Imagine trying to speak to someone in a crowded, noisy room. Raising your voice is unproductive. Trying to overpower the noise only hurts your throat and adds to the chaos in the room. More importantly, raising your voice distorts the intention of the message. Even the most sentimental of messages will lose its intention, if shouted at another person!
The solution?……….Lean in, and whisper.
Often, when tackling bad behaviour in our animals we become irritated that they are not listening, or more likely, not capable of listening. In response, we become frustrated and raise our voices. This merely adds to the noise, the chaos, the stress, and distorts the message we are trying to send them. The communication we are sharing at that point is not clear. Your animal will be unclear about what you want as well as what you don’t want. We are genetically programmed to feel panicked by raised voices, as are our animals, therefore any response to our attempts at ‘communicating’ amongst the chaos will be from that of survival emotions instead of rational thought.
Communicating with animals is not achieved in those periods of noise, frustration and high emotions. It is achieved in the moments of calm and quiet. When we are centred and calm our voice does not need to compete with the external noise and the mental chatter within ourselves or our animals. Our communication will be clear and authentic. This communication is free from judgment and delivers a message of quiet confidence. Quiet confidence inspires others to follow and creates a space for other emotional beings to re-establish their own sense of calm. If we want to communicate to our animal that we want a different behaviour from them, we need to create the ‘space’ for effective communication to occur.
As an animal kinesiologist, it is my job to create that space. I calm intense emotions, quiet the mental chatter, and remove competing and conflicting viewpoints for both you and your animal. This creates a calm environment, both internally and externally to allow effective and clear communication to occur. By creating this ‘space’ you can then communicate how you do want your animal to behave instead of constantly facing the resistance of negative stress responses.
I can influence and encourage new behaviours and associations by working at a neurological level to break old habits, creating space for new, more desired behaviours. Before changing anything negative and destructive into something positive and balanced – ‘space’ is required. Achieving balance is the transition between stress, fear and anxiety – to calm, confident and ease.
Connecting with our internal place of calm, knowing what is right for us, and what our emotional needs are has become lost over time. We often only respond to the emotions shouting the loudest and with the most urgency. The urgency of these emotions stems from the disconnect we have with our inner voice. Stress can be thought of as the distance between what we know to be true for us from deep within, and our response to situations that are far removed from this.
Our animals have also lost touch with their inner knowing, their sense of self, and their calm centre that allows them to feel safe and comfortable in their environment. This has been lost in the noise and chaos of the external world we have created. It is causing high levels of intense and sustained stress, the symptoms of which are behaviour problems such as aggression, anxiety, fears and phobias. Whilst we cannot reduce stress completely, we can regularly create the ‘space’ necessary for clear communication to maintain good behaviour and balanced emotions. This will have a huge impact on your animals wellbeing, as well as your own. This is the key to overcoming fear issues and aggressive tendencies.
Animal Energy Therapies specialises in creating the space necessary for change to occur. Often training and behaviour techniques fail because they are metaphorically the raised voice in the chaotic noisy room. Kinesiology is the tool used to create the space of calm for the training message to be received and understood. It is from this space that you often view the problem from a different perspective. The reason for the bad behaviour may not be what you expected, and your contribution to the stress may be far more than you realised. An animal kinesiology session does more than create the space necessary for change; it creates awareness and clears resistance to moving past the problem.
