Oscar Releases His Emotional Burden

The following is one of Elizabeth’s stories from Animal Reiki: Using Energy to Heal the Animals in your Life (Ulysses Press, 2006). It illustrates what can happen after Animal Reiki treatments and some of the results that Reiki can bring about:

I work with many extraordinary animals, but some animals truly stand out, inspire me with their courage, and leave an indelible print on my memory. One such animal was Oscar, a Russian Blue cat, whom I met at the local shelter in 2003.

Oscar arrived at the shelter in early June; he was severely depressed from the outset; for several weeks he rarely ate and lay with his eyes closed on top of his excrement in his litter box as though making a metaphorical statement about his idea of his place in the universe. He was unresponsive to touch or any overtures from the staff and appeared to have totally given up hope that anything could go well for him. Although I did not know the specific details of his life, what I could see indicated that he had had a particularly rough time. Among other things much of his beautiful tail had been cut off, leaving him with a somewhat ragged two-inch stump. The staff was very concerned about him and asked me to begin treating him.

Oscar began to receive Reiki treatments and a daily dose of the Anaflora flower essence, Return to Joy. In the first treatment the only sign of progress was that he opened his eyes once and fleetingly looked at me. However, within days, and with subsequent Reiki treatments, he began to improve. We first started to notice these improvements when Sunny, a volunteer, was massaging him. He started to purr so quietly after a treatment that we couldn’t be sure it was true until we turned off the music in the cat area. Sunny was so touched to hear signs of life coming from him that she bent over and kissed him on top of his head. Like a person deprived of love and having almost given up on it, Oscar began to cry. For several minutes big golden tears rolled out of his eyes as he looked up at us. We praised him for his courage in being able to open himself up and release his grief.

After this, he became steadily more engaged, making eye contact, then holding people’s gazes, then pushing against the volunteers’ hands when they stroked him. He started to sit up and groom himself. Soon he was coming to the front of the cage looking for attention, batting at toys, coming out onto volunteers’ laps, and looking around with interest at the other cats.

He was always exceptionally sweet and loving. When he wanted to tell someone to stop doing something, he would slowly and gently open his mouth and put it around a hand or finger so as not to upset or startle anyone. It was as though he knew from sad experience what it feels like to receive harsh feedback. After three weeks of treatment, he was alert, healthy, and fully engaged in his life, and a few days later he was adopted to a good home.

I have reflected many times on the tremendous courage it took for Oscar to release his heavy emotional burden and open himself to hope and to interactions with people again despite his previous negative experiences. But Reiki and the flower essences have the ability to reach deeply into a being to restore health and balance, and, in this case, they were aided by the love of the volunteers who took Oscar into their hearts and helped coax him back to life. 

When I am faced with such deep suffering-whether it is on the physical, emotional or spiritual level-I am always grateful to know that I have the wonderful healing capabilities of Reiki and the flower essences on my side.

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Where is Cedric?

The following is one of Elizabeth’s stories from Animal Reiki: Using Energy to Heal the Animals in your Life (Ulysses Press, 2006). It illustrate what happens during an Animal Reiki treatment and the results that Reiki can bring about:

Cedric was a young male cat with beautiful orange and white coloring who was picked up and brought into the local shelter as a stray. His first two days at the shelter were memorable for everyone. He cried and yowled constantly, clawed at his cage door, lay down in his cage and shook, fell over and pawed at the air with his legs, and even got into his water bowl and made swimming motions. He was taken to the vet twice in two days because the staff feared that this behavior was the result of seizures. No one could figure out what was going on with him, but his presence was very strongly felt in the cat area. The staff requested that I offer him a Reiki treatment. He took quite a lot of energy and became quiet and relaxed during the treatment. Afterwards he seemed a little more contained.

The next day, when I stopped by the shelter, I looked in Cedric’s cage and saw a quiet, relaxed orange and white cat. I asked one of the staff, “Where is Cedric?” She laughed and said that I was one of many people who had said the same thing that morning, but that was, indeed, Cedric! Cedric stayed at the shelter for another three weeks before he found a home, but he was quiet and mellow the entire time with no sign of his former wild behavior.

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Rose’s Reiki Miracle

At the height of kitten season, when the shelter was already more than full, a very old, very sweet female cat, Rose, was brought in as a stray. Rose had a number of serious health problems but was bright-eyed, seemed comfortable, and still clearly enjoyed life quite a lot. She was bedraggled and matted but appeared to be quite a lady and not a cat that had been on the streets for long. Because they were so full, with more kittens coming in every day, and because of Rose’s health problems, the decision was made to euthanize her. This happens rarely at this shelter and only when circumstances become really dire. One of the volunteers asked me to send her Reiki for her transition. I did so and also asked for the highest good for her situation, secretly hoping for a miracle.

The next day I was afraid to ask what had happened to her. It turned out that the person who was to give her the injection got sick at the last minute and had to go home. The following morning, someone who normally was not involved with the paperwork at the shelter noticed that the legally required holding period had not been met, giving Rose a several day reprieve. Two days later a very old woman came in looking for her lost cat, and, sure enough, it was Rose! The two of them went happily home together, where hopefully Rose was able to live out her days in peace. When you send Reiki you never know what the outcome will be, but sometimes it really seems that there are miracles!

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Smokey Learns to Trust Again

animal communication catsOne day when I asked the staff at the local shelter which cat needed Reiki, they immediately led me to a twelve-year-old Russian Blue cat, Smokey. He was feral and had been brought in three months earlier by a woman who had been feeding him for quite a while. She was moving and feared there would be no one to feed Smokey.

Smokey didn’t do well in the shelter and tried to escape several times. Soon after he arrived he became very sick and would have died if one of the staff had not force-fed him and nursed him back to life. As he grew stronger, however, he continued to be very wary of people, often biting volunteers who tried to handle him. About a month after he arrived, a staff member found a tooth on the floor of his cage, and when they looked in his mouth, they found a horrendous situation of pervasive gingivitis and infected teeth. The vet extracted several teeth, cleaned them all, and put him on medication for the infections. For about a week after this he was a little friendlier but then returned to his old ways.

When I met him they were very concerned because after three months in the shelter he sat hunched in one corner, never moving from that spot, severely depressed. He started at every noise and movement, and, although he could be taken out of his cage by a few of the most experienced volunteers, he would try to bite people¹s faces as soon as he saw them. I worked with Smokey over a period of several weeks, always sitting on a chair outside his cage, my hands in my lap. For the first treatment, Smokey accepted Reiki readily and allowed himself to doze lightly during the treatment, but each time there was a noise, or even the slightest movement of my hands, he would start and jolt himself awake.

During the second treatment, while I was deep in the meditative state often induced by giving Reiki, I received a strong impression of a blow to the head. I also felt certain that Smokey was very sensitive to light and that this vision problem and his dental problems were related to this blow to the head. I thanked Smokey for communicating this to me and told him how sorry I was that this had happened to him. I praised him for his courage in reaching out to me with this communication. I told the staff my intuition about Smokey and suggested that they try working with him with the light off, in just the dim light from the adjacent room. When they tried this, it made an amazing difference. Smokey came out readily and no longer lunged toward faces. There were no more biting incidents. He was still a cat to be handled only by the most experienced volunteers, but with them, he was an angel. He began to move around his cage, come to the front, and roll over on his back playfully and touch people gently with his front paws when they came to visit.

During his sixth Reiki treatment, he allowed himself to go deeply into a relaxed state and sleep, oblivious to the noises and movements around him. Afterward he got up and ate with his back to me, something he never would have done earlier. The next time I came, he was sound asleep, so much so that the volunteers had to tap on the cage bars and raise their voices to get his attention, and then he just opened his eyes briefly, stretched out toward me, and went back to sleep.

As I continued treating him, I kept getting the intuition that his dental problems had not been fully dealt with and finally shared my feelings with the staff. When they looked in his mouth, they found a large white area of abscess under a front tooth and several areas of gingivitis. For the week preceding his vet appointment, I continued to offer daily Reiki treatments. When Smokey went to the vet, there was no sign of the abscess or gingivitis. In examining Smokey the vet determined that he was almost blind and that his vision and dental problems had been caused by a blow to the head. There was a large area of calcification on the side of his jaw, where the vet felt the blow must have landed. Amazingly, Smokey’s blood work was perfect, not just for his age, but even for a young cat.

When the staff and volunteers learned that Smokey was nearly blind, they began to understand his point of view. They could see that as a formerly feral cat, who had been seriously injured by a blow to the head, he was understandably wary of humans. This wariness was compounded by his limited vision, which left him feeling vulnerable at all times. When people took him out of his cage onto their laps and he looked up at their faces, he was blinded by the strong fluorescent light just over their heads in the small room, became frightened because he couldn’t see, and reacted defensively by attacking in the direction of the light.

Now there was an outpouring of love and sympathy toward Smokey. Basking in this love and feeling that his situation was finally understood, Smokey relaxed and became positively affectionate with his favorite people. He was never at ease with just anyone who wanted to interact with him but was much more relaxed with his favorite people and no longer attacked anyone. I became unusually attached to Smokey and often let him lick baby food off my fingers, something I never do, but somehow Smokey was extra special. Smokey loved his Reiki, however, and more often than not, chose to have Reiki first and the baby food treat after his treatment was finished. For a cat who was very possessive of his food and had difficulty allowing people to remove his food dish and refill it, this was a high compliment indeed!

 

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Cats and Flower Essences: Stories from the Local Shelter

Heidi

catHeidi was a large white cat with tortoise shell patches and beautiful big green eyes. When she was picked up by the animal control officers and handled initially at the shelter she was so aggressive that she was placed in the back room of the shelter, where the cats deemed too dangerous for contact with the public were housed. She was a terror her first couple days at the shelter, hissing and lunging at everyone who came near her cage. A couple of days after she arrived I began to give flower essences to the shelter cats. The day after she received a flower essence she turned around completely; she was gentle and easy to handle and was moved into the front room, where she was available for adoption. There she interacted well with the staff and volunteers and found a new home within a few weeks.

Farley

Farley was a big, muscular, black cat who had been the feline bully in his upscale hillside neighborhood for over a year. The residents were kind-hearted and tolerated his attacks on their cats until he began to come into their homes through their cat doors, attack their cats and spray. He was wild and untouchable but was eventually trapped and brought to the shelter, where he was housed in the back room away from the public. Within a couple of days of receiving his essence he had completely changed; the staff could pick him up and hold him, and he was interested and interactive with people. He was moved to the front room and became available for adoption. The woman who had trapped him came to visit him to make sure he was adjusting to the shelter and was astonished at his transformation; she could hardly believe he was the same cat!

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Animals & Flower Essences

Animals readily understand and seek out flower essences when they need them. I saw dramatic evidence of this several years ago when I was volunteering with the cats at my local shelter. Reiki was bringing wonderful healing to the most sick and distressed cats; but it was frustrating to be able to treat only one or two cats in a visit when there were so many wonderful cats in need of healing. I began to wonder what the flower essences could do in this setting. The shelter agreed to let me give flower essences daily to all of the cats for ten weeks. During this period the shelter was full almost every day, with the full capacity of 36 cats in their care.

Many of the cats quickly understood the essences’ action and, as soon as I arrived, several would stand by their water bowl and meow for their essences, looking back and forth from the water to the essence bottle until I gave them their essence. Then they would immediately drink from the exact spot where the essence landed in the water.

The flower essences brought remarkable improvements in the physical and the emotional/spiritual health of the cats. Some of the improvements were rapid and dramatic. The benefits were especially impressive considering the often challenging backgrounds the cats had come from and the constant stresses of being in a shelter.

In a shelter many animals, even comparatively healthy ones, will become depressed and lethargic eventually if they remain there for a long time. With the essences, the cats who remained at the shelter for a protracted period were able to maintain a state of relatively good emotional health for a longer period of time, and the effect of the essences on cats who were depressed at the start of the study was often dramatically beneficial.

During the period in which the study took place many of the cats contracted a highly contagious respiratory infection. It became quite severe in several cats who had been weak when they arrived at the shelter. The essences, sometimes combined with Reiki treatments, brought about effective, rapid healing for the sickest cats.

Shelters can be places of genuine healing for animals. The period an animal spends in a shelter can become a time of profound healing while he waits to be restored to loved ones or to find a new and loving home. With the assistance of dedicated volunteers, many shelters are moving increasingly in this direction.

Sharon Callahan, founder of Anaflora, explains some of the reasons why flower essences are especially well-suited for use in healing animals:

“Animals are also intimately attuned to the music, or vibration, of nature: the flowers and the trees dancing rhythmically in the wind, the murmuring of the breeze, the whistling of the wind through trees, rocks, and mountains, the harmony of movement of sun and moon, stars and planets, the rhythm of the days, months and seasons. In their essential state animals and plants communicate by means of the music of nature, so it is natural for flowers and animals to work together, and likewise natural for us to extend the healing properties of flower essences to animals.

Animals respond more quickly to flower essences than do adult humans, and often with greater results. Their response is often immediate and sometimes borders on the miraculous. Animals don’t have the complex mental overlays that impede their multi-level functioning by questioning and doubting, and they are closer to flowers both physically and energetically than are humans. In many ways, humans have become disconnected from their point of origin, whereas animals have maintained a firm link with it.”

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