It’s easy for me to say that we are all intuitive and that we all have the potential to communicate with animals. It’s true, but it doesn’t include an acknowledgment of how difficult it is to reclaim intuition that has been repeatedly denied. It’s challenging to open ourselves up to what is actually a normal communing with other species when every outside pressure demands that we remain closed.

I know exactly what that closed-off experience is like because I spent most of my life following those cultural rules. Communing with other species was a normal kid thing when I was very young, but I dropped it to fit in with my family and culture. Then I picked it up again as an adult when I lost my family and retreated from my culture. I dropped it again briefly out of fear of ridicule and ostracism, finally rededicating myself once I had a supportive partner.

So it was difficult for me, too. I remember the steps I took toward allowing myself to receive interspecies communication and I can help others to receive.

When you ask professional animal communicators for tips on learning how to do it, most of us will advise you to meditate. Please don’t groan, many ways to meditate exist outside of 90 minutes of zazen, I promise. I’ll post more on meditation later since it actually is essential. For now, let me tell you what variation I advise as a first step.

Spend time being present with other-than-humans.

For example, hang out with your dog in the backyard. Sit comfortably and plan to stay a while. Watch what she sniffs and where her ears turn. Be curious without staring and without talking. Your goal is simply to be. Most importantly, have no agenda. This is not a training moment. This is not the time to make a mental note to clip her nails. Just be. Every time your mind bugs you with an entry on your to-do list, come back to simply being with and noticing your dog. When you get annoyed with the neighbor’s noise, bring your attention back to a light awareness of your dog.

Watch the birds from your window or a park bench without labeling them. Be curious. Be with them. Listen. Notice how they move.

Sit in the pasture near your horse and do nothing else. Make no plans for training, cleaning, feeding. Just be with him, noticing, feeling the love you have for him. Leave your phone in the house.

Find a green space, a public garden, a few trees near your workplace. You can find a place to dwell a bit with other species almost anywhere. In a city near me, a row of brick buildings downtown is missing one narrow building that burned down many years ago. If you duck into the opening, you’ll find a tiny, quiet spot in the city with a small flower garden and an aged memorial statue. Sit here long enough and you’ll share the space with bees and butterflies. Keep looking wherever you are and you will find a place to be present with green beings, flying beings, crawling beings, and others.

If you’re not used to noticing, listening, and feeling while being with other species, it may not be so easy at first. The whole exercise may feel illicit. You may focus too much on the thought barrage in your head. That’s okay. Do it again, and again, until you catch yourself forgetting yourself. Once your whole being begins to hum along with the remembrance that you are also nature, you are on your way to communing with your kin.