Last weekend, I was re-reading Hands-on Healing for Animals by Margrit Coates, a British lady who works with some other holistic vets doing energy healing for animals, and I decided to take a break from reading and do some communication and Reiki on Thomas, who, at the time, was curled up on my chest. I’d been holding my hand over his body and feeling a strong heat emanating from certain places that corresponded with the chakras, and when I communicated with him I sensed that he was still holding some grief about his previous caretaker (I’ve done a lot of work with him on this issue, both on the energy level and the herbal/homeopathic level), so I gave him Reiki with the intention of helping him to process that grief. Every once in a while, waves of sadness came over me and I just wanted to cry, so I breathed through it and let it go and continually reassured him that he was safe here, I love him, and he has a forever home. Then, after about 20 minutes, I felt a distinct sense of “feedback” in the form of a prickly feeling in the palms of my hands. I thought “hey, I wonder if this means he’s done with the Reiki,” so just as an experiment I sent a little more Reiki and got the prickly feeling even more strongly….so I removed my hands and stroked his head gently for a minute. He looked so relaxed after that Reiki session; he stretched out in my lap and he looked “clearer” than he had before I began.
Later on I gave some Reiki to another one of my cat companions, Sinéad, as well. She’s lost some weight, and while she looks healthy, her appetite and thirst seems to have increased, so I am a bit concerned. When I took Thomas to the vet a couple of weeks back, I got worm medicine for everyone, so everybody’s been wormed. Sinéad and Siouxsie are going for their checkups in a couple of weeks, so I’ll see what the vet has to say then. So in any case, I gave Sinéad Reiki too and communicated with her, in hopes of seeing if there was something I could do to help her. I did feel some odd…I dunno, something...in her energy field. She let me give her Reiki for about 10 minutes, and then she got up and walked away. I never got the feedback sensation with her; maybe she just leaves when she knows she’s had enough so there’s no need for the feedback sensation. I couldn’t pinpoint anything that might be bothering her, so I’m not entirely sure what that means.
I wonder if other Reiki practitioners or animal communicators have had those “feedback” type sensations before and how they interpret them.
Oh, and here’s an interesting tidbit: in Hands-On Healing for Animals, Coates talks about an eighth chakra that animals have, which she calls the brachial plexus, or key, chakra. It’s in the area of the shoulders and corresponds to the shoulder chakra in humans. Her belief is that it’s a major chakra for animals because their communication style is so different from ours that they have trouble communicating their feelings or traumas and so need extra energy in this chakra to help them let go. Of course, it could be because most animals walk on four legs, too….but in any case, I have felt this eighth chakra in my cats and a couple of dogs.
