Here’s something I want you to know before we go any further….communication is happening all the time.
Right now, as you read this, your pet is sensing you. Sensing the energy of your emotions, of your thoughts and your body. Including all of the pieces that are running in the background that perhaps you’re less aware of.
They feel all of it. And you are also receiving information from them. You just perhaps haven’t recognised the subtlety of it yet, or even recognised it as communication.
I had a client recently who told me that two weeks before her cat died, while away with work, she had a strong feeling that she needed to come home.
Her cat died shortly after she returned.
You will have also experienced similar ‘knowings’ or intuitive pulls. Whether it’s a feeling they don’t want to go out that day, or you need to change their food, or you get knowing about how they feel in their body without looking at them.
You were born knowing the language of energy and feeling
In the West, we have become almost entirely reliant on words and body language. We communicate through verbal language and we really value logic, analysis and ‘facts’.
But beneath that, underneath the verbal language, there is a more ancient and subtle form of communication that every being on earth is participating in all the time. You might call it energy, frequencies or vibration.
Your pets are constantly broadcasting their feelings and their desires and your body is designed to receive it. And vice versa.
Scientists like Dr. Rupert Sheldrake have documented this phenomenon through his research into morphic resonance, the way animals, plants and humans are connected through collective fields of energy that transcend physical proximity.
Suzanne Simard’s research into the woodwide web, the vast fungal networks through which trees share resources and communicate, shows us that communication is happening at every level in the natural world, beneath what we can see or hear.
Everything is connected.
The piece we need to work on isn’t learning to communicate, it’s learning to recognise that we already are, and how that communication is coming to us and how it arrives is unique to each of us.
Setting the intention of being more present
Animals are embodied 24/7. They live in the present moment, connected to their physical experience, sensing everything around them.
Most of us, most of the time, are living in our mind, in the past or in the future, analysing, going down mental rabbit holes.
Fun, but it’s not the whole picture and it’s not the place where communication happens with our pets.
So I’m inviting you to get present.
Turn off your phone. Turn off the TV. Put away any to-do lists.
Close your eyes and take some deep breaths in through your nose and out through your mouth. Bring all of your awareness back into your physical body. Wriggle your toes, your fingers and simply bring ALL of your awareness inwards.
Then set an intention and say to your pet, either out loud or in your mind: “I want to learn to receive what you’re sharing with me. I love you and I’m curious to explore how we can deepen our relationship. I’d love to hang out with you more in this way”
And then notice what happens in your body when you do that. If this is something you genuinely want to explore, you’ll feel a kind of opening, an expansiveness, or simply something different.
You might get a feeling, a sensation, an emotion, a word or a visual. That’s your antenna firing up.
The 7 main ways we receive communication
Your body receives information through all of these channels and your pet may have a preferred way of communicating, just as you have a preferred way of receiving.
Before we go into them, it’s worth saying this: as you’re starting out, you’re not going to hear your dog speaking to you in long drawn out monologue like a person.
It’s more like, you might get a single or a few words initially, or an image of them exploring something they enjoy. Or perhaps a physical sensation in your body which wasn’t there before you connected, like a surge in energy, or a hunger pang, or a feeling of tiredness or thirst.
Or just a knowing about something.
It comes through the channels below and it’s often subtle, quick, and easy to dismiss. My advice, notice everything and don’t dismiss anything.
1 Visuals: this is your inner vision which may appear as images, symbols, colours, shapes. Sometimes a quick flash, sometimes a short film.
2 Sound: from within, you may receive a word, a song, a sentence. Or an actual sound like a bell, or a bark or a hum.
3&4 Smell and taste: fragrances or flavours that appear in your body without any obvious source. You might smell mint, or a type of meat, or get a dry sensation in your mouth.
5 Emotions: You may feel a sense of love, joy, sadness, a sudden intense feeling that doesn’t obviously belong to you.
6 Physical sensations: warmth, tightness, tingling, an ache, a pull in a certain direction, sleepiness or a surge of energy or a sense of discomfort in a particular part of your body.
7 Knowingness: and this is the one most of us are familiar with. You have real inner clarity. You might say “It just feels right”.
Some of these channels will be naturally stronger for you than others. I’m personally strongly clairvoyant, so imagery comes first for me. But all seven are available and it’s worth playing with all of them rather than relying on just one.
From thinking to FEELING
Here’s something that makes a huge difference, and it’s a very simple shift.
As human beings, we’re conditioned to ask why.
“Why is my dog anxious?”
“Why won’t my cat eat?”
“ Why does my horse keep doing that?”
The word ‘why’ pulls us straight into our analytical mind, into the thinking, the explaining, the seeking and out of the body where the real communication happens, in feeling.
Animals don’t analyse their feelings. They simply experience them fully and respond. They live in the energetic, sensation-based realm. And to meet them there, we need to shift from thinking to feeling.
Instead of: why are you barking? Try: how does it feel in your body when you bark? What am I sensing right now?
Instead of: why won’t you eat? Try: what do I notice in her body when I think about food?
Some questions you might want to explore when you sit with your pet:
How does your body feel right now?
What do you enjoy most? Share with me the textures, the sounds, the smells.
How do you like to be shown love?
What does freedom feel like to you?
Is there anything you’d like me to understand about you?
Keep it playful, keep it light, and just notice what comes back.
“I think I’m making it all up”
This thought will absolutely come. It comes for almost everyone who is new to this. And it comes because we’ve been told for most of our lives that imagination is for children, that telepathy is fantasy, that anything that can’t be measured can’t be real.
Imagination is one of the ways the body interprets and translates what it receives.
Indigenous cultures, our ancestors, traditions that predate Western rationalism, they understood this. It was recognised as a portal to the non-physical unseen realms.
So when you notice the doubt come in, don’t try to force fake confidence. Instead, start gathering your own evidence. When you receive an intuitive hit about your animal, act on it and then notice how they respond.
Keep a note and build your own body of evidence.
It’s a bit like learning French. The only way to find out if you’re actually speaking it is to go to France, try it, and get the feedback.
Feedback is everything!
In a recent session with a cat in spirit, the word ‘posy’ kept coming through. It came in several times and it’s not a word I’d use. I had no idea what it meant in connection to this cat and I nearly set it aside, but I shared it anyway.
On the call with the cat’s mum, I shared how ‘posy’ had come through several times and mum said she has just started doing a floristry course that week and she loves the delicate posy rather than the grand flamboyant bouquets.
It may appear ‘random’ in the moment, but my advise to you is stay present, stay in ‘receiving mode’ and honour what comes through.
They’re giving us feedback too
One of the things that I find intriguing in this work is when a pet brings through something not just about themselves, but for the person they love.
In that same session, at the very end, the cat gave me two things. She showed me her person lying down and then showed herself lying across her person’s chest in a I’ll-always-been-here way. And then she gave me these words:
“Go gently on yourself.”
Her person had been carrying so much guilt, worrying she hadn’t done enough, hadn’t been there enough. And her cat’s final message wasn’t about any of that. It was: go gently. I’m here. I’m across your heart.
Animals don’t just communicate about their food or their body or their favourite spot in the garden.
They see us, often more clearly than we see ourselves. And when we create the space to listen, what comes back is not just information about them. It’s a mirror. It’s a message.
What I want you to take away
Slow. Down.
Spend more time feeling your way through your relationship with your pet rather than thinking your way through it. We’re so conditioned to analyse everything, to explain, to understand, to find the logical answer. But that’s not the language of animals. Their language is feeling. Presence. The honest, unfiltered expression of what is in the moment.
And your body already speaks this.
You just need to stop drowning it out.
If you want to develop this skill for yourself, you cannot beat having someone who is just one step ahead of you, guiding you, and a safe space to practice and get real feedback. That’s exactly what my 1:1 Animal Communication Mentorship offers….a supported and expansive journey into learning to receive and trust what your own animals are sharing with you.
Find out more about the Animal Communication Mentorship
rachelknott.com/animal-communication-mentorship/
Sessions are held remotely – wherever you are in the world. Your animal doesn’t need to be present. All you need to bring is an open heart and your questions.
