Dr. Jeff Feinman, a veterinarian, molecular biologist, and founder of Holistic Actions, joins Richard Zwicky to explore the profound, often unarticulated connection between animals, human mental health, and consciousness.
Dr. Feinman reveals that his deep understanding of this interrelationship came not from his scientific training but from a half-century of observation, leading him to recognize how relationships with animals are directly tied to the balance of life processes, a concept overlooked in conventional veterinary medicine.
He highlights that animals are masters of “energetic hygiene,” possessing the ability to rapidly “shake off” overstimulation and remain entirely focused on the present moment, a valuable lesson for humans who tend to ruminate and overthink.
Key takeaways
- Animals shake off a scare within seconds and return to the present, and Feinman sees that as a model for how people can regulate their own stress.
- Feinman tracks a pet's quality of life through behavior, energy, appetite and mood, which he calls beam, because a symptom can disappear while the animal is still not well.
- The happiness protocol has three steps: find what makes your pet happiest, double it for two weeks, then check whether beam and engagement improve.
- Caring for an animal can pull people out of their own heads, because they will focus on a pet's wellbeing in ways they cannot yet do for themselves.
- Feinman believes our anxiety or low mood can affect the animals around us, so noticing their reactions can work as an early warning sign about our own state.
The big idea: Can Pets Help You Calm Your Nervous System?
More conversations on Purpose, Meaning and Mindfulness, Attachment and Relationships, Trauma and Healing
Read the full transcript
Richard Zwicky: Hi everyone, it's Richard Zwicky with High on Healthy, the show where we know there's no one path to healthy, so we explore them all. If you haven't subscribed yet, please do so on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or your favorite podcast tool. Today's conversation will explore a bridge but that many people actually feel very intuitively but rarely hear articulated, which is a connection between animals, humans, and really consciousness itself. For today's show, I'm joined by Dr. Jeff Fineman, who's a veterinarian, molecular biologist, and founder of Holistic Actions, a platform dedicated to optimizing pets quality time of life through compassion, early awareness, and trust in the process. His work challenges conventional thinking while remaining grounded in clinical experiences and scientific literacy. Welcome aboard the show, Jeeoff.
Dr. Jeff Feinman: Thank you so much for asking me. I appreciate it.
Richard Zwicky: It's great to have you on board because we talk about all sorts of paths to healthy on the show and one thing that struck me and when I came across your profile and was introduced to the thought of having you on the show was we don't often talk about the role of animals in our daily mental health and yet we see how much comfort they offer people and we see also how people's interactions with each other change as the result of their interaction with animals. You're trained in both molecular biology and veterinary medicine. Tell us a little bit about how that drove an awakening for you about the inter relationship.
Dr. Jeff Feinman: I tell you the honest truth cuz being a molecular biologist,
Richard Zwicky: We're big into honest.
Dr. Jeff Feinman: Being a molecular biologist and
Richard Zwicky: Let's go back. Right.
Dr. Jeff Feinman: Studying and working with cells and then working as a veterinarian for decade. Did not do it. So I guess the answer is What did was my observation of the world around me, my observation what was going on in different sectors and also especially with the animals. In other words, what I mean things like psychonuroimology. It's not an area that we learn about in vet school. We do not learn about the fact that mental health that consciousness that the balance of life processes are directly related to our relationships with animals. In fact the relationship is not that delved into. So I guess the answer is what opened my eyes. I think being a half a century of observation.
Richard Zwicky: I think just before the show, we were talking about the fact that animals see our true selves. They look at us and see who's open and welcoming and who's nervous, who's unwell, and who is a threat, and they adapt accordingly. Those insights are incredibly powerful for us as individuals as well but we've learned to ignore them. How do you separate the science from the spirituality in that sense?
Dr. Jeff Feinman: That's a really important question. They're not separate is the first answer and why are they separate? I think that disconnect between science and spirituality is because in science we are taught to the cellular, focus on the reductionistic medicine, reducing the body into small parts. Spirituality is about just the opposite. It's about how we're all connected. It's about how we can actually talk to our own microbiome and the bacteria that are living in our bodies and living in their bodies and living amongst us are not evil. They're not things to be fought against and that the science is slowly now beginning to verify everything we know in that the realm of spirituality.
Richard Zwicky: And that perspective also then leads me to the question of one of the challenges for people with mental health is we tend to ruminate on what's happened. We tend to obsess and overthink about certain things. Animals are we believe much more focused on and entirely on the present and the present moment. And they do retain memories of threats and things they liked and disliked. We don't have the sense that they overthink the past or the relationship the way we do. What does this reveal about actually better ways for us to look at system regulation and
00:05:00
Richard Zwicky: Emotional health? What can we learn from the animals to help us?
Dr. Jeff Feinman: We can learn that something called energetic hygiene is the key and they are masters of energetic hygiene. Every time they get over stimulated, they start to move into the sympathetic zone out of the healing and resting parasympathetic zone. They can just shake it off and get the energy flow back. I mean, think about an antelope in the wild that's being stalked. I don't know if you ever saw, a herd of grazing antelope being stalked by a lion and then they run and they all freak out, but then within 5 seconds they're fine. Their back's doing what they do. So really,
Richard Zwicky: You see that a lot with deer where they sense a threat, they raise their head, stop check out the area around them, and make a decision, but then it's passed.
Dr. Jeff Feinman: And then that's the key right there. They don't carry it with them and no animal really does except for as you said really traumatic event might become what I call an energetic entanglement. It's actually stuck in if their body keeps score. But most commonly they are in the present moment and they are portals that we can use doorways that we can use to enter that state of presence and I see that in my own life because as scientist I'm always thinking but if I go outside and play with my dog that thinking mind just subsides. It's their plates in the focusing
Richard Zwicky: It does. We feel relief. We feel joy and it's very instant in the moment which is a lovely thing. You teach something called the happiness protocol which talks about beam behavior, energy, appetite and mood. How does that relate?
Dr. Jeff Feinman: On symptoms focusing on diseases, focusing on what's wrong is the focus of veterary medicine of all medicine is we got to fix whatever is Being is a focus on quality of life. Being behavior, energy, appetite, mood is in my observation more important than pretty much any physical symptoms. So, for example, you got an itchy dog or a cat that vomits or any other issue and you get rid of it with medications. It stops the vomiting, but their beam goes down. That's a way to you for you, the pet parent, to know that you're your animals not better even though the symptom is gone. We're using this quality of life space to balance out the symptom space which is all that we as veterinarians really know about is defining and diagnosing and treating a symptom. We are learning more and more about, and I'm sorry to interrupt, but we're learning more and more about enhancing quality of life. And it started years ago with the oncologists with cancer care and the life care but now we're seeing it threat life of our animals
Richard Zwicky: I was just writing a piece I have a predictive analytics software platform for mental health that working through and one of the things that a lot of mental health care and the way people approach it is what is wrong with me as opposed to what's right how am I amazing how am I actually have all these things that are beneficial. When we look at pets and pet their owners, what do most pet owners miss when they focus on diagnosis instead of overall vitality?
Dr. Jeff Feinman: That what they miss is quality of life the happiness, the day-to-day being. I know many situations where the pet goes to the doctor and gets a terminal diagnos and they recommend euthanasia and the pet is wagging away and just as happy as can be. I was on podcast a little while ago where a podcaster's dog had just been diagnosed. Horac was a while ago diagnosed with cancer and was recommended the dog to sleep and the guy just took the dog home and focused on the happiness protocol which is a way to just boost the happiness of the animal.
00:10:00
Dr. Jeff Feinman: And a year and a half later, the dog was put to sleep for another reason, not because of cancer. And the essence of your question and the way it relates to the happiness protocol really started back at Penn in the 70s and 80s with a guy named Marty Seligman. And what you're describing is positive psychology where they discovered that focusing on what Aaron Beck called the sweet spot near the end of his life. He had an interview with Barry Scott Kaufman about what makes people operate the best they can operate and that is what he said being in their sweet spot. The happiness protocol is just a way to maximize sweet spots for animals.
Richard Zwicky: And maximize that sweet spot for the animals is also therapeutic for us.
Dr. Jeff Feinman: No question.
Richard Zwicky: And you must have seen a lot of pet owners whose mental state improved dramatically by a shift in their thought. Can you tell us a bit about a story?
Dr. Jeff Feinman: I'm going to go back to yesterday because the answer to your question is every day I see people being transformed through their animals and we will do things for animals. We will focus on things that we can't focus on for ourselves. When people that are in a depressed state are able to do that and focus on optimizing the beam in their animals. They find what I call zone of joy that place of happiness begins to spread to them and they actually raise their I'm a guy that lived most of his life in his head and as a depressed and anxious person animals helped me see my way out of that and the way they did that is thanks to people to that. Think about it's really our thoughts that are the problem. Not what's happening around us, but what we think might be happening or our interpretation. And animals don't do that usually.
Richard Zwicky: No, animals don't also don't judge which is incredibly powerful for a person who is dealing with certain challenges because they feel judged whether they are or not. Animals just love you for who you are.
Dr. Jeff Feinman: Now we're going to talk a bit about that L word because the unconditional love that we get from our animals that we can give to our animals is also a powerful healing agent. And what we know is that love an unconditional love or any love is going to help us do things and overcome challenges that we couldn't otherwise overcome. And again, going back to the specific examples, this pet parent has had years and years of issues with their dogs. And it's interesting, but it's always been the same issue with every dog. As their own issues as we unravel the issues in their dogs They're beginning to be more cognizant of what is going around them. And now we'll have a pipeman will say, "I know my state of anxiety is affecting my dog.
Richard Zwicky: And we see that in so many ways which becomes our own mirror for an early warning system if we use it properly.
Dr. Jeff Feinman: And it's a very problematic statement that I just made that negative our anxiety our depression can affect our dogs because energy in general we know this for a fact in physics and in science that every cell in the body everything around us is composed of space and energy and that energy is going to be there whether we are depressed, whether we're happy, whether no matter what our mood is. So all we can do is do our best and
00:15:00
Richard Zwicky: And they do.
Dr. Jeff Feinman: Our animals help us do that.
Richard Zwicky: And they also help us intuitively when we're feeling unwell, whether it's physical or mentally unwell. They know to come close to us.
Dr. Jeff Feinman: And again, going back to that energetic, I mean, animals, especially dogs, have this amazing ability to know when things like your blood sugar are going down, you're about to have a seizure or, even detecting COVID, cancer, and yeah, there may or may not be biomarkers that we can detect, but we know there are energetic biomarkers that we can detect and beam is one of those that beam reflects the flow and the smoothness of the flow in the animal of the energy flow in the animal and my own doctor asks me at every appointment at the beginning how's your beam is a great early warning detection tool they don't
Richard Zwicky: And it's interesting when we consider the fact that in taking care of the animal properly we're also taking care of ourselves. And people don't always connect those dots, they get the benefits.
Dr. Jeff Feinman: But they definitely get connected whether we connect them or not. There are certain things like Exactly.
Richard Zwicky: And what questions should pet owners be asking about how to improve the lives of their pets? Not just treatments, but lives of their a pets on a daily basis. Be it their lifestyle, nutrition, environment or anything else that will Of course also help themselves All right. Right.
Dr. Jeff Feinman: My first answer to that is take the holistic actions free 101 course and that this course is to go through food, go through a happiness protocol, go through all the things that we share with them that will help us and them help them have their best life. I know a lot of people in my the holistic space, people that are eating well, but they're still feeding junk food to their animals. And that's a good example because that minor shift from processed food to fresh food corrects innumerable problems. Again, I don't want to call them problems as much as just challenges or temporary challenges.
Richard Zwicky: There are challenges people now, of course, with different pets and people's different lifestyles. Some people live in homes with yards. Apartment some people live in anything in between. Apartments are like, I'm in an apartment now and we have a cat. And before it used to be able to run around through the garden and explore and that's no longer possible. How do you provide the right mental stimulation to your pet when that becomes the case? Because that's something always working towards right
Dr. Jeff Feinman: Where I would always go back to the happiness protocol. And that starts with knowing what makes your cat or dog the happiest. It may be a kind of food. It may be just loving them up. But Identify the Double the amount. Everyone's going to say they give their dogs treats or they play with their dogs or they love their animals but double it for two weeks. Do a little experiment. Try doing twice that amount for two weeks. And then step three in the happiness protocol is evaluate. Are you seeing an improvement in beam and engagement and interaction, through what you're doing. So yeah, the answer I think to your question is by environmental enrichment. Especially cats that go from outdoor to indoor cats, the number one thing you can do is enrich their environment. Places to go, hide, boxes, things to watch, cat TV. Just have to work a bit harder.
Richard Zwicky: And indigenous traditions teach us to view animals as teachers and messengers. How does that wisdom show up in modern clinical work?
00:20:00
Dr. Jeff Feinman: That wisdom is the basis for my modern clinical work. In that is the essence of interconnection of the spirituality of all of every being in life. And you know that wisdom is again now being verified scientifically. A lot of it is via the work in mitochondria that's being done. We're finding that all the things that we're talking about improve mitochondrial function and improve energy flow and there is a mitochondrial scientist here at Columbia University making that direct mitochondrial metabolism brain connection.
Richard Zwicky: And that connection is incredibly insightful and I think we chatted about earlier animals often mirror back to us our own stress and grief and emotional state. And how can we learn to care for animals differently so that we practice presence and compassion and even personal healing?
Dr. Jeff Feinman: I think my answer would be that we don't learn just do it and we just fake it until we make it. So, we feed a better diet and we see what the effect is and go from there. We know the rules. We know what's going to make help the body operate as good as it can Follow the science, follow the framework and then see what happens secondarily. It's doing that. So again, in laughter yoga every night at whatever month, but create laughter, which by the way is a great way to help your mental state is a half hour of laughter in a community of 100 people around the world in laughter yoga duck says every night we got to fake it till we make it. We laugh and sing and play and dance even if we don't feel it.
Richard Zwicky: And you have to or else you'll end up spiraling.
Dr. Jeff Feinman: Next, exactly.
Richard Zwicky: And when we're taking care of the animals around us, we're responsible for that being when we've taken a pet. But we're also taking care of ourselves when we're doing it properly. What if people truly embraced the animal model of air being holistic presence attunement, regulation? How might it change how we live?
Dr. Jeff Feinman: My goodness. It would change everything. I think first of all it would bring presence and awareness into our lives. We would know what's going on. We would know when there is a disregulation. We would begin to sense that our own nervous systems are moving to the sympathetic state and We'll learn to so it will be a happier world. It will be what Echart calls the new earth.
Richard Zwicky: And I've noted it also helps people have stronger interpersonal relationships
Dr. Jeff Feinman: And I think that raise of consciousness is what we are seeing in all in a lot of people and pet parents are leading the way in my mind because he'll do anything for our animals.
Richard Zwicky: Which sometimes we overlook and neglect that how that connect
Dr. Jeff Feinman: And a great example from my own book. I'm a chronic disease sufferers having issues with getting up, getting around, whatnot, but I've been blessed past almost now two years taking my dog to a local park where I get to meet and talk with. And so yeah, she's out playing and we're interacting the whole time. So yes, I mean there is documented research that having animals and being with the animals and following their lead is going to help our depressions can help our interconnectivity. They call the human animal bond. There's a huge amount of research about blood pressure and cholesterol and mental health. What? That was the first place we studied actually because we began to see things miraculous improvements.
00:25:00
Richard Zwicky: Very much so.
Dr. Jeff Feinman: But again, I think that it really see that we need to be on the path to pet wellness, which is based on quality of life, not based on symptoms.
Richard Zwicky: Very much agree. People who want to learn more about this and your work, how can they find your book and how else can they learn more about you and your work? Mhm.
Dr. Jeff Feinman: Path to bet wellness is the book and it's wherever you buy a book so bookstores or Amazon or bookshop whatever best way to learn more dive deeper into what I just kind of introduc in what I call my little picture book meaning it's got cute little pictures like this one of a dog. You can't see that's a cat riding running around in an RV.
Richard Zwicky: A camper.
Dr. Jeff Feinman: That lays a framework and that if you want to go to the course at holisticactions.com. The 101 course will begin to give you more of what we teach in the book. And if you want to go even further then you can join us as a member in holistic actions. We've got a paying membership as well where we support people using the framework that we're describing that we're talking about that we discussed in the book.
Richard Zwicky: If you don't have a pet of your own, there's always ways to access and deal with animals, Be they know interactions in nature friends, or, SPCA and others who are always looking for help walking the pets, taking care of the pets.
Dr. Jeff Feinman: A cow cuddler a friend of mine just wrote a great book called cow hug therapy. It's about the benefit of hugging the cow and regulating with the cow, but you can do it with any animal. And volunteering at the SPCA or humane society, it's a great way because the animals will appreciate it and you'll get a lot out of it. And there's no better way to raise your spirits than to serve others.
Richard Zwicky: Is a wonderful way.
Dr. Jeff Feinman: Serving animals is the best way.
Richard Zwicky: Thanks for so much for joining us today, Jeeoff. Thank you and
Dr. Jeff Feinman: It's great to see you. Thank you all for listening.
Richard Zwicky: Thanks to everybody for listening. I'm Richard Zwicky with High on Healthy and we'll be back again with you soon.
This transcript was generated automatically and lightly edited for readability.