. There's a reason and there's a. What? You know, there's a. There's a wiring that you. That you.

[Leanna Tank]

Yes.

[Warwick Schiller]

Have. That you kind of predisposed to maybe be that way, but it's not necessarily a conscious choice. And I imagine the backstory of most of the people that have been, you know, found guilty of something for reason, insanity, or even the rest of them, actually, really, there's probably a backstory like, wow.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Leanna Tank]

Oh, yeah. I mean, you read some charts that absolutely break your heart. There are folks who absolutely had no chance whatsoever in life. And even, you know, from birth, you know, having fetal alcohol syndrome, even just not having. Having childhood abuse and neglect can really, really impair the wiring of your, like, amygdala and your frontal lobe that controls your emotional regulation, judgment, and problem solving. And so a lot of the people that wind up in those extreme situations and in the locked settings have histories like that. And honestly, even in our prisons, I just read stats that like a third or a quarter of the population of our prisons are people with mental illness. So even if you have a mental illness doesn't necessarily mean you're going to.

[Unknown Speaker]

Get.

[Leanna Tank]

Labeled that way and out of the prison system. It's. Their prisons have really become our new mental hospitals. As a society, we're just not great at supporting people with mental illness. And so it's just this kind of continual cycle.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, yeah.

[Leanna Tank]

But, yeah, a lot of the times, the victims, if they're not well supported, then they wind up growing up and becoming the perpetrators, and the cycle just kind of continues.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Warwick Schiller]

Do you know who Dr. Bruce Perry is?

[Leanna Tank]

Yeah, yeah, I really loved his. The boy who was raised as a dog.

[Warwick Schiller]

Dog, yes, that one. And there's another one called what Happened to Me.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, yeah.

[Warwick Schiller]

That's really Good. But in one of those books, he said something about a study that was done and said that if a child has a perfect first three to five months of life, get everything they need, they could have all sorts of nasty stuff happen to them till the time they're 18 and get out of the house, and they can get along pretty good. But a child could have not have all those needs met in that very developmental stage at three to five months, they could not have that and then have the perfect childhood, and they still end up being in a lot of trouble. And think about, like, fetal alcohol syndrome or think about anybody that ends up in foster care. I guarantee you that first three or five months, they weren't getting what they needed.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yep.

[Warwick Schiller]

Anyway, because you were talking about developmental. Yeah, you know, developmental things and the wiring of your amygdala and.

[Leanna Tank]

And things massively important. Think about, too. There's a whole bunch of children who are adopted from, like, Russian orphanages after the fall of the Soviet Union. And a lot of them came with severe emotional disturbances because in the orphanages, they were never held. They were, like, fed and diapered, but never held. And that just caused massive, massive problems for them. So also in Bruce Perry's book, the Boy who was Raised by a dog, really interesting story of this young man, like a teenager who committed this really horrific crime. Like, no reason at all. Like, followed two young girls into an apartment, killed them, no remorse. And they were like, why did he do this thing? Digging in, Bruce dug into his family history. Nice parents, nice family, seemingly well adjusted. But he found that his mom had, like, a mild cognitive impairment, and he had an older sibling. And when the older sibling was born, they lived with family, aunts, uncles, lots of family support to kind of support this mother. And then around when this young man was born, the dad moved them to an apartment in another city where they had no family support. And the mom wound up being really overwhelmed. The dad was at work all day. The mom would take the older sibling and go run errands all day, go to the park, go to museums, leave this young man in his crib alone all day long every day. And just, you know, I guess Bruce Perry's theory was that terror and, you know, going through the, you know, babies can't really fight and they can't really flee. They just go into total collapse. And the wiring of his brain was just wired up so that there was really no human connection. And then. And I've read other books about the way that psychopaths and sociopaths and people like that their brains instead of wiring for connection, because our brains are wired to release, you know, like oxytocin and things like that when with human connection, they get wired to get oxytocin when other people are in pain. Right. Or they might just get wired in funky ways where they don't really feel connection unless they're in these really extreme situations. So I just thought that was really interesting. It doesn't excuse, you know, and it doesn't make anything better for like the harm that was caused because a lot of harm gets caused. You know, there's real victims and it's, it's not okay. But I think there's really no healing that comes from shaming and labeling people as just bad and putting them away. That doesn't fix anything in my thought and experience.

[Warwick Schiller]

And you know, that's a perspective that you've had to arrive at. You know, you, that that perspective was not drummed into you when you were younger. And so you've had to arrive at that perspective. And I, you know, I'm kind of a bit the same way.

[Leanna Tank]

2.

[Warwick Schiller]

I remember years ago, it wasn't that many years ago, but probably in the last seven or eight years there was. The whole east coast of Australia was on fire. Like Australia has a lot of fires, you know, bush, what we call bush fires, you would call them forest fires in, in the summer. But this, there was, the whole east coast of Australia was on fire. And there was one town in Australia that there was like a winding mountainous road in and people couldn't get out, so they actually evacuated into boats on the ocean. But anyway, there was a young couple who was caught looting in that town. And so, and they were stealing, they stole a television from a, you know, like an appliance store or whatever. And in the Australian news there was uproar. I was doing clinics in Australia at the time, there was uproar how terrible these people were and everything. And my first thought was, wow, can you imagine what their upbringing's been like to get them to the point where that was a good idea then? And I actually almost had to step outside my body and stand over there, look at me and like, who are you thinking like that? You know what I mean?

[Leanna Tank]

How non judgmental of you.

[Warwick Schiller]

Yeah, yeah. I was like, you know, I was thinking, wow, can you imagine the experiences they've had in life that led them to, to where, you know, they're probably addicted to something and they're not going to take the TV because they want to watch it. They're going to sell it to someone because they get some sort of an addiction and thinking about like, you know, like Gabor mate stuff. You know, there's obviously been some, you know, a lot of trauma in their life. And I don't know, it just. For me, that perspective change is, for me is like the perspective change that have kind of had with horses to where you, you don't see the behaviors. You see, you see the horse and you, the behaviors they're exhibiting. You go, okay, that's there. So what? I wonder where that comes from. Rather than they shouldn't be doing that.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, yeah.

[Leanna Tank]

You meet it with like, curiosity rather than judgment. And I think, yeah, like understanding the way that the brain and the nervous system works really lets you look at those things in an unshaming way. And I, and I think it's important too, like, for people to offer themselves that same curiosity. I think people can be really hard on themselves. And, you know, and that's been really helpful for me to just be like, giving myself a little break, you know, because I can be a little hard on myself or holding myself to a certain standard or judgmental of myself to be like, no, no, I need to like, you know, let myself be a little anxious or let myself, you know, have a hard time with something and just kind of be like, okay, you're just being a normal human and it's okay. Like, we don't have to fix it. Like, it's. I think you can get a little sucked into the whole self development, growth world where you're like always trying to be better, better, better, better. And I think at some point it can be really helpful too to be like, no, I can actually just kind of suck sometimes. And that's okay. Like, right?

[Warwick Schiller]

Yeah, you've been to a retreat here at our place?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Warwick Schiller]

And so we had a retreat earlier this year, I think, and there was a lady at this retreat and she was just amazing. Like, absolutely amazing. And everything she said about herself was kind of self deprecating. And right at the very end, like on the Sunday usually we do the ice baths and you gather up and we finish. And it was either just before or just after the ice bath. We're kind of finishing up and I was sitting there and I was thinking, I wish you knew how cool everybody that's here thinks you are. And it was over. But after that I said Robin and I talked about it. And so we actually changed the end of our end of our retreats now. And it's insane where we will have a Circle. Everybody sits kind of around in a circle. And then one person at a time gets to stand up in the middle and they look at one person and the person sits down, tells them something about them that they, they have grown to love over the weekend, something positive about them. And then they go to the next person, they rotate slowly around and everybody tells them something about them that they like about them, love about them, thinks great about them, whatever. And the first time we did it, Robin and I both stood up. And I tell you what, it's not easy.

[Leanna Tank]

No. I don't know. When I hear that, I'm like, that's cool, but that would be so hard.

[Warwick Schiller]

That's cool for everybody else, but not for you. Yes. Yeah. It's so, you know, think about how judgmental we are of ourselves and how, how that voice in our head is pretty self deprecating sort of thing. And it's hard to, it's hard to do. But I tell, when you, when you're doing it to someone else, you're like, you're the.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Warwick Schiller]

You love the bomb. I love when you do this. I love your energy. I love this. I love the way you. Whatever. But when you're receiving it, it's a bit harder to receive it. And about halfway around the circle you kind of start to chill out and maybe let the vibe in a little bit. But it's a little, it's a little squirmy to start with. But anyway, we, we love it. It's, it's, it's such a. I think it's sorely needed in the world everywhere. You know what I mean?

[Leanna Tank]

Yeah, yeah, that's a cool practice and. Yeah, I can see. I don't know why it's so hard to hear nice things about yourself. I don't know why that is, but it is, it's really hard to just like take that in. But that's, that's, that's pretty cool. I like, I really have liked Young. You know, I studied psychology in college and they didn't really teach much about Jung, but like later on, Christian college, you know, go figure.

[Warwick Schiller]

But Cal Young, there was a picture of California, there's a picture of Carl Jung on the wall and he had these two little red horns and these red, red tail with a little trident on the end of it sticking out there.

[Leanna Tank]

Yeah, right. He's in the forbidden section. But I really like his work and appreciate it and I read he has a great book on his writings on nature. Really cool. Highly recommend. But I, I read Robert Bly's little book on the human shadow. Have you read that?

[Warwick Schiller]

No. The only one of Robert Bly's I've read is. Is it Iron John?

[Leanna Tank]

Iron John. Okay.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Leanna Tank]

Quite Jungian. He was, like, studied young. Really integrated a lot of his work. And he wrote the little book on the human shadow. And he writes about people and cultures that have. How they deal with their. Those parts of themselves that they don't like, right? Like the shadow. That shadow self. And how it, you know, we grow up kind of pushing it into a bag. You have, like, all those parts that you get rejected for, and those parts that you learn are, like, not okay to express. And he said you either, like, stuff it away and it pops up in these kind of subconscious ways that you don't realize, or you project it onto other people, right? So then, you know, you're pointing out everybody else's problems. And as a culture, we really do that quite a bit, too. We talk individual. And as a culture, west, our American culture is terrible at dealing with its own shadow projected all over the place. And. Or you can eat your shadow, which is kind of learning to love it, right? Like, you identify it and you see what's good about it and how it helps you, and you really integrate it and work with it and, like, alchemize it and, like, use it. And he talked about how you can kind of tell which teachers and leaders have eaten their shadow. Like, his examples would be like. Like a Lincoln or a Churchill, right? Or like those teachers that just walk into a room and they can just kind of command the room. He said it's like the teacher has his crow with him. Like, that's the teacher that has worked with their shadow. And I just. I liked the way that he talked about it and the things he said that, you know, how to do it. Like, all these other cultures that work a lot more with the shadow, like, tuning into the senses more. You know, as an ot, I work a lot with, like, the senses, like sensory integration and. But just, like, being less in your head and more in the sensory world. And he said, like, poke holes in your routines. Drum. Spend time with indigenous tribes. Make terrifying figures out of clay. Like, those were, like, the things he said to do, to work with your shadows. I don't know. I. I think that's. What's the name of that book, a little book on the human shadow.

[Warwick Schiller]

It's just little.

[Leanna Tank]

It's just short. But it's lovely. It's a great book.

[Warwick Schiller]

Yeah, that. That shadow stuff, that's my. That's My current line of questioning with myself.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Leanna Tank]

It's important. And I think, like, yeah, when you work with folks who have mental illness, you know, like, it really helps. You need to see where those parts of yourself that could do the same thing. Right. Or be in that same space and be able to kind of tap into those so you can work with them with empathy. Because really, like, it's all this continuum of the human experience, and we're not, like, exempt from ever being in those states. A lot of them are sometimes just very, very extreme states of, like, fight and flight and freeze or just more readily triggered states. But working with the people I work with and then working with the general pop public, I see shades of it everywhere.

[Warwick Schiller]

Yeah. You know, one of the questions I've kind of had for myself and for different therapists I've worked with over the years is if I keep going down this path, unraveling myself, what if I go crazy? That's. That's. That's always been floating around there.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Leanna Tank]

Yeah, I guess. You know, I don't know. I guess when you are playing with, like, your sense of self and control. Right. And. And, like, playing with those things, I think crazy is so relative, you know, I just don't. For me, like, I don't think I've ever met anyone who I'm like, oh, they're crazy. You know, there. It's just. I think it's.

[Warwick Schiller]

I thought you were gonna say. How are you gonna say I never met anybody that I thought they're not crazy? Oh, that could be because you said there's a continuum. You know, I think, like. Like the autism spectrum. I think we're all probably somewhere along it.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Leanna Tank]

I mean, I think there's. There's. You might push yourself out of being really living in the same kind of reality as other people. But, like, even, like, if you look at, like, our political world, people are living in different realities. Right. Based on the information that they're taking in and, like, the belief systems. That's kind of part of the human condition is that we can tell ourselves enough stories that we can divorce ourselves from the actual physical reality in front of us. And that's really all mental illness is. Is kind of being disconnected from the reality in front of you to greater or lesser degrees.

[Warwick Schiller]

Well, in that case, we're all mentally.

[Leanna Tank]

Ill, I think, a little bit.

[Warwick Schiller]

Yeah. I was reading a book a while ago, and I can't remember what book it was, because I'd love to go back and read that line again, but this Guy said something about we're all, we're all blocking out some parts of reality because if we did, it'd be too much for us.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Warwick Schiller]

And I really think death is one of them. You know what I mean? Like, like think about, think about the people who have had other near death experience, like where they've actually died, been somewhere and come back, or the near death experience, like we could have died sort of a thing, like whatever it might be, they kind of bring. There's a different. There's a different reality after, you know.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Leanna Tank]

They all tell really interesting stories. They all seem kind of coherent, you know, with each other. The ones that I've heard seem like.

[Warwick Schiller]

Yeah, and I'm not. And I'm not just talking about near death experiences. Like people who've actually died, left their body, come back, that sort of thing. I'm talking about, you know, someone who's had a gun stuck in their face or whatever, that sort of near death sort of a thing. In that very moment, the veil gets lifted, like right there. Life is real and you can see it for what it is right there.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yep.

[Warwick Schiller]

And, you know, coming. You almost can't come back from that. You've had, you've had some of the veil pulled away and. And you almost can't view the world the same. And this quote in his book was kind of like that because. Yeah. But. Yeah, I think death's a big one of those.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, Yeah.

[Leanna Tank]

I think that. Yeah. The fear of death, or even just the fear of needing to control things, needing to feel a sense of control over your own life, can really keep people stuck in certain perspectives or ways of looking at the world. And then it is like they have this filter over reality where they just really can't see what's in front of them. Right. Or, or that's kind of what trauma is too. Right. Like it's not responding to the reality that's in front of you. You're responding to what happened in the past. You're reacting out of, you know, the. That traumatic event and not from what's actually going on in reality. And I think that's kind of the way the brain protects itself sometimes.

[Warwick Schiller]

Right. And then you got to figure out what actually is reality. You know, like if you really get into the whole quantum physics of it, nothing that we think is solid is actually solid.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Warwick Schiller]

And think about how much of the light spectrum we can actually see. So how much of what's going on here and do you think those people. Because think about, you Know, think about psychedelic journeys. You, you become aware of things that you don't normally see. I, I saw a graph or something the other day about the light spectrum and how much of it humans can actually see. And it's zero, zero something. And it made an analogy. It said if the light spectrum stretched from the west coast of America to the east coast of America, how much of it we can see would be the size of a pea.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Warwick Schiller]

Or something like that. So think about how much, Think about what cats look at and, you know, like, they'll be looking at something that you don't see or whatever. Like, how much more is there. And if we could actually see that, would we stay sane or would we visiting you? You know what I mean?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, yeah.

[Leanna Tank]

I mean, yeah, so many animals perceive so much more of those different spectrums and frequencies than we do, but we kind of like claim to be the arbiters of, like, what's actual, the reality in front of us. And that's, that's why I do, like, even when I'm working with the people who are seeing things or hearing things or believing things, like, I'm not going to tell them they're wrong. You know, I might say I don't see the same thing.

[Warwick Schiller]

I was going to ask you about that. So my wife's mum had some dementia for, for a number of years and then she, she got pancreatic cancer and that, that deteriorated pretty quickly and she passed away a couple of years ago. But for a while there with her dementia, when Robin would go over there, she'd correct a no, ma', am, that's not right. And after a while she, she, she read something. She said, you're not doing anybody, you're not doing them any good. Telling the wrong. Just. Yep. Just, just kind of, you know, match steps with whatever they, they're, whatever they imagine, as long as it's not a danger to them.

[Leanna Tank]

Yeah, 100.

[Warwick Schiller]

You know, it's, you know, and you.

[Leanna Tank]

Can validate like, the emotion behind what they're saying too. So even if they're, you know, maybe they're anxious because they, they want their husband, but their husband died 20 years ago. You know, you can say like, oh, I know you, you really love him and you miss him and you're really like missing him right now and, you know, and you can like, and then kind of redirected to something else. But yeah, no, that's 100% a really helpful way to work with somebody who, with dementia or with a psychosis or who's, you know, Just perceiving things differently, I think to. You don't have to correct them and fix it with psychosis. You just can't argue with it, like, there's no point. Like, they're not. That's like.

[Warwick Schiller]

Right. And imagine it would just alienate them anyway. So you're not. You're not making things. You're not being neutral, you're not making things better, you're actually making it worse.

[Leanna Tank]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Leanna Tank]

You'll get nowhere.

[Unknown Speaker]

So. Yeah. Yeah.

[Warwick Schiller]

Amazing. So it sounds like you're doing amazing things out there in the world, and I. It sounds like you're actually changing the world more than one person at a time. Because when you're trying to, you know, like, teach these staff a different way of perceiving what's going on, it's going to go out and every person they. Every client they come into contact with, it's going to help them. And I. I kind of feel like, you know, it's a little bit the same way trying to help people with their horses have a different perspective. Because once they have that different perspective and their horse is different, then I feel like those people start to kind of share that perspective in the world a bit. So I feel like you are out there doing amazing things in the world. And the other thing I thought was so great, too was the correlations between the horse stuff and.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Warwick Schiller]

What you do, and you work with some of the most marginalized people in society sort of thing. So it's.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is.

[Leanna Tank]

It is wild. I always. I think about that a lot. I'll be like, gosh, that's so much like Warwick's principle of this or that. Like.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Leanna Tank]

So it's fun to have this conversation and, you know, kind of like run those by you and see you making the connections, because.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Leanna Tank]

I've been making them for. For years now. And it's really cool to me. I think it speaks to, like, underlying universal truths. Right. Like when you see things that work over multiple species and multiple places. I think Dan Siegel from Interpersonal Neurobiology, who I have learned a lot from too, calls that, like, consilient. When there's something that kind of works across disciplines and.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Warwick Schiller]

Yeah. Well, a couple of years ago, I changed the business name of my business from Warwick Schiller Performance Horsemanship, because I wasn't really doing that stuff anymore and changed it to Attuned Horsemanship. Well, there's a horsewoman that's. A lot of people see her on social media and I forget what she Changed hers from. But she changed it to consilient.

[Leanna Tank]

Oh, interesting, interesting.

[Warwick Schiller]

And it's funny enough, both of those terms can. Well, I don't know where she found it, where she found that one, but I found attunement from Dan Siegel, so she may have found it from him too.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Leanna Tank]

There's something. It just means that.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Leanna Tank]

That whole focus on attunement and understanding and that whole way of looking at people and animals in the world is.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Leanna Tank]

On the right.

[Warwick Schiller]

Yeah. Really, if you think about it, it comes back to. You talked about indigenous wisdom and ways of doing things, and it's that looking at others not as less than. You know what I mean? Yeah. I really feel like. Yeah, I'm a big fan of indigenous wisdom and ways of knowing, and I feel like that's humanity's way out of the problems they've got right now. And I. I think for those of us lucky enough to. To have horses and be far enough down the rabbit hole to have the horses start to show us that stuff, I think that's kind of a bit of a gift.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's.

[Leanna Tank]

I am really, really grateful.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Leanna Tank]

And I'm grateful, like, for you for kind of sharing your journey with the world, because then that helps plant little seeds for people like me to be able to. You know, I mean, I think I was on this path with it. When you have other people that are really clearly showing it and talking about it, it just kind of helps you connect the dots that much faster, you know, and connect me to other people who are also doing things, you know, because I've. I've gotten connected to also awesome people I've learned from through you. And so it's just a great network of people that are looking at the world in this way. So it's cool to be part of it.

[Warwick Schiller]

And it's funny. We've kind of. We've kind of flipped lot for me. I was doing things with horses that I wasn't sure why they're working, but I knew they're working. I was just kind of doing intuitively and then reading stuff from therapist. HE TYPES Human therapist. HE TYPES explained why it was working, which. And when I understood it better, I could. I wasn't just guessing anymore, like, oh, I know what, what, what the mechanism here, so I can focus more on that. And it's almost like for you, it was the other way around. You were doing it with people already. And then you started realizing, oh, if I do the same thing with my horses, I do with the people. Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Warwick Schiller]

So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Leanna Tank]

Very much a reciprocity. I love it.

[Warwick Schiller]

Yeah. Lots of dot joining. Well, it's been great chatting with you. Thank you so much for joining me on here.

[Leanna Tank]

Thank you for having me.

[Warwick Schiller]

It's fabulous fun conversation. And for you guys at home, thanks for joining us and we'll catch you on the next episode of the Journey on Podcast.

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Thanks for being a part of the Journey on Podcast with Warwick Schiller. Warwick has over 850 full length training videos on his online video [e-mail] Be sure to follow Warwick on YouTube, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram to see his latest training advice and insights.