Animal Reiki Relaxation & Rebalance

12/07/2025

I want to take a moment to thank The Whole Horse Journey for this invaluable piece they’ve written and shared with us. 🙏
It hit my heart hard—yet with so much love and compassion.
My heart horse, Benny, who has been running free for some years now, also lost his mother at birth. Reading this piece felt as though it was written about him. Every bit of it. I imagine many others may feel the same connection.
Benny taught me so much about communication, about trauma, and about the scars and challenges he carried throughout his life on earth.
We all know how sh*tty it feels to have our emotions dismissed or ignored. I can’t imagine any parent finding it easy to watch their children go through that—especially over and over again. And the damage it can create in a human child…
Honestly, it’s no different for horses or any other animals.
I am beyond grateful that more people are bringing attention to this. 🙏
Understanding how animals communicate is crucial. Listening is everything. Having a conversation with them is life-changing.
I am eternally grateful for Benny and for all the animals in my life whom I love so deeply.
Our animals are our greatest teachers.

Today I want to share a case that teaches us so much about what happens when early development, attachment loss, and a dysregulated nervous system collide inside a horse’s body.
Not to diagnose him. Not to “fix” him. But to help people see behaviour through a lens that honours physiology, emotion, history, and unmet needs.

Meet Khalid (not his real name but he is a real case study of ours), a young Arab gelding who lost his mother at birth and was hand-reared by humans. Beautiful. Sensitive. Intelligent. And struggling.

Presenting Behaviours:

Chasing other horses
Biting at them with intensity
High arousal at the smallest trigger
And when overwhelmed…
he bites himself
For many people, this looks like dominance, aggression, or “bad manners.” But when you look deeper, a completely different picture emerges.

WHAT’S HAPPENING IN HIS BODY?

1. A Nervous System That Never Learned How to Come Down

Foals regulate through their mothers.
They match her breath, her rhythms, her calm, her pauses.
When that is lost at birth, a foal grows up without:
Somatic co-regulation
Emotional buffering
A template for safety
A model for social behaviour
So Khalid’s body doesn’t know how to downshift once it goes up.
There is activation, activation, activation… then overflow.

2. Sympathetic Overload Disguised as ‘Aggression’

Chasing and biting are often misunderstood. In Khalid’s case, this isn’t dominance. This is a sympathetic system with no internal brakes. Fight energy isn’t a choice for him - it’s where his body goes when it cannot find a path back to baseline.

3. Self-Biting as an Overflow Valve

This is the part that tells the real story. When his internal arousal gets too big, too fast, and too intense, his system overrides itself in a desperate attempt to interrupt the surge.
Self-biting can look like:
A shock response
A self-stimulatory behaviour
A grounding attempt
A trauma echo from early disruption
It’s not a behavioural issue.
It’s an emotional emergency.

DEVELOPMENTAL PIECES AT PLAY
4. Social Literacy That Never Formed

Horses learn 90% of their social behaviour from other horses -
especially mares and low-conflict, well-regulated herd members.
Hand-reared youngsters often:
Misread social cues
Escalate too fast
Apply too much pressure
Struggle with boundaries
Don’t understand how to pause, soften, or end an interaction safely
Khalid isn’t trying to be bossy. He simply missed the education that only horses can give.

5. Attachment Wounds Held in the Body

Early loss leaves a somatic imprint.
For horses raised without mothers, we often see:
Hypervigilance
Difficulty settling
Sensitivity to transitions
Fragmented self-regulation
A constant searching for “something” they don’t know how to name. His body remembers a world that felt unsafe before he even took his first steps.

THE DEEPER LESSON: BEHAVIOUR IS ALWAYS COMMUNICATION
When a horse bites himself, it is not misbehaviour. It is not “nasty.” It is not disrespect. It is the body expressing a level of distress it cannot manage any other way. Khalid shows us that behaviour is never just behaviour.

It is:
physiology
history
attachment
environment
unmet needs

and a nervous system trying its best with the map it was given
These patterns don’t appear out of nowhere. They come from somewhere. And when we can trace the thread back to its source, we stop judging the horse and start understanding him.

WHERE THIS STORY GOES FROM HERE
For horses like Khalid, the path forward is never about “getting after him” or shutting down the behaviour.
That only increases the overwhelm.

Instead, it’s about:
Reading his thresholds
Understanding the spikes before they erupt
Supporting the body he lives in
Rebuilding the regulation he never received
Re-teaching social safety slowly and carefully
Helping him find a sense of ground inside himself
That process is deep, sensitive, slow, and entirely individual to the horse.
And it requires attunement more than technique.

Khalid is not a problem horse.
Khalid is a horse whose early life was shaped by loss, absence, and survival - and his behaviour makes perfect sense once you see it through that lens. If you have a horse who reminds you of Khalid,
or if your horse’s behaviour feels confusing, contradictory, or “bigger” than expected, there is always a story underneath it.

There is always a reason.
There is always a nervous system trying to be heard.
You don’t have to navigate that alone.
Sometimes all that’s needed is someone who can translate what the horse has been carrying in silence.

08/28/2025

My Nephew and Niece sharing a calm and compassionate space with my love and greatest teacher🙏💕🦄

I loved watching all three of them connect so deeply. It was incredibly inspiring.

02/08/2024

01/30/2024

💕My Journey with Energy Work💕

There are many things in our lives that negatively affect us. Stress, anxiety, and trauma are just a few. Any of these can disrupt the flow of our “Life- force energy,” When this happens, our bodies begin to fall out of balance leading to a greater chance of illness and disease and of course, pain.

When I was seventeen I began developing certain ailments. While multiple surgeries improved a few, the remaining ones couldn’t be helped by western medicine, including my seven year journey with Fibromyalgia.

I began receiving acupuncture treatments, a Chinese form of energy healing.
Most of my ailments were so deep rooted, and while none of my other family members experienced them, we came to the realization they had developed due to past traumas.

It’s the same for animals. However, animals don’t have the ability to seek out their own treatment like we can. Instead, they come to us when they need help. It’s important that we listen and understand what and how they are trying to tell us. Behavioral changes, refusal to eat or drink, body tension are signs something is negatively affecting them.

All animals deserve to live a happy life. I empathize with them, especially when they are not at their best. I am beyond grateful to be able to share reiki with so many different kinds of animals and to make a difference in their lives.

In this video, Gem and I are sharing reiki. You might notice her head begin to lower as she becomes more and more relaxed. There’s also the movement of her ears and behind her eyelids and the quivering of her lips. This is the processing stage when the energy begins flowing to where it’s needed most. When Gem licks her lips and yawns that is when the release occurs bringing balance to her body.

💕This page was created on Dec 4th, the three year anniversary of my horse, Benny’s passing. Today, I am celebrating his 17th birthday and sharing this special journey with you. While I wish I could have shared reiki with him, I know he is by my side on this journey with me.

I hope you’d like to learn more about this work and how it could help your animals. Follow for more ❤️

To Benny, my greatest teacher.💕🦄💕

01/02/2024

I’m honored to share this recent blog post by, Kathleen Prasad, the founder of Animal Reiki Source and the Let Animals Lead® method.

“As our animals face their final chapter in this physical life, our role as Animal Reiki practitioners has never been more precious or important and we can help them transition by offering Animal Reiki as end-of-life support. The Animal Reiki space that we can hold for them, using our Let Animals Lead® method pillars of practice, can create a peaceful, harmonious gateway for our beloved animals to walk through as they transition to the next realm.”

As our animals face their final chapter in this physical life, our role as Animal Reiki practitioners has never been more precious or important and we can help them transition by offering Animal Reiki as end-of-life support. The Animal Reiki space that we can hold for them, using our Let Animals Lea...

01/01/2024

Hands-off reiki is just as effective as hands on. This sweet girl chose hands off to start. I was just happy she wanted to reiki with me.

01/01/2024

💕I always knew my kids would have fur💕

01/01/2024

💕The “Heart to Heart,” connection 💕
With a very special boy.

The connection we shared during this reiki session moved me so deeply.

01/01/2024

💕Welcome to my Animal Reiki Meditation page

In loving memory of my special horse, Benny. 💕

With all the information I’ve learned and the experiences i’ve had while sharing Reiki with wild and domesticated animals, my hope is that this page might become helpful to others looking for ways to further support their beloved animals and gain an even deeper connection with them.

Some helpful info

All living things on this planet hold their own life-force energy. This energy is responsible for our spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical well-being. It flows through our bodies like the blood in our veins.

Like humans, animals have an innate ability to heal. It’s the same for plants and trees. Healing requires a healthy flow of energy, so when one experiences trauma, anxiety and stress, negative energy & negative experiences, the animal’s energy force begins to weaken, becoming blocked-creating imbalances within the body.

It wasn’t until after my training in equine craniosacral therapy, followed by equine sports massage that I was able to fully dive into animal reiki. Reiki is a Japanese form of energy healing, developed by Mikao Usui. The words, “Rei,” meaning, Spiritual and “Ki,” meaning, life-force energy.
When I began reiki training to further my ability to help animals I never expected it to be the spark that would start my own healing journey.

I was trained in The “ Let Animals Lead® Method,” a practice developed and taught worldwide by Kathleen Prassad.
This practice is dedicated to protecting the animals dignity and right to choose to lead in their own healing process.

With a quiet mind, love, compassion and our heartfelt intent we create a sacred space of healing for the animal to join. Animals are drawn to this healing energy as they experience a deep state of peace and relaxation as the reiki clears blocked energy aiding in the body’s natural ability to rebalance and heal itself.

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Send a message to learn more