Met a wonderful therapist at the Humane Society US Animal Care Expo last week, Jen Blough; a sister Michigander and animal lover. Her website is https://www.animalwelfarewellness.com/ and her clinic is called Deepwater Consulting.
Below is one of her blogposts and I highly recommend learning more about Jen, her books and her services.
Man’s Best…Therapist? Exploring the Health Benefits of Animals
When we live with, care for, work with, and protect animals, we often find ourselves forming deep attachments to them. This special connection, known as the human-animal bond, is described by the American Veterinary Medical Association as a “mutual beneficial and dynamic relationship between people and other animals that is influenced by behaviors that are essential to the health and well-being of both.”
Benefits of the Human-Animal Bond
People are forming friendships with all creatures great and small in some rather unlikely places – zoos, hospitals, and even prisons. More than 90 percent of zookeepers, for example, report having a bond with one or more animals in their care. Sharing the company of birds helps older patients in skilled rehab facilities battle loneliness and depression while boosting morale. Providing aquariums full of fish for dementia patients promotes healthy eating habits, sociability, and relaxation. Prison programs are becoming increasingly popular, offering second chances to inmates and animals alike. From dogs and horses that need socialization to injured, sick, or orphaned wildlife, animals all of kinds are receiving comfort and care in the confinements of prison walls, and returning the favor by providing inmates with a purpose.
Research has only begun to uncover the myriad of psychological, physiological, and social benefits from human-animal interactions. Did you know that petting a dog, for instance, has been shown to reduce blood pressure in people – as well as in the pooches? In addition to helping us calm down, our critters can decrease our heart rate and cholesterol levels and boost our immune system. And forget fad diets and magic weight loss pills. When it comes to the battle of the bulge, nothing beats man’s best friend. A study by the National Institutes of Health revealed that those who walked their dogs on a regular basis were more active, less obese, and even more social. Animals promote healing in hospitalized children, aid adults coping with chronic health conditions such as cancer, and bring peace to those near the end of life in hospice care by alleviating anxiety and decreasing discomfort. As you can see, animals have an amazing ability to heal us throughout our lifespans:
Pets can help children develop motor skills, self-confidence, and empathy.
Children often see their pets as companions, even siblings. In withdrawn or shy children, sometimes a pet is the only companion.
Companion animals provide affection.
They promote opportunities to exercise, play, and socialize.
Pets allow us to love and nurture something – leading to enhanced self-esteem.
Companion animals are dependent on us, creating caregiving opportunities.
Pets can offer stability and support in difficult situations such as a divorce or move.
They can serve as an extension (eyes, ears, or legs) for those with physical impairments.
Pets can be a lifeline for people with terminal illnesses.
For the elderly especially, pets can provide a sense of purpose.
Companion animals provide something humans cannot — unconditional love.
As Richard Rohr explains below, “Understanding the Universal or Cosmic Christ can change the way we relate to creation, to other religions, to other people, to ourselves, and to God.”
May we all enjoy the healing presence of thisEaster.
Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation
From the Center for Action and Contemplation
Week Fifteen: The Resurrected Christ
Christ Is Risen
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
As we celebrate Easter, the Daily Meditations explore Father Richard’s teachings on the Universal Christ, which reconnect Christ to his cosmic origin.
Understanding the Universal or Cosmic Christ can change the way we relate to creation, to other religions, to other people, to ourselves, and to God. Knowing and experiencing this Christ can bring about a major shift in consciousness. Like Saul’s experience on the road to Damascus (see Acts 9), we won’t be the same after encountering the Risen Christ.
Many people don’t realize that the apostle Paul never met the historical Jesus and hardly ever quotes Jesus directly. In almost all of Paul’s preaching and writing, he refers to the Eternal Christ Mystery or the Risen Christ rather than Jesus of Nazareth before his death and resurrection. The Risen Christ is the only Jesus that Paul ever knew! This makes Paul a fitting mediator for the rest of us, since the Omnipresent Risen Christ is the only Jesus we will ever know as well (see 2 Corinthians 5:16–17).
Jesus’ historical transformation (“resurrected flesh”) and our understanding of the Spirit he gives us (see John 16:7–15; Acts 1:8) allow us to more easily experience the Presence that has always been available since the beginning of time, a Presence unlimited by space or time, the promise and guarantee of our own transformation (see 1 Corinthians 15; 2 Corinthians 1:21–22; Ephesians 1:13–14).
In the historical Jesus, this eternal omnipresence had a precise, concrete,andpersonal referent. God’s presence became more obvious and believable in the world. The formless took on form in someone we could “hear, see, and touch” (1 John 1:1), making God easier to love.
But it seems we so fell in love with this personal interface in Jesus that we forgot about the Eternal Christ, the Body of God, which is all of creation, which is really the First Incarnation. Jesus and Christ are not exactly the same. In the early Christian era, a few Eastern Fathers (such as Origen of Alexandria and Maximus the Confessor) noticed that the Christ was clearly older, larger, and different than Jesus himself. They mystically saw that Jesus is the union of human and divine in space and time; and Christ is the eternal union of matter and Spirit from the beginning of time.
Jesus willingly died—and Christ arose—yes, still Jesus, but now including and revealing everything else in its full purpose and glory. (Read Colossians 1:15–20, so you know this is not just my idea.)
When we believe in Jesus Christ, we’re believing in something much bigger than the historical incarnation that we call Jesus. Jesus is the visible map. The entire sweep of the meaning of the Anointed One, the Christ, includes us and all of creation since the beginning of time (see Romans 1:20).
Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Cosmic Christ (Albuquerque, NM: Center for Action and Contemplation, 2009). Available as CD and MP3 download.
Suppose there was a green, sappy log, and it was lying in water. Then a person comes along with a drill-stick, thinking to light a fire and produce heat. What do you think, Aggivessana? By drilling the stick against that green, sappy log lying in the water, could they light a fire and produce heat?”
“No, Master Gotama. Why not? Because it’s a green, sappy log, and it’s lying in the water. That person will eventually get weary and frustrated.” …
“Whoever has not given up the defilements that are corrupting, leading to future lives, hurtful, resulting in suffering and future rebirth, old age, and death is deluded, I say. For it’s not giving up the defilements that makes you deluded. Whoever has given up the defilements that are corrupting, leading to future lives, hurtful, resulting in suffering and future rebirth, old age, and death—is not…
Presbyterian pastor Rachel Srubas writes of the paradox at the heart of Good Friday and the three-day “triduum” of Holy Week:
Jesus anticipated his arrest, passion, and entombment, calling this triduum “three days and three nights … in the heart of the earth,” and likening it to the prophet Jonah’s journey “in the belly of the sea monster” (Matthew 12:40). Thomas Merton, the brilliant contemplative writer of the twentieth century … also wrote of Jonah (or as Merton and others have called him, Jonas). In The Sign of Jonas, … Merton said, “It was when Jonas was traveling as fast as he could away from Nineveh, toward Tharsis, that he was thrown overboard and swallowed by a whale who took him where God wanted him to go…. Even our mistakes are eloquent, more than we know.” [1]
A sense of sacred irony, of eloquent mistakes, has for centuries enabled Christians to call the Friday of Jesus’ tortuous execution “good.” This is not a matter of putting a happy spin on a grisly, unjust tragedy. Good Friday, and all Christian life, is about embracing paradox. Jesus’ teachings and his death reveal sacred contradictions. The truth that you and I may try to avoid, the pain we’re loath to face, point the way toward our freedom from captivating lies that perpetuate our suffering. When you and I embrace Jesus’ essential paradox—that to lose is to gain and to die is to live—we come to God, who gathers up the broken pieces of the world and makes them more complete and beautiful than they were before they broke. God integrates all fractious dualities into the wholeness of life that Christians call eternal salvation. It’s a life we get to live here and now, by grace and faith. It’s the life toward which Lent has always pointed.
Like Father Richard, Srubas considers the cross a “collision of opposites” that leads us deeper into reality and the presence of God:
Following his jubilant entry into Jerusalem (which Christians celebrate on Palm Sunday), Jesus told his disciples, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:23b–24). Pay attention to that pivotal unless and understand: without the fatal fall, no glorious resurrected life can be lived.
From this divine paradox, it follows that there can be no compassion without passion, no responsive loving-kindness unless there first comes suffering. Until God ultimately mends all of creation’s broken pieces, there will come suffering.…
“You will know the truth,” Jesus said to those who trusted him, “and the truth will make you free” (John 8:32). By his clear-eyed honesty, Jesus revealed holy, ironic wholeness. Denying pain would intensify it but facing hard facts of life and death would lead people deep into reality, the only place where God eternal can be found.
[1] Thomas Merton, The Sign of Jonas (San Diego, CA: Harcourt, 1953, 1981), 10–11.
Rachel M. Srubas, The Desert of Compassion: Devotions for the Lenten Journey (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2023), 167–168, 169.
Image credit: A path from one week to the next—Jenna Keiper, North Cascades Sunrise. Jenna Keiper, Photo of a beloved artpiece belonging to Richard Rohr (Artist Unknown.) McEl Chevrier, Untitled. Used with permission.
“Breathwork refers to any breathing exercise or technique. People often perform them to improve mental, physical, and spiritual well-being. During breathwork, you intentionally change your breathing pattern.
Many forms of breathwork therapy involve breathing in a conscious and systematic way. Many people find breathwork promotes deep relaxation or leaves them feeling energized.” http://www.healthline.com/health/breathwork
One of my early morning sessions yesterday at the 2023 HSUS Animal Care Expo was the Benefits of Breathwork for Animal People offered by Katya Lidsky, Writer, Life Coach for Dog People, and podcaster for Somebody Save Me! I loved her metaphor of seeing our breath as a bat signal revealing our values, thoughts and actions. Becoming more conscious of how we breathe and focusing our breath more purposefully can achieve better results for ourselves and those around us.
As Katya explains, “I think of Breathwork as ‘active meditation.’ It has done so much to shift and improve my life that I got certified as a Breathwork Facilitator … I get to focus on the power of it, the love of it, and give it away.
If you work in animal welfare as a rescuer, at the animal shelter, behind the desk at a nonprofit organization, or simply identity as an animal lover, I specialize in supporting you … I am open to supporting anybody because I believe that breathwork can help everybody.
Breathwork is a wellness tool … try it!”
I totally agree with Katya and encourage you to check out her website, podcast and her next presentation or training session near you.
I attended a powerful session yesterday on the importance of remembering all the change that’s been accomplished to-date and moving forward more skillfully when discerning how these changes were made. Bernard Unti, PhD of Philosophy from the American University provided a rich history of animal protection progress starting in Europe and then through the U.S. Here’s a few highlights of what he said:
“Organized animal protection is now 200 years old … skillful use of our history can help us engage more supporters in the future.” Dr. Bernard Unti, presented on the four key themes from a historical and contemporary perspective and showed how these themes have led to real (but not-yet-complete) improvement in our human-animal relations.
The four themes are:
relationship between cruelty to animals and interpersonal violence (e.g., how we treat non-human animals leads to how we treat fellow humans – beat your animals = beat your spouse, kids, elders, …)
connection between animal causes and other social justice causes (e.g., temperance, feminism, work safety …)
social values and communicating change (e.g., Black Beauty, Be Kind to Animals Week, Scouting …)
Bottom line: change comes from communicatingwhat we are for versus what we are against and wear our values gracefully (i.e., recognize incremental improvement and patiently win one person at a time).”
I am very fortunate to be investing much of this week at the Animal Care Expo in New Orleans, LA, USA. This 4-day event is an annual opportunity for educators and exhibitors to meet with over 2500 attendees to discuss what is happening to improve animal care, animal rescue and animal re-homing across the globe. Here’s what I did on Day 1:
Introduced to the Canine Assessment for Risk of Shelters (CARS) framework to assess a dog’s behavioral response to humans, other dogs, or other domesticated animals. This Learning Lab also included a Bite Assessment. This nearly 5-hour interactive session was excellently presented by Dorothy Baisly, Fernando Dias, Amanda Kowalski and Mara Velez.
The Welcome Keynote included the recognition of the 4,000 Beagles rescue program completed last year and the aspiration to do even more this year and years to come. This was followed by an inspirational presentation by Dr. Jyothi Robertson on how her interspecies family members (i.e. cats, dogs and a tortoise) help her (and can help us) look at life and our animal care challenges more courageously and lovingly.
Last, but not least, I was one of three animal chaplains staffing an exhibition booth for Compassion Consortium.
More good news to come!
Jill Angelo, Patrick Cole and (Rev) Sarah Bowen (award-winning author for Sacred Sendoffs and a founding director for Compassion Consortium)!
It’s Spring and I’m exploring the many types of deep friendships we encounter during our life. One reference I just discovered is reposted below from, believe it or not, the Brides website: written by Christine Coppa and referencing Dr. Michael Tobin.
Today’s senryu: Soul Friends and Soulmates
who are we today
who reminds us we are one
let’s begin anew
I’m interested in your comments on this topic. Do you have a soul friend and/or mate?
The idea of meeting your soulmate is the glorious stuff of rom-coms—and apparently real-life, everyday people, too.
What Is a Soulmate
According to Dr. Michael Tobin, a soulmate is someone who you feel deeply connected to, but not in a dependent or needy way. The guiding principle in a relationship between soulmates is that needs are equally met because a soulmate relationship should challenge you to move from selfishness to giving.
“It’s the realization that this person who shares your life is a part of yourself,” says family and marital psychologist Dr. Michael Tobin. “A soulmate is an individual that has a lasting impact on your life. Your soulmate is your fellow traveler on the journey of life—you need one another to grow beyond the limitations of your individual selves.”
If you’re wondering if you’ve met your soulmate—or are currently with your unique flame, Dr. Tobin has optimistic news for you: “I believe everyone could discover their soulmate. However, to find your soulmate, you must first understand that humans are not meant to be alone and that the purpose of a relationship is not merely to get our individual needs met—but rather as a challenge to grow—and to help our partners reach their potential.”
As for when you might meet your particular person, Dr. Tobin saysthat there isn’t a perfect age or life stage for discovering your soulmate—and that is exciting news. “I know a 74-year-old woman who reconnected with her high school flame after a 56-year separation. She calls him her soulmate. They were meant to be together during the later years of their lives.”
You might be wondering if you met your soulmate on a vacation, subway stop, or that time in the rain when a stranger invited you to share an umbrella—but didn’t realize it at the time. According to Dr. Tobin, yes, this is possible. “Everything in life is about timing. I believe it’s a matter of self-knowledge. When you understand that a relationship is not about control or the simple need of fulfillment but is essential to our psychological and spiritual development, then you’re open to the possibility of meeting your soulmate.”
If you’re curious about what to do if you feel like you’ve experienced a ships-in-the-night experience, Dr. Tobin suggests embracing it because it may actually have been what he says is known as a “soul crossing.” He explains that this is a brief encounter with someone who crosses our path and has a lasting impact on the direction we choose in life.
Knowing or understanding the signs you met your soulmate is interesting in itself because there isn’t just one generic type of soulmate out there. Most people equate the term “soulmate” with romantic love. Ahead, the types of soulmates that exist and how to know if you’ve found one.
Types of Soulmates
Not all soulmates are the stuff of life-long romance. Here are six different kinds to look out for in your own life.
Romantic Soulmates
“Romantic soulmates ignite one another’s passion throughout their time together,” explains Dr. Tobin. “They have the capacity to bring one another to heights of physical and emotional pleasure.” However, we’ve all experienced breakups, even if we were with someone who hit the hot and heavy marks. “Passion can be a brief flame that burns hot and then extinguishes. For those rare romantic soulmates, the flame burns continuously because they’re both committed to keeping the fire lit throughout their time together.”
Soul Partners
Has it been years since you connected with a friend from elementary school, but when you do, you just click? “A soul partner is that person who you haven’t seen in years, and when you reunite, feel like time and separation have no bearing on the depth of the connection,” explains Dr. Tobin.
Karmic Soulmates
You know you’ve met a karmic soulmate when you’re in sync about common purposes. “You’re both here together to make a difference in the world, and your skills complement one another—you’re ideal partners to fulfill a shared mission.” This kind of relationship doesn’t require love or intimacy and instead relies on putting your best selves forward to achieve something that matters.
Companion Soulmates
This is the yin to your yang, the peanut butter to your jelly—you get it. “Friends are an essential part of our lifetime journey, and those of the soulmate type help us laugh when we’re in pain, nurture us when we’re suffering, flow with us when we’re riding high, challenge us to be real, love us with our warts, and never abandon us in anger. And we do the same with them.”
Kindred Soulmates
You know you’ve found a kindred soulmate when you pretty much agree on all of the small and big stuff. “You love the same things; laugh at the same jokes; agree and disagree with love and affection; compete with gusto but without bitterness or jealousy. These people share the same journey toward truth and love,” Dr. Tobin says.
Soul Contracts
This is an interesting type of soulmate because it’s when two people are bound by a common commitment to speak the truth, be emotionally open with one another, own up to deceits, and be authentic. A soul contract might look like a married couple, where one spouse cheated, but they stay together, not for the kids or appearances but because there’s a deep law of attraction within pulling them together for their lifetime.
Signs You’ve Found Your Soulmate
The signs you’ve met your soulmate are kind of infinite and can overlap with the different kinds of soulmates you encounter in your lifetime. Dr. Tobin believes an important truth about relationships is that you have to create love and nurture soulmate connections. “Love isn’t delivered to us because we believe we deserve it. We must work at being loving and then we’ll receive love in return.”
They Give You a Sense of Calm and Storm
He also says that a sense of both calm and storm is an indicator light. “Sometimes a soulmate is here to shake us out of complacency, to challenge us to think and to act differently, to grow beyond our comfort zones. This is never smooth and peaceful. Yet with that same soulmate, there are and will be moments of exquisite connection, serenity, and harmony.”
You Feel One Another’s Pain
Another sign you’ve met your match is the way you react to their pain. “It’s hard to imagine soulmates who don’t bleed with one another, who don’t feel one another’s pain, who are absent of empathy and compassion,” Dr. Tobin says.
As a final note, “Soulmates may be like two strands of spaghetti entangled in such a way that they don’t know where one begins and the other ends,” says Dr. Tobin. And at the same time, some soulmate relationships serve their purpose and expire. The good news is we may all experience a soulmate connection at some point in our life.
It seems like Roald Dahl may have been onto something after all: if you hurt a plant, it screams.
Well, sort of. Not in the same way you or I might scream. Rather, they emit popping or clicking noises in ultrasonic frequencies outside the range of human hearing that increase when the plant becomes stressed. This, according to scientists, could be one of the ways in which plants communicate their distress to the world around them.
“Even in a quiet field, there are actually sounds that we don’t hear, and those sounds carry information. There are animals that can hear these sounds, so there is the possibility that a lot of acoustic interaction is occurring,” explains evolutionary biologist Lilach Hadany of Tel Aviv University in Israel.
“Plants interact with insects and other animals all the time, and many of these organisms use sound for communication, so it would be very suboptimal for plants to not use sound at all.”
Plants under stress aren’t as passive as you might think. They undergo some pretty dramatic changes, one of the most detectable of which (to us humans, at least) is the release of some pretty powerful aromas. They can also alter their color and shape.
However, whether plants emit other kinds of signals – such as sounds – has not been fully explored. A few years ago, Hadany and her colleagues found that plants can detect sound. The logical next question to ask was whether they can produce it, too.
To find out, they recorded tomato and tobacco plants in a number of conditions. First, they recorded unstressed plants, to get a baseline. Then they recorded plants that were dehydrated, and plants that had had their stems cut. These recordings took place first in a soundproofed acoustic chamber, then in a normal greenhouse environment.
Then, they trained a machine learning algorithm to differentiate between the sound produced by unstressed plants, cut plants, and dehydrated plants.
The sounds plants emit are like popping or clicking noises in a frequency far too high-pitched for humans to make out, detectable within a radius of over a meter (3.3 feet). Unstressed plants don’t make much noise at all; they just hang out, quietly doing their plant thing.
By contrast, stressed plants are much noisier, emitting an average up to around 40 clicks per hour depending on the species. And plants deprived of water have a noticeable sound profile. They start clicking more before they show visible signs of dehydrating, escalating as the plant grows more parched, before subsiding as the plant withers away.
The algorithm was able to distinguish between these sounds, as well as the species of plant that emitted them. And it’s not just tomato and tobacco plants. The team tested a variety of plants, and found that sound production appears to be a pretty common plant activity. Wheat, corn, grape, cactus, and henbit were all recorded making noise.
But there are still a few unknowns. For example, it’s not clear how the sounds are being produced. In previous research, dehydrated plants have been found to experience cavitation, a process whereby air bubbles in the stem form, expand and collapse. This, in human knuckle-cracking, produces an audible pop; something similar could be going on with plants.
We don’t know yet if other distress conditions can induce sound, either. Pathogens, attack, UV exposure, temperature extremes, and other adverse conditions could also induce the plants to start popping away like bubble wrap.
It’s also not clear whether sound production is an adaptive development in plants, or if it is just something that happens. The team showed, however, that an algorithm can learn to identify and distinguish between plant sounds. It’s certainly possible that other organisms could have done the same.
In addition, these organisms could have learned to respond to the noise of distressed plants in various ways. “For example, a moth that intends to lay eggs on a plant or an animal that intends to eat a plant could use the sounds to help guide their decision,” Hadany says. For us humans, the implications are pretty clear; we could tune into the distress calls of thirsty plants and water them before it becomes an issue.
“Now that we know that plants do emit sounds, the next question is – ‘who might be listening?'” Hadany says. “We are currently investigating the responses of other organisms, both animals and plants, to these sounds, and we’re also exploring our ability to identify and interpret the sounds in completely natural environments.”
(Michele Constantini/Getty Images)
Life Matters 