Awareness and connection – such important ingredients for a happy, healthy life with your pets!

Awareness can be tricky. It can be easy to lose. Then both awareness and connection suffer. And whenever that happens, all of your life suffers, including your beloved pets. Because you are always connected with your pets, but the quality of that connection can vary drastically.

If you are absent, disconnected, or caught up in your own stresses and worries, your pets will be paying the price of lack of your clean, strong, undivided attention. You might even miss small signs of encroaching illness. Not to mention that you won;t be caring for yourself in the way you need.

When we lose awareness, we often start to eat badly, take more stimulants, and do unhealthy things that help us feel a bit better. But this is only by suppressing whatever it is that is too uncomfortable for us to stay in full awareness with. Could be grief. Could be money worries. Could be a crappy, stressful job.

In my experience, I nearly always have challenging feelings that I’m not wanting to be present with when I lose awareness and connection. Some kind of stress, fear, sadness. Something that is uncomfortable. Maybe something that I know that I need to change, but I just don’t have the spoons for.

This has been happening with me lately – for quite a few weeks in fact. But it was only last week that I finally saw that I was checking out, dissociating, not at all present and engaged – even though I superficially seemed to be. After I spotted my lack of awareness, I noticed how this had been playing merry hell with my connection – with my beloved, my animals, my business, life in general.

After I regained awareness, I had a few days of lots of strong, uncomfortable emotions to be present with, process, and assimilate. It was hard work. I reckon I’m still in the middle of it, actually. I’ll continue to face, embrace and be. And I’m now more aware (bit less comfortable, thank goodness) and able to reconnect and heal any damage done from my lapse.

How do you build awareness and connection in a healthy and sustainable way?

I do this firstly by being willing to always honestly question where I’m at. And by knowing that I’m far from perfect, and that at times I’ll lose awareness and connection. I do this by listening to my beloved, my friends, my men’s circle, and not discounting anything they say.

But one of the most important ways that I gauge my levels of awareness and connection is by being very. VERY sensitive to my relationship and interactions with my pets.

Here are a few red flags that I look out for:

• Getting grumpy or impatient with my pets
• My pets ‘acting out’ for what seems to be no reason
• Conflicts between my pets that seem to have no trigger
• My pets being overly demanding of my attention
• My pets looking like they are sad or flat
• My pets looking like they are worried about me!

My pets always tell me, one way or another, when I lose awareness and connection within myself, and with them and my life. They are incredibly honest. And they help me see when and where I have lost awareness and connection, so I can regain it, and then work at growing it stronger and stronger over time.

The best awareness practice I use in my life is simply to bring all of my awareness into and throughout my body, and then be present with everything that I’m experiencing in my body. This is a muscle, so you have to exercise it (lots) to make it strong.

But the stronger you make it, the happier your pets will be! Not to mention the incredible benefits for you…

‘Want more? Check out our most recent of this series of articles at this link.

And here’s where you can click through to watch this week’s video where I talk about these themes from a bit of a different angle.

If you want an online or in-person consultation with me, go to www.thehealingvet.com and book a free discovery call with me! We also offer a stack of awesome online training programs that empower you to find and heal your pet’s Silent Pain. Check them out at www.wholeenergybodybalance.com

Picture of a horse I helped with bodywork this week