Peace of Mind for you and your Animals this Holiday

After a challenging year, you deserve to rest, and you should utilise the time for soul replenishment and family connection. To better this experience, ensure that the stresses at home are well managed. One thing you do not need to be anxious or guilty about this holiday is leaving your animals at home.

Anxiety is something I deal with daily, not only in my own life but throughout consultations that I do with animals and people patients.

As an animal communicator, I see daily that our animals are almost all co-regulators, and their worries often originate from the fears and anxieties we experience ourselves. They carry these in many different shapes and forms. It is my experience that once the cause of these concerns has been identified and once the animals have been able to share their worries regarding their humans, bringing awareness to the fact that they know and share our burdens, we can all move forward. When you’re tense, so are your animals.  If you calm yourself, they, too, will relax.

Here are the essential tips to minimise anxiety, making your holiday easier for you and your animals staying at home.

Step 1 – Choose to get off the spinning wheel.

It’s that time of the year when deadlines are chasing us even in our sleep. Anxiety knocks at our door every so often for some more than others, but as with everything in life, we have a choice. We can choose to stay on the wheel, or we can choose to get off and disempower the spin and, by so doing, enable ourselves to live a better day. You will get through it all in one minute, hour, and day! Apprehensive before leaving, anxious and worrisome when you’re gone. The first step to getting off the spinning hamster wheel is breathing.

Step 2 – Breathe.

One way to get off the wheel is to breathe correctly. Here, our primary goal is to settle your nervous system. Not only does this calm your animal before you go, but from a communication perspective, your animal can generally feel and hear you more clearly.

In this modern-day society, many factors influence us in adapting an improper breathing cycle. We learn to use our shoulders, upper chests, neck, and back muscles to inhale, creating a shallow breathing pattern. When chest breathing by raising your upper chest and lifting your shoulders, you are only drawing air into the upper portion of your lungs and, therefore, not using your lungs at total capacity. Learning how to breathe using your diaphragm, called belly breathing, can help break the negative cycle discussed above. Our breathing patterns affect our nervous systems. Breathing to optimise our air intake can decrease anxiety, amongst many physiological benefits. More importantly, if we breathe in the right way, our animals follow and in so doing, we create calm.  

Herewith is a technique for a healthy, diaphragmatic breathing pattern:

1. Lie on your back on a flat surface with your knees bent. Use a pillow under your head and your knees for support.
2. Place one hand on your upper chest and the other on your belly below your rib cage.
3. Breathe slowly through your nose, letting the air in deeply towards your lower belly.
4. Tighten your abdominal muscles and let them fall inward as you exhale through pursed lips. The hand on your belly should move down to its original position.

The hand on your chest should remain still, while the one on your belly should rise. Proper breathing starts in the nose and then moves to the stomach as your diaphragm contracts, the abdomen expands, and your lungs fill with air. It is the most efficient way to breathe as it creates space in the chest cavity, resulting in maximal airflow into the lungs.

Look out for the full blog on understanding the human complexity and importance of breathing. This will be followed by another blog teaching you how to breathe in synchronisation with your animal. This is one of the most beautiful things I could ever teach you.

These exercises prepare you for your animal communication journey through a soulful connection.