An interview with Konstantina Rodi for Greek News and Radio FL
This very special conversation with Niki Markoyannis, owner of the "Ippolisis" estate, I am sure is the interview you need to read, as the torrent of knowledge and truth that came out of this woman will answer many questions about your life, about your health, about the way you see things.
Niki Markoyannis is a neurologist, a psychotherapist with long experience, and -now- the woman who found an ideal way to provide healing to people, through the ancient healers: horses. And since I had had questions for some time regarding a doctor of this specialty, she was the ideal person to talk to. I found her one Saturday morning on her estate in Marathon, just as the horses were coming out for their morning meal.
After so many years of work in medicine and psychotherapy, we find you here. What is the idea behind Hypolysis?
I have been observing people since I was a child. I saw that man is a creature that, while he can create everything, instead goes and gets killed - and even when he doesn't get killed, he constantly causes misery. And with this question I started practicing medicine, I also had a relationship with horses. A strange gene, because my mother's father, who had died before I was born, was in love with horses. So horses were forbidden in the house, because my grandfather suffered a severe depression when his horses were taken away in the war, so it was a taboo for us. I was born and I was constantly a slob (laughs) and my father used to say that the gene is atavistic, it has somehow been passed down through the generations. I was always with horses, I knew that horses are comforting – that is, if you are upset, the horse will come and calm you down, it will comfort you. Through psychiatry I was looking for various things, that is, how someone can understand and help people, and at some point before the internet I learned that in America they use horses therapeutically, but interventionally – that is, not with therapeutic riding which is for physical therapy – but psychotherapeutically. I tried to figure it out then, but before the internet it was impossible to reach an agreement. Then those who did the research and the first farms created a Federation, but they fought among themselves, then they tried again… In 1999 Eagala was created (Equine Assisted Growth and Development) by an amazing woman, Lynn Thomas, who organized the methodology and this spread to 50 countries.
Methodology?
Equine Assisted Psychotherapy, when someone has phobias, insomnia and can solve these problems with horses. The other part is Equine Assisted Learning, how you learn to have better concentration, attention, to quickly find alternative solutions, to communicate nonverbally. I went and trained in England and Belgium. It seemed that my abused horses had a weakness, that is, wherever I was I would hear a horse calling out to me, and it was a horse that was destined for slaughter, it had a broken leg, etc. They made fun of me in riding, when I would join a group and hear a horse calling out to me, they would tell me "what's happening to this animal now"? After the trainings I rented this estate, and at the beginning of the crisis I said I would try it. We survived for 16 years.
Tell me about horses and the work they do.
Horses do incredible work. It's mind-blowing. I've been a psychiatrist for 45 years and every time horses do a treatment, I'm left speechless. At first we didn't understand how they did it, they said it would be the smell or something else. Then they started showing them videos and the horses reacted to the video too, so it wasn't the smell. Then neurophysiology came along and told us that - as we all know - there is the conscious and the unconscious. The unconscious is like a huge computer and the conscious is a small, limited screen. The unconscious is constantly passing information, and although little information passes to the conscious, it is constantly talking. It speaks through the body, through changes in muscle tone, muscle contractions, changes in temperature... the conscious doesn't see these things, but the unconscious also detects them in others around us. We may be talking and suddenly feel strange about the other person because there has been a twitch in the eyes, for example, which we do not pay attention to, but the unconscious observes. We in the conscious are so focused on speech that we cover all of this up. Horses read this nonverbal communication, and so it is as if they are directly talking to the unconscious. The person comes for psychotherapy, we dig and dig and at some point we reach a wall. We scratch the wall to see what has happened in the unconscious, and so on. But the horse has entered directly into the wall, is chatting with the unconscious, and either extracts information from the unconscious to the conscious (so suddenly an idea comes to you and you wonder how it appeared?), or you may suddenly be moved by something. People here might tell you "I didn't understand anything" and after three days they might call you and say "I'm crying all the time". And you say "you're doing well". The horse in direct communication with the unconscious is like doing work that we would do with 10 years of psychotherapy. In education, it's also very important, the horse teaches you to concentrate and have control over the environment. We give people a space to hear what's inside them, without them speaking. Because there are things we can't bear to say, either we can't identify them, or we don't know how to express them. Can I ask you "what's wrong"? And you tell me...
… “I have something but I don’t know what”…
So the horse doesn't need speech.
Describe a session with horses to me.
We never ride horses first, we always work from the ground. To do this work, trained people and trained horses are needed. Training is about Un-Training, that is, while you have completed your training as a psychologist, you must un-train so as not to interpret. If you interpret, the horse will perceive it and you can disorient it. We must be empty, so that it does not read anything from you, it only feels safe. Emptying our head takes a long time.
Time, but also the heroism of leaving behind "ego" and knowledge.
Many have come for training and run away because they feel that it is eliminating them. "I have studied for so many years and a four-legged animal comes and eliminates me"? I do it because I see the benefit to people so I don't care if I am eliminated. If I can give people a chance to get well, then I will give that chance, I don't have to be the great one. The same un-training happens to horses, because they usually come to us with broken morale, broken legs, backs and a history, which is usually a history of obedience. So here they will spend a long time, where we leave them alone without obeying anyone. "If you want to be loved, make friends, if you want to fight, fight, we will be there to separate you". Some horses, after passing this stage, decide to work - not all. So a person comes who has some psychological issues and asks for help. If he really asks for help, because we don't always really ask, one of the horses will come and say, "I'll help you." We don't choose the horse. The horse chooses us.
You're walking among the horses and someone comes towards you, that is.
Yes. The horse that is for you will come and help you. If no horse comes, it's because you don't ask for help. Most of us haven't learned to ask for help, either because we once asked and were disappointed, or because we think asking for help is a weakness. Almost the entire first hour is spent with people saying "horses don't want me". But it has nothing to do with that, you simply haven't asked for help. Then, at some point you see them, the change happens inside them, the horse comes and they start. When we have companies, teams, in the morning we have a process with the horses. We go and tell them "my loves, today a company will come, people will come, we will do a seminar because we have to work too"... some horses go far away there. We once had a fat guy and a mare who were workaholics, they always came. Now they've died, they've grown old, and now, thank God, on the third or fourth request, one will come closer, and then the other will say "why you and not me" and that one will come too, and then after three or four come, when we go to work, the others start shouting too.
After the horse chooses you, what happens?
After he chooses you, there is the process where we tell people "sit down for a while and talk to him about yourself". From within yourself. You may say "my name is so and so, I live there, my problem is that I live in the city, etc." and the horse may respond in the manner of "your problem is your mom, for example" and the subject begins to shake. At first we give people more structured practice, such as "symbolize the horse as your problem", etc. The horse receives this symbolism as you mean it. Then another simple exercise to see, for example, if your kindness (as you mean it) helps you, if your strength helps you. Because we have usually seen that when "strength" is projected onto the horse, then it does not take a step. We think that strength helps us, but usually it is the strength of inhibition that holds us back.
We fear our power.
We are afraid of power, of success, there are many things that seem different on a conscious level. For example, someone comes into the office and talks to you - he talks to you, and you say to him "why are you so afraid of success"? And he says to you "I'm afraid?!". The horse comes in there and shakes his nose in his face - and what can you tell him? That the horse is wrong? Many times the horse tries to explain to you, you see it, it's as if he's talking to you. The other person says "I don't understand"... the horse turns around and looks at us, but we don't understand the conversation between them to help... and when the person sometimes says "oh, I understand", the horse reacts as if to say "no, you didn't understand"! (laughs) Or in seminars with many people together, a horse may come and take one person separately and deal only with that person...
...because he found a topic to deal with.
Yes.
To the extent that I haven't experienced all of this, it seems magical to me.
It's very interesting, I'm still speechless. We also have horses that don't work. After 10-15 years, they haven't forgiven people for what they've been through. These, even if they work, will do so intensely and violently. We don't put them in treatments.
Does this mean they get to the root of the problem in a much more direct way?
Yes, and the people there are upset. They can't stand it. Are the horses telling you, showing you, when you ask them "hey my love, we'll forgive people"? They react. And you say "well, it doesn't matter". Horses are generally very forgiving animals, you can hit them and they are forgiving. But they can't stand being deeply offended. They have a gentleness, a great dignity. If you offend them in this matter, it's very heavy. Better to break his leg than to insult his dignity, his entity.
That's why they were so close to the North American Indians who had a code of honor and behavior.
What was the name of the teacher of Medicine? Hippocrates. Where did Apollo take his son, Asclepius, to learn medicine? To the Centaur. Where did all the kings take their children to be taught? To the Centaur. He hadn't been the same for 2.000 years. Centaurs were this archaic people from the primitive people of Greece, who considered themselves one with the horse, because they were always together and had learned from horses. Indian, Greek, Phoenician methodology... A few years ago, a Tai Chi teacher came to me and told me that Chinese medicine developed from equines. People who dare to step out of their arrogance know this. For donkeys, it's a different situation.
You also have donkeys.
Of course. I put you in a chair, you sit down and these come, they smell you and suddenly they bite you in one spot. If you don't move, there's no mark left, of course you hurt a little at that time. And where they bite, there are the meridians. A woman grabbed one of her noses, I told her "don't move". So she had a bowel problem, by biting her nose, her bowel problem was solved. Whatever they do, they do on the meridians.
What wisdom do these animals have...
We humans have become isolated. Think: It's a sea and we are all together. It evaporates and rises and becomes a cloud, and we continue to be all together. At some point it differentiates into drops. The moment the drop falls, it has the feeling of exclusive individuality. It says "now I am Victory" and then it falls and becomes part of the whole again. The plants that are here and hear us, they know what we are saying. And this is now also scientifically proven. We are one. We have the illusion of separation and the longer we hold on to it, the more our ego is terrified. The longer I believe that I am a unique entity, excluded, my ego is terrified. The longer it is terrified, it inflates, because it believes that this way I will be protected. So all those with the inflated ego are terrified egos who experience absolute separation. If you start to experience union, the ego is fine, because it has no fear. It is an energy that circulates and is not afraid. It coexists with the rest.
All esoteric traditions recognize certain centers within us, which they call "chakras," for example. I looked up a book on nervous system anatomy and found that there are ganglion zones there. But what does this mean for the body? Why were they considered sacred? How do they work for us?
The body, in addition to the circulation of blood and the circulation of messages through the nervous system, is an energy structure with energy channels. It often happens in the energy channel that we find rows of ganglia, connections of neurons, which means that they are not unrelated to each other. In other words, the nervous system is built on something like this and from something like this. Here we say that the "solar plexus" that is causing so much fuss is located - it is the parasympathetic nervous system. We have the nervous system, with which we move, and the autonomic nervous system that regulates the viscera. This, foreigners took a Greek word incorrectly and called one part 'sympathetic' and the other 'parasympathetic', that is, one is of tension and the other of relaxation, that is, the one that does self-healing. The entire part of the abdomen, of the viscera, is regulated by the parasympathetic. When I lower my breath there, it's like waking it up, because I'm usually in sympathotonic in order to live, speak, etc. Our entire body is a biochemistry. I have a molecule and it can be clockwise or counterclockwise. That is, it reflects light from one side or the other. It changes immediately, from medicine to drug. Where each molecule will go depends on the field you are in. You can be in a field where everything is harmonized "towards health", or in another where everything turns "towards toxicity". The chemical composition does not change, but...
… its place in the environment.
Yes.
And this does not happen by chance.
No, what happens is what is needed at the given moment and from what effects it receives. There is a substance in the nervous system called acetylcholine, in the parasympathetic, for calm. I was with an amazing Swedish scientist for many years, who did research on this subject in 1985. At that time, we knew that acetylcholine simply existed. She starts shouting that it is a carrier of self-healing, and that because we are constantly in tension, the body does not have time, through the parasympathetic, to produce acetylcholine and do self-healing. Because the body does self-healing if we let it. A great researcher works with all the neurotransmitters and wins the Nobel Prize and she shouts because she left out acetylcholine. She called him and cursed him and told him "write this too because it is a matter of balance". Nothing on its own matters. She told him "is it balanced with the earth? Is it balanced with the mountains?”. This woman died and in 1999-2000 a study came out that acetylcholine prevents Alzheimer's. Acetylcholine disappeared from the market. We haven't had it since. Four months ago a study came out from the US and said that in cases of schizophrenia that are not controlled, acetylcholine can control them. And because it is not commercially available, we got it from mushrooms: from some poisonous ones, if you take a small dose it does this job. And all the studies have remained on the shelves or locked in drawers. The point is to make people well? Of course, if someone can get well by avoiding Alzheimer's or regulate schizophrenia with something that costs 1 cent a pill, it is different from getting well with a pill that costs 30 dollars. This is what I'm telling you now about the value of the parasympathetic system and self-healing. Lettuce has acetylcholine, so does gazia. A group of agronomists came here and I told them "plants have a nervous system". They told me no. Young people now. I tell them "you're 30 years old and you're telling me they don't? Of course they don't have a brain and branches, but since lettuce has acetylcholine and serotonin, then it has a nervous system. Otherwise why would it have neurotransmitters"? These are everywhere after research, I don't have the secret bible! Even our biochemistry is common, we just didn't have a way to look for it before. The organs of the body are like an orchestra. In this orchestra, your own organs and those of others participate, what happens in the soil, everything. A huge orchestra. If there is harmony in this huge orchestra, we are fine. If something starts to go wrong then it will affect the other instruments in the orchestra.
We are rushing to prove things today that ancient traditions knew.
When Pythagoras had created his School in Samos, he had studied sounds and their effect on the nervous system. M calmed the nervous system. N caused calm stimulation. S made you cheerful. Today they say that S raises serotonin. If you say S for five minutes, you start laughing. We lost this at some point in our history, the knowledge left, went to the East and then came back to us. What did Pythagoras use to measure sounds? Either he had a technology that was lost or he made another use of the brain that we have lost today.
We are in the information age, and from what we know, when you learn something new, the brain creates new synapses. How is this happening and the number of cases of diseases that reduce memory increasing?
It denies. There is a harmony in all things. If I take a car and accelerate it to go to Thessaloniki, it will burn out, if I don't change its pace, speed, etc. There has been a rush of overinformation, which is also misinformation. Between overinformation and misinformation, the brain turns off the switch. That's why we have dumber people - in the 70s the average IQ was 110, now it has gone to 90. Normally it should have gone up but it has regressed.
So this orchestra that we were talking about before (and Jung said it well), has an autonomous – self-regulating system. Which is beyond our own will.
It has nothing to do with our own will. It has everything to do with the overall harmony. Anyone who creates great disharmony disappears. Because the point is not that I, the horse, the cat exist. It is that the harmony, the Earth that is alive, is not disturbed…
...yes, and this has now been scientifically proven.
It's a living organism that has been through so much and has emptied itself so many times, what? The arrogance. It doesn't hold it, it kicks it. I was laughing yesterday when I saw on the news that there is a super-luxury shelter in America, where to book a place you have to pay 300 million dollars and they will go there to save some people, when the earth is destroyed. Somewhere in Virginia.
And if the Earth is destroyed, how will Virginia be saved?
The joke is, first of all, how are you going to get to Virginia? Or how are you going to know in advance to start going there? And the other thing is that if the absolute arrogance of humanity gathers there, then the first place to be destroyed will be this shelter! If he finds them all gathered, he might leave us alone.
There are cases of people who were diagnosed by a doctor as being in the final stages of a disease and had only a few months to live. However, by changing their way of thinking and perhaps their lifestyle, they lived for many years afterwards. Does this mean that the nervous system and the body are regulated?
If the nervous system shows disharmony, then the immune system also shows it. This means illness. Because every day we produce 10.000 cancer cells and the body kills them. If the immune system does not work well, we get sick. If the nervous system enters a state of harmony, then the immune system also works in favor of the person.
Thought plays a role.
The thought, yes, but that's not enough. "I'm healthy" is not enough. I have to understand deep down inside why I want to live. Why I want to be healthy. What research has found is that I am a person who does my job, paints my nails, goes to parties, gets sick because the men I want don't suit me, I die. If at some point I get out of my egocentricity and start engaging in offering, the nervous system is repositioned.
You become part of the orchestra again.
Yes, because I was isolated. The latest research on Alzheimer's says that the more self-centered someone is, the more the nervous system is catalyzed. And when I offer, it doesn't mean "I offer to be well," that's not right. It doesn't mean "I'm a good kid to go to heaven," because then I'm not a good kid. The point is to open my heart and offer because that's how I feel. A huge inner movement. Many people who see the wall of death and make this inner movement have gone to another level. I've talked many times with cancer patients in the last stages and I ask them "will you donate your corneas that haven't suffered anything from chemotherapy"? And they react. "Why"?... "what will you do with them? If you're dying and there's something good left in you, why don't you give it away to save someone"?...
This patient in the final stage, when he makes the internal movement, can essentially turn the tide of the disease? What the church translates as "repentance," that is.
There is a red line. If you reach the point where all the organs have been destroyed, that may not be possible. There is room as long as you have not reached the red line. But even there it is beneficial, because even at the last moment with all the organs destroyed, you experience a state of unity (I am not talking about heaven and hell), which will calm you mentally and you will leave peacefully. Many times, however, serious illnesses have receded. And we do not know why.
They say that in Ikaria, many such good things happen.
I think you go to Ikaria already determined to change your life and make a huge move.
So the change has already started working with your decision to go. What happens to a person when you are constantly exposed to fear, anger, laziness, anxiety?
Fear and anxiety produce a lot of adrenaline and dopamine and the system is poisoned. It does not allow acetylcholine to cause self-healing. There are two types of laziness. One is the "benign" one that I call it. It happens when the nervous system is tired and wants to take its time. We give this person time, because that is what they need. "Malignant" laziness is a large percentage of people who believe that others were born to serve them. They are parasites. On the other hand, we see many people walking around with headphones on in the streets, not looking at each other. This is as if the nervous system cannot bear any more pressure. Every creature needs a space to breathe. There are 5 million people on top of each other in the city, there is no living space. So this is how they isolate themselves in order to cope.
There is also collective anger. I see people who live with a constant anger with whatever event happens, with whatever politician they speak to.
It is fear. Anger exists as a stimulus. For example, you come to step on me and I come forward with anger. Anger is my protector, because I don't want you to step on me. General anger has a complaint. A fear of what will happen now and a complaint about how I will cope. The inner child within us needs a sense of security. There are major political changes, and fear is growing, so anger is growing too. Fear is also a bodyguard. The seminars we do here are for these great bodyguards. Fear will save me from crossing the road with cars. As long as I don't respect it, it becomes dominant. As long as I play it fearless and ignore it, it becomes dominant, just like a mother who, when the child doesn't listen to her, will become authoritarian. Fear keeps us alive. We can talk with anger and fear to understand what they want to tell us. The more we close ourselves off to the little I that becomes more defenseless and more frightened, the more we fear. It is completely incriminating to say that your intention is enough to bring about the result you want, as completely omnipotent. That is, saying that "what happens to me is my fault" or that "what doesn't happen to me is my fault". No. You are not omnipotent. You are part of a whole. Go with the flow. All the ancients who did such great things were afraid. Of lightning, of the flood. And that is why they said "what should we do, there was a flood, we will be flooded".
Tell us some stories from sessions with the horses.
I and outsiders don't understand anything when a session is taking place, because when the horse talks, it speaks directly to the person. The horse can stand and tap its hind leg, and that means A. It can come to you and tap its hind leg, and that means B. Because at that moment it is the answer to what your unconscious is saying. I, from the outside, don't know the conversation that you and the horse are having. But I remember a case where we were left speechless. A company had brought 80 people, the strategic planning and marketing section. They told us "we've released a new product, we won't tell you what it is, and we want to work on the marketing strategy". There were nine horses at the time that were hanging out, but two of them had had a lot of fights and were on opposite sides, they weren't close to each other. So we told them "symbolize the horses". And so they symbolize the horses and say "this is the new product, this is profitability, that's all there is competition" etc. And before they finish, one of the quarrels that is profitability leaves and the quarrel that was competition embraces the other. We look at each other, we say "what's this now"? They did it from the beginning with a new distribution of roles, and again the same, profitability went to the competition. The new product went to the competition, so the competitors know the product. "No, there is secrecy". When horses work in a team, what they see is like a huge puzzle, since the unconscious speaks with images, so they keep the pieces that are the most powerful images. So what they saw told us that the competitor also makes this product. And the company decided not to release the product, and they saved 30 million. It's a theatrical play, everything that happens with the roles and the horses.
In a therapy, animals generally see where there is disharmony in the orchestra we were talking about and they go and correct it.
Exactly. In Spain, they've been putting dogs in hospitals for 20 years. At first, they put them in the intensive care unit and the dogs would go under the bed of the patient who could be treated. Wherever they didn't go, wherever they didn't get permission (because to treat you have to ask permission, and dogs do that), then they wouldn't get treatment. At first, they would come in twice a week, but they would die.
They took the disease upon themselves.
Now they put them on every two months. They join the disharmonious field, they try to harmonize it, but a piece remains on them...
Beyond psychological issues, are there also cases of motor problems that horses help with?
A lady with a cart came, all the horses came and lay down at her feet. Then a horse came, put its head under her armpit and lifted her up. She took two steps. She wasn't saved, but for the first time in years she felt like she could. I won't tell you that we resurrect the dead, but people with crutches, at least for half an hour in there, don't use them.
