Teatime with Elsa - Episode 136

Chatting about: Interest without anxiety…

In this episode I talk about developing functional levels of curiosity without causing dysfunctional levels of stress. We can tell the difference between anxiety and curiosity by how easy it is to be in harmony. When horses are anxious or concerned, their self preserving instincts cause them to think about themselves and how they feel. This means they have less capacity for cooperative thinking and the feelings of others so harmony feels more difficult. When horses' stress is lower, they have more capacity for interaction and community so harmony feels easier when the horse is on the more curious end of the spectrum. In this episode we talk about what we can do to nurture confident curiosity in our horses in ways that help the horse prevent their own stress from getting too high and that feel good to the relationship.

Originally aired on: May 10th, 2022