Heart Healing

You may think I’m out there when I say this, but dog training is an entry point to your growth and healing.

When you’re tired and frustrated with things not changing in your relationship with your dog and whatever you’re doing isn’t working, you’re forced to seek help if you don’t give up on your dog first.

Then the next hurdle is accepting that instead of being focused on your dog changing and expecting Biscuit to be fixed, you lean into, the push for you to learn something new.

If you still have hope and now feel you have the will to do something different, you’ll open your heart to the possibilities that lie ahead.

This is a turning point in your relationship with yourself and with your dog. You recognize your dog can’t change if you don’t change too. This is where the real work begins.

This self realization that life with your dog can’t keep going on like this goes deeper. This is an entry point that touches on who you are as a person that you may know was hiding behind illusions of the judgments of yourself to yourself or the judgements of others, the fear of something going wrong or you not getting it “right” or reconciling resentment, pain or bitterness that this is not what you planned to be doing.

The real work is connecting with the light within yourself so you can show up and be the authentic person your dog knows you already to be. The barrier you’re experiencing by being upset and angry and frustrated with your dog is you preventing to receive love. Love is the only thing that exists and the uncomfortable feelings arising within you is a signal of what your heart is trying to tell you where you need to heal.

The patterns of lashing out at your dog and yelling or being upset for your dog also expressing an emotion doesn’t resolve what the past hurt is trying to say to you. Instead, you’re pushing down and blaming your dog for what you feel instead of sitting with the experience of the feeling. The latter is what moves the energy out of you.

Your freedom from past pain or future worries is based on you being ok that you’ve stored all these past experiences in your body because at the time they were too much to handle and now your body is telling you its ready to let it go in the here and now.

An embodiment practice that allows for the energy to be transmuted can be practicing skills with your dog.

An embodiment practice that allows for the energy to be transmuted can be eye gazing with your dog for a few minutes a day.

We are not meant to heal on our own. We as a social species is meant to heal in connection with others. Our dogs are great companions to do this inner work. As you heal and regulated your nervous system, the symbiotic nature of the relationship you have with your dog, you dog heals too.

I invite you to see that dog training is not fixing your dog, but rather it is your journey to heal those things that are heavy on your heart.