From Healing from The Biological Injury of Trauma: Jamie Mustard – Into Healing S1, Ep.13:

“He [Daniel Amen] helped me look at this thing [traumatic brain injury] in relation to all the other modalities, primarily brain toxicity from drugs and alcohol. If you look at brain toxicity caused by drugs and alcohol—if you take a brain scan, even a kind of simple surface scan like Amen uses—and you were to look at brain toxicity, 90 percent of the people in our criminal justice system have self-identified as having drug and alcohol problems. They call that brain toxicity.

If you were to compare those brain scans to somebody coming back from Afghanistan who has brain damage from concussive war, traumatic brain injury—specifically abrasions and damage to the brain—those brain scans don’t always look that different.

Amen’s been scanning brains for 30 years, which is a massive data set. So there are a lot of correlated abrasions and agitations in the brain that we see reflected in behaviors. One of the primary things is that anything that’s wrong with the sympathetic nervous system is going to be agitated by a lack of brain health.”

From The Therapeutic Power of Equine Therapy: Alexa Ball – Into Healing S3, Ep.6.

From The Therapeutic Power of Equine Therapy: Alexa Ball – Into Healing S3, Ep.6.:

“Mira: The healing always happens in relationship. You almost need somebody to witness you for the healing to happen. And I find that so beautiful that it's also the same with these amazing creatures, right? People have worked their way outside of the food chain. And horses are these very sensitive creatures. How do we tap back into that sensitivity as humans?

Alexa: You have no choice. When you're with the horse, that sensitivity is how you build the partnership, that it helps you accomplish the things together that you want to accomplish. And honestly, in our lessons, sometimes we let people trial and error like, “Hey, I see that there's a lot of escalation and activation and new energy in a way that feels really dominating. Is that working?” Or is there a way to show up with, you know, firmness that is also kind and rooted in regulation? And domination can sometimes come from a place of like “I am powerful and you are powerless”. And how do we accomplish things in a dynamic that is sensitive to the fact that we actually both have power?

Mira: And honor the power that exists in both creatures.”