The Importance of Being Relaxed

Being mentally, emotionally and physically relaxed is a vital aspect of successful interspecies communication. Our busy energy bodies (mental, physical and emotional) can push an animal away, or muddy the communication. This is true for wild animals, and is also true for our companion animals.

We can support our development of our interspecies communication skills by beginning to recognise when our thoughts, our physical energy or our emotions are over-active, and by having practical ways of bringing ourselves back to a relaxed calm state.  It is when we are relaxed, calm and peaceful mentally, emotionally and physically that telepathic communication is most successful.

WHEN OUR EMOTIONS are running high, the animals will pick up those emotions, and they will either avoid us, or they will react to the emotion, or they will reflect it the emotion back to us by ‘mirroring’ our behaviour.

Our goal of being emotionally peaceful when we communicate ensures that our own emotional landscape is not colouring the communication. Also, the more familiar we are with our own emotions, the more easily we can differentiate between what is our own emotion and what is the animal’s.

How we go about calming our emotions is a deeply personal thing.  We may need to find support to help us process our emotional reaction to an animal’s situation; or we may simply need to take ourselves ‘offline’ for a while until our emotions feel more balanced and equanimous.  Become familiar with your own emotional landscape; what triggers a response; what helps to bring you back to calmness.

If you want to know how well you are doing at being emotionally peaceful, go and visit a horse!  They are very sensitive to human emotions.  If they move away from you, there is still some work to be done;  if they stay near or move closer to you… well done! You’re on the right track!

OUR THOUGHTS also need to be relaxed and quiet  When we are overthinking, or if our mind is full of ‘to do’ lists, or running over the conversations we had earlier in the day (or earlier in the week) we are clearly stuck in our head.  There is no capacity for us to drop into our heart and listen.

Telepathic communication happens heart-to-heart (‘telepathy’ means ‘feeling with’).  In order to be successful at telepathic communication we need to be able to move out of our head, away from our thoughts, and drop into our heart space.  When we are overthinking we are not connected.  On the flip side: the less we think, the more connected we become.

You might like to find a practice that helps your mind to become still, such as a regular meditation practice, regular ‘sit spot’ time in nature, or practise Qi Gong or Tai Chi.  These are all excellent activities to help move energy away from our head and into our body and our heart.

Here is a breathing meditation that can help to quieten the mind, and which may also being a sense of emotional calmness:

Close your eyes and turn your attention to your breath.  As you breathe in, visualise the air moving into your lungs, filling them with life-giving oxygen.  As you breathe out, see the air moving out of your lungs giving carbon dioxide to the trees.  Do this three or four times.

Now begin to notice how each breath becomes slower, deeper, longer.  As this happens, notice how your body relaxes and your mind becomes still.  

Now breathe in for a count of three; pause and hold your breath for a count of three; then breathe out for a count of six.  Do this for one minute (you can set a timer on your phone so that your focus is on the exercise and not on keeping track of time).  Each day increase the length of time that you practice this breathing activity by one minute, so that by the end of the week you are practising it for seven minutes.

Any time you want to quieten your mind you can return to this breathing practice.  When we ‘watch’ the breath moving in and out of our lungs it distracts our mind, giving it something else to focus on, so that it can take a break from those persistent thoughts.  It is also a really great exercise to help you to fall asleep when busy thoughts are keeping you awake at night.

FINALLY, WE NEED TO BE PHYSICALLY RELAXED before we begin telepathic communication.  If we are fidgety and restless we will be distracted; it can also make the animal feel on edge.  Become familiar with your body’s need for physical activity and especially what helps to release it.  If you are about to sit down to communicate and yet you feel full of unspent energy, find some way to discharge that energy before you start the communication.  Dancing wildly around the kitchen, running laps in the backyard, or doing 30 minutes of strong yoga – whatever you choose, have something in your ‘toolkit’ that you can call upon whenever you need to release your physical energy.

WHEN WE ARE AWARE of these three forms of energy that are constantly moving in and through us and become familiar with how they express themselves within us, we start to recognise when they are out of balance.  At the same time we can build our capacity for quietening that energy through identifying resources that help us.  Over time we will find that we can quickly drop into a quiet, calm, relaxed state of being with very little effort – the perfect state for clear two-way communication.

May 2020

Here are some more ideas for relaxation:  Meditation – Walking in Nature – Tai Chi – Qi Gong – Yoga – Painting – Drawing – Listening to Music – Pranayama (breath work) – Gardening – Jigsaw Puzzles – Colouring-in Books – Tapping (EFT)