Mindful Movement: The Missing Link in Dog Training #46

Want to communicate better with your dog? Beyond treats and verbal cues lies a powerful hidden language - your movements and mindset. Learn how simple self-awareness can unlock new levels of trust, behavior, and connection with your best friend.

Through personal stories and practical examples, you’ll discover how your physical state, breathing patterns, and unconscious tensions directly influence your dog's behavior.

Drawing from her experience with both dogs and horses, Mary explains how subtle changes in your movement can create profound shifts in our dogs' responses, illustrating how intentional movement can lead to beautiful synchronicity between you and your dog.

The episode challenges many training programs by highlighting an often-overlooked component: the human’s physical and emotional states. While positive reinforcement remains crucial, Mary reveals how unconscious tension patterns can undermine even the best training efforts.

Key Takeaways:

• Dogs mirror our physical and emotional states more than we realize
• Movement and mindset awareness is crucial for clear communication with your dog
• Relaxation in the handler invites relaxation in the dog

Resources:

Grab your FREE video training to help your dog. 🐕 https://www.marydebono.com/lovedog 💥

Join our free Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/DogHealthAndVitality

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. Please consult a qualified healthcare provider if you or your dog are unwell or injured.

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 movement, well-being, and connection of animals and their human companions.

Mary's innovative approach draws from the Feldenkrais Method®, tailored specifically for the canine world. Her methods have helped dogs and humans:

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

Mary's best-selling, award-winning book, "Grow Young with Your Dog,”  offers a unique opportunity to experience the benefits of Feldenkrais® while learning her signature hands-on work for dogs. This approach has helped dogs and their people move with ease and confidence. Visit https://www.marydebono.com/you-and-your-dog. 

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello. What if everything you knew about bonding with your dog or even training your dog was missing a vital element? What if it was missing a key ingredient? So today, I'd like to talk to you about how movement is like the hidden language with your dog, that how you could use your movement, your physical and emotional states actually, to communicate better with your dog and to grow your bond, to deepen your bond with your dog.

And in case we're meeting for the first time, my name is Mary Debono, and this is the Easier Movement, Happier Dogs podcast. So, yeah, let's talk about how movement builds trust. And not only does it build trust, but you realize how much our dogs reflect our movement, our physical states, our emotional state, like, the whole package, Right? So I'll give an example. So every morning, I hike with my dog, Tony, and we hike in these.

This nature preserve, and it's fantastic. It's gorgeous. It's a highlight of my day. We both have so much fun this time of year. It's freezing that early in the morning, and Tony is really excited. He's really energetic. You know, he's still fairly young, and he has a lot of energy, and off we go. And what I found over time. We adopted Tony about three years ago, so he's five and a half now.

And, you know, he didn't know anything about being on a leash. When we first adopted him, he was a street dog from Mexico. But, you know, I quickly taught him, using positive reinforcement, of course, you know, how to walk on a leash. So when we're out there in the morning and it's cold and, you know, sometimes I want to run with him. What I discovered at first was that when I would run, Tony would get so excited that he would just want to gallop as fast as he could.

So, like, all the leash training went out the window. So I figured out how to work with them. I mean, after all, I've trained my horses over the years to run at my pace as well, you know, side by side. And I certainly can train Tony to do this. And I've trained other dogs as well, and we did, and he learned. He learned to go at my pace.

So when I want to, like, sprint, he'll sprint, and when I want to go slower, he'll go slower. But today what happened was really kind of funny because we were going down this hill, and I decided to run a little bit. However, it's like some of it is, like, rock face, and there's also loose gravel in other parts, so I wasn't going to Run fast. And I was doing, like, this little kind of almost like a little prancy trot down the hill.

And I'm looking at Tony, and he's doing the same prancy trot as I'm doing, which I thought was kind of funny. And then I kind of picked myself up a little bit, you know, moved a little bit differently. And he. He went right into this amazing, like, collected canter, where he was basically, like, almost like running in place, right? He was. He was advancing a little bit, but was very, very.

What we call collected, like, in horse terminology. And I started really playing with that, just like I've always done with the horses, where changing my movement so intentionally often will change what the horse is doing. And this is true with. With dogs as well. And Tony was like a perfect mirror for me today. It was really kind of funny. And so it just reminded me, like, that I wanted to share this with you.

I wanted to tell. Important it is to have awareness about how you're moving. So that's kind of like a big example, like, where he's, like, matching my little prancy trot and this collected canter and all that kind of stuff. But there's much more subtle ways that our dogs reflect our movement, our physical states, our emotional state as well. So, for example, you might be holding your breath at times when you don't realize it, or breathing, like, really shallow.

Maybe you're out on a walk and you see something and you're like, you know, automatically, just unconsciously, you're tensing up, your breath changes. You hold the leash differently. There's just different tension in your body. And, you know, if you think about it, think about how amazing dogs are, how they notice everything about us, right? So they're trained. Many dogs are trained to detect changes in blood sugar, right?

Or, you know, heart rhythms and things like that, right? So they're incredibly sensitive. So they notice. They notice us. And when we become more aware of what we're doing, and we can then become more aware of how that's influencing our dog. Okay? And that's why I think this is so important, because I'm a huge fan of positive reinforcement training, okay? And for dogs, use it with horses as well, et cetera.

But I have to say, many of many, many training programs overlook this crucial element. They fail to account for what you are doing, like the tension in your body. Because if you think about it, you can. You can reward your dog with the tasty of, you know, tastiest of treats, right? You can give your dog. You can Reinforce behaviors that way. But if you're physically or emotionally tense, which by the way, they go hand in hand, the physical and the emotional.

So we know that, right? Your dog will feel that, your dog will feel that, and that will shape their behavior, that will shape their interactions with you. I often say how you move, how you breathe, and how you direct your attention are all felt by your dog. And they all shape your interactions with your dog. And that means that your, your underlying sense of either ease or effort is felt by your dog and changes your interaction with your dog.

It's a big part of shaping how you and your dog experience each other, whether you have this underlying sense of ease or tension, strain. Okay, so this is really important stuff. Okay, so let's, let's think about ways that we can let go of tension. Because a lot of times we don't even know we're doing it. It's so unconscious. It's just a habit. We may have started this habit when we six years old or maybe it's something fairly recent.

In either case, oftentimes it's like we're not, we're not aware of it. Okay. We don't think we're tense. We don't think we're doing something unnecessary, but we are. So you can try this just whether you're sitting or standing, I wouldn't do this if you're driving your car or operating any other heavy machinery. But you know, just sit or stand naturally. If you can stand, that's even better. And just notice how your shoulders feel.

And then you don't notice how your jaw feels. Notice how you're breathing. And you can even do a head to toe scan of your body and asking yourself, where can I let go of unnecessary tension? And don't forget the spot between your ears, okay? Because a lot of our attention is generated from habitual thoughts that we have that are not serving us, that they're actually creating physical tension and emotional tension that our dog feels that too.

So you might start to really examine those habitual thoughts you have as well as your habitual movement patterns, your habitual holding of muscles that you don't need to. Okay, so you know, just breathe easily. Let go. Ask yourself, where can I let go? You might notice that your shoulders drop down, right? You might notice that the muscles around your hips relax or your back, maybe in your fingers.

So many of us clench things with our hands all the time. Just invite relaxation, Invite relaxation. And then as you enter into a state of relaxation, you're non verbally inviting your dog into that same state. Right? Relaxation invites relaxation. And now let's do something with your dog. So just, you're just standing next to your dog, you're both facing the same direction and just take a step forward and notice if your dog matches you.

Does your dog follow you? And if not, it's not a problem, but just notice and notice even. It sounds funny, but the more you dive into this and get like granular, the more you'll improve your movement and your well being and therefore help your dog. So for example, when you take a step forward, do you always step forward with the same leg? In other words, if you're going from standing still to taking a step, is it always the same leg?

You start with many. For many of us it is. Do you always step up on a curb with the same foot? Again, many of us do that. It's just unconscious. So start to ask yourself again, like, okay, and then just see if you can engage your dog nonverbally to come along with you, okay? And watch that movement that they choose to move with you. And this isn't about obedience, it's about choice.

And it's like when you, when your dog starts to freely choose to move with you, it's when you're really deep in your trust. Okay, and now, now let's talk about when you're playing with your dog. Now you probably enjoy playing with your dog. I know I do. Right? But notice, are you doing things in play when you're playing that again are leading to this sense of strain or effort, unnecessary tension, right?

You know, maybe you're holding your breath, maybe you're gripping that toy too tightly. Like are you giving non verbal signals to your dog that say something isn't safe here, something isn't right here. Again, what is your underlying sense? Is it of ease or is it of effort? Okay, so, you know, think about this as you're playing with your dog. Just make sure you're breathing easily, Let your body be soft.

Right? Think, you know, you could, you can kind of signal to your dog that yeah, we're playing together, but I'm not controlling you. And again, this is not about forcing anything to happen, it's about allowing things to happen. Okay? So think about these things as you go on your walks with your dog as well. You know, maybe before leaving home, before you even pick up the leash, you know, you center yourself, you take a few moments to notice your breathing, notice what random thoughts are running around in your head.

And by the way, those so many of our thoughts, quite the majority of them are unconscious, and they influence our behavior and they influence our physical state. Okay, so they influence a lot of things, and therefore, they influence our dog. So just kind of tune into yourself. Ask yourself, where can I let go of unnecessary tension, Tension in the body, tension in the mind. Feel your feet on the ground.

Notice how your shoulders are when you do pick up the leash. Notice how you hold it. And then start your walk from this more centered place. And notice how your dog responds to this more centered and grounded version of you, this more aware version of you. For many of my students, they tell me that right away their dog starts to be more tuned into them when they're like that.

That suddenly their dog's training progresses faster once they become more aware of their part in it and of what they're doing. So this is something that benefits you because you'll feel better, you'll move easier, you'll have a happier life as well as it benefits your dog. And of course, it benefits the both of you. It benefits and deepens your bond, your trust of each other, your connection. Because as I always say, you and your dog deserve to feel great together.

So I hope you found this helpful. Let me know if you have, you know, how it. How you do with this. Like, if you have any experiences that you want to share with me, please, please feel free to message me. Mary Mary debono.com and thank you so much for listening. I really appreciate you, and I look forward to talking to you again soon. Bye for now.