08/20/2026
🧠✨ THE SCIENCE OF STILLNESS 🐾
Meditation research gives us an interesting look into nervous system regulation.
📊 A review of nearly 3,500 people found mindfulness meditation produced measurable improvements in anxiety, depression and pain.
🧠 Another 8-week study found that reductions in perceived stress were associated with changes in the amygdala, an area heavily involved in our threat response.
So what can this teach us about our dogs? 🐕
👤 HUMAN:
Trigger ➡️ Arousal ➡️ Pause ➡️ Regulate ➡️ Recover 🧘♀️
🐕 DOG:
Trigger ➡️ Arousal ➡️ Quiet / Leave It ➡️ Disengage ➡️ Settle ➡️ Recover 🌿
This is why I put so much emphasis on teaching Quiet 🤫 and Leave It ✋, particularly with dogs struggling with over-arousal or separation anxiety.
Using clear communication, including the remote collar once the dog understands the command, we can interrupt that escalating behavioral pattern and give the dog an opportunity to practice something incredibly important:
✨ Coming back down. ✨
We aren’t trying to create a dog that never feels stress.
🐾 We’re teaching a dog what to DO when stress shows up.