A Simple Hands-On Way to Calm Your Animal’s Nervous System #137

What if supporting your animal’s nervous system didn't require complicated techniques?

In this episode, Mary Debono shares a simple, gentle practice she calls scanning with your hands. This light, attentive way of touching your horse or dog helps calm both nervous systems at the same time while deepening trust, awareness, and connection.

Mary explains how slow, respectful touch stimulates calming sensory pathways, encourages learning, and sets the stage for meaningful change, even before doing anything more advanced. You will learn how to approach your animal with curiosity rather than judgment, how to listen with your hands, and why your own comfort and presence matter just as much as what you do with your animal.

This episode is about connection over correction, support over fixing, and learning how change naturally unfolds when safety and ease are present.

 

Key Takeaways

• Nervous system regulation does not require force or correction
  
  
• Light, slow touch can calm both you and your animal
  
  
• Scanning with your hands builds trust and body awareness
  
  
• Your comfort and self-organization directly affect your animal
  
  
• Curiosity creates better outcomes than comparison or judgment
  
  
• Gentle support invites learning and lasting change
  
  
• Trust grows when your animal’s responses are respected

Resources:

Grab your FREE videos on Connected Breathing and Rhythm Circles to help your dog. 🐕 https://www.marydebono.com/lovedog 💥

Get your free videos on Connected Breathing and Rhythm Circles with your horse. 🐎https://tinyurl.com/equine-videos

💥Learn how the Feldenkrais Method can help improve your seat, position, and balance on your horse! Free rider videos masterclass: https://www.marydebono.com/rider 💥

Get Mary’s bestselling, award-winning book, “Grow Young with Your Dog,” for a super low price at: https://tinyurl.com/growyoungwithyourdog. Demonstration videos are included at no extra cost. ⬅️⬅️⬅️

All information is for general educational purposes ONLY and doesn't constitute medical or veterinary advice or professional training advice. Please consult a qualified healthcare provider if you, your horse, or your dog are unwell or injured.  Always use extreme caution when interacting with horses and dogs.

About the Host:

Mary Debono is a pioneer in animal and human wellness, blending her expertise as an international clinician, best-selling author, and certified Feldenkrais Method® practitioner. With over three decades of experience, Mary developed Debono Moves, a groundbreaking approach that enhances the performance, well-being, and partnership of animals and their humans.

Mary's innovative approach draws from the Feldenkrais Method®, tailored specifically for horse and dog enthusiasts.  Her methods have helped animals and humans:

• Improve athletic ability and performance
• Enhance confidence and reduce anxiety
• Reduce physical limitations and discomfort
• Deepen the human-animal bond

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello. Today I'm going to share with you a simple and very effective way to help regulate your animal's nervous system and your own nervous system at the same time. Yeah, I mean, right, A twofer. Isn't that what we all want? Right? To help our animals and ourselves feel better and move through life with greater ease and harmony. And in case you're new to the podcast, I'm Mary Dabono, and this is the Easier Movement, Happier Life podcast.

It's for you, your horses and dogs and cats and other animals as well. Just kind of a long title, if I said all the animals. So let's talk a tiny bit about neuroscience at a very basic level. You know, people often talk about regulating the nervous system. And you may have heard phrases like, you know, terms like parasympathetic state. That's often referred to the rest and digest state of the nervous system.

That means basically a more relaxed state. Then you might have also heard about the sympathetic state, which is also sometimes referred to as the fight or flight response. That when you're in the sympathetic state, you know you're stressed, right? There's more anxiety, you're worried about something. Now, I want to be clear. I'm just explaining this in very basic terms. And there's a lot of nuance. It's not like an individual is in one state completely or the other state completely.

There, there's like a blending there. There's gradients of the states. It's not like you're flipping a switch from one to the other. But you may notice that you or your animal at certain times are in more dominant parasympathetic or dominant sympathetic. Okay? Remember, parasympathetic is the more relaxed state. Sympathetic is the more stressed state. We can just think of them like that, okay? Now we don't have to even.

You don't even have to remember that for what you're going to, to learn today. But with that said, there are sometimes very simple ways. And I've, I've done this work for several decades now. And even before I knew the neuroscience behind it, before I knew about CLTM receptors and Rafini receptors and all the other receptors in the body, I knew that it worked. That when, for example, I'm going to teach you today about something I call scanning with your hands.

But I knew that when I touched an animal very lightly and slowly, kind of to get information about them, they often relaxed. That my hands, on assessment, if you will, helped them feel better in and of itself. Before I did all the fancy strategies that I know and that I teach others how to do. Before I got into all the technical stuff, there was very simple things I did that immediately set the stage so that the more advanced strategies could work even better.

And I've talked about one of them before in other podcasts episodes and I call it connected breathing. And you might want to go back and I could put in the show notes a particular episode. I know I've talked about it several times because it's so foundational, it's so fundamental and it's another way in addition to what you're going to learn today, it's another way to help kind of calm the nervous system.

I like to think of it as like a reset for the nervous system and deepen your connection with your animal. Well, the scan with your hands can also do that. Now you can, you can use them both, you know, one at a time or you can alternate. Maybe today you use the scanning because you're going to just learn it and tomorrow you go and do connected breathing with your animal.

It's. They're both very, very useful. And again there, there's as you learn more because I teach this work, I teach this work for horse lovers and dog lovers in online programs and sometimes occasionally in in person workshops that you'll learn even more nuance to these strategies. But I'm going to give you the basics today. Okay, so let's get back to scan with your hands. It is what it, what the, the name says, what your, what I do, I'll speak for myself, is I very slowly run my hands over an animal to really feel them, to really start a conversation with them.

I call them tactile or kinesthetic con that I'm noticing things about them. And maybe at first, when you first do this, you're not really getting that much conscious information. Like you're not sure you know what things are quote unquote supposed to feel like. And I'm going to tell you to let that go. It's not about trying to fit your animal into a norm and say, you know, how does my animal feel compared to what is quote unquote normal?

Right. It's not about that. It's sensing what is present in the moment with your animal. And when you do this, when you slowly run your hands over your animal and it's very light and very slow, not only do you get a lot of information about your animal that's going to help you, I'll explain how later, but you're also stimulating these particular receptors like CLTMs, Rafini receptors, et cetera, that help the animal go into that more relaxed state.

And, and this is a big plus as well. They also stimulate these bonding hormones, these hormones that help you feel more connected with your animal and your animal more connected with you. It actually works in both directions. So this is so important because our state, of course, is incredibly important to how our animal feels and how they respond to us. We know that. So this is, again, it helps you and it helps your animal at the same time.

But let's talk specifics. So if your animal allows you to start, you know, at the, at the top of the neck, right just behind the skull, and you veri. Just on one side at a time, if you're with your horse, your horse is standing up. I'm assuming if your dog is, you know, working with your dog, your dog, it would be really nice if your dog could lie down.

Now if they don't want to, that's totally fine. So side lying, I would say, is maybe the ideal because more muscles are relaxed. If they want to lie like a sphinx, what they call sternal recumbency, that's fine as well. Or if they just want to sit up, you can do it that way as well. So, and I will say this, for some dogs, if they're lying on their side and you start touching them, what often happens is they immediately roll onto their back and they want you to scratch their back belly.

So if you think your dog is going to do that, maybe start in another position, maybe sitting would be better. Okay, so it will work in any position. Standing up will work just like it works with the horses. But some dogs don't want to stand there for that length of time. So they, they might sit down or lie sternly like a sphinx. So whatever position is the easiest for you and your dog, that's the one I would start with.

And if your dog does happen to roll onto their. And you know, you just, just work with that, Just work with that. And eventually the dogs realize that, that what you're doing feels good as well. So it doesn't have to always be about the belly scratching. So, okay, so let's assume you and your animal are in a comfortable position. And that's important because, you know, with your horse, you'll be standing up.

With your dog, you'll be probably sitting or potentially bending over. But I would say, if possible, you know, maybe sit yourself and make sure you're comfortable sitting. That may mean sitting on a chair or a sofa or sitting on the floor, but maybe with supports under you Like a large pillow or a folded blanket or something. But because. And the reason this is so important is because if you are uncomfortable, you're going to transmit that, that sense of restriction and discomfort to your animal.

So we don't want that. And it reduces your sensitivity. This is all about improving your sensitivity, helping you become more aware, you know, have greater body awareness. And your animal is also developing that body awareness skill. Okay, so you start to run your hands very, very slowly, and I'm going to say down the animal's neck. You skip that. If your animal is uncomfortable with that, it's very light, very slow.

And you're, you know, imagine you're a sculptor and you want to create a sculpture of your animal. You have to know every little nuance of your animal. You have to know where there's like, oh, there's like a little bulge here. What is that? Like, is it, you know, like you get curious about it. This isn't, again, I want to emphasize, this isn't about judging or anything like that.

You're noticing things. And a big benefit of this is that you get so familiar with your animal's body and their response to where you are on their body that if something feels a little off, feels like, not sure about that, you can take that to your vet. You have that information that you can ask your vet. Is this significant? Is this something we should look into? So this has helped many, many people find things at a very early stage with their animal.

And sometimes it's nothing. The vet says, that's nothing. Other times they were the beginnings of something serious and they were able to treat it right away before it became a problem, you know, a major problem for their animal. So you're really going to get very familiar with how your animal feels under your hands. You'll also note things like, oh, this is a little warmer here, this is a little cooler, or sometimes even the hair feels different.

So again, you start to, you know, be curious about what I call skeletal landmarks. Like you feel, you know, the, the, the beginning of the neck vertebra, right? You feel that. You feel the atlas and the axis. You know, you just, that's how slow you're going. Don't worry if you're not sure of what you're feeling. You're learning, you're developing your skill. You gently take your hands down, you know, again, running along the length of the neck, right?

Then you find the edges of the shoulder blade. What does that feel like? How much of the back of the shoulder blade can you feel? And I want to emphasize this work is really, really light and gentle. You're going to feel more. And this also invites your animal to tune into you more because your touch is very light, so it feels safe. And they, they have to kind of listen.

It's like when you whisper to somebody, right? They have to kind of lean in and listen more. Well, your animal has to do the same. They have to, you know, their, their nervous system starts to pay more attention. So this is how you really set the stage for your animal to start to have greater body awareness, right, because you, now you're kind of waking up these parts. You're touching them in a way that maybe you don't usually touch them that, that way.

For example, many of us pet our animals, we stroke them, but we do it kind of just in a way that's habitual. Now you're doing something quite different. So you, you, you examine, you know, you kind of feel all around the shoulder. You could use two hands to do this, by the way. It's up to you. If it feels too distracting to use two hands, then just use one.

But then you run your hand down the, down the front leg on that side. Again, you're looking, you're noticing things. Where's the elbow, for example? What does the elbow feel like? Spend some time there examining, you know, feeling the elbow very, very lightly, right? What does the foreleg feel like? The forearm? What is the carpus, the front knee feel like? Some people refer to the stifle as the knee.

That's why I said front knee. But what does the carpal joint feel like? What about the. Below that? What do those joints feel like? What is the foot? You can pick up the foot. What does it feel like? Then you go over your dog's back, for example, feeling the, or the horse, feeling the top of the spine. Notice the changes in the shape of those dorsal processes as you run your hands very slowly down your animal's back, down all the way to the tail, and you're noticing things.

You're noticing your animal's response to where you are. Sometimes an animal be like, oh, or you might feel tiny, tiny little, you know, twitches of the skin or something like that. Make sure you're very light. This is all about being very, very light. And then you, you also run your hands over the rib cage. Maybe you ask yourself, well, how many ribs do I feel? Can I find that last?

And then coming back to the front of your animal, the chest area, can you find their sternum, their breastbone? Can you trace their breastbone? Down. Don't worry if you feel like you can find the beginning of it, like the top of it, but maybe you don't feel it all the way down, that's totally fine. Especially with horses, there's a lot of muscle. It ends, like, in the girth area for a horse, so behind the forelegs, behind the elbows, and also ends there for the dogs.

But with the horses, there may be a lot of muscle over that area. And also, you know, you may just feel like the outside, you know, edge of the whole rib cage. Can you feel that? Again, your hands are very, very light. And by doing this, you're giving a sense of, you know, rhythmic movement to your dog. In other words, you're being very light and careful, and you're entering into, again, this conversation with your animal.

So you're building tr. You're deepening your connection, and you're stimulating all kinds of wonderful, you know, sensory receptors, mechanoreceptors that are processing your touch, they're processing the movement, the contact you're making. And like I said, this can help change your animal's state, can help them be more relaxed, can help you be more relaxed as well, because it kind of forces you to really slow down and can deepen your bond.

And then, of course, you. You go over the hind legs. If it's tolerated by your animal, if there's any sense of discomfort, you can skip over areas. You know, maybe you. Your animal is worried about the hip area. You can just skip over that. And of course, if you're working with a horse, you just. You're always careful that you don't get stepped on or kicked. You know, as you're doing this, but you're feeling the shape of the muscles.

You might notice whether it's. You're working with your dog or a horse, you may notice that I can feel like the inside, you know, thigh muscles feel different from one side to the other. Maybe one side is more prominent, they're more developed. Well, that gives you really good information about how your animal is organizing their movement. Maybe they habitually use one hind leg more than the other. This could indicate that maybe there's a problem with the less used side, or it's simply a habit.

Either way, that's something you can bring to your vet's attention. Right? You want to find the cause of that, and in my programs, we work with that. In other words, once any medical issue is ruled out, we help the dog or horse discard that obsolete pattern. If it's just a habit. Right. And help Them move in a more balanced way so they're not overstrained, draining the side that they're using more.

Right. And so their movement is, you know, just freer and healthier and reduces the risk of injury and wear and tear damage and all that stuff. So this is how you get information about your animal, right? You take the time to do this. So now if you're still on the hind leg, right, you're running your hands down the inside and the outside of the thigh and the hock, where's the hockey and where's the stifle, which is the.

What some people refer to as the knee in the hind leg, right, because it's similar to our knee, right? You. You feel those areas. You run your hand down the whole length and you pick up the hind foot. You feel that. How does it flex? Very, very gently, of course. You feel maybe flexion of the fetlock for the horse, maybe just very, very gentle movements of the toes with your dog, if your dog is okay with that.

And you can feel down the length of the tail, you know, and this, you know, doing this, again, gives you incredible information about your animal, because then you go to the other side. So if you're working with your dog in. If the dog is lying on their side, then you have them flip over. If you're working with your horse, you simply move to the other side or a dog, and standing or sitting, you just do the other side.

But this is so, so important because, again, you're setting the stage. You're also helping you, your. Your animal learn that your touch is to be trusted, right? That you pay. You're paying attention to their responses. I cannot emphasize this enough that when you do that, when you're. When you respect, when they say, I'm not sure about that, that gives you, you know, that creates an incredible bond between you, incredible communication between you.

And you'll see that that can change. And certainly in my programs, I teach people strategies and how to help the animal be okay with that. You know, once we rule out any, you know, current pain or anything like that. And we realize, oh, they're just worried about it, they're anticipating pain, right? But maybe it's no longer painful. There are ways then to help the animal, you know, recover from that, to have a different sense of themselves about that, to.

To be more, you know, more, again, more balanced in their movement and how they feel. So one way, though, I'll give you one little strategy right at the get go here is you can just take your hands off your animal's body and do this scan away from their body. Now that sounds very woo woo, whatever you may think, but it actually works. And I'll tell you a few different ways it works.

It works because you're over the area. Like I'll give you an example. This German shepherd who had hip dysplasia that I worked with and I worked with many, many dogs with hip dysplasia. And this work can be, you know, my entire body of work can be very helpful for those dogs. This particular dog didn't want me anywhere near her hips. So I just, and I knew that certain things I could do if I actually was able to touch her hindquarters would help relieve her discomfort.

But she didn't know that yet. She didn't know me. So as I did my scan and she kind of gave me that look like, don't go there lady. I just took my hands off her body. And I had to start in the beginning, I had to start, you know, really away from her. Not just a couple of inches, but, you know, much further away, at least 12, 18 inches.

So foot, foot and a half or so. And then gradually I could get closer. So she started to learn that she could trust me. And then I did other things in other parts of her body with my hands on her. That felt really, really good. I did a lot of, you know, what I call muscle supports or muscle lifts, things like that that had an immediate payback, like felt good right away.

And then she was like, oh, okay. And then I could gradually get to her hindquarters after I established that trust. Okay, so that's one thing. They start and then, you know, little by little you get closer to their body and sometimes you just barely hovering over it, like you might even be touching their hair and they're okay with it. So that is, you'll have to do by kind of trial and error.

But always err on the side of being too respectful, if you know what I mean. In other words, you always honor how your animal feels about it. You don't disregard that. Okay. And, and again, if you have any questions, you take your, you, you know, make sure your animal is seen by the veterinarian. Just maybe there is something that is acute, that or even chronic that needs veterinary attention.

That's super important. But also, you know, this is going to sound, again, maybe it sounds strange, but it's really not. When you work above your animal, what we're calling off body, so you're not even touching the hair, you're just, you're you're maybe, you know, a centimeter away from. From your animal. Little bit away, right? You're. You start to imagine what that area feels like. And why this is so important is that you're developing your sensitivity.

I can't tell you how many times I've seen an animal just like, from a distance. And I already know what that animal's just say back feels like or their hip area feels like or whatever, because I've done this so many times. So I've educated my hands, right? Just like. Okay, I'll give you an example. You know, like, if you go up to a tree, say, like a pine tree, that has that lovely bark that's, you know, really textured, right?

There's a lot of texture to the bark, right? It's not smooth, right? There's edges. There's all kinds of, you know, rough places on it. It's. It's lovely to feel, right? If you just look at that bark, pine trees bark, you. If you've touched that bark before, you can kind of conjure up a sense of what that would feel like if you touched it. Like, I'm imagining a pine tree right now that I.

That I know, right? It's near a lake where I spend a lot of time hiking with my dog. And I'm picturing it, and I'm picture. And I'm feeling what it's like to touch that pine tree's bark. I could kind of feel it in my hand. I can conjure up that sense memory, that felt memory, and I have the resonance of that in my hands. So if I saw another pine tree that looked like it, I can get the beginnings of what that would feel like, right?

I would have a sense of that if I saw it now, I might not know the nuances, and this is what's important. Maybe I need to touch it to get all those nuances. But I'm starting to develop my brain's ability to sense differences, to notice things. So what you're really doing is you're training your brain to pay attention to even unconscious cues about your animal. So. And there's something in the brain called a reticular activating system, or ras.

Well, you're training your ras. You're saying, pay attention to this. So even if you're hovering your hands over your animal, you're getting information. If. If you're imagining what your animal feels like. And then when you have an opportunity to actually feel that area, you're like, oh, yeah, okay, well, maybe you have to adjust what you thought it felt like, right. Either way, you're training yourself to be more sensitive.

This also improves your proprioception, your body awareness, all those good things. So you benefit personally as well, as well as helping you be a better partner for your anim animal. So maybe even go to a place on your animal where your animal's totally 100% happy with you doing the scan there, maybe on the ribs or the back or the shoulder blade. Right shoulder blade is often a good one.

So. And then you take your hands away and you imagine you call up that sense memory, right? You feel the resonance of that. Then maybe you put your hands back and see did the, did the sense memory match the actual sensation? And again, you're training yourself, training yourself as. So you're helping your animal and yourself at the same time, and you're helping yourself be a more effective partner for your animal.

Okay, so this went a little bit longer than I expected. So I hope you go and have fun with this. Remember that these things that may sound very simple, that, but in practice they actually take a high degree of attention. So maybe you only want to do five minutes at first or three minutes, right. And train your brain to pay attention for longer periods of time. So for this.

So this is not something you just do like while you're watching TV or listening to a podcast like this or something like that. Unless you're doing it to learn from this podcast. But you know, if you're listening to a, a totally different type of podcast, you know about something else, right? That, that would distract you. You wouldn't be able to pay attention. So don't do this while you're distracted.

Don't do this in such a. When you can pay attention to your animal and you're in that place. And if it takes time to work up to it, because we live in a distracted society, so we are, a lot of us are, are losing the ability to pay attention. So this is a great way to also, again I'm going to say it, improve your own brain. So you're helping your animal pay a lot of attention to what you're doing, right.

Which is improving their body awareness so they can feel better. They'll also be more relax, right? You're helping them be in that state more easily. This can also translate when you're out in the, in the real world, in a situation where maybe your animal is getting a little nervous, maybe you're out on trail, on with your horse or you know something's happening, you know, or maybe you're out with your dog.

And a skateboarder is coming by, maybe even just putting your hands on them, then will they'll have that neurological connection between the way you're touching them and the feeling of relaxation. Okay. So you're helping them get into that state more effectively. Right. So maybe even just a touch on the neck. Right? So if you're in the saddle, for example, maybe even a touch on the neck and done in that particular way, your other hand maybe is on the reins, of course, but one hand gives that reassuring contact, right.

And you make sure, by the way, that you're exhaling a little bit longer and making sure that you're in a centered, grounded, relaxed state as well. Okay, I think I'll wrap it up now. I really, really appreciate you listening to the podcast. Let me know how it goes for you. If you do a simple scan with your animal, what do you feel? What did you notice? Did you notice differences between the sides?

You know, the back muscles might be develop differently, right? Or the your animal's responses could be quite different from one side to the other. Let me know. You can always email me maryarydebono.com and again, I appreciate you and go and have fun with your animals and I look forward to talking to you again soon. Bye for now.