The Hidden Magic Of The Animal-Human Relationship: James French (Transcript)

Here is the full transcript and summary of James French’s talk titled “The Hidden Magic Of The Animal-Human Relationship” at TEDxBologna conference.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

Good evening. I am delighted to be here to share with you the hidden magic of the animal-human relationship. Shelley and myself have been running a mindfulness organization for the last 20 years. Its sole purpose is to help animals and people with a mindful practice.

These insights I’m going to share with you tonight are from those 20 years of experience. I would like to cover trust and connection, change of behavior, and true cooperation.

So first of all, what on earth does mindfulness helping animals look like? Well, when you understand how animals and humans share feelings, we developed a process that delivers the present moment directly to any animal.

Now, just like us, when they feel the present moment, it helps them to feel very calm, very relaxed, and it creates this huge amount of connection. Yes, the less we think, the more connected we can become. We have shared our experience with many rescue centers all over the world, and it is an absolute pleasure to help some of the most sensitive animals on the planet. At times, it just feels like you’re reaching out and touching their soul.

Helping an animal who’s had really bad abuse from people and helping them to relax into such a peaceful state and building trust is just such a privilege, and it doesn’t matter how big the animal is or how much the abuse that they had. The fascinating thing, our science shows us that the limbic system for the animal and human is almost exactly the same. That’s the way we process emotions, memory, and how we learn.