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.

There’s no question in your mind when you watch an animal go into the present moment that the present moment is a thing. There’s nothing psychosomatic. This was a wild stallion, DeLorean, who I actually helped to relax right down into a deep trance-like state before he would allow me to touch him for the first time. Gwen was so badly abused by people, by helping her to relax, meant that she could actually realize that not all humans are bad.

So, where did this come from? I didn’t wake up one day and go, hey, shells, let’s just Buddha the animals in our life. No, this came from a childhood experience, and when I was two years old, my sister died. My family moved to a farm in the UK in Surrey. And my mom surrounded us by animals, which is no surprise with her loss.

And it wasn’t really a surprise a couple of years later when my mom and dad separated and a stepfather came into my life. And I guess the best way of describing it is I was surrounded by the A’s, anxiety, arguments, and alcohol. And I am so grateful. This is a story of gratitude.

I am so grateful for that human disconnection, because that human disconnection made me incredibly vulnerable for connection. Every being is seeking connection, and I sought it from the animals around me. There were so many of them. There were such beautiful connections.

And I was aware of it, but I wasn’t conscious of it. This is Sunday, my little dog. Her only role was to be by my side always, no matter what obstacle was in the way. It was even more impressive to see her coming down the ladder.

So being aware is something very different from being conscious. And my first conscious understanding that we share feelings was it was a little bit painful. So I had this beautiful pony called Pip. He was a rescue. We used to go all over the countryside. To be honest, he was like an intelligent motorbike for me. He was my legs. We were very, very connected, and he loved this field.

So when we got to the field, he’d be all ready. And I’d go, yeah, you can go. Now, this one post in the middle of the field has been there all the time that we went through this. But this particular time, we were heading directly for it.

And when we got really close, I just went, oh, I better steer him to the side. At exactly the same time, Pip wanted to go and steer me. It’s just that he went the other way. So we kept going straight. So realizing this, I thought, I better go his way. Realizing this, he thought, I better go his way. And we both swapped over.

We were still heading straight. In the very last second, he turned to the side, and I hit the post. It was the first time I’d ever knocked myself out. When I woke up, I was absolutely delighted that my pony was in my face, blowing at me.

I was so delighted that he hadn’t just run off with the fright of it. I was completely broken. We were three and a half miles away from home. So I clambered up on top of him, and it was halfway home that I got hit again.

But this time, it was an understanding. I just went, oh, my God, we were thinking the same thing at the same time, just in different directions. I became conscious at a very early age. Oh, wow, that consciousness has really changed the direction of our lives.

So the second part I wanted to share with you was behavior. This is really fascinating. Change the feeling to change the behavior. Us human beings are so fixated on trying to change the behavior. We shouldn’t do that. We’re so fixated on changing the behavior that another behavior comes, because we haven’t addressed what drives the behavior, which is feeling.

So I’d like to share with you Pasha. Pasha had been in rescue for many years because he bites people.