Deep Breaths & Slow Blinks

For this step, you start with taking deep breaths in order to prime yourself to feel calm and relaxed. Then, the whole session is slow blinking the cat on and off.

Make sure to take breaks and look away or close your eyes because when you do slow blinks correctly it will be tiring. You rarely use these eyelid muscles so it’ll be quite the workout! It is better to take breaks instead of trying to power through and doing sloppy slow blinks.

Incorrect slow blinks are ineffective or sometimes even makes the cat feel stressed. Record yourself practicing and compare it to my slow blinks in the video below. 90% of people I’ve worked with thought they knew what slow blinks are but were doing it incorrectly. Once they saw the correct way to do it, they understood why their prior slow blinking wasn’t effective and the cat remained stressed out the whole time.

Make sure to sit on the floor sideways of the cat with your legs extended. Sitting sideways prevents the cat from feeling like we are about to approach the cat (refer to the Reset for more details why we sit sideways). You also start sitting with legs extended already so that the cat gets used to seeing you in that position—in preparation for the next step. After you sit down and settle in, do the deep breathes and slow blinks. If you move position after you do the deep breaths and start to slow blink, the movement will break the magic and the cat will be on alert again.

When the cat moves onto new steps, always start every session with 5 deep breaths and about 2-3 minutes of slow blinks before starting that step. You will notice a huge difference in the cat engaging with you if you do this. You can stop slow blinking at the beginning of every session when the cat comes right up to you in anticipation of the session when you sit down.

Sitting in the playpen

Start off by slow blinking the cat sitting sideways of the cat outside of the playpen. I do this for 1-2 days, then if it seems safe (the cat isn’t lunging at you when you feed him) I do slow blinks sitting sideways legs extended inside the playpen. I initially sit on the opposite side of the playpen as far away from the cat as possible. The cat needs that space between you in the beginning.

If the cat is lunging when you feed, I hold a large cat bed or a flattened cardboard box with one hand to protect my hand coming down into the play pen to place the food and water (see video in the Setup section). While the cat is still lunging, you should sit sideways of the cat outside of the playpen and slow blink the cat for the sessions.