Soul Tails: The animals who led me here
Soul Tails is an animal communication and energy work practice by PJ Valenciano, offered through Raise and Rise Wellness. Whether you're navigating a pet's illness, aging, behavioral shifts, or grief after loss, Soul Tails creates space to deepen the bond between you and your animal companion. Every session also supports Pawsion Program Philippines — because caring for the animals we love and the animals who need us most go hand in hand.
COMMUNITYPETS
PJ Valenciano
6/16/20266 min read
Explaining how I found my way to animal communication, energy work, and Soul Tails is not always straightforward. There are many points along the path that could be considered a beginning — teachers and courses, experiences that shifted the way I understood animals, and earlier this year, a scholarship to study with Danielle Mackinnon, whose work deepened my exploration of the connections between people and animals.
Yet none of those feel like the true beginning.
The beginning is much simpler. I have always loved animals.
Long before I learned the language of wellness, energy work, or personal development, animals were already shaping my life. Their influence predates Soul Tails, my work with Raise and Rise Wellness, and many of the experiences that would later guide my path. Over the years, animals such as Moose, Max, Maxine, Princess Susie, Harvey Junior, Hime, Astro, Willow, and Bunshin — and many more — became part of my story. Each brought a different energy, personality, and perspective. Our paths crossed under different circumstances and at different moments in my journey.
At the time, I wasn't thinking about personal growth. I wasn't looking for lessons. I was simply sharing my life with animals. Yet many of the things I would later encounter through coaching and energy work were already unfolding through those relationships.
Learning through animals
Living with animals changes how we move through the world. Their needs require us to think beyond ourselves. Their routines invite consistency. Their presence pushes us to pay attention to details we might otherwise overlook.
Animals also have a remarkable ability to reveal parts of ourselves that often remain hidden — reflecting our habits, emotions, patience, and capacity for care. They accompany us through major milestones and ordinary days alike.
Willow developed a love for fruits and vegetables during my vegan years. Fabio shared my love for travel and was always content to join me on weekend beach trips. As Moose grew older, he seemed to appreciate a slower pace, joining me during walks and moments of reflection. Hime, my activist cat, has never hesitated to make her opinions known. Bunshin delights in teasing everyone with playful nips — a habit I suspect he picked up from me. And Love, my wonderfully eccentric cat, prefers to come alive when the rest of the world is asleep, perhaps sharing my own fondness for the quiet hours before dawn.
Living with animals has often reminded me that relationships are never one-sided. We shape one another in ways that are both obvious and subtle.
Wellness through relationship
As my relationships with animals deepened, so did my curiosity. I wanted to understand them more fully — to become a better caregiver and a better listener. Questions about illness, aging, and the emotional lives of animals gradually became part of my everyday reflections.
Like many animal lovers, I found myself talking to them constantly: asking questions, telling them about my day, sharing frustrations. More often than not, they would respond in their own way — a meow, a bark, a particular look, a change in posture, a behavior that seemed perfectly timed. Those moments always left me wondering. What were they trying to tell me? How much was I missing?
That desire to explore those questions eventually led me toward animal communication and energy work.
My interest in wellness already existed by then. Years of navigating mental health challenges, trauma, and my own healing journey had introduced me to different approaches to well-being and self-discovery. Exploring energy work felt like a natural extension of that path.
I realized I was never searching for a technique. The animals came first. The learning followed.
The scholarship to study with Danielle Mackinnon reinforced something I had been discovering for years: the strongest relationships continue to evolve when we remain curious. Because curiosity — like a cat — creates space for deeper understanding, whether we are learning about animals, other people, or ourselves.
Following curiosity
Over time, I began to realize that my interest in animals extended far beyond companionship. Animals become part of our routines, our decisions, our memories. They are present through celebrations, challenges, and countless ordinary moments that eventually become important simply because they shared them with us.
As the animals around me grew older, I wanted to understand how to better support them through illness, aging, and major transitions. I wanted to know how to be present for them during the moments that mattered most.
Like many people who love animals, I eventually found myself confronting grief. Losing an animal has a way of changing you. It reveals the depth of a relationship and reminds you that what we shared was never as simple as companionship.
Grief became one of my greatest teachers. It challenged me to think differently about connection and love, and it strengthened my desire to understand animals more deeply — not only while they were physically beside me, but throughout every stage of the relationship.
Soul Tails grew from the realization that the animals who share our lives shape us in ways we often only recognize much later.
Why Raise and Rise Wellness resonated with me
My path eventually led me to Raise and Rise Wellness, where I now serve as one of the coaches. By that point, I had spent years exploring different approaches to wellness, healing, and personal growth.
As I got to know Rhoda and her work, I found myself appreciating the openness she brings to wellness. As an Essential Oil Coach, Board Certified Holistic Coach, and Certified ThetaHealing Instructor and Practitioner, she has created a space where people are encouraged to explore, reflect, and discover what works for them. There is an understanding that growth and healing do not always follow a straight line — and that felt familiar to me, because animals had already taught me something similar.
Those values are part of what made Raise and Rise Wellness feel like the right home for Soul Tails. The conversations I have through this work often touch on caregiving, grief, connection, and resilience. Animals may be at the center of the work, but they often reveal something deeper about how we live, love, and care.
Where the work continues
My relationship with animals has never been limited to the ones who share my home. Loving animals gradually introduced me to a much larger community doing what it can to improve the lives of animals every day. Over the years, I found myself supporting fundraising, helping animals access veterinary care, participating in spay and neuter initiatives, assisting with food programs, and working alongside people committed to animal welfare.
Those experiences connected me with the work of Pawsion Program, which supports rescue and rehabilitation, spay and neuter campaigns, community feeding, education, and animal welfare advocacy. Each act may appear small on its own, yet together they create something remarkable: a community of people choosing, day after day, to show up for animals in need.
This is one of the reasons every Soul Tails booking through Raise and Rise Wellness supports Pawsion Program. It creates an opportunity to honor the emotional and spiritual connections we share with animals while supporting initiatives that improve their lives in practical, lasting ways.
The journey continues
If I were to trace this story back to its beginnings, I would find relationships — not accomplishments — at every turn.
The animals who crossed my path never set out to teach me anything. They were simply being themselves: loving, stubborn, playful, curious, independent, comforting, demanding, and wonderfully unique. Yet somewhere between the ordinary moments and the unforgettable ones, they changed me. They changed the questions I asked. They changed the way I understand connection. They changed the way I move through the world.
Long after a paw print disappears from the floor, a favorite spot on the couch sits empty, or a familiar face is no longer waiting at the door, the love remains. In many ways, that love is still leading me.
Soul Tails was created to hold space for those stories and the relationships that shape our lives in ways we often only recognize much later. To learn more or schedule a Soul Tails session through Raise and Rise Wellness, please contact:
+63 931 142 2798
contactus@raise-rise.com
Every Soul Tails session also supports the work of Pawsion Program Philippines. Those who would like to help animals through community-based programs, spay and neuter initiatives, education, rescue efforts, and compassionate care are invited to follow Pawsion Program Philippines on Facebook and learn more about their work.