Your Horse Can Feel Your Heartbeat | Kansas Carradine | EAW 55
✨ "What is HeartMath doing? They're measuring your care." – Kansas Carradine
Description Kansas Carradine is a HeartMath-certified trainer, acrobatic stunt rider, and equine guided educator based in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. She spent years performing with the international touring show Cavalia — working alongside 70+ head of horses, many of them stallions — before dedicating her work to heart-based horsemanship and emotional regulation.
What makes Kansas's approach distinctive is the bridge she builds between rigorous science and lived horsemanship. HeartMath is not just a breathing technique; it is a research-backed body of work measuring the electromagnetic output of the heart, heart rate variability coherence, and the demonstrable effect of human emotional states on the beings — horse and human alike — around us. For equine-assisted practitioners, that has profound implications.
In this conversation, Rupert and Kansas explore how heart coherence can be layered into any equine-assisted modality, why horses are uniquely able to detect incoherent emotional fields, the science behind the toric field and biophoton emission, and how Kansas's own path — from a difficult childhood at a California trick-riding ranch, through Cavalia's global stages, to HeartMath certification — shaped her understanding of regulation, resilience, and the horse as healer. She and Rupert also announce a planned 2027 collaboration. If you want to support the show, you can do so at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LongRideHome
If you want to support the show, you can do so at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LongRideHome
🔍 What You'll Learn in This Episode
- How the heart functions as an electromagnetic organ — always broadcasting and receiving — and why this matters in the saddle
- Why HeartMath is not a relaxation technique but an adaptogenic one: it balances both over-activated and shutdown nervous systems
- What heart rate variability (HRV) coherence is, how it is measured, and what a 2025 peer-reviewed study in Global Advances in Integrative Medicine and Health found about its clinical outcomes for anxiety, depression, and trauma
- How a 1997 University of Kassel study suggested that heart-centered meditators can emit up to 100,000 photons of light per second — compared with 20 in average individuals
- Why horses in fight-or-flight broadcast incoherent fields, and why a calm, coherent horse feels the way it does to be near
- How the toric field — the measurable electromagnetic pulse of the heart — extends roughly arm's-length from the body, carrying a unique energetic fingerprint for each emotional state
- Why a little sympathetic arousal is necessary for engagement and learning, and how HeartMath creates the sweet spot between shutdown and hyperactivation
- How trick riding — rooted in Cossack cavalry training — functions as a martial art form requiring zonal focus under high pressure, and what Kansas learned about regulation inside that crucible
- How to use a simple heart-focus breath practice (even mid-session) to set the energetic field before working with horses or clients
- Why HeartMath's research is now extending to plants and trees as the next frontier of measuring human heart-field impact
- How Kansas's online courses approach HeartMath from the equestrian's perspective — and how to reach her for one-on-one coaching or in-person clinics
🎤 Memorable Moments from the Episode
[00:02:20] Kansas defines HeartMath as both a research institute and a practical modality — and walks listeners through a live heart-focus breathing exercise
[00:08:18] The toric field explained: the measurable electromagnetic pulse of the heart and what it broadcasts depending on your emotional state
[00:17:11] Why HeartMath is not about relaxation — the adaptogenic heart response and why shutdown clients do not need more parasympathetic
[00:21:59] Kansas describes running away to Reata Ranch at age 11 and being raised within its highly structured trick-riding world for seven years
[00:44:39] Trick riding as martial art: how Cossack acrobatic training shaped Kansas's capacity for high-pressure focus — and the cost of that
[01:20:02] Rupert reads aloud the 1997 University of Kassel biophoton study — 100,000 photons per second from heart-centered meditators
[01:48:37] Kansas explains how to get started: online courses, one-on-one coaching, and the Inner Balance biofeedback device
[01:51:40] Kansas leads a second live heart-coherence practice — breathing gratitude in and out through the heart [02:06:26] Rupert and Kansas announce their planned 2027 collaboration in the Sierra Nevadas and a short-form YouTube series
[00:08:18] The toric field explained: the measurable electromagnetic pulse of the heart and what it broadcasts depending on your emotional state
[00:17:11] Why HeartMath is not about relaxation — the adaptogenic heart response and why shutdown clients do not need more parasympathetic
[00:21:59] Kansas describes running away to Reata Ranch at age 11 and being raised within its highly structured trick-riding world for seven years
[00:44:39] Trick riding as martial art: how Cossack acrobatic training shaped Kansas's capacity for high-pressure focus — and the cost of that
[01:20:02] Rupert reads aloud the 1997 University of Kassel biophoton study — 100,000 photons per second from heart-centered meditators
[01:48:37] Kansas explains how to get started: online courses, one-on-one coaching, and the Inner Balance biofeedback device
[01:51:40] Kansas leads a second live heart-coherence practice — breathing gratitude in and out through the heart [02:06:26] Rupert and Kansas announce their planned 2027 collaboration in the Sierra Nevadas and a short-form YouTube series
📚 Contact, Projects, and Resources Mentioned
Kansas Carradine – HeartMath-Certified Trainer, Equine Guided Educator https://circuscowgirl.com kansascarradine@gmail.com
Facebook: Search Kansas Carradine
Facebook: Search Kansas Carradine
HeartMath Institute – Research, courses, and Inner Balance biofeedback device https://heartmath.org
New Trails Learning Systems – Horse Boy Method, Movement Method & Takhin Equine Integration https://ntls.co
Rupert Isaacson / Long Ride Home https://rupertisaacson.com
Patreon Support https://www.patreon.com/LongRideHome
Rupert Isaacson / Long Ride Home https://rupertisaacson.com
Patreon Support https://www.patreon.com/LongRideHome
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