Hello everyone. Welcome to Your SuperPowered Mind. This is your host, Kristin Maxwell. And in this show, we explore the process of transformation and give you the tools and strategies that you can use to transform your own life.
Today we have a treat. We are taking a slight detour, although only slight, because instead of talking about what we do to help keep our own minds out of depression and anxiety and to build lives that we love, we’re going to be talking about communicating with our pets and how our relationship with our pets and our own mental state impacts them.
We are talking to, Rachel Augusta. Rachel is a Certified Advanced Proficiency Healing Touch for Animals Practitioner. And as a practitioner, Rachel works with animals all over the world who are sick, injured, have a terminal illness or suffer from age-related issues or trauma due to previous abuse. She also has a passion for helping to keep animals and their owners healthy. Rachel has been featured by the New York Times, CNN and BBC, and she has even been on the cover of People Magazine. I can’t wait to ask her about that. Rachel, has her own practice, works in hospitals, pet clinics and rehab facilities and shelters.
Rachel, welcome to Your SuperPowered Mind.
Thank you, Kristin. It is so great to be here with you.
I am very excited to talk to you because your work is so interesting. But before we really get into that, my first question is always, what superpower did you uncover as the result of mastering your mind?
The superpower I uncovered was the ability to create new cell growth in my body just by tapping into my joy center and knowing that I’m my own best preventative healthcare system right here, just by smiling and laughing.
Wow. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Because that’s definitely intriguing.
Yeah. In my work, I talk a lot about the physiological relaxation response. And this physiological relaxation response, I’ll talk you through it. It helps people really understand our body and our animals bodies and how we can bring healing to our body or disease. When we’re happier, when we’re relaxed, our muscles relax. And when our muscles are relaxed, our blood becomes oxygenated. And with oxygenated blood, our body absorbs nutrients more efficiently from food, from tinctures, herbs, medicines. Our stomach creates digestive enzymes. With those digestive enzymes your hormones start to regulate, your body detoxes and new cell growth happens.
And that physiological relaxation response is why if you go to the doctor with a broken arm they’re going to ask you your pain level. If you say two, they’re going to give you an Advil and if you say 10 they’re going to prescribe you Percocet. They’re not handing out painkillers because they feel bad for you, they’re trying to trigger this response in your body cause you can’t heal if it’s not triggered.
And I love knowing this. I feel like this is a superpower because this is what gets our body working. This is where miracles and I’m putting that in quotations, “Miracles happen.” When animals come to me and let’s say with Stage IV advanced cancer are given a couple of days to live but then ended up living an additional two years and it looks like a miracle. The miracle is that we got their brain and body to start working with one another instead of against each other. And everybody has the ability to do this, and this is why I love this as my superpower because knowing this and tapping into this, I know that I’m capable of bringing healing to my body. Yeah.
Wow. That is really a wonderful, a great explanation. By the way, one of the best I’ve heard of understanding how not being in stress, so being relaxed actually can lead to health. Thank you for that. That has been clear.
You’re welcome.
How did you get involved with animals with this knowledge, and how do you use it with animals and with their owners?
And that is what threw me into action, knowing that if anybody was going to help the most important person to me in my life, it was going to be me.
I started working with animals when my own soul companion, my kitty got really super sick. She was diagnosed with a terminal illness and given a couple of weeks to live. And that was when I realized that there was a gap in our medical system that creates desperation. And her diagnosis threw me into desperation. And I want to say I love Western medicine I’m so grateful for it. Thank God we have hospitals, we all know somebody whose life has been saved because of hospitals. I love Western medicine and thank God we have it.
But it’s not the only medicine we have, and that’s not where it ends. And basically what my veterinarian said to me is, “There’s nothing more that can be done.” But a truer answer would have been, “There’s nothing more I can do to help you.” And that is what threw me into action, knowing that if anybody was going to help the most important person to me in my life, it was going to be me. I had to be the one to do it.
Within days I was studying through Healing Touch for Animals. It’s a school in Colorado, but they were teaching classes at the University of Minnesota. And I immediately started taking these techniques of triggering this response in the body and applying them to Holly, my cat. She was given a couple of weeks to live, she ended up living an additional three years.
Wow.
Yes. And because I was really doing this for her to help her and well, to help me because I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to her. I know so many people with animals, I mean, everybody has animals. They’re an important part of our life. All of a sudden my friends are like, “Here’s my cat, here’s my dog, here’s my horse, here’s my sugar glider, here’s my… Here’s a million animals.”
And I mean, it was like a rotating door and all of a sudden I was like, “I’m going to be homeless if I don’t start charging.” Like, “I think this is my job now.” And I was actually on a completely different path. I was in the process of starting a manufacturing company for women’s clothing. And then I realized that I wasn’t supposed to be doing that, I was supposed to be helping animals. And that’s where it all started.
That is so interesting. And I have about a thousand questions that I want to ask. When you work with animals in general, are you working with them in person or do you work with them remotely?
Both. I do both. I have clients all over the world. I have clients in Lithuania, I’ve had to bring translators to help translate conversations between us. I have Australia, France, Italy, and then all over the United States. And a lot of it involves coaching the humans. A lot of what’s going on, why animals are sick is because of environmental issues. We need to find out what’s going on in the house. Is there something really toxic in your house? A chemical, are you using Glade Plugins? Are you burning a lot of scented candles? What’s going on in the house that would be impacting their health?
Animals can smell our emotions.
And something I always talk about with my clients all over the places, my first question is, what stinks in your house? And stinks meaning two different things. There’s the obvious stinky stuff like your Glade Plugins and maybe your bleach and stuff like that, that animals are very sensitive to. I mean we all are, but they have many, humans have 10 million neuron receptors in their brain associated with smell. A cat has 80 million and a dog has 400 million.
What in your house smells? Because it’s going to be breaking down their nervous system through the neuron receptors and their olfactory bulb. And it’s often when people come to me and they have a very young animal, let’s say a four-year-old Chihuahua that’s in heart failure. That’s not normal. A four-year-old dog should not be in heart failure. There’s something going on in the house usually that’s stinky, something they’re being exposed to.
And then the other thing we look at is what’s going on in the house that’s stinky in a different way, and that’s human emotions. Animals can smell our emotions. We’ve known that for a long time, there’s a lot of science to back this up. Animals we’ve known, obviously dogs can smell fear. We know that animals can even smell cancer and diabetes, that’s why they’re brought in as service animals because they can smell these things on as well.
There’s a lot of science and proof that animals can smell our emotions. And if they’re negative, and our animals are deeply bonded to us, let’s say you live with your dog or your cat and they love you and you’re going through a divorce and you’ve been really super depressed and you can’t pull yourself out of your depression. Not only is it harmful to your body, but it’s also harmful to your animal’s body. Your animal is going to get really sick with you because they love you.
Gosh, that’s crazy. And I want to go deeper into this after we take our break about how it is that we can communicate with our pets and also to help their health and how that relates to our health. But before we take a break, can you let people know where they can find out more about you and this work?
Yes, they can go to my website, RachelAugusta.com. And I’m obviously, on Instagram.com and Facebook.com and all of those places, but all the links that are on my website and that’s really the easiest way to find me, is RachelAugusta.com.
Great. Hang in here, we have some more interesting stuff coming up.
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