How to Empower Patience in Your Animal Reiki Practice

What does it mean to empower patience? Patience is more than just waiting—it is a practice of love, presence, and trust. In our busy human lives, slowing down can feel uncomfortable, even frustrating.

Yet when we step into Animal Reiki with the Let Animals Lead® approach, patience becomes our greatest ally. Every time we let an animal choose how to engage, every time we soften our urge to “fix,” we are cultivating the steady, compassionate presence that creates space for true healing.

Patience isn’t passive; it’s an active offering of calmness, kindness, and respect. In this way, patience becomes both a gift we give to animals and a blessing they reflect back to us.

“Patience is the companion of wisdom.” — Saint Augustine

The Let Animals Lead® method of Animal Reiki helps us cultivate patience. At the center of our practice is the idea of animal empowerment in Reiki connections. Because we always let the animals choose both if and how to share in our Animal Reiki sessions, we’re practicing patience every time we share Animal Reiki with them.

This kind of patience is so powerful because it’s about mindfully choosing to create a calm and peaceful energy of acceptance through letting go of control.

Why Empowering Patience Can Feel Difficult

It’s not always easy to be patient. Who among us wants to wait in a long line or sit in a mess of traffic? Or perhaps we’re on a diet, and we see two options: feeling fit in the future, or eating the piece of chocolate cake right now. In this scenario, it’s really hard to turn down the immediate reward, the chocolate cake, especially if it’s sitting right in front of us. But we all know intellectually that good things come to those who wait—an ideal that is even supported by research.

The same holds true when we spend time with animals who are struggling with health issues. Sometimes when we approach to connect and support a dog or cat, we come on way too strong and scare them away. Or perhaps while sharing Animal Reiki, we feel compelled to hold our hands on their bodies, focusing on areas of discomfort.

Humans love a “quick fix.” Of course, when we do such things, we fail miserably. Focusing on what’s “wrong” only creates a negative feeling in our energy that animals will shy away from. 

Trying to “fix” often creates an energy of rushing and pushing that makes animals disconnect. Putting our hands on top of areas that are sensitive can make animals run away. Although we may mean well, if we approach our ailing animals without patience, we will only create obstacles to healing.

There is so much we can learn about healing from animals, who are so much more in tune with the healing that naturally manifests when we get in touch with our inner space of peace and compassion. Everyone’s journey to healing looks different, and when we cultivate patience, we will see this very clearly.

We just need to relax, get back in touch with our inner still point and remember that each of us has an amazing capacity to self-heal! Meditation can help us to uncover our inner self-healing power.

Here’s a meditation you can try that is foundational to the Let Animals Lead method of Animal Reiki, and also helps cultivate patience:

So what happens when we throw away our desire for “the instant fix” and instead just sit silently and meditate without expectation with our animals?

A few amazing results begin to unfold:

We start to notice and observe behaviors of the animal we may not have noticed before. We might notice health issues in the early stages when they are much easier to resolve—perhaps our cat isn’t eating the way he usually does or maybe our horse seems out of sorts emotionally. This is a time to stop, relax, breathe and share Reiki with them. 

We might also become familiar with the complex social system between animals—such as our horse’s herd or our dog’s pack. Noticing little changes in this social structure can indicate something is “off” and needs support way before most people would become aware that anything has changed.

In addition to what we sense with our animals, being patient and quiet helps us begin to notice our “monkey mind,” as Buddhists like to call it, and how busy it is. It’s not so easy just to sit and breathe, is it? The busyness of our minds is simply a distraction from being here, right now in this present moment, for our animals. Reiki meditation can help us to come back to the now, and focus and quiet the mind. And in so doing, we are also developing our patience.

When we are patient, we will begin to see our animals coming forward to connect with us to relax and heal. Because we waited, instead of rushing in, they are able to wait until they are truly ready to connect with us in a beautiful space of peace and compassion. It is so amazing to experience when animals make this conscious choice to come forward and connect, especially when it happens with a fearful animal that normally may not trust humans.

If we are always “doing” this or that to fix animals, we never get the opportunity to see an animal take the lead in her own healing. Patience also means we have to let go of our own timeline for “fixing” issues and allow animals time to process healing in their own way.

How Empowering Patience Supports Your Practice

Cultivating patience is also the antidote to one of our most prevalent and tricky human emotions: anger. 

The animals of the world face many challenges these days. As much as I try to keep my focus on the good things, sometimes I can’t help but feel angry and helpless to make a difference. In times like these, my Animal Reiki meditation practice helps me to find my balance again. One meditation I like to do is deeply contemplate the Reiki precept, “do not anger.” How does anger feel in my body? How does it come through in my words and actions? How do animals respond to me when they sense my angry energy?

As I meditate on anger, allowing my thoughts to come and go, my mind eventually comes to rest on the healing power of patience. How can I cultivate my capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset?

In other words, how can I somehow endure and persevere through my animals’ difficulties?

Empower Patience with Equanimity

"Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity." - Carl Jung

One way to truly empower our patience is to focus on creating an energy of equanimity: mental calmness, composure, and evenness of our temper. Our Animal Reiki meditation practice gives us the tools to literally shift our energy from anger, worry, fear and discomfort into calm, composure and peace. 

Practicing equanimity means we are actively choosing to create a safe energy for our animals, even in a moment when it might be the most difficult thing to do. Equanimity can be our antidote to anger and reactivity because it actively empowers patience during our time of waiting.

If we can stop, breathe and take time to practice patience our meditations in those difficult moments, we can support our animal’s path towards healing.

Learning Patience from Animals

“With love and patience, nothing is impossible.” –Daisaku Ikeda

To empower our patience, we can also focus on love. Animals are wonderful teachers of this, as it is often our love for them that gives us the strength to be patient through difficult times. When animals are facing illness or healing from past trauma or abuse, love helps us to open our hearts and just “be” with them when they are sick or suffering.

To be patient and loving with animals, we must let go of the anger we might feel at their situations or anger at ourselves that we can’t change the situations to be better. Shifting out of anger, we can bring ourselves back to patience, and as we persevere, we meditate on equanimity and love. This will create a space of trust and connection with the animals we love. In this space, we can see miracles of healing happen!

The story of Shirley the elephant is a wonderful example of the power of patience and love to heal. As you know, elephants live very long lives. Captured as a baby in the wild, she performed in circuses for 24 years (being terribly wounded there by another elephant who crippled her back leg, and then losing part of her ear in a fire) and then lived in complete isolation at a zoo for another 22 years. (Elephants are social creatures, so this must have been so difficult.)

In 1999, she was brought to The Elephant Sanctuary to live in peace and contentment—and immediately became matriarch of the other elephants. She is such a wise and gentle elephant. She never lost her love and patience, even through all those years.

When she arrived, she was reunited with Jenny after 22 years of separation—Jenny already lived at the sanctuary when Shirley arrived, and she hadn’t seen Shirley since she was a baby! It was an amazing and emotional reunion you can watch in this video:

Her story touched me very deeply, inspiring me to travel there in 2002 to teach Carol Buckley and two other staff members Reiki 1. I hoped to support them in helping to heal the elephants in their care. Believing I was there to help the elephants, how surprising it was to find that Shirley actually helped me. Seeing her living peacefully and contentedly at the sanctuary was wonderful. Her energy truly embodied equanimity and love. Realizing how she endured all her years of difficulty without losing her gentle, loving spirit was a wonderful example for me to emulate.

In fact, she was eating lunch with Jenny when I met them from a bit of a distance on a 4-wheeler in a large pasture on the property. Shirley looked at us and placed a pile of hay on Jenny’s head as if to say, “Don’t forget to laugh.” No matter what, she still had her sense of humor!

Who are the animals in your life that teach you the power of patience?

Learning Patience from Trees

If you would know strength and patience, welcome the company of trees. ~Hal Borland

Perhaps the ultimate teacher of patience is nature all around us. I love meditating with trees, especially the beautiful redwoods that are all around Marin County where I live. Have you ever tried forest bathing?

I often think of trees as a great example for us as Animal Reiki practitioners too: They simply stand, quiet and steady, day after day, year after year. In this patient way of being in the world, they are quietly and without pomp and circumstance, sharing with other beings on the earth the oxygen needed to live. In fact, trees help all of us in so many ways!

Perhaps if we could learn to share Reiki in the same way – Just “being” Reiki day by day, radiating love and light in support of others, without expectations, agenda or human concerns. To share Reiki the way trees share life and healing, would be the ultimate expression of the healing power of patience, equanimity, love and more!

Here’s a short meditation to help you connect with trees and learn from their energy; trees are truly the masters of patience:

Patience is Key in Creating a Safe Space

When we embody patience, we create a sanctuary of peace where animals feel safe enough to open their hearts to us. In this quiet space, we witness the miracle of healing that unfolds naturally—at its own pace, in its own time.

Whether guided by the gentle presence of a beloved animal, the steadfast strength of trees, patience teaches us to trust the wisdom of life itself. May we remember, with every breath and every Animal Reiki meditation, that patience is love in action, and through it, we and our animal teachers walk together on the path of healing.