Dear Dan,

  I don't recall seeing anything about animal healing in the Newsletter, and thought to share the following:

  A few months ago I had the privilege of mediating my first healing of a sick horse named 'Sally'.  She was brought to me by her owner, a girl of 15 whose mother I had earlier successfully treated for 'incurable' eczema.  Sally had a visibly swollen hind leg which had been present for several weeks.  Intuitively, I laid my right hand on her lower spine and almost immediately was startled to feel a very pronounced heat, much stronger than the subtle sense of an energy flow which I often feel when treating my human clients.  The sensation continued for about a minute, when Sally's young owner, who was standing by her head, informed me that Sally was falling asleep.  I then removed my hand and Sally was taken back to her stable, a few hundred yards down the road.  The following day Sally's swollen leg had returned to its normal size.

  I have been asking myself since this event about the meaning of that powerful sensation of heat.  Inevitably, it reminds me of my human healees who so frequently inform me that they are aware of an unexpected heat or other sensations during treatment.  I find this feedback encouraging, since I have learned from experience that such reports invariably signal improvement in the healee's condition, either immediately or soon afterwards.  The statements give me the assurance that healing is indeed happening.  In the case of an animal such a horse there can be no verbal message.  The extraordinary sense of heat in my hand as it lay on the creature's back fulfilled a similar communicative function.  This experience also led me to see that words are not important.
 
  Much more is being conveyed than just a gratifying confirmation that 'I' am doing my 'job' properly.  These sensations trigger an imaginative identification on my part as the healer, focusing me on what healees report is happening in their bodies.  The moment when this identification occurs is one of peculiar privilege, a powerful sense of kinship that transcends even the distances between species.

  I am inclined to believe that the ability to achieve a wordless sense of 'at-oneness' with other life forms is a natural faculty in all human beings, albeit a one that is masked to a large extent by our 'scientific' education.

  Another personal experience of inter-species communication strengthened this belief.  In 1976 there was an extremely dry, hot summer in Britain.  On returning in August from abroad I was astonished to find this normally green island burnt brown during the long drought.  Shortly afterward I found similar conditions in rural Ireland, where I spent a short holiday in a cottage loaned by a friend.  Despite the high temperature, the cottage provided an idyllic retreat, apart from one problem: it was buzzing with hundreds of houseflies.

  Perhaps because I was alone, the far-fetched idea came to me of trying to communicate with these little creatures and persuade them to move elsewhere.  I therefore selected a fly that was resting nearby and, with all courtesy, requested the insect to leave through the nearest open window.  After a second or so, to my conisderable surprise, it did just that.  Thinking that this was perhaps a mere coincidence, I turned my attention to another, temporarily immobile fly and projected the same polite message.  The result was identical, and similarly with the third, fourth, and so on.  Half an hour later, to my astonishment, the cottage was completely free of flies.  No less astonishing was the fact that thereafter no flies entered or re-entered the cottage, even though I was obliged to keep all the windows permanently open because of the heat.
                                       Roy Willis, Fairview, The Loan, Linlithgow EH49 6LW

RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR THIS NEWSLETTER