Empathy – A Doorway to Connect With and to Heal Your Pet

Empathy is a natural gift that all living beings share. Empathy is a sensory pathway or awareness, something that you can experience within your body. The wilder an animal, the more sensitive their empathic sensory awareness is. The more domesticated an animal (or human) is, the less sensitive the empathic sense tends to become. 

Let’s define empathy – first we will consider a couple of dictionary definitions. The bold words are my emphasis, added.

Empathy can be defined as:

• The ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
• The action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner also : the capacity for this.

My definition of empathy is as follows:

Empathy is the sensory awareness of the living experience of another being in your body (aka in your sensory awareness).

Your Pet’s Empathy Is Off The Scale!

Your pets are exquisitely empathic. They experience your state of being- how you feel emotionally, what you’re experiencing mentally, sometimes even what’s impacting you physically. When it comes to anxiety, stress, and uncomfortable emotions, the more you suppress or avoid them, the more your pets will feel them. 

This is the reason why some dogs will growl at people for no apparent reason. They are sensing what that human is hiding. That person may have intentions of violence towards you, but they can’t hide this from your dog. Your dog can feel the intentions in their body, and respond protectively. 

You are exquisitely empathic too! You may have shut down this innate ability, but it is still within you. When you were born, when you were a little baby, you were wide open empathically. This was extremely uncomfortable when you met the trauma, anxiety or aggressive emotional states of first your parents, and then other humans. So uncomfortable in most cases that you will have shut that awareness down. 

Some people remain open empathically. Some of those can ground and be functional with this online, others struggle and find it very difficult to live with.  Regardless of how connected you are with your empathic awareness, I want to let you know that it is possible to not only awaken your empathic awareness but for it to be a blessing in your life. 

I know this because I have done so. 

Empathy Can Heal Your Pets

What are the benefits of awakening and using your empathic abilities? 

You’ll be able to connect more deeply with your pets! Through being able to experience how your pets are feeling in your body, you’ll be far more sensitive to their needs. You’ll be able to know where your pet is at, and have a much better idea if something is upsetting your pet, or if they are feeling unwell.

You’ll be able to understand your pet’s needs better! When you reawaken your empathic sensory awareness, you’ll be able to work out a whole lot more of the things your pets need, but can’t tell you. 

You’ll open a huge healing doorway with your beloved pets! When you experience the pain, the suffering, or the trauma of your pets in your own body, this has a profoundly healing effect. If you’ve ever had someone simply be deeply present with you when you were grieving or unwell, you’ll have a taste of how powerful this is. 

I’ll share a story of how one of our Whole Energy Body Balance (WEBB) students empathically connected with and experienced the distress of a wild Galah (a small Australian parrot) who had been injured. Wild Galahs bite like poison. I would have said that you simply would not be able to make friends with and pet a wild Galah.

This Galah had a broken wing, which the vets and our student, a vet nurse repaired. He was sitting with this little wild bird, practicing the skills from WEBB that support deeper empathic connection, when suddenly he felt this little bird’s loneliness, fear and trauma in his body. The human felt the bird – this moved him to tears for about 15 minutes. 

The magical thing is that straight after this, this wild little bird (who had been attacking his hands any time he changed water or food in the cage), suddenly made friends with the human – rubbing up against his hands, wanting scratches and cuddles. 

If you want to learn how to re-awaken your empathic abilities, so you can literally feel your pets’ experience of life, their feelings, their state of being in your own body, it’s easier than you think. In our online WEBB Home and Professional Practitioner training, we teach a practice for you, the human, that helps you open up and use your empathic awareness to help your pets.

It’s a simple, everyday practice that you can learn in about 5 minutes, and the more you practice it, the more sensitive you become empathically over time. And the more sensitive you become, the deeper and more beautiful your relationship with your pets becomes.It’s a true win win. 

Empathy is the greatest doorway I know to deeper connection and healing – for and within myself, for and with my beloved pets. If you want to get started, I’ll give you a taste of the full practice. Simply gently and continuously bring all of your awareness into your body, and be present with whatever you are experiencing. 

There’s a lot more to the full practice, but even this simple beginning will help you connect more deeply with your pets. If you want to learn more about the full online trainings, where you not only learn this practice of connection and empathy, but a whole lot of beautiful hands-on healing and bodywork skills, please email us at dredward@thehealingvet and ask for more info. 

And in the meantime, start practicing!

Here are links to the youtube video that goes with this blog

part 1 https://youtu.be/Xu538gXcDCs

and part 2 https://youtu.be/7SShBcxCYGw