Excerpt Unit From Energy Healing For Animals
The Harmony Programme
by Silvia Hartmann
The Birth Of The Harmony Programme
|
Dominance Reduction Programs |
The Structure Of Attention Seeking Behaviour |
The Attention Seeking Behaviour Evolution
| The Cure For Attention Seeking Behaviour Disorders
| Animal Autism |
Trance Behaviours & Repetitive Behaviours
| The Harmony Programme In Brief
| Harmony In Action |
Positive VS Negative Energy Interactions
| Re-Connecting The Love |
* Exercise 1 – Falling In Love
| * Exercise 2 – Magic Moment
| * Exercise 3 – Remember ...
| * Exercise 4 – The Love Connection
| The Fear Of Love
| Healing With Love Energy
| * Exercise 5 – Ray Of Hope
| A Note From The Author And Copyright Holder
|
Energy Healing For Animals
I have been
particularly looking forward to this part of the course;
understanding the nature of energy exchanges and their effect on
the behaviour of animals (and people) was my own first
breakthrough experience into the healing realms that are right
here, completely accessible to anyone who might wish to enter
there, make perfect sense in the context of practical living and
results and yet for some obscure reason, seem to have been
missed over and over as old entrainments are thoughtlessly
repeated from one generation to the next and knowledge and
understandings are lost and become corrupted.
I would like to
tell you the story of The Harmony Programme, how I came to it
and what we learned from that time. It could possibly be the
most important single aspect of this entire course for many of
those of you who are reading it, so and without any further ado,
here it is:
In 1993, I was
working as an animal behaviour specialist and had been doing so
for the preceding 12 years. At this time, I was at the top end
of the referral chain and worked closely with John Fisher and a
number of other behaviour specialist to create new approaches
and paradigms in the face of ever growing numbers of companion
animals with severe behaviour problems.
We had by that
time already developed major breakthroughs, such as the role of
allergic responses to food in particular which caused severe and
otherwise inexplicable behaviour problems; most notably the
overfeeding of digestible proteins to under exercised pet dogs,
causing hyperactivity and numerous other kinds of problems, but
also responses to various other additives, colorants and
flavourings in many other species and including zoo- and farm
animals.
John Fisher was
working particularly with the so called “Dominance Reduction
Programmes” for dogs, and if you are not interested in dogs or
don’t like them much, I would suggest you still listen
carefully because this is centrally important and the key points
are beautifully portrayed in the problems of dog owners and the
Dominance Reduction Programmes or Dominance Reduction Programs for short.
Trying to take a
“scientific” approach to the problems of disobedience and
behaviour problems in companion (pet, house kept) dogs across
the breeds, it was decided at some time to try and copy the visible
behavioural strategies that naturally exist in a wolf pack
or in a pack of laboratory beagles, and have the human parts of
the “pack” play the role of the “alpha male” by copying
what “alpha males do” – the idea being that you “speak a
language that an animal might understand that is too
neurologically limited to understand in any other way.”
The owner was
advised to “take charge” of all forms of interaction with
the companion dog and to create a “power gradient” through a
brick-by-brick approach that would clearly show the dog in
question who was the ruler, the leader, the confident “alpha
dog in the human pack”.
The areas where
this charge was taken were global and comprehensive and extended
over the following:
All forms of
social interaction. The dog was not responded to unless it first
“submitted” in some form
- if it would come to the owner for attention, for
example, it would have to go through an obedience ritual first
before it was stroked. It was purposefully ignored in preference
of other creatures/humans in the house upon greeting, and in
many other contexts.
Power Games in
movements and exercise. In “the wild” (what wild!) it is
held that “the Alpha dog goes first” – gets the food
first, leads the pack on the hunt, gets every bone by rights and
enforces this entirely, does everything first. There is a famous
picture that at that time just about every animal behaviourist
had on their walls – of a wolf pack in the arctic in single
file with the Alpha male up front, in strict hierarchy, and not
one of these 20 wolves put a paw out of line ever as the snow
trail behind them testifies.
Power Games in
food and feeding. Once again, the owner would eat first – if
only demonstratively, a biscuit whilst the dog was waiting to be
fed, and the dog would have to wait for permission from the
owner before it was allowed to eat. Shock devices such as the so
called “dog training discs” or the more old fashioned (and
cheaper) version of “two stones in a coke can” would be used
in set ups, like having food in the centre of the floor, to
“negatively condition” the dog to the fact that all food
belongs to the owner, the shock device replacing the shock of an
Alpha male flying out, teeth bared, to protect their bone “in
the wild”.
Physical/spatial
power games such as forcing one’s way through a doorway ahead
of a dog, up and down the stairs, making the dog get up and move
out of one’s way deliberately numerous times a day, forbidding
“privileged” resting places such as beds, arm chairs, power
hot spots such as thresholds and landings, “taking the dog’s
bed” by sitting or standing in it just to show the dog “that
you can”, ensuring the dog walking behind the owner as a pack
member would follow the alpha leader and so forth.
As time went on,
the Dominance Reduction Programs became ever more specific and watertight as the power
divergence between dog and owner was extended into virtually
every waking moment of their lives together.
And the results
at that time seemed near miraculous. Dogs started to pay
attention to the owners, became more “obedient”, pulled on
the lead less and it is true, we really thought we had cracked
it as far as dog behaviour was concerned.
In the spring of
1993, two things happened that began to erode my confidence in
Dominance Reduction Programs and gave me a severe headache at the time.
The first of
these was that I was seeing a number of dogs and their owners
with extreme problems that had not become better as the result
of applying Dominance Reduction Programs, but were getting ever worse.
I must admit to
having fallen prey myself to the unhelpful human behaviour of
“if at first you don’t succeed, try harder”. Dominance Reduction
Programs worked,
right? The owners were just not doing them hard enough!
The effect of
tightening up on the Dominance Reduction Programs further and further was appalling. One
dog in particular and one who, it could be said, gave her life
for us all and me in particular at that time, was a Doberman
bitch by the name of Bridget. When we started, she had some mild
moments of general disobedience in an otherwise loving
relationship with her female owner. After 3 months on the
Dominance Reduction Program,
she was a ravening mad beast who turned and tore apart an old
cat she had played with happily her entire life and the owner
had her put to sleep on the spot.
That is when I
stopped dead and knew something was terribly wrong. I closed my
behaviour counselling practise and turned with a passion to
finding out just what had happened and to investigate the whole
Dominance Reduction Program situation from a new standpoint.
And then the
second piece of evidence came to me. Previously, I had been
involved in setting up a long term study of the effects of
Dominance Reduction Programs
on the dog/s and owner/s – in order to have scientific back up
data on how good they were and how useful. As the
questionnaires came back from the owners who had undergone these
miraculous changes for the better two years ago it became
blatantly apparent that many dogs had become worse and Bridget
had not been the only example of this at all; that many owners
had stopped using the Dominance Reduction Program strategies within days of the
consultation and the old original problems had never been
resolved at all; and that many more dogs developed behaviour
problems of a different kind as well as the original presenting
ones.
This rang a bell
and I looked up a similar study conducted by an American animal
behaviour team in the 70’s, a husband and wife – Hart &
Hart. Their study had been conducted before the onset of
Dominance Reduction Programs
and their popularity, and it mirrored mine quite perfectly apart
from one detail – the statistics of dogs becoming much worse
were absent.
At this time I
was also beginning the study of NLP and this incredible modality
suggests that one should model excellence in order to know how
to design trainings and strategies to re-create excellence in
others.
When I looked
carefully at people who I regarded as having an “excellent”
relationship with their companion animals and including myself,
I realised with astonishment that we were NOT applying any
Dominance Reduction Program
strategies at all with our own creatures.
Our
relationships were NOT that of human wolves within a pack.
What we were
doing was inherently and absolutely different.
Instead of
turning ourselves into wolves, we remained human and endeavoured
to teach our creatures the ways of human communication.
Instead of
waging war with our animals, we were co-operating with them from
a base line of mutual respect and understanding.
And then one
day, it hit me like a ton of bricks what it was that was so
completely overlooked in scientific animal behaviour and yet so
glaringly on display if only one would open one’s eyes as THE
major factor of successful companion animal relationships:
Love.
With my heart
beating high, I went through the many books on animal behaviour
and especially, companion animal behaviour and I could not find
that word in a single one of them at the time.
It was an
absolute revelation to me that opened my eyes to the universe as
it really was in a heartbeat and probably changed me more than
any other experience I have had on this plane.
Right from the
start, I was well aware that what I meant by “love” was not
some kind of mushy, fluffy pink behaviour that results in
putting knitted jackets on Alaskan Malamutes because “it makes
him look so cute”.
It was some kind
of energy form that existed naturally between an owner and an
animal and that was a major driver for otherwise completely
inexplicable behaviours.
Why, I ask you,
why if this did not exist, could it possibly be explained that a
seventy year old arthritic tiny lady can walk with that massive,
uncastrated GSD by her side who obeys her and makes sure the
lead stays loose as not to hurt her?
She’s not
dominating him, she’s not even hormonally targettable as an
“alpha female” any more. She is asking him nicely if he
would mind sitting there for a while whilst she goes into a shop
and he says yes.
What is that?
That is not and never, “dog eat dog” scientific laboratory
beagle behaviour.
This is a fully
formed, deeply bonded, highly interactive, mature relationship
between two entirely sentient beings who are trying to
co-operate as best they can.
Those two look
at each other and something passes between them – and this
something is not a result of training or communication,
but the baseline for any of it in the first place.
An energetic
connection of the highest order that will remain even through
extreme suffering, that is at some level beyond reproach and
quite regardless of either creature’s limitations.
We can call it
what we like, but it sure looks like “love” to me.
With this new
mindset I went back and looked again what happens in the
interactions when a Dominance Reduction Program is being applied.
Firstly, the
owner is told that the dog is “trying to take over”. This
sets the war metaphor in place and reframes the owner’s
experiences in that light – the dog coming up with a toy is
not just wanting to play, but it is in fact a part of a long
term, devious strategy to grab all the power and become the
Hitler of the household.
In our last
unit, we talked about what happens in medical interventions when
war metaphors are applied, and we had an experience of accepting
the problem unconditionally in the “becoming the vortex”
exercise.
Do please note
that the vortex is the same vortex, but as we change our
perspective or frame of reference from war to understanding, we
receive a rush of new insights and the universe expands all of a
sudden.
In Dominance Reduction Program
interventions, the relationship universe contracts as the dog
becomes the enemy.
You contract it
too much and you will reduce the possibility of incidences of
“good energy exchanges” to the point where the creature in
question experiences such a shortfall of this essential energy
(and make no mistake, it is absolutely essential and
systemically built into any species that forms relationships,
no matter how rudimentary, with others of its kind) that a
systemic collapse occurs and the relationship simply dies.
It is this
shortfall of essential energy that drives behaviour
disturbances, stress related illness and in the end, systemic
shutdown and death.
With the caveat
that you can “drive any creature crazy” if you put it into
insane environments (such as a panther in a small enclosure),
feed it with poison, or torture it continuously with actions,
substances, and behaviours from the outside, all the rest of the
behaviour problems you might come across can be chunked up to
versions of “attention seeking behaviour”.
This is a very,
very interesting phrase.
Just run it
through your mind and apply it to a creature of any kind, a
child perhaps:
“She was
attention seeking all the time.”
What response,
what gut response do you have to that phrase?
It’s not a
good one, I would wager. It’s along the lines of, “Dear oh
dear. Tut. Shake head. Naughty child. Ah, she’ll learn to keep
herself quiet eventually. Her parents probably “spoiled”
her. She thinks she’s the centre of the universe. Ah, we’ll
beat it out of her ...”
It is
extraordinary to me just how we have come to that. Where did
this come from? Who was the first to think it was a good idea to
leave a child crying for hours in the dark and expect this to be
“good for them”?
At least now (in the last 30 years or so, to put it in
perspective, and by all means not in all Western parent’s
thoughts) it is held to be the right thing to feed a baby when
it is crying and as soon as possible because
The baby doesn’t cry because it is naughty or evil but
because
it
is using a feedback device that is programmed in to alert
the care takers of a shortfall of food supplies.
Attention
Seeking Behaviour progresses through the following stages as the
need becomes more and more acute and more excruciating to the
individual who is experiencing the energetic shortfall in a
visceral, whole body experience:
1. Awareness
Here, the
creature (child, dog, cat, horse) first becomes aware that the
shortfall exists and begins to look around for a likely
“other” who may fulfil this need.
2. Approach
The creature
will get up and start approaching the other and make some minor
signs that it is in need of some attention. In an animal, that
would probably be just coming over and presenting themselves
whilst looking at the other.
3. Escalation
If the other
ignores (read “refuses to provide the attention energy”)
this subtle approach, creature A will now escalate its
behaviours to “break on through” the barrier of ignoring –
make sounds, push physically, engage in behaviours that have
previously worked to “gain attention”.
4. Extreme
Escalation
If these higher
level behaviours are also ignored, the need turns to a pain and
will now drive consecutively more extreme behaviour in turn in a
direct cause and effect relationship. If the need is high
enough, the creature may even attack.
5. Catastrophic
Collapse
If still no
energy is forthcoming, the system collapses in on itself in a
catastrophic implosion which causes severe neurological damage;
the stage beyond rage is autism, where the creature can no
longer elicit the energy required nor process it when it is
being offered because of the damage sustained by the receptors
of the energy processing system during the catastrophe.
Depending on the
severity of the neurological/energetic catastrophe and the age
of the creature at which the catastrophe occurred (obviously the
younger the creature, the greater the impact on the system
overall), some individuals may never come back from the autism
stage and remain there forever.
It is so simple
– following the “crying baby” model for filling the need
as soon as it arises, ASBDs can be entirely avoided as well as
cured by giving focussed attention immediately and as soon as
the request has been received.
This does not
mean one has to put one’s entire life on hold or “run rings
around the creature” – it is literally a simple little flash
of attention at the right time and when first asked for it;
the classic “a stitch in time saves nine” principle.
Rather than
“rewarding” attention seeking behaviour, it never gets to
escalate, the creature’s energy system remains balanced and the
disturbed behaviours never need take place at all.
As the babies
who are fed when they are hungry cry markedly less or not at
all, creatures who receive attention energy (or love or
recognition energy) when they ask for it, their attention
seeking behaviours become markedly less frequent, markedly less
dramatic and may cease altogether once the system has been
in operation for a while and the creature has understood that
not only can it get what it needs just the for the asking, but
also it’s energy system has become more robust, more healthy,
more resilient and won’t collapse when there is a time when
attention is in short supply.
It is one of the
saddest things I personally find to have to deal with to meet an
animal that has entirely shut down within itself and is no
longer able to make attention energy exchange based
relationships with others.
Autism is a
rainbow scale of a naturally existing neurological function, not
an on and off switch and autistic behaviours in animals are
often and once again, very sadly mistaken for “being
stubborn” or “wilful” or “disobedient”.
As autistic
animals cannot provide the owners with “attention energy” in
turn (as they are trapped within themselves), the owners may
actually go through the same attention seeking escalations that
can end up with attacking the creature just so it will take
notice, respond at last and acknowledge their existence.
A safety
mechanism of any social creature’s neurological set up is to
induce autistic-like deep trance states to protect themselves
from the systemic catastrophe.
Repetitive
rocking in small human and monkey babies who are left to
themselves, head weaving in elephants, flank sucking in
Dobermans, shadow chasing and tail chasing in collies, crib
chewing in horses, pacing endlessly in a ritualistic way in
caged cats are just amongst the many, many examples of this. In
pet dogs, spaniels and crosses thereof are highly pre-disposed
to enter these trance states in moments of stress and there are
many variations on the theme. Self mutilation and ritualised
howling/vocal expressions also lead to the security of a deep
trance state where the individual may rest inside when external
environmental conditions have become unbearable – these
external conditions being systemically, a short fall of energy
of the correct kind to re-balance the stressed and hungry
system.
It is my
supposition that the individual creature’s choice of which route
into trance they will take is a mixture of genetic
pre-disposition and chance; I have seen many animals who have
developed a chance behaviour into these rituals and the
behaviours themselves, which may be quite bizarre to an
unsuspecting onlooker, are, indeed, secondary to the trance
state they are designed to induce.
Let us back up
here and go through the main points of the energetic
circumstances and causes and effect of “attention seeking
behaviour disorders” in mammals (and this includes people too)
step by step.
There is a form of energy that is exchanged between
social creatures that is derived from the attention of
another. This attention is focussed, direct and involves eye
contact, no matter how fleetingly this takes place.
This energy form is as important to a social
creature as is sleep, or food. In experiments, human babies
died when attention was withheld (although the babies were
fed and their physical care taking proceeded as normal).
Adults develop severe behaviour disturbances including rage,
deep trance type repetitive behaviours, antisocial
behaviours and autism under similar conditions.
Western humans have been trained from birth to
withhold attention, especially when it is being
“demanded” – possibly a learned response and set up
that occurred in their own energy systems when their
energetic attention needs were repeatedly and systematically
refuted when they themselves were young.
Companion animals vary widely in how great their
tolerance is to living with “not enough attention
energy” being supplied.
It seems to be also specific to an individual if
their first choice response to a shortfall of this form
energy is withdrawal towards autism or escalating fiercely
in their “attention seeking behaviours” before systemic
collapse and those, too, falling into autism.
Attention Energy is Attention Energy – in general,
creatures do not seem to care one way or the other if the
attention energy they receive is of the loving or of the
non-loving kind. Indeed, with the set up amongst the Western
Human caretakers, creatures find it far easier to obtain
negative attention through disturbing/annoying/”naughty”
behaviours than to obtain positive attention. Indeed, a
great many caretakers “train” their animals into ever
more outrageous behaviours by firstly, failing to give
attention of the positive kind and secondly, trying to
ignore developing behaviour escalations in the beginning
stages when they are still fairly mild.
Giving focussed attention in the beginning stages of
any escalation pattern does not only stop the escalation
pattern dead right there but over the long term, actually cures
the individual and re-sets their energetic exchanges with
everyone and not just with the owner to a natural and
sociable status.
With the energy system balanced that needs this
social love energy, a creature truly blossoms, becomes more
self assured, self balanced and gains access to sleeping
resources of problem solving, interaction, communication,
thought and experience that were previously out of reach.
With this part of the energy system balanced, an
individual will be radically better placed to face any
kind of stress challenge including showing a greater
tolerance to environmental poisons, toxic energy systems and
all immune system stressors.
Turning The World Upside Down
Back in 1993, I
formulated the appalling idea, based on my theoretical musings
and practical observations, that instead of playing power games
with a companion animal, one should try and give positive
attention right away, as soon as the animal would indicate a
need by a small behaviour such as coming up, looking at the
owner, or trying to make contact in any other shape or form.
This
contradicted about everything I had ever been taught or learned
to do; for example, it was common practise to let small puppies
howl and cry all night until “they had learned that no-one
would come” and “thus never to reward this appalling
attention seeking behaviour”.
So it must be
said that it was not without trepidation that I began to
experiment in earnest and put my theory to the test.
And here’s
what happened in actuality.
I would go
upstairs and at the first scratching of the puppy, I would go
back down again, open the kitchen door, cuddle the puppy (“Oh
no!” the old fashioned dog trainers and nursery nurses began
to shout, “you’re making a rod for your own back! The puppy
will grow up a monster!!!”), put it back in it’s bed and
tell it with full eye contact and meaning, “Now then, little
one, all is well. I’m upstairs and if you need me for
anything, just call me and I will come. Good night now. I love
you.”
Then I would
turn off the light, close the door and sit at the bottom of the
step until the scratching and first little whimper would start
up again, and I’d repeat the self same thing.
With this
particular puppy, a very sensitive 8 week old poodle cross
God-alone-knows-what, it took 8 repetitions and a total of 1
hour 12 minutes for silence to reign and for me to go to bed. It
called me twice more that night, and once or twice a night for
another 3 days. After that, it did not call me any more apart
from one occasion about a week later and when I went to see it,
it was distressed and a little while later, threw up something
that looked like an old fish skeleton.
I wrote down my
findings in a note book and mused for some considerable time on
the last puppy in my house, that had howled for hours on end and
finally got to sleep in my bed in the end anyway simply because
the neighbours sent the police round repeatedly.
Realising of
course that one puppy doesn’t make a paradigm shift, I then
went back to my referring trainers and assistants, told them the
whole story and asked them to try it out.
They listened
with both eyebrows raised but luckily enough, I had an excellent
reputation and track record for being sensible and practical in
all my dealings and innovations, so they gave me the benefit of
the doubt and a rather half hearted, “Ahm, ok Silvia ...
we’ll try it ...”
One of these, a
very conservative lady, had taken receipt of a rescued GSD bitch
that very afternoon and in the night, grew fearful that the
bitch would break through the glass kitchen door and injure
herself severely, as she was throwing herself against it
senselessly in absolute panic of separation.
As the lady, who
happened to be a highly qualified and supremely experienced dog
obedience instructor and trainer’s trainer, didn’t know what
else she could do (and sleeping with the dog in the bedroom was
not an option on account of her husband and his views on the
topic), she half heartedly tried “Silvia’s new fangled
theory”.
She went back
into the kitchen and told the dog that she needed to sleep and
that she was just upstairs, feeling very foolish by her own
admission for doing so.
Guess what. The
GSD bitch calmed right down and called the lady three more times
before in that household too, peace and silence reigned that
lasted until 7am the next morning when the bitch began to bark
to be let out into the garden. The rescued bitch never
called again after that – not once and to this very day in
2001.
From mad
separation anxiety to total peace in one single night.
The good people
who tried out the Harmony Programme
on their cats, dogs, horses, husbands and in their boarding
kennels, rescue kennels, wildlife parks, you name it, were
absolutely astonished how easy it was to calm a creature
in this way and how it did the exact opposite of what we all had
believed it would do – instead of a needy monster that would
haunt you all your living, breathing hours, what we were
creating were balanced, satisfied individuals that seemed to
find a sense of confidence in their environments, in us, and
most importantly, within themselves.
Before we go on
to Harmony Programme exercises, I would like to tell you why I
am taking my time in this assignment to tell you all of this.
The Harmony
Programme is not something that we can use as healers from the
outside to make “everything all right” in behaviour problems
that are rooted in attention seeking.
It is something
that the caretakers need to be told about and need to at
least try, no matter how half heartedly, to get an understanding
of the benefits for everyone involved.
The “need for
attention energy” is a daily one, and it is important that the
owners make changes in their interactions with the animal in
question to supply at least a baseline of positive attention
energy and begin to find ways of backing away from negative
attention energy exchanges.
Although for
that part of the system which processes attention energy it
really doesn’t seem to matter what kind of attention is being
given, the kind of attention (positive or negative) has many
repercussions on other energetic exchanges and on the systems of
both caretaker and animal.
Animal carers know
that animals will prefer a shouting at or a beating rather than
being ignored. This is also true for children and of course, the
delinquents in the prisons and mental hospitals that these
children eventually become.
Eliciting
negative attention (being shouted at, threatened, chased around,
reprimanded, punished) is so much easier and so much more
freely forthcoming in this society of ours, it is scary.
You might laugh,
but I can’t remember the last time a policeman stopped me on
the road and commended me on my safe driving skills. I also
don’t think I’ve ever had a friendly letter from the taxman
thanking me sincerely for paying up every year on time, either.
But I guess that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
With the kind of
set up that ignores the good completely but crashes into action
for bad behaviour immediately, you can see how easily animals
fall into thinking that the only way they can get this vital
life energy is by resorting to annoying behaviours and
escalating to worse and worse ones over time.
The problem with
this process is that prolonged negative attention energy
exchanges are bad for the self esteem of both the caretaker and
the animal/s; they lead to tension, terrible stress, less in the
way of touch and over time, less and less desire to interact
at all which cannot help but create a vicious downward
spiral where everyone involved cannot help but suffer. The end
result of this unloving spiral is usually euthanasia or
re-homing of the animal in question.
Even way back
then, I began to talk about “reconnecting the owner and the
animal” and using “natural communication” and “the
underlying strand of love” to do so.
Energy therapy
in action, only I didn’t even know the name then.
In the original
Harmony programme, I advised my then assistants and trainees to
find moments when the owner/caretaker had experienced a
“falling in love” with the creature in question – the
moment when they chose that one animal in a litter, or a herd,
or from a choice of all
the animals on this planet.
Sometimes, it
wasn’t so much an active choice and someone might have just
had a moment somewhere and accepted a rescued or unwanted animal
into their hearts and homes but unless the caretaker absolutely
never wanted the animal in the first place (which is a very rare
occurrence indeed and not a one you are likely to come across
amongst the clientele that would seek out an animal energy
healer) there is always that moment when two creatures
met and fell in love.
Now and exactly
as it is with people, stuff happens, annoying things happen, bad
things happen and that love connection gets plastered over with
daily negativity and unhappiness until a point may be reached
when you can’t see it shining out any more under all that
rubbish that has been piled upon it, and one or the other
creature truly believes that “the love is dead”.
For one, this is
a very sad moment indeed when they think, “I don’t love you
any more.”
But for the
other, it is the end of the world as the echo arises in return,
“They don’t love me any more.”
It is one of the very worst energetic
injuries any social creature is capable of sustaining in the
Hard, and can prove to be incurable and fatal, indeed.
To take a client
back in time to a time when this love was still clear and
clearly visible and could be touched just by looking at the
creature is a direct energetic effort at clearing away some of
the rubbish and reminding everyone concerned about the energetic
realities of the situation.
Establishing
this baseline or base connection of love, that it is
absolutely still there and absolutely still as bright and
beautiful as it was the first time they looked upon the creature
and made that connection with them, is the most healing
intervention you can possibly make in any situation
involving behaviour problems of any kind.
With the
baseline love connection in place, the human client will:
Have more patience under all circumstances. Often,
behaviour problems and especially the type that has lead to
the trance-escape states or even autism, can take a while to
undo, re-route and bring back to an even flow of the
individual and it’s environment.
Have more faith & trust. During this time of
re-balancing, learning new behaviours and dropping off old
and unhelpful ones, the owner/caretaker must support
the creature in many different ways and must be willing to
accept setbacks and plateaus without losing heart or focus.
If you love someone, you can do that and it isn’t even
hard.
Have the desire for change and to keep the
relationship alive. Without these two key points, all is
lost. Literally. If the owner gives up, there’s nothing
you, or I, or even the angels can do to help the creature
from thereon in. If you love, you don’t give up easily, if
ever at all.
Think of an
older animal you know, one that may have been with you for many
years and might not, at this time, be the total focus of your
attention. If you do not have or know of such an animal, a human
friend is a perfect stand in for this exercise.
Think back on a
time, perhaps long ago, when first you met this creature. Allow
yourself to really remember what it was like, then –
remember details about the meeting, what time of day it was,
where it was, what you were wearing and so on.
Now, remember
the moment when you first fell in love and also then, remember
how you felt at that time.
Holding the
feeling steady, allow time in your mind to pass as it does and
consider the animal as it is today.
Reflect on how your feelings towards the animal have changed
as a result of this exercise
For this
exercise, remember a time when you connected deeply with
an animal. A time when you looked into an animal’s eyes and it
looked back and you knew that something extraordinary had
happened, a moment that changed you both in some way and changed
your relationship after it had taken place.
Remember and
really re-experience this moment of connection as fully and on
as many levels as you can.
Sit for a moment
after the exercise and give grace.
The purpose of
the two exercises above is to bring to your conscious awareness
as well as setting up your unconscious systems, to recognise
that special energy that makes up a “love connection”
between two mortal creatures here in the Hard.
Once you have
recognised and experienced it yourself, it becomes much easier
to target and re-call this energy in others you are working
with. To this end, here is an exercise with another human who
will stand in for your future clients:
Find a willing
human and talk to them about an animal of theirs. Ask them about
those two incidences from Exercise 1 and 2. You do not have to
make a big deal about it, just ask them conversationally, for
example, “Where did you get X? When was that? How did you come
to choose X? What was special about X?” For Exercise 2, you
can ask, “Did you ever have a special moment with X? Something
you really remember?”
As they think
about it and answer you, keep a close track on their states and
energy emanations. See if you can guide them to a point where
you can absolutely feel the resonance of their
experiences with the love connection in yourself.
Now, strengthen
and nourish that love connection you have brought to the
human’s awareness in any way that comes to you.
You could, for
example:
simply add your blessing and love to it in harmonic
resonance;
add a The Gift style strengthening/re-balancing,
such as sending waves of support of a colour, a bright light
that restores and cleans the connection or anything that
your intuition provides for you;
gently raise the vibration so that the love
connection always remains above and unblemished by whatever
happens in The Hard AND the person knows it does, too.
Give them a
silent blessing and continue the conversation until you have
reached a natural exit point.
Do this exercise
with at least three different humans and note how the energy
of the love connection is immediately recognisable in each
case.
When this is
done in workshops, an objection is nearly always raised from the
participants and it goes like this:
“Isn’t it
dangerous to strengthen someone’s love connections to another
creature? Is it ecological? Doesn’t it make bereavement much
worse when the creature dies? Won’t they become ever so upset
if they lose the creature or if it is ill?”
These questions
come from the presupposition that love makes us vulnerable to
terrible suffering and pain and it might be better to not love
at all, or at least keep a lid on how much we love, so we need
not experiences these awful feelings.
This is a
classic Harmony Programme style dilemma, only it isn’t a
dilemma at all, we were just and once again, taught and
entrained to believe that it is.
George Harrison
had a point when he said, “All you need is love.” Oh, for
sure, that line has been beaten to death and heard so many times
that it has become hardly more than “Coca Cola is The Real
Thing” in our neurologies but the fact is that it’s true.
All you need is
love. The more you have of it, the more powerful you become, the
more centred within yourself, the more unassailable you are to
doubt, fear and panic; the more you are able to cope with
anything at all the universe can possibly throw at you.
From a place of
love, you can do things that you thought were beyond you.
You can stand
pain, unbelievable suffering and in the end, if you just love
enough, you can quite happily allow yourself to be nailed onto a
cross, drink from the hemlock chalice or walk voluntarily to the
bonfire for burning – this truly is the only way to
overcome and find strength, courage, perseverance, dedication,
and every single human attribute that’s worth having at all.
Love truly does
reach across time and space and it is truly, in that sense,
eternal. It is not love that causes pain, it is backing away
from it, holding back from it and disturbing its absolutely pure
energies with entrained power games, domination games,
possession games, punishment games and all the other kinds of
games that people play.
Therefore, anything
at all that you might do or contribute to strengthen love
connections and the flow of this energy form – between
creatures, between creatures and owners, between creatures,
owners and you, between you and the universe, the land, the
earth itself - is a holy pursuit of the highest order.
Behaviour problems are inherently and
structurally different from health problems in many ways. They
are often linked, of course, and I would encourage you to
remember our planes model and to give serious thought to Hard
reasons for behaviour disorders – the usual mismanagement,
environmental conditions, bad feeding, underlying health or
structural or physiological problems in conjunction with genetic
pre-dispositions towards expressing behaviours that are often
species and breed-line specific.
True behaviour problems always arise as a
result from an individual animal having a disturbed map of
the world, created by trauma or drop-by-drop chipping
away at the individual’s original map over time.
Behaviour problems respond to love energy
like a parching man in the desert will respond to the offer of
water.
Love energy, based on the deepest possible
connect and deepest possible regard for the Immortal Beloved as
we discussed earlier in the course, is my first choice
intervention for any behaviour problem.
Simply, the worse the problem, the more
love the creature needs to find a new balance within themselves
and to begin to want to really live again.
Sometimes, we are the first one in many
years, if ever, that could reach into that creatures darkness
and loneliness and give it very literally a ray of hope.
Find any creature at all that might be
appropriate for you to give a ray of hope – a loving, that
special energy of love from one living, sentient being to
another. This may be a zoo animal, a kennelled animal, an animal
that you know of and that suffers in the darkness, or it may be
a bitter little old lady who lives in your street –
structurally and technically, it matters not.
This is a distance healing exercise, so
please create the meeting space as discussed in Unit 8 and
invite the creature to join you there.
Look upon it and leave its physicality as
it presents to you behind and meet the Immortal Beloved in the
other.
Allow yourself to love them. I know that
that is easier said than done, for we too have our fears of
loving. Accept what you can give and receive and see if you
cannot release some of your old limitations today and love more,
more and more until you breach the threshold into total
brilliance and love is, indeed, all there is.
Please Note: Do what you can. I ask
never any more of you than you are ready, able and willing to
give. If you cannot breach the threshold as yet or if fears
assail you at this point, it is as it is and the
beginning, not the end. Try this exercise often and be gentle
and loving with yourself, allowing yourself the time you
need to grow into love.
- This concludes the first part of The
Harmony Programme. In the second part, we will consider
communicating with animals, training and animal emotions in the
context of the Harmony Programme.
Please give the exercises in this Unit your
very best attention.
I would also ask that you really observe
power-based interactions that exist all around you and become
familiar with how love and power are rationed out, withheld, and
generally used to shape behaviour and to entrain
individuals.
This Paper is an
excerpt from
“Energy Healing For Animals” by Silvia
Hartmann.
For the original
Harmony Programme and Harmony Programme based dog training and
behaviour manuals, please visit http://A1Dog.com
Dear Reader.
The Harmony
Programme is one of the most important things I have discovered
in my quest to seek a better understanding of how the Universe
works than I had been offered by my various well meaning
teachers alive and across the centuries.
I have always
had problems with charging for this discovery or should I say,
re-discovery of a truth about the World and our interactions
within it. The Harmony Programme, if it was known and
understood, would absolutely revolutionise not just dog training
– indeed, and as much as I love dogs, it is not even here it
is the most needed.
Every single
day, everywhere where Western ideologies are in place, little
babies, disabled children, delinquents, old people, sick people,
all people are being treated with dominance reduction and
behaviourism. They still give and withhold Smarties and
privileges to seriously mentally handicapped, helpless
individuals, for Heaven’s sake. It is the accepted practise
everywhere and it perpetuates so much suffering in so many
different ways, it is literally scary.
Not everybody
“gets” the Harmony Programme.
Some people do
and have done, a long time before I got to it but it was never
properly written up like I’ve done as far as I know. A S
Neill, for example, the famous founder of the Summerhill School,
used to cure delinquent children way back in the 1950’s by paying
them for every time they wet the bed or broke a pane of glass
and their behaviour would stop, too – as if by magic.
This is just one
of a billion possible applications of the Harmony Programme.
Therefore, and
in spite of the fact I have to live in the Hard and pay my
mortgage, I offer this paper to you with all copyright
restrictions removed and for full public distribution.
You can share this with anyone and everyone, freely, and I would
encourage you to do so. You can re-print it, copy bits from it,
re-phrase it, re-name it; you can even pretend you invented it
if you need to. I won’t sue you.
This information
needs to be out there. Every single care officer, dog trainer,
parent, teacher, healer, psychologist who gets even a little
glimpse of the possibilities here for healing, growth and change
and tries it out, no matter how half heartedly at first, is one
more human who can help stem the tides of negativity we are
perpetuating each and every day into the next generations and
beyond by our lack of understanding of the basic idea that needs
need to be filled in order to establish happiness and Even
Flow.
With my best
regards to you and all those who look to gain attention from
you,
Silvia Hartmann, January 2002
The Birth Of The Harmony Programme
|
Dominance Reduction Programs |
The Structure Of Attention Seeking Behaviour |
The Attention Seeking Behaviour Evolution
| The Cure For Attention Seeking Behaviour Disorders
| Animal Autism |
Trance Behaviours & Repetitive Behaviours
| The Harmony Programme In Brief
| Harmony In Action |
Positive VS Negative Energy Interactions
| Re-Connecting The Love |
* Exercise 1 – Falling In Love
| * Exercise 2 – Magic Moment
| * Exercise 3 – Remember ...
| * Exercise 4 – The Love Connection
| The Fear Of Love
| Healing With Love Energy
| * Exercise 5 – Ray Of Hope
| A Note From The Author And Copyright Holder
|
Energy Healing For Animals
|