 Okay, I think we're live. I'm trying some new software out and it didn't work last time but I think it's working. And anyway, welcome everybody. So today I would like to talk a little bit about the idea of when we have a relationship with anybody, you're not going to get out of the relationship what you don't put into it. And I have a new book coming out called Stretch to Connect and I'm super excited about it because I think it's going to help a lot of people in this department with their horses because it's the same with the horse. If you don't put in and give your horse good things, you're not going to get that back. And if we can come into a relationship with the horse and if we can come in in a way where we're really giving the horse a lot of quality and a lot of good feel and a lot of good experiences, it really creates a relationship that can flourish and have success in just about anything you do. But it comes from us. And therefore it means that when we go to our horse, we need to try to be as centered and as relaxed and as calm as possible if we want our horse to be centered and relaxed and calm. If our horse is dull and unresponsive, well then we need to come into the relationship and be instead of dull and unresponsive ourselves, we need to be sensitive and aware and trying to bring the aspects of lightness into the relationship. And in this new book what I am doing is I'm incorporating written stretching exercises. So these are exercises that you do while you're riding your horse to help you bring these components into the relationship. It's going to make an amazing difference in your ability to get feel. And this is something that I think is really hard. Nowadays we're constantly on our phone and we've got a lot of distractions, there's a lot of things going on. And we come to the barn and we've got all of these kind of distractions and emotions and the high energy level or maybe even a totally drained energy level because all we've been doing is go, go, go. And we bring that stuff with us to the barn. I think the thing that's amazing about horses is they really reflect back to us and almost biggie size our emotions. So whatever emotions we tend to have our horse kind of reflects that back to us and we can see it in our horse. Now, yeah, it's not always, but I've been doing this for a long time, like 25 years. So I've seen these things and I, when I started out as a kid, I had lesson horses in a lesson program. And the horses that we had in our lesson program, they weren't like ideal, perfect quality lesson horses at the time. They, I had to make do with what I had. But what I found out is there were certain horse rider combinations that were absolutely amazing and they worked really well together because that person brought certain aspects into the relationship that the horse needed. I could take that same horse, let's say we had a horse, her name was Chiquita, we used her as a lesson horse actually until she was like 36. She was amazing and she was sound and healthy until that point, but it was because of how we worked with her. But you could put some people on her at 35, 36 years old. I mean over 30, you'd put some people on her and obviously there were little kids at this point because she was older and, but she would totally light up and be super energetic and kind of go, go, go, go, go. And that's just her personality type was in general that way. She was a real kind of go getter sort. And then you could also take her and you could put really like mellow, relaxed people on and she would go into like more of a plotting mode where she was really slow. She would change almost like those mood bracelets or mood rings that you see kids wear, right? That she would change with whoever was on her. She would match their energy level. And our horses, they do that. And I, you know, that was just one example, but I've got a bazillion examples I could use of the same sort of scenario where the horse, the school horse that was, you know, with five, six other people would change depending on the rider. The same goes for your horse, but you may not see it because maybe you're the only person that rides your horse, but I bet there's days where you come to the barn and you're a little more emotional, a little more excited and you see that in your horse or there's days where you're more nervous and tense and you might see your horse become a little more nervous and tense. So these are things that if we can tune into them and be aware of them, then what we can start doing is we can start saying, hey, if I want my horse to be relaxed, then I need to relax myself. Another thing I talk about in the book is our bodies show the horse how to carry theirs. So if in our bodies we're crouched and slouched and heavy and, you know, this sort of thing, well, the horse is going to look kind of saggy and, and, you know, maybe throwing one shoulder down versus the other if, if the rider is that way. So not only is it an emotional state, but it can also be a physical state. And in this book, I, my hope is to set it up so that it is, it's, it's both we're addressing the emotions and we're tuning you into that, but we're also addressing the physical pieces of, of your ride. And there is a mind-body connection. It's not fake. It's something that's real. And I think there is even like some app or something where you wear something on your chest and I could be wrong. I think it's a necklace, I believe, but if it, if it senses that you're slouching, then it makes a noise or it does something. I don't know. And it tells you to sit up again. And this was like a year ago that I was looking at reviews of this and people were saying, yeah, I couldn't believe the difference in my emotional state and how much better I felt. And I, I just felt great when I wore this. And it was because they were getting friendly little reminders to sit up. Well, guess what? Just by being like that, they found that their emotional state completely changed. And then when your emotional state changes, it changes the outcome of your day, right? It changes the outcome of your life if you are, if you are constantly positive and optimistic and that sort of thing. It completely changes our relationship with our horse. And I would like, or I'd like us a little challenge out for you guys. I would like you to see if in the next few sessions with your horse, you can be conscious and aware of your emotional state and how it's reflecting back to you from your horse. Once you're aware, once you can make observations, these are so important. Once you can do these things, then you're going to see a profound impact in your ability to make changes. If you're not aware, then you're never going to really see any connections, any correlations between what's occurring and what the outcome is. And you're not going to be able to make changes. Or even if you do make a change, you may not even know what caused your horse to be better or you to feel better or the scenario to be different because you weren't aware. So you didn't really know. It was just like a coincidence. Who knows? It just happened. And that's not how it works. It's, there's, there's these relationships. And if we can start being aware and making observations, you're going to start to see these relationships and therefore it's going to allow you to make big changes. So anyway, I hope this streamed. I don't know. I might just be talking to my computer. But, but anyway, thanks for joining me live. If you joined in live and I suppose until next time, happy riding. Now we're going to see if I can shut this off because I've got like three screens on my computer screen right now and I don't know which button to press.