How Animal Reiki Can Help Us Ground in Compassion

If you live with compassion, you have probably felt overwhelmed by the suffering of animals—and at the same time maybe even unsure how to help. As Animal Reiki practitioners, we often carry deep empathy, which can be both a gift and a challenge.

This month, we’re exploring how grounding ourselves in compassion—through daily meditation, mindfulness, and the Reiki precepts—can help us stay steady, present, and empowered as we support the animals who need us most.

What is Compassion?

Compassion means “sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it.” In the context of Animal Reiki, compassion is at the heart of our practice.

In fact, the final Reiki precept says, “Be compassionate to yourself and others.” However it’s not always easy to be compassionate to ourselves or others. Many things can get in the way, such as negative beliefs, judgments, fears and worry, avoidance, pity and more.

Maybe you believe that you don’t “have the talent” to be an Animal Reiki practitioner. I’ve had many students over the years doubt themselves. But I can say with confidence that great results are built on diligent practice of the meditations and the ethics of honoring animal agency, no “special talent” required!

Sometimes we find it difficult to find a space of compassion because our own worries and fears about the outcome of an animal’s diagnosis or situation get in the way. The mindfulness we build through our meditations helps us identify when these feelings come up, so we can work on softening them.

Perhaps some of you avoid volunteering in shelters or sanctuaries because you feel overwhelmed emotionally by the situations and backgrounds of the animals in those places. But what if I told you that offering Animal Reiki in those places can be the key to creating a breakthrough for an animal and that sets them on the path to healing!

Perhaps knowing the importance of your role can help give you the courage to lean into the difficult emotions, or perhaps even, transcend them for the higher good. In addition, the more you practice, the more stability you can feel inside of yourself, even in difficult situations. Our Animal Reiki practice teaches us the tools to ground and calm ourselves.

It helps us to let go of seeing only what is “wrong,” and see with our “Reiki eyes” to the heart of the animal’s bright spirit. This can help us let go of the overwhelming emotions and step into the power of compassion.

No matter which of these challenges are making grounded compassion difficult for you, our Animal Reiki practice gives us the tools to break through these barriers and pave the way for a vital space of healing, not only for the animals, but also for ourselves and others we meet along the way!

Grounding in Compassion Starts with You

Here are 3 ways you can begin leaning into compassion.

1) Start with developing mindfulness through hands-on self-healing.

This Reiki practice can help you move through the areas in your body that may be struggling, and check in with your emotions too as you bring awareness and presence to yourself in this moment. You can practice this Hands On Healing Meditation, which also creates a calming space for your animals!

2) Soften those parts of yourself that resist self-compassion.

One way is to imagine yourself as a baby animal. Choose your favorite type of animal or the animal that you feel guides and inspires you. For example, you could imagine yourself as a baby kitten. Imagine if you were to see a kitten like this struggling with physical or emotional issues.

What would you wish for this kitten? Safety, love, kindness, compassion, well-being? Imagine taking the kitten of your inner self into your arms to offer yourself comfort and loving-kindness.

Repeat these affirmations as you imagine embracing your baby animal self:

You are safe. You are loved. All is well.

3) Allow the Animals to Guide You Back to a Centered Place Through the Reiki Precepts

It’s not easy to quiet our burdened minds. Life gets chaotic, we run out of time, seemingly insurmountable challenges continue to block our path. Sometimes negative emotions govern us—we feel off-balance and give in to anger or worry or fear.

These are the times we need our animals the most. Spending time with them can help to bring us back to that place of true happiness—of compassion, of harmony, of peace.

How do we begin? As we walk the path of Animal Reiki healing, simply take one step at a time, with the assistance of our animals

1. Walk without anger. Anger is such a heavy burden to carry. Allow the peace and joy you feel when spending time with your animals to help you to put down this burden of anger. Allow your heart to lighten in the presence of your beautiful animal. Allow yourself to feel gratitude well up inside of you, thinking of all the joy and love your animal has brought to your life.

2. Walk without worry. Worry is a fruitless exercise of an overactive mind. It happens when we leave this present moment to fret about something that hasn’t happened yet. In other words, we are missing out on the here and now! Allow your animal to bring your energy back to the now. Join your animal here in this very instant, because that is where they are already.

In this moment, you are together. In this moment, your hearts are connected with love. Allow yourself to feel courage well up inside of you, thinking of the infinite power of the heart to heal.

3. Walk in humility. Do you think of yourself as an animal caregiver? Take a moment to consider the opposite: What if your animal was the one caring for you, healing you, teaching you? Yes, perhaps they do so in an unconventional, subtle and very clever way. Nonetheless, your animal is teaching you very important life lessons about the power of living life from the heart, and remembering to always be authentic to your true self.

4. Walk in honesty. Something that is very special about our animals is that they love us for who we really are. They don’t care if we are fancy or rich, poised or graceful. They can see through to our hearts and see us for our beautiful bright light that is our truth! That is why they always look at us as if we are perfect—not because they are mistaken, but because they are looking through all of our foibles to see the truth of our inner spirit.

What if we could walk through life seeing things in this way, too: seeing the inner hearts of others, seeing deeper than the perception of separateness? Seeing the truth that we are all connected, all One. Imagine if we all walked in such honesty, what a beautiful and compassionate world it would be.

5. Walk with compassion. When we care for our animals and have deep relationships with them, something very beautiful happens: We get to practice kindness and compassion every single day just being with them. It might seem like these are isolated acts at first, but in reality, our compassion for animals has a very wide ripple effect. We are also modeling kindness for others who may observe our relationship. When more of us make compassionate choices every day for animals, more people will become aware of the positive difference kindness makes. I dream that one day the world will unite in compassion for the good of all animals everywhere.

Animals have much to teach us about compassion and the Reiki precepts. They model the importance of letting go and living in the present moment.

Notice that all 3 of the above techniques will create a strength within your center, grounding and stability within your energy. This is because we are “waking up” to this present moment and in doing so, we realize our interconnectedness with all beings! This leads us to our next step of grounding ourselves in compassion: how to hold space for animals!

How to Hold a Healing, Compassionate Space for the Animals in Your Life

Animal Reiki is a meditation practice we share with our animals, and more than that: it is a way of seeing the world and living with more compassion in it. One of the things I like to say to students is, “Be Reiki with your animals, don’t do Reiki to them.”

What this “being Reiki” is really about is holding an openhearted, compassionate space for your animal in this moment.

But this isn’t so easy, especially when an animal is stressed or in pain. How can we learn to hold space in a deep and supportive way, even in the most difficult moments? I created The Let Animals Lead® method to show you the way!

In our Let Animals Lead® method meditations we can let go of the mind and expand our being into a deeper space of energy. In that beautiful, open space, the animal can choose to meet you. The heart-to-heart connection that is created is extremely transformative: all things are possible in that beautiful healing space of connection.

So if we want to help our animals, we may ask ourselves, how do we get into that meditative space where the animals can reach out and connect freely and on their own terms? In the Let Animals Lead® method, this can only happen when we quiet the mind, go inward and trust animals to take the lead, rather than taking charge ourselves and actively sending energy to this or that issue.

The Healing Space Meditation is the very first meditation practice I teach to help students begin holding an empowered space for animals. It combines the Japanese Reiki technique of Joshin Kokyu Ho with a deep honoring of animals as teachers and a specific mental intention and openness of heart to engender trust and comfort in the animals we share space with.

The Joshin Kokyu Ho is a special breathing method which helps you get in touch with your lower belly at the center of your physical being. In becoming aware and focused on this center, we cultivate grounding and stability in our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual levels of being.

This is very important for us as human beings because we often live our life overextended, stressed and multitasking, with our energy all over the place. Vibrationally speaking, we can feel very unstable to our sensitive animal friends, so focusing on centering and grounding is very important.

This special breathing practice also helps us to bring our focus inward which is important when we are connecting heart to heart with another being. Too often, we push our good intentions on the animals because we want so badly to help, but this only creates obstacles in connecting with them.

We also may find ourselves in emotional situations, such as:

• personal, stressful issues in our own lives

• supporting an animal who is very sick or recovering from surgery

• sharing space with a stressed animal recovering from a traumatic past

• or helping an animal in hospice or who may be dying.

If we are very empathetic or highly sensitive, it is easy to get knocked over by the emotions or trauma experienced by the animals or the people who love and care for them. So how do we learn how to hold a strong, solid, calm, peaceful energy, even in the midst of the storm of emotions around us?

We must practice meditation every day! Our meditation practice is foundational in helping us go deeper than the emotion of the moment, to find that strength and grounding within us. Our inner stability will help us get through whatever is going on around us. In every moment, peace is truly possible and meditation helps us remember this.

When we can hold a space of peace and calm, the animal can step into it for comfort in that difficult moment. If instead, we end up getting drawn into the chaos around us, ruminating on the sadness or suffering, our vibration changes. We end up in a place of pity, sadness or upset, and animals will feel uncomfortable with this vibration and not want to connect with us.

Holding a beautiful, peaceful space involves pure, openhearted presence. We must let go of the past. Whatever happened is done and over, so let go of it. Don’t breathe new life into the ashes of what has been. Instead, be present with the animal right here and right now. What is going to happen in the future for this animal? We cannot know and worrying about it doesn’t support the animal. In fact it takes us away from this moment. So we must let go of it.

Let’s just sit (or stand or walk with the animals) and be with them right now. This kind of presence, without worries or agenda, creates a beautiful openness, and animals will want to share space with you. They will feel better just stepping into the peace and calm you have created.

I invite you to practice the Healing Space Meditation.

Want to expand the ripple effects of your compassionate Animal Reiki space? Engage in compassionate action! Here are some ideas to practice random acts of kindness for animals.

Cultivate a Calm Presence with Compassion

When we ground ourselves in compassion, we create a calm, healing presence that animals can trust. This stable energy helps us meet even the most difficult moments with grace and strength.

Through our Animal Reiki practice, we not only help animals feel safe and supported, but we also deepen our own inner peace. The more we embody compassion, the more powerfully we can serve as a source of healing in the world.