How EFT Tapping Can Help Your Pet Heal and Thrive

In this episode, join animal intuitive and Reiki Master Shannon Cutts for a deep dive into one of the most essential tools you can add to your modern pet parenting toolkit - Emotional Freedom Technique, or "tapping" for short. 

As you listen, you will....

• Actually tap along with Shannon as she works with anxious-aggressive rescue dog, Spike, and his mom, Tricia. 
• Learn how tapping works to reset a pet's nervous system after traumatic events and even works to help pets with high sensitivity cope. 
• Discover the hidden link between your pet's energy and your energy and how to use tandem tapping to help you both reset. 
• Explore all of tapping's powerful applications to help even the most calm and well-adjusted pets (as well as all the other pets!) to recalibrate their "inner wild" settings and thrive in their modern domestic lives with us.

NOTE: This episode comes with a free four-part EFT Tapping for Pets and Their People guide that you can download and start working with right away.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

EFT Tapping for Pets guide: https://www.animallovelanguages.com/eftpetsoptin

Podcast episodes mentioned in this episode:

The Hero's Journey, Pet Edition: https://letstalktoanimals.buzzsprout.com/2105365/episodes/19241267-the-hero-s-journey-pet-edition-ho...

8 Types of Pet Soul Agreements Which One Do You Have: https://letstalktoanimals.buzzsprout.com/2105365/episodes/16658714-8-types-of-pet-soul-agreements-wh...

Pet Stress Vs Anxiety Vs High Sensitivity: https://letstalktoanimals.buzzsprout.com/2105365/episodes/19321653-pet-stress-vs-anxiety-vs-sensitiv...

Transcript

Welcome And Why It Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome back to Let's Talk to Animals, the podcast all species can enjoy together. My name is Shannon Cutz. I am an animal sensitive and intuitive, a Reiki master practitioner, and an animal communication teacher with Animal Love Languages.com. And for our purposes here today, I am also your friendly neighborhood hostess and guide through the wild, wise, and wonderful world of interspecies communication. Call me crazy, but I truly believe that animal communication has the power to save, heal, and restore our planet for all species to enjoy and share. When we learn to communicate with one another, we begin to realize we are so much more alike than different. We care about each other. We become friends. On this podcast, we talk about what the animals have to say and share and why our pets truly are our partners, empathic friends, and teachers. I am so glad you have joined us here for this fresh new episode of Let's Talk to Animals. So let's dive in.

EFT Tapping Explained Simply

SPEAKER_00 1:09

Hi, Shannon here. Welcome back to Let's Talk to Animals, the podcast all species can enjoy together. And today we are diving into one of my hands-down, most time-tested, most trusted, and most universally useful energy-shifting tools. It's called Emotional Freedom Technique, or simply tapping for short. And I have used tapping for probably two decades. I'm not exactly sure when tapping first entered my world, and I'll share the story behind that here for you in a moment. But it has been a tool in my personal healing and wellness toolkit for probably at least two decades now. And it has added itself, and I'll share the story behind that, into the energy healing and wellness toolkit that I use to work with your pets as well, and often with you as pet parents. So let's dive into it.

The Mary Water Phobia Origin

SPEAKER_00 2:10

Tapping first arose in the 1980s. And so it's a relatively recent addition to our modern human understanding of how we can work with and shift energetic patterns within ourselves and support that in others as well to achieve optimal healing and wellness and balance. But it's based on a much older system, the system of traditional Chinese medicine and the complex network of energy meridians that run throughout our bodies and how each energy meridian corresponds to different systems and can help us unlock greater healing and wellness in those systems if we know how to work with them. Now, full disclosure, I am not trained in traditional Chinese medicine. And fun perk, none of us need to be in order to use tapping. What's important to understand here is that while tapping itself is relatively modern, it's based on a system that has been tested for thousands of years and found to be beneficial. So emotional freedom technique first came to us as the brainchild of Dr. Roger Callahan, a clinical psychologist, who founded something called thought field therapy. When he was working with one of his patients, a woman named Mary, who had a severe water phobia. And Dr. Callahan had tried everything else that he knew to try in his clinical psychology toolkit. And Mary's phobia just wasn't getting better. It was just incremental, tiny little painful steps. And he was desperately searching for something more, something better, something that would actually work to free her from this lifelong phobia. And one day when they were in session, Mary described this awful feeling in the pit of her stomach every time she thought about water. And Dr. Callahan had been studying traditional Chinese medicine, and he knew that the stomach was connected to a meridian point underneath the eye. So he asked Mary to describe the feeling in the pit of her stomach while gently tapping on this energy meridian point underneath her eye. And after she did this, she was able to go outside, sit by the pool, get in the pool. She said, My phobia seems to have dissolved. And that was the birth of what Dr. Callahan later called thought field therapy. Now, thought field therapy was a little bit complex. You required some special training, you had to go through a specific protocol. It's kind of high-level stuff. Dr. Callahan had a student, an engineer named Gary Craig. And engineering minds are great at putting together standardized systems. And so Gary Craig was able to simplify thought field therapy down into a system of meridian points throughout the body. And he discovered through experimenting that tapping on these standardized points seemed to deliver commensurate effects to the results that his mentor, Dr. Callahan, was getting through thought field therapy. And it was wildly accessible to the average lay person who didn't have or have time for any specialized training. And that was what became emotional freedom technique. Now,

What Research Says About EFT

SPEAKER_00 5:36

the whole field of energy medicine as a whole, it's still a bit of a wild west. And the clinical research behind many of the modalities that we have access to is a little bit spotty to say the least. But when it comes to emotional freedom technique or EFT tapping, the research we have is fairly robust, actually, probably more than any other energy modality that is in widespread use today. And tapping studies, clinical studies, seem to indicate that a single tapping session can lower our cortisol levels by up to 43%, and can lower generalized anxiety by up to 41%. That's pretty significant, especially in a single session that can take just five or 10 minutes to do. Doesn't need any special training, doesn't need any special equipment, doesn't need any special environment, just you and your own body system and some light tapping pressure from your fingertips. So

How Tapping Entered My Life

SPEAKER_00 6:41

this tool entered my life. I don't exactly remember when, but I do remember why. I have spoken here before in the podcast that before I stepped into the world of animal communication and working as an animal intuitive and teaching animal communication, I went through a period in my life where I struggled through 20 years of recovering from anorexia, bulimia, panic attacks, and cyclical anxiety and depression. So I have had a bit of a journey to get to where I am today. And along the way, my desire for my search for effective, practical, affordable healing modalities has taken me in some very interesting directions. And I have suffered through PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, on my personal journey to healing. And one day I was researching and came across an article that talked about this tapping thing that was helping combat veterans with treatment-resistant PTSD to overcome the symptoms. It was a medication-free treatment, it was a free treatment. There's literally no barrier to entry. It was something that anybody could do. And I thought to myself, well, if it works for them with all the horrors that they've seen and been through, surely it will work for me too. And I started to use it and I started to experience results. And that is how tapping essentially added itself to my personal healing and wellness toolkit. And it has been in my life for decades now, to the point where I no longer remember what life was like without it. It's a tool that I still use daily in my work as an evolving soul, in my personal life, challenges and opportunities in my business life, expanding my knowledge, expanding my abilities, stepping into fear factor situations, challenging myself to learn new skills and grow. Tapping is there with me every step of the way. And it is a reliable, relied upon tool. So,

Why Tapping Helps Pets Too

SPEAKER_00 8:55

as interesting as that is, what does this have to do with our pets? When I first started learning, my formal learning journey as an animal communicator, and I share that story elsewhere here on the podcast, tapping wasn't something that was taught in the curriculum that I was walking through with my first couple of teachers. It was never mentioned. And in many circles, animal communication is treated as a very separate track from any kind of energy healing modality. So Reiki, emotional freedom technique, chakra balancing, scalar wave, color therapy, crystal therapy, sound therapy, they are treated as separate paths, maybe complementary, but definitely meant to be kept separated. And that has never really been the case for me, as I'm having communications with pets from 26 countries now. Very organically as needed. I have found that the tools that have gathered themselves in my personal wellness toolkit over the years have just kind of presented themselves, kind of like a knock, knock, knock. Hey, I could help you here. And so while again, I don't remember exactly when tapping first introduced itself into the conversation with the animal communication sessions that I facilitate. I do remember feeling the increasing nudge and feeling a little bit of hesitation because of the way in which I had been initially trained to keep everything very separate. And it took a little bit of courage for me to work up the nerve to start asking you in our pet sessions together, especially if you've had a session with me and I have asked you if you'd be open to allowing me to tap with your pet or with you, you know that this is another way that we can communicate with the body system, with the system of emotions, with the mental patterns, and even with and especially with relational patterns that we develop within ourselves, with ourselves, and with our pets. So tapping in my world is just another form of animal communication. We're communicating with ourselves, with our own animal selves, with our biological selves, our psychological selves, and our soulful selves. We're communicating with our pets and we're supporting our pets to have those same conversations with themselves and within themselves, especially in situations where maybe you have an animal who's come into your family who has brought anxiety with them, has brought stress with them, has brought trauma history with them, has brought anger management issues or socialization issues or rehoming issues with them, who has brought even high sensitivity issues with them. So if you've listened to my podcast episodes on high sensitivity, you know that that is a genetic trait. That is not typically something that we can modulate. It's not something that we fix or that we heal from. It's something that we live with and adjust for. But where tapping can be helpful there is to ease the distress that we can sometimes feel around being highly sensitive and needing to make those environmental modifications just to experience a baseline level of ease and normalcy as we move through our daily life. And I have found that tapping can be helpful in all of these situations and so many more pets that come into our life. Maybe a rescue pet that you have whose previous caregiver died, and they come into your life with existing grief. I've worked with pets where somebody that they love in their family, a human or another animal in their inner species family, has passed away and they're struggling through grief. Tapping can show up in those moments as well and provide support at a very deep biological, psychological, and relational as well as soulful level. So I'm gonna share a couple of stories with you from my animal communication case files just to give you a sense of what's possible and what tapping can accomplish. But first, I want to just pause and give you a little overview. Now, in the show notes for this episode, I'm going to give you a link to request my free four-part EFT Tapping for Pets series. And this is a simple four-part video series that will walk you through the basics because I believe that tapping is a tool that every pet parent needs to have in our toolkits, and not just for our animals, but for ourselves as well. So

The Points And Core Setup Phrase

SPEAKER_00 13:33

tapping works on a system of nine basic energy points. And the points are as follows. We have the first point is the karate chop point, that is that outside narrow edge of the hand between the base of the pinky finger and the start of the wrist. Then we have the eyebrow point, which is right underneath the eyebrow, then the side of the eye, right at the temple, underneath the eye, which is that little soft cavernous part, underneath the nose, right at that midpoint between where the nose ends and the upper lip begins, under the lower lip and above the chin, underneath the collar bones, right about an inch down from the central midpoint of each bone, underneath the arms, about three inches below where the armpit ends, and then that top crown point on the top of the head. So these are the standardized nine points that are used for every tapping session. Tapping marries this kinetic element of somatic interaction, moving energy, quite literally, using this meridian system in the body with a mental and emotional component. So it's paired with a statement. And the statement itself is very simple. Basically, the statement starts with even though I, so I'm just going to use myself as an example, even though I, Shannon, am feeling so anxious right now. So what you can think of when we're using this statement is the even though I and the name of you or your pet or whomever you're tapping on behalf of, we've just taken truth serum. So we cannot tell a lie. If you've worked with me in one-to-one pet sessions, you've heard me share this. So we are being absolutely honest about exactly how we're feeling and we are accepting that 100%. So this is a very powerful combination of self-acknowledgement and self-acceptance. And both of those pieces need to be in place before we can release anything. So much of the stuckness that we feel, that our pets feel around how we're feeling and what has unfolded in our life and how we feel about what has unfolded and whether or not we agree with it or not is based on resistance, not accepting it, not accepting ourselves, not accepting how we feel, not accepting the cards that life has dealt us. And for us as pet parents, often it also shows up as not accepting the cards that life has dealt our precious animals. So when we feel resistance, often that gets translated as stuckness in our animals' emotional systems, because if we can't release it, they can't release it. So as I mentioned, I'm going to link up my free four-part EFT tapping for pets guide. And it includes a whole section that I call tandem tapping for pets and their people. And we'll talk about that as we go along. But right now, I'm just wanting to give you the setup, especially if you're listening on the go and you're not sitting at a computer taking notes. You can get a mental picture of what we're talking about as you're listening. So as we're tapping on these different points, we're using this statement that focuses on first acknowledgement, self-acknowledgement. How does life really feel for me right now? How am I feeling in my body? What is going on in my life right now? How heavy does it feel? How well is it working for me or not? And fully accepting that. So that would be even though I, Shannon, am feeling so anxious right now. Then the next piece is the willingness to shift. So once we have the acknowledgement, the awareness, we bring our full conscious awareness to it, we have the acceptance of it, full acceptance, no resistance anymore. We drop all of that and we step into right here, right now, I'm feeling so anxious. I'm just giving you an example. That is when we reach this threshold of being able to shift the energy in our life. So the next piece of the statement would look like even though I, Shannon, am feeling so anxious, I accept myself exactly the way that I am. I accept exactly how I'm feeling, and I'm willing to shift it. Once we have that acknowledgement, we have that acceptance, then we can take a look at what would feel better and what would work better. And how can I get there from here? And that's where the magic happens.

Nervous System Reset And Safety Signals

SPEAKER_00 18:10

Even though science is still trying to sort out exactly the domino effect as it unfolds, it is thought that by simultaneously bringing conscious awareness to exactly the state of what is in our lives right now, exactly how we're feeling, exactly how it's affecting us with tapping on these meridians. While we're holding a stressed state in our body and mind, we're sending calming, relaxing messages to our body. So the tapping itself is very calming, it's very relaxing. And what happens in this inner section is that our nervous system is receiving a message that something has changed. It's receiving a message that we're actually not in danger, we're actually safe. And all the research seems to suggest that what's happening is in this inner section of conscious awareness and this kinetic somatic tapping, it's switching off. It's actually interrupting a sympathetic nervous system pattern that's been encoded in. And it's breaking that and it's creating a new pattern. So it's actually creating a new neural pathway that says, even though I'm feeling one way, I'm actually safe, I'm actually okay. There's no five alarm fire, it's just an emotion, it's just a thought. Replaying on repeat on a loop. And what's important to understand about this is that back in the day, back in the millennia, when our sympathetic nervous system first evolved. And if you've attended any of my intuitive development for pet parents free trainings, you remember that our sympathetic nervous system is designed to keep us alive in the face of a time-sensitive threat. So that might be a saber-toothed tiger stalking us. That's gonna end pretty quickly. Either we're gonna escape or we're what's for dinner. And so the sympathetic nervous system response is it's time stamped to auto-shut off after a certain event has taken place. Either we escaped or we are what's for dinner. That worked really well when we were still out in the greater food chain of life. It doesn't work so well in these over-stimulating, overloaded, modern, isolating artificial lives that we live today. Our sympathetic nervous system doesn't ever get the shutoff. It doesn't ever get the message that the danger has passed. It literally has not evolved to keep up with us, to keep up with how rapidly our world has changed. And for most wild animals, their sympathetic nervous system still works just fine for them. They're out there in the greater food chain of life every single day, tasked with getting dinner and not becoming dinner. So we don't see the kinds of stuck emotions in most wild animals that we do in our companion animals as well as in wild or commercial or service farm or livestock animals who are keeping consistent company with our species, with humans. That's where we start to see these stuck emotions and these negative emotion patterns. And we have a need for some kind of a tool to help break through it to send the sympathetic nervous system the all clear so it can stand down. And that is what tapping can do. It tells the sympathetic nervous system even though you're having a distressing emotion, you're actually safe. Nobody's coming to eat you for dinner. You have everything you need, and all is well. So that's the last part of the statement. So we start with even though I, Shannon, am feeling so anxious. So that's the acknowledgement part. Then we Add and the acceptance of it. I love and accept myself exactly the way that I am. Then we move into the willingness to shift, and I'm ready to let this go in favor of something that feels better and works better. And we're tapping the whole time. And this is what it is thought turns off that sympathetic nervous system response, reminds our physical organism. Nobody is chomping on my butt right now or my thigh. I'm not being eaten for dinner. I am safe. I am okay. And interrupts that loop, that feedback loop within the biochemical organism and allows us to reset our nervous system and pop back into parasympathetic rest, digest, reconnect. And because most tapping sessions only take five or 10 minutes, it's a quick cycle breaker. We don't have to go to therapy for years. We don't have to have multiple retraining sessions. Sometimes for the deeper big T traumas, absolutely. It can take a combined approach. But tapping has shown remarkable effectiveness even in a single session to break through feedback loops that have been established and functioning on high alert for months, years, and sometimes decades.

Spike’s Visitor Trigger And Fear Loop

SPEAKER_00 23:18

So, how do I use this with your pets? I'll share the story of Spike, now renamed Spirit. Mom Trisha is actually one of my animal communication students as well as a pet parent client. And she came to me, even with working with all the tools that she had, learning animal communication, learning to talk with Spike, learning to regulate her energy with Spike. She came to me kind of in a panic because Spike, who had come to her as an adult rescue dog with a history of street life, a history of multiple rehomings, a history of abuse and neglect. He had a beautiful new home. He had a beautiful new family. He had a canine brother that he adored. And he had all the love that he had never had in his life before he met Trisha. There was just one problem. Spike's nervous system had been programmed for a very different life. And so while Spike's outer circumstances had changed and changed drastically for the better, and there was a powerful element of self-agency here. If you've listened to the podcast episode on the pet hero's journey and giving our pets their personal power back, there was an acknowledgement within Spike that he had gotten himself out of harm's way and into a new forever-loving family. And where we saw the proof of that was in his ability to bond with mom, bond with his canine brother, bond with dad, and really enjoy his new family life. Where we saw the system breaking down, however, was whenever visitors would come to the home. And especially anyone in a truck, especially anyone wearing a uniform, because he had been on the wrong side of that interaction too many times. He had been in situations where uniformed individuals with trucks had come to try to take him. And he was bound and determined that he was not going to be taken away from his new family. So in this particular situation, Spike had adjusted very well to his insular family life with mom and dad and his canine brother. But he had not been able to make the leap to recognizing that other elements in his surrounding community were also safe for him. And so where I started with Spike was to have a conversation. That's always where we want to start and find out what's going on in your world. How are you feeling? What do you feel like when this happens? What do you feel like when that happens? How do you feel when you see somebody approaching the house? Who do you look to for guidance and support? And what Spike was sharing with me was that he felt very agitated and restless anytime anybody would approach the house. And there were two reasons for that. One, he was absolutely bound and determined that he wasn't going to be taken again. And number two, he was also looking to his mom, Trisha. And her anxiety was spiking because she was looking to Spike and saying, What are you going to do? Are you going to bite? Are you going to growl? Are you going to snarl? Are you going to lunge? So they were caught in what I call a tandem feedback loop of shared fear, shared anxiety that in Spike was manifesting as very aggressive and increasingly dangerous behavior. So while we started with animal communication, it was very easy for me to recognize very quickly that we weren't going to be able to go deep enough with animal communication alone, because we needed to communicate not just with Spike on a social and relational level, but we needed to communicate with Spike on an emotional and a biochemical level. So all animal communication, but just different layers, different communication tools. If you're in my animal communication adventure to fluency program, we talk about how the chakra system in the body is its own communication system, how the emotions that we share in common form their own communication, how body syncing, being able to sync our nervous systems through polyvagal theory is its own shared communication pathway. Energy tools like Reiki, that is another form of animal communication. And tapping, which is a very powerful form of communication, not just between myself, for instance, and Spike, but most importantly, between Spike and Spike, so that he can start to interrupt his own inner feedback loop, his biochemical, emotional, social, relational, and soulful feedback loop, and make different choices in the same situation. So, in other words, bringing all of himself forward into the reality of the here and now, which is that his days of being taken, his days of being relinquished, of being abandoned, of having to go hungry, get scrappy, be in dangerous situation, that was gone and it was never coming back. And Spike needed a way to step into that reality. So when I asked mom Trisha, would you be open to me tapping with Spike? I was grateful that she trusted me enough to say yes. And what we did is we co-created a statement to use to tap with Spike. And I'm gonna share with you in just a minute exactly how I tap when I'm tapping on behalf of an animal, because it's a little different than just using the tapping points on yourself, the nine tapping points when you're tapping for yourself within yourself. This is the statement that we came up with to tap with spike. And Trisha and I co-created the statement together, pooling her awareness of Spike's behavior with my awareness from the animal communication conversation that I'd had with Spike. Even though I, Spike, cannot settle in my new safe forever home, even though I am always afraid and expecting to be taken, even though I never want to leave and will do anything it takes to stay, including growl, lunge, and even fight, I still love and accept myself exactly the way that I am, and all is well. So this was the basic tapping statement that we came up with to work with Spike and help him to downshift his nervous system away from this fight-flight response that he was having and into rest, digest, and reconnect, and being able to observe visitors coming to the house, being able to allow packages to be delivered by uniformed truck drivers, being able to remain calm and recognize that what was going on had nothing to do with him. He was in his forever home, he was safe, he was okay.

Proxy Tapping And A Live Script

SPEAKER_00 30:05

And the way that I work with pets. So this is where each practitioner is a little bit different. So don't take anything that I'm sharing with you today as the way that it has to be. There are new advances every day, and we are always learning and growing in our understanding of tapping, its benefits and how it can be used. But when I'm tapping with pets, 99.9% of my animal communication and energy wellness practice is remote. It's not local. I'm not with Spike. Spike lives in a different state. So I'm doing something called tapping by proxy. And this is a form of what I call body syncing. So body syncing is very similar to when you have your phone near your laptop or your tablet, and they're all sharing information. And it just happened. They share all the same basic parts, the same basic bits and bytes, and it's a seamless experience for them to share information back and forth. And in a much earlier iteration, we evolved to do the same thing through our nervous system. And that is Dr. Stephen Porges' polyvagel theory. We evolved to share information about danger and safety back and forth using our nervous systems because we have all of the same basic parts. And underneath these costumes that make us look so different on the outside, we're so much more alike than different on the inside. And through the process of animal communication using the Reiki, I can tap into Spike's energy and sync with his nervous system. And I use a very simple applied kinesiology or muscle testing test to make sure that I am tuned in with Spike's nervous system or whoever I'm working with on a given day versus my own nervous system. And once that's verified, I'm able to use my body as if it's Spikes. And I'm able to tap by proxy to help Spike receive the benefits of the tapping. And what I do typically when I'm working with pets is rather than work with the traditional system of nine meridian points, I work with the under the collarbone point and down the central channel. So I recognize that this does not necessarily conform to the classic tapping, but I've had excellent results with pets. And the reason that I do this is I felt guided to do it based on where I'm feeling the energy constriction or restriction or congestion in the body. So every tapping session looks a little bit different. But if you're watching the video version right now, you can see where I'm tapping up and down like a T shape on the central part of the body underneath the collarbones and all the way down to where the pubic bone is. And that's where I tap when I'm tapping by proxy for an animal, as I'm saying the statement. So when we put it all together, the way that it looks is even though, and I'm tapping as I'm saying the statement, even though I spike, cannot settle in my new safe forever home, tapping, tapping, tapping, even though I am always on high alert and expecting to be taken, tapping, tapping, tapping, even though I never want to leave and will do whatever it takes to stay here, including to bark, lunge, growl, or bite, tapping, tapping, tapping. I am still the pure and perfect dog. I accept myself exactly the way that I am, and all is well. And from here, if I feel like there is more unpacking that is needed, I may shift to the classical points. For instance, I may start tapping on the karate chop point, even though I spike, feel all of this anxiety and tension in my body, all of this fear in my body. Switching to the other karate chop point, even though I spike, cannot let down my guard, even though I trust my mom, my dad, and my canine brother implicitly, I cannot seem to let down my guard. Especially when people come to the house, I just get so afraid. Switching back to the other karate chat point, even though I feel so much stress, so much anxiety in my body, and I can't seem to let it go. Moving to under the eyebrow point, I am willing to let it go and find a new, more peaceful way. Side of the eye point, I am willing to shift into a trust that I am safe now. I am willing underneath the eyebrow to let my feelings of fear and anxiety fade into the past. Under the nose, I am willing to step into here and now in this beautiful, safe, calm situation that I'm in. Underneath the mouth and above the chin, I am willing to trust that mom, dad, and my canine brother will tell me if there's any real danger. And I trust them to help me know that I am safe. Under the collarbone, even though I spike and feeling this anxiety, I acknowledge that I am safe on the sides of the body. I acknowledge that I am brave and able to let this anxiety and this frustration and this fear go. Top of the head, I program in safe, peace, and calm now. And then stopping the tapping, taking a deep breath in and deep breath out. And often with animals, I will also add in a piece at the end from a related discipline called new decision therapy, where I will tap along that central T-shaped meridian point again and install a new statement. So what that might look like is this now it is time tap, tap, tap for me spike to go on with my life. I'm ready to be healthy. I'm ready to be happy. I really want to live. I am ready to feel safe in my forever home. I am ready to step into here and now and enjoy this safe and protected and beautiful, peaceful life with my new family. I am ready to accept help from my family to know when there's true danger and when all is well and I am safe. And I am ready to trust myself to be the calm, confident dog that I have always been underneath and all is well. So that is just an example of the way that I like to work with tapping with your pets.

Tandem Tapping For Pets And People

SPEAKER_00 36:26

And I have shared that I have many, many case studies. Spikes is one of the most recent, which is why it's fresh on my mind right now, where tapping has stepped in to provide the relief and the results where other methods have failed. And this can include straight animal communication, it can include Reiki and energy balancing, it can include training, it can include socialization. So if you're listening to this episode and you're working with a beloved pet in your life and you feel like you've thrown everything in the kitchen sink at a situation that they're going through, and you feel like you're just not seeing the results, you're not seeing sufficient results for what you are hoping for or what is needed. Tapping is another tool in your pet parent toolkit that can add value on a very different and deeper level because we're working with all of the various systems, the levels of self all at once. I've also had great luck with tapping with pets that have even been reincarnated and have come back into their new life with their person bearing memories from their past life and not being able to shake that off. Kind of like where we started this episode with Mary and her inexplicable fear of water and how she couldn't seem to pinpoint how or when it began. Sometimes that can be evidence of us actually bringing in unresolved experiences with us from a previous incarnation. I've had great good luck with tapping, working to shift grief into a state of release and acceptance and moving forward in life. I've had great luck with tapping in relieving anxiety. And here's something I mentioned earlier that I also wanted to talk about this feedback loop, this emotional kinetic feedback loop that we can get into with our companion pets. Why? Because we share soul agreements to learn and grow together. And whenever we share a soul agreement to learn and grow together, it's like that old story about the elderly couple who went to the doctor. And when the doctor asked the couple, why are you here? the husband said, our leg hurts, referring to his wife's leg injury. And a soul agreement can feel like that. What's happening with your pet, it's happening within you too. And if you are going through something in your life, well, your pet shares a soul agreement with you. What's happening for you, it's also happening for your pet. And where we see a lot of evidence of this is in what we call mirroring or modeling behaviors, which has a lot to do with mirror neurons, but also has a lot to do with soul agreements. Uh, we're so in sync. If you've listened to the podcast episode I did on the eight types of pet soul agreements, which one do you have? If you haven't listened to that, I will link it up in the show notes here for this episode. And you can take a dive into that and explore which soul agreement that you might share with your pet. They each come with different lessons and different opportunities for mutual growth and expansion. But so often we find that these are opportunities for us as pet parents to add new tools to our own toolkit for self-healing as well. So life happens to all of us, and you can't control if you go through an experience of loss and grief, if you go through a need to move to a new situation, whether it's a job or a move across the country or a new partnership or somebody leaving the family or somebody coming into the family like a new baby. We wake up in the morning and we don't know exactly how life is going to unfold and how it's going to affect us. And so often what occurs with us, with our pets, is we get tangled up in each other's lives. And so, what may have started, for instance, for Trisha as Spike's very genuine and understandable aggressive anxiety now is manifesting as Trisha's fear for Spike's safety and for the safety of those coming to the house and for the future of their family and their relationship and for Spike's safety in the community. So we need to tap not just for Spike to help him let go and shift into a new, more regulated, more balanced, safer feeling space. We need to tap for Trisha too, to help her let go of her fear and her anxiety because Spike is reading the room. Spike told me during the communication session that he was looking to Trisha, to mom. Is it safe or is it dangerous? Is it okay or is it scary? Do I need to react? And based on Trisha's emotional response, he was reading that he needed to do something to protect the family, such as lunge or bite. So this is what I mean by tandem tapping for pets and their people, where we need to take action not just for our pets. That solves half of the issue. But if we don't also shift our own emotional state, we have the risk of reverting to previous behaviors because we have this polyvagal sinking going on. And your nervous system and your pet's nervous system need to be on the same wavelength. It would be like if I change my password on my phone and it doesn't change on my laptop, then when I go to log into the same apps, I can't get in on one of the devices. It's the same thing on a nervous system level. If Spike has shifted his feelings, his internal state into a feeling of more safety, more ease, more calm, more acceptance of his new safe forever family in his loving home where he is totally never going to be taken again. But Trisha is still living in a state of fearful expectation of danger. They're not sinking. And there's a very real risk that Spike isn't going to be able to hold his newfound emotional regulation. So that's that fourth part in my free four-part series for pet parents, where we're doing this tandem tapping for pets and their people, for you and your pet, so that you can begin to sink together from a calmer, more self-regulated, safer feeling space. So I hope that today's episode has offered insight and potentially new tools that you can use to help the pets that you love to move through past traumatic or challenging or emotionally difficult situations and into a better feeling state that also works better for your inner species family life together. We have to recognize, and I've talked about this here on the podcast before, that our pets bring their inner wild into their domesticated life with us. Long before even dogs and horses first decided to work side by side with our species with humans, they were wild. And they bring all of that wild DNA, all of that wild programming into their artificial, insulated, isolated, unusual feeling lives with us, where all of their usual coping mechanisms and behavior strategies and wild wiring, most of the time it's not safe, it's not accepted, it's not even tolerated. And so it can feel like our pets are literally left without any coping skills at all to deal with what life hands them as they live alongside us and recognizing at a soul level that these beautiful animals that we share our lives with, they're a very special, very small subset of all. Of the animals that are alive on our planet at any given time. When you think about how many animal species there are in this world alive right now, who want nothing to do with our species, who intend to have nothing to do with our species. And then the small group of animals who has come here, who has entered these bodies specifically to spend time with us, to serve as our pets, our partners, and pathic friends, and teachers to help us learn and grow and evolve as souls and to teach us through the power of unconditional love that self-acceptance is a thing. This is something we too can do. And as we connect, we get braver and stronger together. These animals have special calling, they have special challenges and they have special needs when working through the challenges that life hands them on their path to helping us. And that is where tapping can be perfectly placed to offer a quick release from anxiety, stress, trauma, anger, grief, sadness, loss, and shifting into a state that feels better, works better, is more aligned, and feels better for everyone involved. And it can also work the same way for you. So many pet parents that I've worked with over the years who might not be brave enough or determined enough to seek these tools for themselves. I can certainly speak to that myself. I have added so many new tools to my toolkit, not necessarily for myself, but because I was trying to help an animal that I loved. So when we love our animals, it makes us very brave. It makes us very receptive to new ideas and new modalities and new methods and things that work and work better than anything that we've been previously aware of. And my hope is after listening to today's episode, that perhaps tapping might be one of them.

Free Resources Sessions And Goodbyes

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So be sure to visit the show notes and go and download my free four-part EFT Tapping for Pets and Their People series. I've linked up the other episodes that I've mentioned for you here in the show notes as well. Let me know what questions you have about tapping, about emotional freedom for your pets, about supporting your pets through some of these tough life situations that we've been talking through today. And if you decide to give tapping a try, be sure to come back and post a comment. Let me know how it works. If you would like support tapping with your pets, this is a service that I offer in my one-to-one pet sessions. And there's also a link in the show notes so that you can schedule your pet session and we can craft a statement and work through a tapping session together. This is not only good to help you learn the ropes so you can feel more confident doing it at home with your pets and with wild animals. I've had several clients and students out of our sessions learning how to tap, have gone on to use it in many different applications in their life with their own animals, with the wild animals that they share space with. So that's a great way to build your confidence and experience the results for yourself. So you build trust in tapping as a tool in your pet parenting toolkit. So thank you again for joining me here for Let's Talk to Animals. It's always a joy to connect with you. If you have a moment to drop a review, to offer a rating, that really helps our little show get seen and heard by more pet parents who might receive value in what we talk about here. And until the next time we connect here on Let's Talk to Animals, just know that I'm sending you and your interspecies family all my love and bye for now. I have so enjoyed sharing this episode with you. If you're new to the Let's Talk to Animals community and you've enjoyed this episode, please do leave us a review on your favorite streaming service or drop a comment wherever you'd like to listen. I love to hear from you, and your feedback truly helps me shape future episodes based on your interests and needs. If you're not already in my weekly love letters community, head over to Animal Love Languages.com to opt in. Your welcome email will include $25 off your first pet session with me, and you'll be the first to know when a new podcast episode drops. If you're interested in learning more about the work I do communicating with animals, offering pet Reiki, and teaching animal communication, please visit me at animal lovelanguages.com. Click on Schedule for Pet Sessions and Programs for all the information about my new Animal Communication Adventure to Mastery Student Program and the live animal communication practice circle I run for student practitioners. And I look forward to welcoming you back here very soon for a fresh new episode of Let's Talk to Animals. Okay, all my love. Bye for now.