Introduction: The science of meditating with animals

Why the science of meditating with animals can be beneficial

When handling or petting animals, we can use knowledge to ensure that contact is successful.

However, it also takes practice to make contact with animals successful.

We can also simply make contact with animals without any purpose.

When encountering animals, knowledge about interpreting body language helps us to evaluate and react to their behavior. This knowledge usually comes from behavioral research on animals. Scientists have observed animals on the basis of standardized experimental observations or in field trials and recorded how they behave in different situations. This allows conclusions to be drawn about the nature, likes and dislikes of animals. Such studies can also be used to draw conclusions about emotions based on facial expressions and body language.

With this knowledge, we as humans can come into contact with animals. If we want something from an animal, we can use the scientific knowledge from the field of animal training.

Interpreting behavior and responding to it appropriately in terms of time and content requires practice as well as knowledge. For example, you can learn the body language of dogs from books. The principles of animal training can also be taught in theory. However, when it comes to practical application, it usually takes practice for what has been learned to work. The timing of the reaction to a behavior must be right so that it does not lose its appropriate context and the animal understands what the human wants from it.

In addition to cognitive understanding and physical realization, there is another component that is quite difficult to grasp or measure. This is the direct mutual feeling. We can come into contact with animals, just as we can with other people, in a way that can best be described in the words of spiritual literature. The only way to make this somehow objective and therefore credible for skeptics would probably be by observing individual behavior. From this it could be deduced that something is happening, even if it is only indirectly observable and presumably individual.

If this subtle area is ignored in cross-species encounters, a gap remains, but without it, appropriate contact and interaction with animals is not possible. Just because you don't know how to make it measurable doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

When we meet animals, it is possible to feel them and animals feel this too. This is an observation and experience that many people share, although it is often doubted by those who do not feel it.

The best way to describe what people perceive in silent contact with animals is to draw a comparison with music. You can look at notes and learn their meaning. What music ultimately sounds like can only be experienced by perceiving it. But is it then possible to describe the music adequately? It is possible to reduce what we perceive to physiological and physical processes. But does this succeed in adequately describing the immediate perception of music? This can be achieved to some extent through poetry or paraphrased explanations. The perception of music is also a very subjective process. Furthermore, music interacts with us.

It touches the inner self or it is unpleasant. Either way, it does not stand alone, but is only music together with the music maker and the perceiver and it is always directly in the moment. Isn't this similar to what we perceive when we encounter animals? How would we measure this? How could we research it? If it cannot be researched directly and objectively, it is nevertheless true what happens in the moment of mutual sensing between humans and animals.

We can meditate with animals and this can enrich our spiritual experience. There are few reports of people meditating with animals. Scientific literature seems more focused on the benefits of meditation and is mostly centered on humans. Research on the interaction between humans and animals can be found in the field of emotion transference or occasionally in literature on hypnosis or spiritual practices such as Reiki. It is striking that the focus here is usually on an objective and directly measurable result. As far as emotion transference is concerned, the focus here is mostly on negatively valued or unpleasant emotions. Perhaps this is because these are easier to measure than, for example, joy or the feeling of happiness?

Why can it be important to point out the relevance of the existence of a spiritual level in the encounter between humans and animals? It may be important to draw attention to ethical behavior in this area of contact and interaction as well. Is the sending of energy or other so-called subtle or spiritual content justifiable without ethics? If we feel that we sense animals and they sense us, then we also have a responsibility in the realm of the inexpressible.

Is there a benefit to meditating with animals? Perhaps it can be used. But what if you just do it for the sake of it? Someone who likes to play the piano plays because they want to play. An artist paints, a dancer dances, a person meditates with an animal and an animal meditates with a person.