I’d like to talk about physical touch (or hand positions) and Animal Reiki because I receive a lot of questions about this topic.
People often ask me, “What are the hand positions for animal treatment?” or, if they’re going to take a course with me, they inquire first, “Are you going to teach the hand positions for dogs and cats?” Or they’ll see a photo of a Reiki session where I’m outside the kennel at a dog shelter and they’ll think it can’t be Reiki because I’m not touching the animal.
Many people are surprised to hear that I DON'T teach hand positions for animals in my Animal Reiki classes.
When I first learned Reiki, hand positions were one of the central teachings, so how could my Let Animals Lead® method of Animal Reiki be Reiki with animals if there isn’t any physical contact?
In my world, the differences between human and animal Reiki protocol is an important ethical concern, and I work ethics into all of my courses to ensure the safety and well-being of animals that my students work with.
I can’t cover all of the reasons I believe avoiding touch during Animal Reiki sessions is ethically important in one blog, but I want to focus on why hand positions in Animal Reiki, in particular, should be avoided.
Why is it essential to avoid hand positions when offering an Animal Reiki session?
In a nutshell, Reiki is about touching with our hearts, not with our hands.
Although this phrase may sound a little silly, it actually says it all. And, even if we do touch with our hands, it has to come from the heart to make a big healing impact. This is true with human Reiki sessions too, but often our healing touch helps us remember our healing heart space—so without touch, that's definitely a bit more challenging to remember!
The Animal Reiki meditations I teach to all of my Animal Reiki Source students, help us nurture this heart space so that we radiate peace and compassion and our hands become obsolete, except in offering a compassionate touch if the animal seeks it out.
In this beautiful, open space, animals can share healing with us, with or without physical contact. And, you'll find (as I have after offering thousands of Reiki sessions to domestic and wild animals over the years) that animals simply respond better when they don't have any kind of physical contact forced on them (no matter how gentle it may seem).
Our "humanness" predisposes us to believing touch is the only way to healing in Reiki.
When offering Animal Reiki sessions, we often find ourselves focusing on our hands, just like we do in human Reiki treatments, because we are human beings and respond very well to healing touch.
For example, recently, the American Society of Clinical Oncology recognized the importance of massage and other healing touch modalities in helping women recover fully from mental and emotional effects of breast cancer diagnosis and treatment, endorsing a set of guidelines for healing touch therapies.
When I trained in Reiki, I learned a specific protocol for hand positions for self-treatment and treatment with others. I have myself received countless hands-on Reiki sessions (in chairs and on massage tables) and have loved every minute!
Hands-on Reiki sessions have supported my self-healing process for the 26 years I’ve been a Reiki practitioner, and I find them a very important part of the system of practice…for humans.
Animals do not have the same understanding of physical touch that humans do. They understand energy.
With animals, my understanding of physical touch and Reiki has evolved over the years and I now very much see the need to avoid physical touch with animals during Reiki sessions unless the animal seeks the contact.
In the beginning, when I started working with animals, I basically took what I learned for humans and applied it directly to animals. In other words, I used the same (or similar, considering body type differences of different animal species) protocol for hands-on Reiki treatment.
For example, I would take my horse, tie him up to a fence so that he was standing in one place, and then I would set my intent to begin the Reiki session and start to do hand positions. Or I would put a dog on a leash so he’d have to stay with me during the Reiki session. Of course it never worked with cats because they would jump off my lap and run away after about two minutes, LOL. At that time, there was nothing much written about Reiki for animals. In fact, what I did read said, “Animals don’t need much Reiki because they soak it up more quickly; so they’ll walk away after 2 or 3 minutes.”
Some animals submitted to my hands-on approach and other didn’t. Some would be a little uncomfortable at first, and then slowly they would relax into the treatment as if to say, “Okay, she means well, all right, I’ll connect.”
Other animals actually ran away from me (yes, usually after 2 or 3 minutes). And yes, sometimes I ran after them, to no avail. LOL ☺
It really brought home to me that my idea of healing was rooted in on hands-on and an animal's idea of healing was rooted in energy. If my energy wasn't right, no matter what my intention for healing them was, they wanted nothing to do with me.
At one point, I realized I felt out of sorts in my animal connections. For me personally, Reiki was so beautiful and awesome, but for animals, it seemed only something they would “submit” to for a while and then escape from. That wasn’t good enough for me. I wanted to find a way that animals would be as excited about Reiki as I was!
But how could I find a way forward?
So, on a whim, I decided to see what would happen if I let go of the hands-on protocol.
Magic ensues when you let go of hand positions during Animal Reiki sessions!
Letting go of that hands-on protocol was very scary, at first, because it was so central to the way I myself connected with Reiki. Luckily, the animals were there to show me the way, one tiny leap of faith forward at a time. I found more and more that if I would, instead of approaching them and having them tied up, let animals walk around and be free, that they would often actually come to me and show me what areas, if any, that they wanted to be touched.
A dog that had a sore leg might start at five or ten feet away, and eventually walk over and put the sore paw into my hand. Or a horse might have arthritis in his hind end, and at some point he might turn around and back up into my hands to show me, “This part hurts,” or he’d move around me as if to say, “I’d like physical touch here or there.”
That was very profound when that started to happen, because in the human protocol the practitioner always leads the treatment, and here I was, letting animals lead.
Of course all Reiki practice encourages us to let go and just “be” in the space on a deeper level, but we’re essentially in charge of the way the session moves forward.
I started noticing that animals were leading my sessions by dictating whether or not they wanted to be touched and where!
What I began to notice with animals is that they were shifting me out of the “in charge” position, and they were taking charge. Some animals wanted physical touch, but others didn’t. But even animals who settled several feet away from me during the session showed wonderful healing responses. I saw again and again that physical contact wasn’t necessarily a part of Reiki for animals.
Even more incredibly, animals nearby who weren’t “formally” part of the session would show deep relaxation and calm as well. Clearly, animals knew what Reiki was, without the need for physical contact!
All of these discoveries required me to trust that I was onto something good and focus on my meditation, intention and open heart, rather than any ailment or issue with an animal. I began thinking of Reiki as less of a hands-on modality and more like a bubble that was radiating around me. I was, with my own eyes, seeing that animals were very sensitive to feeling and sharing this space, even without physical contact. I started meditating with animals regularly, consciously letting go of any need to touch them or handle them.
With my new meditation-based Animal Reiki protocol, when animals did choose to make physical contact it wasn’t that they were submitting to this space, as they did before; it was like they were looking at me saying, “I know what this is, and let me show you what I need, what I want.”
The more I let go of my own “hands-on Animal Reiki protocol,” the more they became the active leaders in this healing process. I realized animals are so much more sensitive to what’s going within a treatment and would actually lead the sessions, and I found that very fascinating.
As my trust in the animals’ process grew, I began to get more comfortable with the idea that animals could and should lead Animal Reiki sessions.
It was when they were the ones leading, that they showed amazing trust and connection: especially feral animals, traumatized animals and animals that nobody else could reach. Suddenly I was having all these humbling experiences of connection and healing with animals that others may have given up on. I also began to develop a deepened respect for the wisdom of animals. Wow, they sure do understand healing on such a deep level! Once we allow animals to be in charge, we receive a whole new level of participation and excitement from them about the Reiki space.
I often hear people discount these differences, saying, “Reiki is Reiki.” On a spiritual and philosophical level it is true that we are all “spiritual energy” and all One and, of course, connecting within a heart to heart space makes this understanding move from intellectual to experiential reality.
Animal Reiki requires approaching them from an animal perspective, without hands, from heart energy.
However, on the level of treatment protocol, if we approach animals as we do humans, we are essentially asking them to connect from a human perspective: a space of physical touch and ritual.
Some animals will submit to this and others won’t.
We won’t be able to connect to many animals that way. Instead, if through meditation we shed our humanness, letting go of our hands and trusting the heart space, then we can meet animals at their own comfort level, without physical ritual. In this way we let them experience a Reiki session in their own unique ways. Watching different species leading Reiki sessions in unique ways is a very profound experience. Letting animals lead also helps us let go of the idea that we have to be “doing” the healing as the practitioner; in fact we’re all equal in this space and we’re all sharing the healing in this space. We can share so much compassion and peace when we honor the wisdom of animals in this way.
This leads us to wonder how we can tell if the animal does not accept Reiki once we take our hands out of the Anima Reiki protocol.
I would say that there are three ways that animals communicate about Reiki to us and you can read about them in depth in my blog about Animal Reiki and Animal Agency.
Animals always communicate what they want through energy and body language!
One way is that they show us through body language and emotion, “Yes, I love Reiki and I know what it is and I totally want to be a part of it.” That’s an animal that will become very relaxed and very receptive. They may come over for physical contact, but if they don’t, they’ll show through their body language that they’re very comfortable having you there. If they’re initially stressed, you’ll see them begin to unwind and get more and more calm.
Then there are animals who show us through body language and emotion, “Absolutely no,” to Reiki. This is an important opportunity for us to honor their decisions, even if we want very badly to share Reiki. We have to ask ourselves, are we really leaving it up to them? You never know, sometimes an animal will say no at first and leave, and then after a few minutes come back to us and say yes when they see that we respect their “no” (We didn’t run after them, “Come back!” LOL).
Here’s one example of what a “no” looks like. I remember this one experience with a horse while all the horses were having their teeth done. I was going from stall to stall and doing a little bit of Reiki for each one. These days, I always ask permission and really pay attention to the animal's response, but back then, I sometimes forgot while I was really in the mode of helping everyone. So, I was just going in, stall to stall to stall, and all the horses were glad to see me and might put their little nose into my hands and fall asleep, or be really relaxed.
Well, when I walked into this particular horse’s stall, I wasn’t paying attention to what he wanted. I was thinking in my mind, “This is what you need.” I walked in and he put his hears back, and I just kind of ignored him. I closed the stall, and I walked over to him; he turned away and walked to the other side of the stall. This horse turned around and faced his butt to me and lifted one back leg and turned back to look at me, with his ears back and one leg cocked. His message was clear: “Get out of here!”
Well, very quickly, I became aware of my immediate danger. I left the stall and I apologized to him for not listening very well. I did come back a few days later, and this time I asked him and waited for his response. At that time he relaxed, licking, and chewing, and went back to eating his dinner, so I was able to share Reiki with him at that time.
For me a “no” may manifest as the agitation that animals show if they’re irritated at your presence. We have to learn how to stop, sit, listen, look and observe. For example if you’re working with a shelter animal that is very agitated, are they agitated because all the noise in the shelter, or are they agitated specifically at you and your presence?
We have to be really careful to always pay close attention to what the animal is communicating, in whatever way they're communicating it. And, if you are regularly using hand positions during an Animal Reiki session, you'll be able to see and feel the signs of NO very clearly.
And then there’s the “maybe.”
One particular dog that I worked with was a German shepherd and she’d been in a shelter for a long time. She was very agitated when I brought her out of her kennel. She was a highly reactive dog, and so all the noise made her really upset. When I was with her, she would react to any noise, and she was pacing and panting the whole time. But every time she made her circle around the room, she would brush up against my legs, or she would put her nose in my hand and kind of bump my hand with her nose, or she would look at me with this sort of soft expression. It was almost like, “Help me, I’m so stressed!” I could feel that the agitation wasn’t directed toward me, it was just her situation, and she was actually grateful that I was there.
Over time and with patience, she eventually relaxed and lay quietly at my feet during Reiki, which was an amazing transformation to watch!
That’s the tricky part about the “animal” protocol for Reiki sessions. There’s no “one size fits all” treatment. You have to just learn by sitting with the animals and observing them, but you should always begin with asking permission and keeping your hands to yourself.
When animals show you that they’re irritated by your presence, then you have to respect that and just walk away. Even if, in our minds we think, “You need this,” it’s their own healing journey and it’s important to honor that.
Always leave hand positions out of Animal Reiki, but give contact if "asked".
My rule of thumb for animals is to never initiate physical contact, always let the animal initiate. And realize that physical contact is not needed for an effective session. Sit or stand near your animal, but let them come to you, and then you’ll always know whether they’ll want physical touch or not.
Use hand positions for Animal Reiki IF the animal shows you where they want your hands.
What about doing a series of hand positions if they do like physical contact? The hand positions themselves will vary, just let animals will show you. They might put one leg or a shoulder or an arm, or lie in your lap or whatever, so just pay attention to where they position themselves, because they know what they want.
No need to move your hands, let them move their bodies around your hands.
Animals challenge us to let go of our hands. When we do, we honor the animal’s wisdom and understanding. This can be really hard to do, because we like to know what to expect and we like rituals we can count on. It can be a challenge, but it’s so rewarding to see an animal come forward and connect with Reiki, with or without physical contact. It’s such a beautiful experience to see them become truly engaged and relaxed, in Reiki bliss. The healing that follows is always a miracle to witness.
If you are interested in learning how to share Reiki with your animals without using your hands, we have a wonderful introduction to the Let Animals Lead® Method of Animal Reiki. The full mini-course is only 3, 1-hour sessions and a few meditations you can practice with your animals and we've received some amazing reviews from people who have taken it. You can learn all about our 3-Day Animal Reiki Challenge in our Resources Section!
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