This Week’s Thrive In Five Is About Connecting With Animals And Why It’s Good For Your Wellbeing
Welcome to this week’s video, all part of a series we’re putting out in March, to help you change your physiology for the better and perhaps improve happiness.
So this week’s post is about connecting with animals. Spending time with animals is an incredibly good way of changing our physiology. It can reduce cortisol and it boosts things like oxytocin and dopamine which is great for our wellbeing.
Dogs and other animals get a great deal of oxytocin when we maintain eye contact with them. We get lots of oxytocin as well. When we cuddle up with animals, as I am now with Kami our rescue dog. Oxytocin makes us feel amazing. It’s the bonding and connecting hormone, we get from connecting with people we also get it from connecting with animals.
We get dopamine as well from being around animals. Dopamine is the feel good chemical strongly associated with pleasure and reward.
Connecting with animals it’s not necessarily something everyone will relate to, but spending time with animals can be really powerful for your wellbeing. And as things start to open up again, as the year progresses here in the UK, you can get out and see animals in their natural environment. You can get out and see them at farms. If you have pets, and many people have got pets during lockdown, who you’ll probably know this, so make time to really connect with your animals. You will get a lot of oxytocin from the interaction.
It’s another thing that you can think about in conjunction with some of the other ideas we’ve putting out this month of ways to positively change your physiology, to increase happiness, to improve mood, and ultimately give you a little bit more energy.
You can read our other blogs in the series:
Benefits Of Breathwork On The Body
The Concept Of Future Retrospection And Dreaming Of The Future
The Importance Of Connection For Wellbeing
So get out and about with animals as soon as you can, and see if you can get some of those wonderful benefits of sharing a cuddle with people or dogs like Kami, all the best for now stay healthy.
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