Spiritual Development Through Equine Therapy with Gina Yarrish

In this Episode

• [00:26]Stephan introduces today’s guests, Gina Yarrish, founder and CEO of Yarcort, an experiential learning center that helps small businesses and solo entrepreneurs overcome self-sabotage and fears of selling.
• [03:24]Gina talks about the beginnings of her relationship with horses and her interest in psychotherapy.
• [08:59]Gina and Stephan deep dive into the belief system affecting our life.
• [11:11]Stephan and Gina give examples of their vibration experience, awakening, getting memos, being receptive, and then taking powerful subsequent actions.
• [18:40]Gina shares receiving signs before his heart catheterization and further talks about conscious awareness.
• [23:21]Stephan asks Gina about the helpful techniques that one can get in the arena of working with horses.
• [27:38]Gina emphasizes building relationships and how understanding the different horse analogies help people understand human realities, rights, and personalities.
• [33:18]Stephan wants to know about the process of working with horses for starters who wish to take this path.
• [36:20]Gina talks about people who have PTSD and Autism who received therapeutic modalities from horses.
• [41:01]Stephan asks Gina about other animals having huge therapeutic benefits and breakthroughs.
• [47:35]Gina and Stephan talk about their experience with past life regression therapy, helping them cut the chords and live a better life.
• [52:37]Gina looks back and remembers having different trials and tribulations, but also she receives many blessings.
• [59:31]Stephan wants to know more from Gina about muscle testing that connects with the higher self.
• [67:04]Visit Yarcort’s website to work with Gina Yarrish and experience horse-assisted learning for growth and success in life.

Jump to Links and Resources

Gina, it’s so great to have you on the show.

Thank you, Stephen. It’s great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Let’s first of all talk about how you got started with your relationship with horses because we’re going to talk about equine therapy, equine learning or equine-assisted learning, or horse-assisted learning. We’re going to talk all about horses, but you’ve got a great origin story, I’m sure, so let’s hear it and see where horses came into your life and in what powerful ways.

I was 35 when I got involved with horses. I didn’t grow up with them. I grew up in a city just outside of New York, a small town called Clifton, New Jersey. I was in the real estate business. It was a business that the family that had adopted me. I have learned. I was passionate about it at the time. 

By the time I was 35 years old, I was having a heart catheterization.

Unfortunately, there were a lot of traits or beliefs that I had acquired from the people that had raised me on how to do business, how to live life, and what I should be doing. By the time I was 35 years old, I was having a heart catheterization. 

It was definitely something where I had to take a look back at life and say, even though I was very successful, we had started a family foundation of real estate. I had four kids, I was married, I was self-employed, life was definitely on a major roller coaster. That heart catheterization, I look at like this big memo from the big guy upstairs that said, “Let me make things clear for you. This is not the way that you’re supposed to be doing it. “

Instead of leading my life every day the way I was, I decided to start listening to other things around me. One of the things was that my kids, we had had a 160-acre farm up in Northeast Pennsylvania, and we were thinking of retiring at some point. The kids had said, “Why can’t we move there now?” We had come here often and they rode quads and they hunted. We had a big 35-foot travel trailer at the time. We thought, well, how can we make this work? 

My husband, as a veteran, was eligible for retirement at 42, and so we decided to retire and he would be a stay-at-home mom and I would commute. Now I have this 160-acre farm and it’s like, well, now I can have horses. Who can teach me? I went out and I found an instructor who taught me natural horsemanship, and Stephan, it didn’t take long. 

When I had my heart catheterization, it was interesting because the doctors always say, there’s good news and there’s bad news, right? The good news was, there was nothing wrong with me and it’s like, how is that possible? I felt like I had 10,000 pounds of bricks on my chest. He said, “Well, the bad news is that it’s all in your head.” 

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Now you have to think about a really strong, confident businesswoman that was just very dominant, bold, and sassy. I guess you could call it like the jersey attitude, I don’t know, but that was me. Had I not had as much anesthesia when he was telling me this, I probably would have gotten off the table and decked him because I really didn’t understand what that meant. 

What he was trying to tell me was that my thinking patterns and how I allowed myself to think, look at life, and what I believed about life was what was causing what was happening to me. You and I know, most often people treat the shoulders down and not the head up or they’re treating the head up and not the shoulders down. 

When I started studying Natural Horsemanship, I never knew a horse had a belly button. But even though the external part of my energy was very calm, the internal part of my energy was like the fastest-moving roller coaster. Every time I tried to play with the horse, he fed off of my energy and was constantly on his rear legs. 

After about six months of working with him, we started to build a relationship, there was harmony together, and we were moving harmoniously throughout the arena. That one epiphany was, I wasn’t thinking anymore, that I thought I had a bigger problem because what led to the heart catheterization really was the fact that I couldn’t turn off my mind. My mind was constantly going. .

Even though the external part of my energy was very calm, the internal part of my energy was like the fastest-moving roller coaster.

You put your head down on the pillow at night, and I’m sure there are many listeners that can relate to this. You put your head down on the pillow at night, your mind gets faster, and you can’t sleep. Then you’ve got this whole insomnia thing going on, then you start taking pills, and it’s like this spiral of downward transition, which is so unhealthy. 

In playing with the horse, the first thing that he showed me was how to be present. Think about taking any addict, whether it’s sugar, cell phone, alcohol, sex, no matter what it is, any addict if you tell them to stop doing something, it’s nearly impossible. But playing with this 1200-pound animal made it so easy because I couldn’t focus on anything else because I have 1200 pounds in front of me. 

That was the first real epiphany was that, wow, I had stopped taking my medicine, I felt better. When I went for my six-month checkup after we relocated to Pennsylvania. The doctors here wanted to know why I was coming for a heart scan and I thought, what do you mean? Well, whatever they saw before, there were no signs of it after. 

At that point, I began to start studying more about what they called psychotherapy and horses. I thought this is powerful. People have to know about this, but not just in a therapeutic way for autistic children or children in itself, but more in veterans. 

We hear so much about therapy in veterans, children, and so forth, but just everyday people. A lot of people don’t want therapy. I went out and studied the therapeutic model of equine-assisted psychotherapy. Unfortunately, as an entrepreneur, again, I can feel that many people can relate to it, is that you want to be able to accomplish what you set out to accomplish. If there are roadblocks in the way, well then get out of the way, we have to do something different. 

In the therapeutic model, here I have the arena, I have the horses, I have the program, but I couldn’t operate without a counselor in the arena. So it became very challenging to do that business model. I found an organization called Equine Experiential Education. Through them, I studied and I was certified, which their model is more approaching, coaching, corporate training, team building leadership, and things like that.

That is super cool. I love that story. I love how open and vulnerable you are to share that and how it really was a gift that transformed you. A lot of times, we see things as tragic or low points in our lives, but yet they bring us to such incredible epiphanies, such incredible transformations, metamorphosis. You went from a caterpillar to a butterfly, but it took a heart catheterization for you to make that shift.

Yeah, in most cases, people change either by choice or by trauma. In most cases, it’s by trauma. It’s like we wait until something significant happens before we get that big epiphany because we can’t see it. Otherwise, we’re too busy.

Too busy with the mundanities of life that are just being on autopilot. One thing that you said about beliefs reminded me of Tony Robbins and how he would talk about the BS standing for belief systems, and that’s our biggest roadblock. If we change our beliefs, we change our life.

I think that people don’t really understand. It took me a while to really grasp what that meant. What is the belief? Maybe people are not conscious of what their beliefs are and because so often they’re living a fast-paced life, they don’t take the time even just to sit down and think about what beliefs or values they live by that are affecting them.

One of the primary beliefs that kind of runs our lives is the primary question. Again, I learned this from Tony Robbins. For some woman who might have had some traumatic experience in earlier life, she might walk into a room or a new environment with the primary question of, am I safe or how do I stay safe? 

Imagine that running your life in the background, you’re not even aware that that’s the question you’re asking yourself, but every single new scene, new scenario, you asked that of yourself, and that limits you, that changes how you interact with people, how you interact with the environments, how you would interact with animals, horses, for example. It would put you in a straitjacket. 

Changing that primary question to something around how do I reveal even more light in this situation can completely transform who you are, how you show up in life, and what you do with this life that you’ve been gifted. 

Just asking yourself other questions or telling yourself, how can I be safe or what is it that I can do to be safer? What steps can I take to be safe kind of thing. I often ask a question along the line of how much are you investing in your thoughts? Or what thoughts are you investing in? What are they costing you? And people go, oh my God. Great. 

That’s a powerful frame. It’s a reframe because thoughts, one big reframe I got about thoughts that happened in India when I was learning from oneness monks. This concept of our thoughts is not our own, and conceptually, I took that on board. We’re receivers of thoughts like a tuner, an antenna, or something. Stereo receiver, but we’re also broadcasting thoughts too. 

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If we are receiving thoughts all the time that aren’t our own, we don’t have to have the same kind of relationship with those thoughts. We can just brush them off. We don’t have to give them so much importance. We don’t have to buy into them or believe them. 

That’s great conceptually, but it took a whole other turn earlier this year when I had this big spiritual epiphany in January, this awakening, a second awakening. The first one was in India in 2012, but the one that happened this year really did reveal a lot more about this matrix essentially, that we’re living in. 

If you are, let’s say, in a dark place, you’re just not taking care of your vibrational state, how you’re feeling. You will attract thoughts into your consciousness that are not your own, that are not of the light, that are not valuable, that are not helpful, that are disempowering, and they’re not even yours. 

Some folks refer to these as intrusive thoughts. I think even a psychotherapeutic term, intrusive thoughts. But that denies the reality that they’re not even yours. That they’re being kind of injected into your consciousness because you’ve made yourself vulnerable by lowering your vibration or just unconsciously not attending to your vibration or your emotional/spiritual state. What are your thoughts about that?

Many people are unsure that there is a vibration, but we do vibrate at a certain level.

For sure, Stephan. Again, unless you’ve experienced this awakening, I think a lot of people are unsure that there is a vibration, that we do vibrate at a certain level. That’s what makes the horses so powerful. When we’re doing these interactions, you can be the smartest person in the world and you can have the best knowledge, smartness, and whatever it may be as far as your business is concerned, but the reality of it is what’s going on internally is more important. 

That energy, for instance, I’ll give you a perfect example and we have someone here that was in the financial spectrum. He was a team leader of about six other advisors. When he came into the arena and we did a particular activity with him, most people would say that he was more of a bully. He used his words to manipulate people in order to get them.

In a sense, he didn’t know any better and they were using it in a way where it would help to motivate other people. But when you bring that into the arena with a 1200-pound horse, it doesn’t work. He realizes, you’re already creating the image, right? Go ahead, make me. Now they can see the vibration of your words are manipulating people because you’re giving them that autosuggestion and putting ideas into their thoughts and their minds that then creates a vibration for them, and people are not taking control of their own thoughts or their own vibrations. 

One of the things that I’ve learned over the years of going out on the stage and speaking was, I would put myself into this sexy glass vase and I call it sexy because I feel I’m really sexy. When I put myself in this sexy glass vase, anything that would come at me would just bounce off. It would bounce off and it would go back to wherever it needed to go so that I could keep my vibration level up to what I needed to. 

The conscious awareness, especially when you’re speaking, is at the end of the day, when I did go out and speak, Stephan, I was so drained. You ask my teams, it used to take me three days to recover because people just sucked that energy out of me.

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Once you realize what’s happening, again, it goes back to that conscious awareness. People have to be first aware of where they want to go in life and create their own thoughts, beliefs, and patterns, and stop worrying about what other people think because it’s really none of their business. 

A lot of times, people watch the media and it’s a complete no, no, in our house for about eight years now. It just influences us terribly in ways that you can’t imagine and then you set your whole day up like that.

Yeah, so true. I don’t watch the news. I try to stay off of social media, for the most part, but I do have days where I get sucked in. It’s so much healthier to stay off the news websites, to not watch TV, it’s a game-changer. 

I want to also circle back to something you said earlier that ties to this whole idea of vibration, receptivity to the good vibrations, and to protecting yourself, having boundaries, like for you the vase, from the negative vibrations. .

That is you said a memo. You got a memo from above. How this ties in for me is, I just interviewed Perry Marshall several weeks ago, and by the time this episode airs, the Perry Marshall episode will have been out. Perry Marshall is known for being an expert on Google ads and on the 80/20 rule, the Pareto principle. He’s got books out on these topics, fantastic marketer, now he’s gone spiritual. 

You have to first be awakened and conscious of how to live a mindful life.

That’s something I didn’t expect. I didn’t really know him very well to know that that’s been a part of his life for many years, but this book that is just out is called Memos from the Head Office. It is all about receiving these memos, being receptive to getting these memos, and then taking powerful next actions on those memos. 

I’m reading the book now, finally. I hadn’t read it before interviewing him, but we had a fantastic conversation. It’s really moving stories that he shared, not just from him, his own personal experience, but from some of the people he interviewed for the book.

I’d like to explore this a little further with you about the memo that you received when you ended up having to get the heart catheterization that you received was a wake-up call, but it was a wake-up call that wasn’t just because of the law of cause and effect. It was a memo from the head office. How did you receive it as that and how did you know?

I don’t know that I consciously was aware of it when it happened. I think it’s something that came to me later on when I started to look at just life in itself and being grateful, the difference between being ungrateful and grateful. I don’t know that it necessarily makes you a bad person, just that you’re not aware. 

There were signs along the way prior to the whole catheterization, for instance, even just people saying, you seem really on edge, take a break, take a vacation. There were all these little tiny signs along the way when I think back.

It’s never about the destination you’re headed to; it’s about the journey to get there.

They say that God will send people your way when you need it. It’s just a matter of whether or not you’re willing to listen to what others are going to say. The same way I don’t believe that there are coincidences. I believe they happen intentionally and for a reason. But until you’re awake, you don’t really see them because you’re so busy living life and in a lot of times being selfish that you don’t see any of that stuff. 

Once I had the heart catheterization and I moved up to northeast Pennsylvania, I went back to Benjamin Hardy. I had to take myself out of the environment.

Benjamin is going to be on this podcast, by the way. I’m interviewing him next week.

Oh, beautiful. I love the book that Dan and he just did. I can’t think of the title of it at the moment. 

Oh. Who Not How?

No, no, no. They did that one last year.

The Gap and The Gain?

The Gap and The Gain. They just came out, yeah. Looking back at all the signs, blessings, or whichever you have that came along the way, it made me realize that the more we slow down and we look at life itself, what it is that we want to be able to create, the more messages there are for you to receive. I don’t know about you and I don’t know how you feel about it, but when you think about your higher consciousness, you can ask your higher consciousness questions. I used to question myself.

When you have these internal conversations, you wonder if the answers that you’re getting when you’re questioning things, if they’re coming from that higher purpose or they’re just you answering them.

When you ask really good questions, you get powerful answers. Those powerful answers, whether or not you want to believe it, they just come from that higher self. Again, it goes back to you have to first be awakened and conscious of how to live a conscious life. Live life on purpose. When you talk about having that life and business balance, in a sense, that all goes back to that conscious awareness.

A lot of people don’t realize that their mind is a muscle and you have the potential to control it. But you first have to take the time, like anything. Take the time and think through it. Then through practice, repetition, and so forth. One of the techniques that we’ve branded is called the Focus Forward Technique™. So everything that people do here in the arena is always about, what is it that they’re looking to create, in a sense?

I’ll give an example, Stephan. One of our clients, when we first started this business, she came in and she had about 28 years’ worth of therapy. It’s pretty sad. Someone to stay in therapy that long and not really get any help doesn’t say much. Well, when we came into the arena and we said, well, we leave all of that life behind, all of those things. Unfortunately, she had been sexually molested many times. If you leave all of that behind who you are and we just focus from this day forward on the life that you want to be able to create, what would you do?

The hardest thing that people have to do is think. I think it was Albert Einstein who said, the hardest thing that people have to do is think in the direction of what it is that they want. We don’t take the time to do it. If we first start with that thinking of what it is that we want, there’s this conscious awareness that begins to open up and evolve. The heart starts to beat at a different rhythm and the energy starts to come out of them. It’s always interesting to see how the energy flows from their feet up when they’re in the arena.

We do really crazy things to bring out that inner child and people because that’s what creates those vibrations. That’s what brings them back to that person that they need to be, that authentic self that they need to be. As long as they can think of something bigger than where they’re at, life begins to evolve in the direction that they want as long as they stay steadfast and positive. 

It doesn’t mean that we’re not human, we’re not going to hit hiccups on the way. Think of driving down the road and all of a sudden you hit the little divots on the side. Okay, you don’t just go off the road, you put yourself back on the road and you keep moving forward.

That’s great. What would be another example of a technique that is very helpful that you can get in the arena working with a horse that’s very hard to receive or achieve in other modalities?

In any type of learning, you’re going out and there’s all this intake. And then we go into the world and whatever we know to do based on what we had learned to this point, we’re going to take out. I’m trying to think of a good example.

You’re only going to do what your conscious mind knows to do. The hardest thing that I said was to help people to think in the direction of what it is that they want. When you step into the arena, regardless of whatever modality that you’re in or that you’re trying to do—learning, webinars, therapy, whatever it may be—with the horses, these on the ground interactions that we create with specific objections, it forces the human to look at themselves from the inside.

It’s not an outside action. It’s an inside thought. That’s where it begins to condition, how they think about what it is they’re doing, why they’re doing it, and what can they do differently? Because the horse doesn’t answer you back. So for instance, if you’re communicating with a horse and you just have to ask them to do something, and the horse isn’t doing it, what is it that you’re communicating? The only thing that the horse really demands is confidence. They want that alpha person. That’s it. If you don’t have that alpha person, then either you’re going to push the horse or the horse is going to push you.

What does communication look like? We bring it back to, well then, where does that happen in life? That’s where those big epiphanies happen because it forces them to look at the experience that they’ve had with the horse. Then where does that happen in life when it forces them to look inside themselves and say, hey, what’s going on out there? Well, the horse isn’t listening to me. Okay, well, why isn’t the horse listening to me? Well, I don’t know any horse techniques. It doesn’t really matter. Where is it in life that people don’t listen to you? All of a sudden they go uh.

I believe that this business was created not because I created it but because He created it for me, that God put me into this place. I’ve often looked up to the big skies, and I said, I don’t understand why me. It fills my soul to such a degree because it’s a beautiful sight to see. People have their epiphany every single session. It is the most powerful form of transformation because it’s not anything outside themselves, it’s what’s inside that forces them to change.

A lot of what we are looking for on the outside—answers, guidance, direction, purpose breakthroughs—it’s all inside of us. I didn’t really understand what that meant until this year, until I’ve had the big awakening and I could kind of see the matrix. 

The conceptual idea of this is that you’re going to go within and you’re going to quiet your mind and listen to the depths of your soul. Sounds good. In this new level of realization for me, what’s inside is actually what’s outside because I’m a receiver and if I’m receiving thoughts from the inside that are high vibration that is coming from my spiritual guides and teachers, my angelic team, and spiritual cheerleaders, they feel like it’s coming from the inside. But it’s actually coming through the inside, which is a different nuance to it that I didn’t appreciate until this year.

I think it’s never about the destination that we’re headed to. For me, it’s about the journey to get there.

Now, I’m curious to hear your thoughts around equine therapy as a modality and the horse whisperer, Monty Roberts, and resorts like Miraval that offer equine therapy. I actually went to a retreat at Miraval and worked with some horses there. It was really cool. That was my first and only experience with equine therapy or equine-assisted anything and it was powerful. I’m curious, what are your thoughts on all these?

Well, Monty Roberts is an amazing man. In fact, he’s the gentleman that really, my mentor that had taught me about horses. There’s a difference between people having a transaction versus having a relationship. If you look at Monty Roberts, it was all about building relationships. It didn’t matter whether it had a voice or not, but he took the time to understand. If you look at the these methods, they take it down to him and Pat and at that time, took it down to horsenalities. Understanding the different horsenalities help people to understand our personalities.

I’ll give you an example of that. I’ve been married 30 years, have four kids, my husband’s a 12 years veteran of the army and retired from the sheriff’s department. There’s like one way to do something, and that’s it. On the flip side of it, I was spontaneous, outgoing, just try it anyway. There’s no right way to do anything. So you talk about complete opposites. 

When I started to study horsemanship and thinking about Monty Roberts and his methods, one of the horses was what we would call a left brain introvert. It was extremely intelligent and extremely spiritual. He’s the only horse that I could ride where if I thought about the things that I wanted to do, he would do them before I asked for it. It was the most impactful relationship that I’ve ever had with a horse.

Understanding the different “horsenalities” helps people to understand their personalities.

When I was learning the natural ways to move horses and have relationships with them and develop that, him having that left-brain introverted personality, and I was a left-brain extrovert. At times, it created a lot of frustration. If I asked him to do something and he didn’t want to do it, it would get ugly. The more I played with this left-brain introverted horse, the more I realized I was having a relationship with my husband. The better I got with becoming provocative about how I approached this relationship with a horse, the more I got him to move his feet.

I’ll give you an example. If I wanted my husband to go to dinner, and I said, “Hey babe, let’s go to dinner tonight.” He’d say, “No, not happening. It’s not on my agenda. I need like three weeks’ notice.” But if I said to him, “Oh my God, you remember that steak we had like two weeks ago? I don’t know about you, but the mushrooms and the onions?” Then I’d let it go. Most often, 15–20 minutes later, he would say, “Why don’t we go to dinner tonight?” Well, one for me. That’s something that the horse taught me.

If I wanted to motivate this horse, what motivated him was food. I had to cause my idea to be his idea. If I wanted him to go forward, I’d ask him to go back. He’d go back a couple of times and go, well, why are we going back? This is dumb, I want to go forward. Then he would put gumption and energy into going forward. All of the reasons why I played with the horses, I was developing myself. In developing myself, I created a new person. Now I have healthier and better relationships, not only with my husband but with my family.

It’s also taught me a lot about boundaries. You talk about having that life business balance. When you play with horses, you have to learn boundaries, because if not, you’ve got a 1200 pound horse that has no problem pushing you around. How do you stand up to that? How do you say no to somebody without hurting somebody’s feelings? Monty Roberts’ therapy, if you look back, it all has to do with the conscious mind of allowing someone else to teach you in a way that doesn’t have to do with words.

Everything that you’re doing is forcing yourself to look inside. I’m sure there’s a lot of people even listening that if they were to look inside, it’s pretty scary. That’s where you need to go because if you want anything on the outside of your life to be different, the first place and the easiest place for you to change, as hard as it may seem, is inside. As soon as you change the inside, the outside always responds differently.

Right. This is powerful stuff. If somebody wanted to start a process of equine anything, and they’ve never ridden a horse, they’ve never had much interaction with a horse before. Maybe they even live in an urban environment and it’s not really that practical. It’s not like there are horse farms nearby. How would you suggest somebody get started in this area?

As far as being part of a program or actually learning how to do horse-assisted learning?

How to receive the benefits of working with horses, not necessarily to learn how to ride but to have a powerful experience? Do they just book a week-long or weekend-long retreat? Do they start a program where they might have to meet with someone assisting them and the horses on a weekly or bi-weekly basis? Maybe drive an hour to get there? What would you suggest to somebody who wants to start on this path?

Well, for starters, Stephan, feel free to reach out to me and have that conversation. I’m sure you’re going to share my contact information. There are people all around the world that, believe it or not, now that we’ve had this conversation, people are going to see more either assisted therapy sessions, equine-assisted learning sessions, or farms around just by having the conversation. Definitely connect with me.

Everything that you’re doing is forcing yourself to look inside.

The other thing is that there are different types of programs. For instance, in our programs, we’ve had clients from Germany, Ireland, and Australia. We’ve had people come from all over the world to either train with us on a professional level with regards to their business doing equine-assisted learning. I have one client that drives an hour and a half once a month. That one session is extremely powerful. The one thing that she looks for every month is to come back out here. It really depends on the learning process and how much we can absorb and apply and how fast that process is.

In the beginning, when we’re first becoming consciously aware of things and being awakened, it’s kind of like being fed from a fire hydrant. That pace of how much we take in and absorb at a time really depends on the individual. There are programs out there where they can do one session once a month or once a quarter. For us, we have three-day retreats that we do. We have an upcoming business retreat that we’re doing called Heart-Centered Sales.

It’s really just contacting a local farm that has horses and inquiring to see whether or not they do horse-assisted learning or psychotherapy. The only difference between the two models is one is—they’re both therapeutic either way no matter how you look at it because it’s taking you on the inside journey. On the counseling side, the therapeutic side, you’re with a counselor. They’re usually more severe cases about  veterans’ PTSD, and things like that. People that have had severe trauma.

On the flip side of it, when you’re looking at horse-assisted learning or equine-assisted learning, it’s more of a coaching modality. There are objective lessons that people are looking to learn. For us, we work with those small businesses. Entrepreneurs that really have some struggles around fears of selling, being rejected, have those internal conversations that talk themselves out of things, what we want to do is be able to build that communication, build that confidence so that they can go out and really conquer what they’re looking to do. The fastest way that we’ve seen doing it is to horses because every single session they have is 100% positive change.

That’s really cool. Let’s talk about some of the more extreme scenarios with people who have PTSD, have autism, or some other real life interfering issue to deal with.

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It’s not my specialty, so I can’t say a lot about it. We have had people that have mild cases of PTSD, ADHD, or ADD. What I’ve seen in using the focus forward technique is that in therapy, a lot of times they’re always taking them back into the past. There’s this pattern of continuing to go back in the past that doesn’t help them to get out of it. So for us, it’s like, yes, that happened, acknowledge it, but now what is it that we’re going to do to move forward? 

In conditioning the mind to think from a future result then building the sessions behind that helps support it, we see them have great success. On a severe level working with a therapist and using the horses, I hear really, really great things, but it’s just not my specialty. So I can’t really talk too much about that.

I’m curious. What would be an example of something that you had heard was a huge breakthrough for somebody, let’s say, with autism? I wouldn’t have connected the dots between autism, therapeutic modalities, and horses. But now that you mentioned autism as one of those things that can be addressed through working with horses, that makes total sense to me. I’m just curious, is there a particular example, resource, or anecdote that comes to mind in relation to autism?

When we talk about autism, there was a great farm that I did my internship with years ago and they work with autistic children. One of the things that I know that’s very impactful with using horses and autistic children is the bilateral movement of the body stimulates the part of the brain that’s not functioning. They’ve seen a tremendous amount of results with autistic children and the use of horses. Therapeutic riding is usually where autistic children would go. So it’s specific to a riding program.

Experience creates emotion, and emotion creates vibration.

The modality is much different. Equine-assisted psychotherapy, you can do both. You can do riding, as well as on the ground activities with a counselor. Equine-assisted coaching and the models that we’ve used specifically on the ground, there’s no riding involved, there’s no experience necessary. It’s just interaction with the horses on the ground and we create different metaphors.

That’s cool.

It’s not too funny. Every activity that we repeat, because we have certain ones that we can conditionally keep using for different things, and every time we have people coming in to do this, the horses show up different all the time because they show up based on the energy that’s coming into the room. The epiphanies that they have are just amazing what the horses can show them. It’s just breathtaking sometimes.

Granted, we have people that fall to their knees and end up crying not because we want them to, but just something magical happens and there’s no explanation for it. It’s like that memo from above. For other people, I’ve gotten calls two and three years later saying that damn horse, and all of a sudden, there’s a light bulb that went off. But the reason why they remember it is because of the exponential experience that they have. It creates an emotion and the emotion creates a vibration. So it’s always interesting, every time anyone’s in the arena, to watch and see the beauty that just happens.

I would guess that you can build these kinds of relationships, the kind of rapport, and breakthroughs not just with horses, but with other animals. One particular animal comes to mind when I say this and that is an elephant named Tara, an Indian elephant I met in India, in Jaipur. 

We got to ride on her, we got to paint on her, wash her, and feed her sugar cane and all that. It was really a beautiful, amazing experience. That animal, that elephant has a special place in my heart and also in my wife Orion’s heart. It’s just unexplainable. We have a soul connection now. I don’t know if that animal soul was in other lifetimes that I had. If you would have told me, I’d be talking like this a year ago, I would have thought that was crazy.

Ask the inner part of your soul or body, “Is this healthy for me? Is this what I need?” If it’s no, then put it down.

I hear one body, many souls.

I’m curious, have you heard much about other animals whether they’re Indian elephants, dogs, or whatever else having huge therapeutic benefits and having these more soulful connections that lead to big epiphanies and breakthroughs? I’m sure you must have heard of many.

I hear it very often, especially with dogs. It’s more heartwarming, especially the service dogs and things like that.

Emotional support to animals, yes.

Yeah. The big difference between, for instance, the horse versus a dog is the dog becomes your companionship in the sense that it’s emotionally there for support. You feed it, you nurture it, you groom it, and so forth. Even though you may do the same things with a horse, the horse doesn’t look for a stake or a pat on the back. That fight or flight personality that a horse has is very similar to a human.

If you think about horses out in the wild, the only thing that they’re living to protect themselves from is being eaten. When you’re working with horses, it demands that alpha in you to rise up, where the dog is going to make you feel comfortable, safe, and so forth. I don’t know about elephants, but you’ll have to share where you were because it sounds like a beautiful experience.

Yeah, it was amazing. I wanted to circle back on a couple more topics to expand on those a bit further. I’d love to hear your concept of the higher self. Before you share yours, I’ll just quickly share what I see now.

My new understanding from this year of the higher self is one of the other parts of your soul that’s connected to you, to your soul that’s in the physical body connected by what’s referred to as the silver cord. That other part of your soul is up in the heavens and sees the bigger picture, sees all your past lives, and where things are heading. Time is non-existent up there. It really is the eternal now. Past, present, and future all happening simultaneously.

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It’s like you’re sitting in the center of a train track that goes in a circle. That higher self, also known as a light avatar, that part of your soul that’s up in the heavens, can see all the perspectives of past, present, and future, and say, oh, you know what, don’t turn right today, turn left because I can see what that’s going to lead to is going to be amazing. If you turn right, if you turn the wrong way, which you’re used to turning, that’s going to lead to some pain that is unnecessary.

Let’s steer you in a different direction and if you listen to the intuitive hit and you follow it, then you get all these beautiful blessings, amazing opportunities, and stuff. So listening to that higher self is really important. Having that position of being in the center of the circle, the train track, being able to see past, present, and future—where the train is heading as well as where it went—is really, really powerful. That’s my new view of higher self as of the last eight months. I’m curious to hear more from your perspective about the higher self.

I’ve never looked at it from two different perspectives like there are being more than one soul, one that’s that higher self here guiding us and then something that’s bigger than us or up and seeing—

I wouldn’t say different souls, I would say another part of your soul. The part of your soul that’s up in the heavens connected to the part of your soul that is connected to your body.

If it doesn’t come from the Earth, then don’t eat it.

Yeah. My internal journey of being awakened started about 10 years ago, but the soul part of the journey didn’t happen until this past year in April, and really understanding. There was a great book that I read that really made me think about life itself. It was by Brian Weiss actually, I think he’s down by you in the Miami area. He wrote a book called Same Soul, Many Bodies.

Many Lives, Many Masters, I’ve actually been reading. It’s fantastic. It’s one of his books.

I haven’t read that one. I actually did a regression. I’ve never done therapy in my life. But when I came back from Montana in April and I read that book, I was like, gosh, I got to find someone that I want to see. There are questions that I have. I want to see if I can get answers.

I actually found someone just north of me that was trained by Brian Weiss. So I went and I did this regression therapy that takes you back into your past souls. I want to talk about karma, but that’s a whole nother conversation from generation to generation or from soul to soul.

Being raised in Catholicism, you don’t believe in reincarnation. It was definitely something that you had to grasp, is it true? You make your own decisions as to, is it possible? For me, it made perfect sense. 

For instance, Stephan, I was adopted, and I grew up in a very large Italian family. My adopted mother had 13 brothers and sisters. It was a very large family, but yet I always had a passion for castles. I love castles. I love historical romances. I had no idea why, but when I went back into these past lives, all of a sudden, I began to get answers. It was just absolutely amazing and it just validates for me even more that there’s something beyond us. There’s something outside of us that now I think about.

There are times when I do meditations and I’ll send my soul out or I’ll call upon somebody else’s soul. For instance, my husband’s not a big talker. Being in the army, he’s got a shutdown personality. He doesn’t like small talk kind of things.

Often what I’ll do is, in the morning when I wake up, I’ll envision my soul outside of my body, I’ll call my husband, and we dance. We get up in the morning, it’s just a beautiful feeling. Since I’ve started to create those visions, manifesting those visions, he’s become a different person.

Beautiful.

Your soul is what lives on forever. You’re just here for a short period of time. I’m on my own journey. It’s beautiful. I love it. The soul is just something outside of yourself that you can kind of like that advisor, that angel, that fairy, or whatever you may believe in. You can have those internal conversations with and get guidance from.

I did a past life regression, just one session this year. It was with Susan Lawrence, also in the Miami area. She was trained by Brian Weiss. She helped me to connect with a past life memory of a teenage boy who was dared to jump off of a bridge into the water. I ended up drowning.

In that lifetime and that experience, I developed a fear of heights, water, and swimming. So I don’t swim. I don’t know how to swim, I avoid the water. I’ll go on a boat, but I don’t want to get in the water. I feel less fearful about it now that I know about that memory. I got some validation that that was not some fantastical like synoptical firings and just purely imagination, it was real.

In that process of the past life regression with that particular memory, the cords were cut so that I could just leave that behind, have the memory, know that that occurred, but not feel fearful or tied to that emotionally. I haven’t tried to learn how to swim so far since that session, but that was my experience.

Just dip your toe in the water. For me, when I did my regression therapy, it’s interesting because one of the things that I’ve struggled with in the past or probably since the whole heart catheterization was weight. I’m not extremely heavy, but I’m heavier than I’d like to be.

I’ve been going to a wellness center up in New York State for about 18 months now. They do something called nutritional response testing, so everything is done muscle testing and then they treat the deficiency. The different organs that have deficiencies, they treat them with dried food in capsules. Everything is natural, it’s pure, it’s whatever.

It’s been a beautiful journey. But when I did the regression therapy, I said to her, I want to know why I can’t lose this weight. I do Pilates twice a week, I ride horses, I’m active. I’ve got four grandkids. I’m not a person that just sits down. We went back into the past lives and in two of my past lives, I’ve died of starvation.

Wow.

Now I’m curious. I get curious about, okay, well, I’ve been doing this health thing, I’ve been taking care of myself, and doing my exercises. Now I’ve done this regression therapy and we’ve cut the cord. I’m not getting on a scale or doing any measurements until September 1st, which will be 60 days after the regression therapy that I did, to see if something actually shifts. Nothing else ever changed.

I’m still eating the same way, still taking the same vitamins, still doing my Pilates, walking, and horses. I can tell you it has changed because there are clothes that I’ve had to put on the side because they’re too big. I got curious. I’m like, okay, fine, now I know that I’ve died of starvation, that’s the past life, let it go. Is it really going to have an impact on this body, in this time, in this future? Slowly but surely, it is. It’s kind of cool.

That is awesome. Congratulations. Sachin Patel in Genius Network, that’s how we know each other, is through Joe Polish in Genius Network. Sachin has introduced to me his metabolic reset protocol. I’m in the middle of that. I’m on day 25. I’ve already lost 12 pounds, which I didn’t really need to lose weight, I needed to remove or release the abdominal fat.

They call it vesicular.

Yeah, chokes the internal organs. That’s not good. That is going. That is on its way out and I’m down to 15% body fat now, which I think is probably the lowest I’ve been. I don’t know that I’ve ever been this low, at least since I’ve been measuring my body fat percentage. So this is very exciting and I’m not even done with the program yet. I’m on day 25 of 42 days.

And who is that?

Sachin Patel.

Out of New Jersey?

No, he’s in Canada. He was a past guest on this podcast.

I’m trying to think, you meet so many people at Genius Network. The one gentleman that I know of was out of New Jersey. Lots of wonderful people come out of Canada.

Yeah, he’s great. The Living Proof Institute, thelivingproofinstitute.com. He’s a great guy.

I have to check it out. Cool, that’s exciting. I remember when I was young and dumb, in a sense, before I hit 35. That journey, since 35 and now I’m 52, has just been more and more, as I get older, I’m more grateful. There are so many blessings when I think about all of the crazy things that I’ve done in my life, all the bad things that have happened, all bad things that have caused just different trials and tribulations. But I look back and I see there are so many blessings.

I don’t know that I’ve shared this with you, Stephan, but being adopted and an orphan, there was a big struggle with abandonment for a long time that I didn’t realize that it was ever an issue. I did a session with a lady. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Carolyn Myss. This is one of her intuitive trainers. I recently had done a study and she had brought it up. But the journey moving forward and the blessings that I received not only having an amazing adoptive family and all the good things that have come of that. But also when I turned 50, I connected with my biological family.

I met my biological mom. I have two half-sisters and a half brother. I’m blessed in so many ways in that family because when we connected, the gentleman that was helping me, an investigator out of Texas, and again coincidences, I had looked for years and couldn’t find her, and there were so many questions about whether or not back in the ‘60s if the names on the documents were even legitimate, and how do you know the birth name that’s on my adoption paper was real. So there were so many questions.

I went to an event in Philadelphia. As I was walking down the stairs onto a platform where the convention was, my sciatica kicked in and I tripped. I landed in this guy’s arms that was like 6′ 5″. He was huge. I was so embarrassed. But he happened to be a chiropractor.

He’s like, are you okay, is everything all right? I shared the story with him and told him what was going on and he’s like, well, look, tomorrow we’ll find each other, if you’re still having a problem, we’ll find some place to correct you.

I guess he would have been easy to find at 6′ 5″.

It gets better. Again, these are just little blessings that happen at the right time and the right place. I didn’t sleep all night. My sciatica, I cried, I was in so much pain. When he found me in the morning, he said, “Oh my God, you don’t look good.” I said, “I don’t feel good.” He said, “Well, on our lunch, let’s find some place to adjust you.”

Lunch came and I said, “Well, I’ve got a table in my room.” because I’m traveling so much. My room was pretty big. I’ve got a table, we could do it there. Stephan, I went up to my room, and I called my husband, and I went, you’re not going to believe what I did. I just invited a stranger to my room. What am I, crazy? There were like a million thoughts that went through my head.

I said to my husband, you have to stay on the phone with me. So he stayed on the phone with me. His name is Ben Duke. He’s out of Chicago, he’s a chiropractor. He comes to the room. He knocks on the door and when he opens up the door, he’s standing three feet from the door. He goes, “I got to be honest with you, I’ve never done this before.” I was like, “What part? Coming to the room or the chiropractic?”

That’s funny.

He came into the room, looked around, and he’s like, “Now the table’s too high, the lounge chair wasn’t right.” He looked at me and he put his hands over his head and looked down. “I hate to say this,” he goes, “But could you face down on the bed?” But we ended up having lunch afterward. He adjusted me, it was beautiful. I found out that he was orphaned and his wife had paid to have an investigator look for his family. Unfortunately, they were all incarcerated.

He shared that information with me, the investigator. I waited a couple of months after that before I reached out to him and then he had given me some things to do or try, and it didn’t work. But then he said, “Well, why don’t you try your DNA?” That’s where it all unfolded.

Unfortunately, had I not waited that time from when Ben had given me the name of the investigator two, three months later, I actually probably wouldn’t have met my biological father who had passed away during that time because it was only a couple of months later that I met my biological family. The blessings, again, being conscious and looking at all the different gifts that get put in front of you as ways of leading you in directions that you’re supposed to be taking instead of doing whatever you want, I guess. Life has just been blessed in so many ways.

Yeah, amazing. I was blessed to have a foster mother. I was in a foster home for three years of my childhood and I still am very close with my foster mother. I just spoke with her yesterday. Beautiful, beautiful soul, and what a gift to have had that experience. I didn’t think of it as a gift.

At the time, I was really resentful of my biological family putting me into a foster care environment, even though there was a good reason for it. My grandfather was caring for me and he had a heart attack. He couldn’t care for me anymore. So there are certainly valid reasons for it happening, but at the time, I didn’t take it very well.

In retrospect, hindsight is 2020. You can see all these beautiful things. You could see how your heart issue turned into something really amazing and beautiful. I can see how that situation was for my highest and best good. It’s just beautiful to be able to look back and see these divine interventions and these coincidences that were not coincidental.

I’m very blessed for Ben to have stepped into my life, and again other people and places that put me over the years to get me where I am today. Even meeting Joe Polish, I met Jim Dew. Jim Dew has been an absolute blessing for the past two and a half years that we’ve had our relationship and work together. I’ve written an Amazon bestseller, Harness Your Purpose, Power & Peace.

There are just so many things that have come of it, but can I go back and look at the bad things that have happened or the negative things that have happened? I probably could, but I’ve conditioned my mind so much that it’s almost like you’re not even there anymore. When bad things happen, you’re just, okay, well, what’s the outcome that I want from this and what’s the learning that I’m supposed to learn, and then you just keep moving forward.

Yup, focus forward. I love it. All right, one last thing I’ll just mention in passing here before we close out this episode. You mentioned muscle testing. I interviewed, a while ago now, Christian Mickelsen. We talked about muscle testing in that interview. It’s a really good interview. 

Muscle testing is real. It does work and it connects with again, that higher self, that part of you that has internal guidance and helps you to see if whatever you’re testing, whether it’s a new supplement that you’re holding in your other hand or it’s something that you’re saying is true, valid, useful, helpful, or not.

In fact, you’re down in Miami and I think he’s pretty much down in that area as well. But the gentleman that I understand that invented all of that was Dr. Ulan, Nutritional Response Testing and he’s down in that Miami area. We actually use it to test our horses as well.

You can test from human to horse and use your arm as a muscle. You can hold different parts of the organs on the horse and then have someone else push down on your arm. If it holds strong, the organ is strong, and if you’re holding on to something and the arm goes down, it’s impossible to hold it up. You know that there’s a deficiency there. Then we use different vitamins to help the horses just like we help humans.

Wow, that’s really cool. There’s another way to utilize muscle testing.

Often, when I’m trying new things, I will allow my body to be a pendulum. Are you familiar with pendulums?

Yes, I am. I’m curious to hear what you’re about to say. That sounds really cool.

I get my vitamins every month from the health center. Every week, I fill up my little pill case. But before I fill it up, I’ll hold the bottle first and ask if I still need this. If I need it, my body will tip forward. If I don’t need it, my body will tip back. So if I need it, now I put a bunch of pills in my hand. How many pills do I need today?

If I don’t need that many pills, my body will tip back and if I do, my body will tip forward. Every pill, I do it with. You can do it. Anyone can test themselves. Say, hold a banana when you think it’s really healthy, but yet it’s one of the highest sugar content pieces of fruit. If you have a problem with sugar, I guarantee you, your body’s going to be like, whoa, and come back.

It’s asking that inner part of your soul or that inner part of your body, is this healthy for me? Is this what I need? If it’s no, then I put it down. It was through muscle testing—I had suffered, when I lived in New Jersey, with sinuses. I was on prescribed sinus medicine nasal sprays, over-the-counter Tylenol, sinus infections where I’d be on Z-Pak three or four times a year and then I’d be on Augmentin for 30 days. I’m like nothing was working.

The first time I met a gentleman that did muscle testing, he said to me, I was allergic to grain. I went for years of testing and had all those little needles put in my arm. They could never find anything that I was allergic to, but yet, I had all these allergy medicines that I was on.

We cut out all the allergy medicine. I took grain out of my diet and from that point on, my body just got healthier because even though I thought I was eating healthy, say, for instance, I’d have a nice ciabatta sandwich with arugula, mozzarella, olive oil, or whatever, ciabatta bread was no good for me. I would have a waffle in the morning with peanut butter. The waffle wasn’t good for me.

Being raised Italian, you always had bread, pasta, or whatever. Even though I thought I was eating healthy, my body still wasn’t healthy because of the grain that I was putting in my system. So I detached myself from grain and then I didn’t need medicine anymore.

Wow. That reminds me that my stepmom stopped eating tomatoes and nightshade vegetables. Nightshade vegetables are problematic for her.

She cut those out of her diet and it really reduced inflammation and all these other chronic ailments that she was suffering from. That was really a great breakthrough for her.

If it doesn’t come from the earth, then don’t eat it. That’s the way I look at it.

If it comes from a box or a big factory, that’s probably not the best thing for you. I do eat some processed foods still. But since I’ve been on this metabolic reset, I have been eating only four ounces of fruit, four ounces of vegetables, and four ounces of protein. Well, actually, a little bit more of the protein because I don’t eat meat, so I need a bit more to make up for that.

I do that twice a day. It’s within an eight-hour eating window. I don’t snack and I fast for 16 hours of the day. Like I said, I’ve been doing this for 25 days now. The results are phenomenal. I got before and after photos and I’m not even through the program. It’s like, wow, I couldn’t believe it when I saw those photos.

Did you get the detox flu?

No.

A lot of times, when you’re detoxing, and you’re going on those cleanses—

You release some stuff that is not healthy and then you get some symptoms. I didn’t feel that.

Probably because of the whole India trip too.

Maybe, anyways but that India trip, the first one was in 2012. That was when I had my biggest breakthroughs in early 2013. Anyway, the last thing I want to share about muscle testing before we close out the episode is Jaye Lasko who was referred to me by Aaron Scotti. He was the executive producer of the movie Peanut Butter Falcon. Have you seen that movie?

No.

It’s a fabulous movie. It’s about a kid with down syndrome. It’s really beautiful and heartwarming. He’s a Hollywood producer. It was just such a powerful, spiritual conversation we had on this podcast. Anyway, he referred me to Jaye Lasko and she uses muscle testing on herself while she’s working with you remotely over the phone or WhatsApp. Not video, just audio call.

She’ll be able to access things like past life memories, imprints, areas of your body that have stuck energy, and things just through her own psychic abilities and muscle testing of herself while she’s talking with you. It is incredible. I’ve referred so many people to her. Everyone but one has raved about her. The one person who didn’t actually have a session with her.

We all come to what we need in the timing that is right. For that person, that’s not the right timing. Anyway, she’s amazing. That happened, thanks to Aaron Scotti and that introduction. Muscle testing, it’s real. Very cool.

It’s real. It’s so non-invasive and inexpensive.

Exactly, yup. All right. This was a fabulous, fun, and enlightening conversation. Thank you for that. If our listeners or viewers want to work with you and the horses at your facility, maybe do a team-building exercise or workshop like the heart-centered sales program, how do they get in touch? What’s your website and all that sort of stuff?

The website or the company is yarcort.com. We’re on Facebook, I’m on LinkedIn, all those different social media platforms, but feel free to reach out there. You can also send me an email at gina@yarcort.com as well. In fact, on Tuesday, we have a bank that’s bringing in its top executives. They’re having some issues with communication.

We’ve got a great day planned for them with catered breakfast, lunch, and so forth, and a bunch of horse activity. So it’ll be exciting. If you’re struggling with sales, that’s my big thing. Whether or not you’re a company that has salespeople or you’re a sales agent yourself, feel free to reach out to me. I’d love to have a conversation with you.

Awesome. Thank you, Gina. Thank you, listeners. This was something that may have been a little bit outside your comfort zone. I appreciate you being open-minded enough to listen all the way to the end. Now take some action from what you’ve learned from this conversation from Gina and put it into your life. I’m sure that you’ll get some amazing results. This is your host, Stephan Spencer, signing off.

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