If I could talk to the animals… Animal Communication with Lifelong Learning
Guest Post by Judy K. – Student
I love animals, I have cats, I volunteer with cats, I should take this class! So I did…
Patty Rayman’s “Animal Communication” class met recently. The class description made me wonder if I really could “talk to the animals”. How much “psychic talk” would be involved? I am pretty skeptical about psychic abilities – not saying it doesn’t exist, just on the cynical side of most of it…
Ms. Rayman introduced herself and told us how she knew she would become a true communicator with animals. Her story of the orphaned cat she rescued was plausible – although you could feel some disbelief in the air when she told us the cat actually “talked” to her (via mental telepathy).
She told us there are three categories of skill she would talk about: awareness and focus, visualization and emotions, and creating expectations and boundaries. We did the first of several exercises; this first one might help us feel the transfer of energy as it passes through us. She explained that animals feel this energy all the time, so we need to be able to feel it as well.
Going into the first skill area, she said that one of the worst things we can do with our animals is to be mindless with them. Paying more attention to our electronic devices, rather than our animal, is one of the most common forms of being mindless with our animals. They sense this, and may act out to get your attention. It’s definitely ok to discipline an animal for a particular action (biting, barking too much, getting on the counter, etc.) but NEVER ok to hit your animal. She said she will take down the animal, then get “in its face” and let it know that behavior is unacceptable. UN-AC-CEPT-ABLE crossing of a boundary!
Patty also went over her Emotional Ladder charts – one side with negative emotions, the other with positive. She told us to try to turn a negative into a positive – and always let your animal know how much you love them. Not an easy task, flipping the negative for the positive, but you will have a better relationship with your animal if you can learn to do this.
When you work with your animal, you must set definite, very specific boundaries, and do not allow any variation. Be specific, as in “no getting on the couch, ever!” as opposed to “no getting on the couch, except when I’m watching tv and eating ice cream.” That will only lead to “it’s ok to be on the couch, anytime”, so you have to be firm with yourself at times.
The last portion of the class was focused on visualization. Visualize how you want a specific behavior to be, including the emotion, and send it to your animal throughout the day. One woman said that this had worked with a dog she had, that had a problem with peeing in the house. She visualized her home, all clean, all carpets clean and untouched, and “sent” it to her dog several time each day. The incidents became less and less frequent, until she did come home to a clean house – she said that her dog began to “show her around the house when she got home” to demonstrate his behavior. Patty said that this was a great example of how this can work to achieve a behavior goal. Celebrate the small successes along the way, and heap praise upon your animal when they please you. Don’t say “bad dog!”, but say “bad chewing!” or “not on the counter!” Reinforce good behavior, chastise bad, but always let the animal know that you love them.
The last exercise was done with partners, someone we didn’t know. Part of this involved the pictures we’d brought of our animals – we looked at our partner’s photo, then told them what we “felt” about the animal, just from studying that photo. I’m not sure how successful this was, but it was an interesting exercise to try.
I don’t know how many people went away from the class feeling as if they will be able to change their dog/cat/horse/bird’s behavior, but Patty had very interesting ideas to chew on.
Wait, chewing is unacceptable…
