Heart to Heart

On a Friday evening, two dozen or so people were sitting inside a function room with a wall of windows overlooking a field full of munching sheep. Amelia introduced the theory behind animal communication and its connection with science and quantum physics. She began by telling us that everything is energy. Human beings are energy, plants are energy and animals are energy. All this energy is connected on the most gargantuan spider’s web, a 3D picture which spreads out in every direction throughout the universe. Amelia called this ‘the Zero Point Energy Field’. She went on to elaborate that quantum physicists now tell us that every living being and physical object has a resonant holographic image logged on to the spider’s web (Zero Point Energy Field). This image is called a quantum hologram. This theory means you have a hologram, I have a hologram and so do our animals. All of us are connected, because our holograms are attached on the web, despite the fact that you are sitting there and I am sitting here.

As Amelia spoke about the harmony of science and psychic connection, it dawned on me that she was in a completely different league from the other teachers I’d met. Her understanding of animal communication was immense. When I witnessed her own ability to talk to animals and her deep heartfelt love of them, it gave me cause to feel inspired. I could see just how far you could take this ability and I knew I had a lot of work ahead of me. Amelia was setting the standard for animal communicators everywhere. She was then, and would remain, a huge source of inspiration to me, as well as hundreds of other devoted animal lovers across the globe, a role model for professional animal communicators and an ambassador for animals.

After the in-depth and brain-expanding explanation of animal communication, we were invited to try our first communication with a little white and tan terrier. His guardian had brought him in for us to communicate with and he stayed for the next 40 minutes. This was the first workshop I’d attended where a ‘real live animal’ came to help us practice – an animal guest-teacher.

The first question Amelia wanted us to ask him was: ‘What’s his favourite food?’ She told us to imagine sending an empty food bowl to him using a picture in our mind’s eye and asking him to fill it with his favourite food then return it to us.

By this time I had already attended four animal communication workshops, I knew how to make a connection with an animal and how to ask questions. This should have been puppy-play for me. However, all I felt was blank. It was as if an empty void had washed over me. I couldn’t connect. I couldn’t receive the answers. But the most disastrous feeling of all was the nothingness. I desperately tried to feel an emotional connection with the cute little dog who had taken a liking to my trousers and had begun licking them in earnest. Despite his joyful distraction, I felt numb. My heart felt closed.

After a couple of minutes’ silence, Amelia asked, ‘What did you get?’

‘Nothing,’ I replied.

She continued around the room hearing what everyone else had either seen or heard.

The second question was: ‘What about his favourite activity?’

‘What have you got?’ she cajoled.

‘Nothing,’ I said despondently.

‘Nothing at all?’

‘No, nothing.’ I found myself shrinking into my chair as everyone’s eyes fell upon me.

‘Can you see what his bed is like?’ Amelia encouraged.

‘No,’ I replied uncomfortably. I felt worse and worse. With each question I felt another nail being driven into my complete lack of ability. I had lost it. The special connection had gone.

Amelia looked at me, confused, ‘Did you receive anything?’ It was as though she could tell something wasn’t quite right and that this was new for me.

‘Nothing, nothing at all.’

I wanted to run – run away from the knowledge that I couldn’t communicate with animals anymore. The wonderful ability I had discovered just six months earlier had vanished for good.

Back at my guesthouse, I fell into a deep dark despair. I went to bed feeling as though I couldn’t speak about this to any of the other students and ended up tossing and turning all night.

The next day I tried to start afresh and entered the workshop room with positive thoughts. But when we began to practice our communication skills again, I struggled whilst most of the people around me seemed to find it effortless. They appeared to communicate with dogs and cats as if they’d been doing it all their life. But for me, it was another disappointing day.

Over supper that evening I had the good fortune to sit next to a talented animal communicator called Yvette Knight. She had been having amazingly accurate communications all day.

‘How are you doing?’ she asked me.

‘Not good,’ I admitted.

‘Oh, really? Why’s that?’ she asked, genuinely interested.

‘I just can’t feel anything – anything at all.’

I went on to tell her of an animal communication workshop earlier in the year, where I’d chosen to believe someone else rather than trust my own inner voice. Understandably, this had the result of completely undermining my confidence in my ability as an effective animal communicator.

‘I feel as though my heart has shut down,’ I told her.

Now Yvette is a belly dancer of gladiator proportions, with long blonde hair and the wit to disarm even the smartest of opponents. Shy and retiring, she is not. So she was very empathetic and for a while simply listened, which was just what I needed – then she came out with a few hand-picked expletives and I felt a bit better for sharing my feelings.

Jupiter’s Magic

Sunday morning arrived, along with the last two sessions before my flight back to London. Yvette was having breakfast at a private table with Amelia, so I joined some women on the grand dining table and earwigged an interesting conversation about shamanism. It seemed that the basic principle of shamanism was the belief that everything is alive and has a spirit, and shamans try to live in harmony with the Earth and animals.

An hour later, the students and I were sitting in an oval-shaped pattern around the edge of the lecture room anticipating Amelia’s arrival. She walked in as though she meant business and launched into the importance of staying centred and grounded within your own power. She wasn’t talking about a masculine, dominating, controlling power, but that internal power all of us have as part of our individual birthright, the power that keeps us strong and protected. As she spoke, it felt as though everyone else disappeared and the room descended into silence until all I heard were her words. Although she didn’t look my way, I felt she had crafted her speech just for me. She spoke at length and then ended with a short summary.

‘Don’t ever give your power away,’ she said. ‘You must keep it close, because there are those who will try to take it from you. Don’t let them.’

Easier said than done, I thought, but it immediately struck a chord, and I remembered my feelings of emptiness when someone had implied I should not trust my own intuition, my own gut feelings.

The air was cool, but the sun was shining upon us as we walked outside with our notepads and pens to meet our first animal guest teacher of the morning. In the centre of the courtyard stood a tall dark horse called Jupiter. He appeared very calm and very proud. After a disastrous day and a half, I didn’t have high hopes, but I tried to communicate with him anyway.

Within seconds of looking into Jupiter’s deep chocolate eyes, my chest started to rise and fall as my breathing became deeper and more demanding. I began to feel an overwhelming rush of love from him that seemed to cloak my entire body. My legs were shaking, overcome by this sudden surge of emotion. Worried that I was about to make a right fool of myself in front of everyone, I made a hasty retreat from the group to the side of the building behind us. Tears were pouring down my face as I tried to compose myself, struggling to control my breathing and desperately trying not to sob out loud in front of this group of relative strangers.

Whenever I looked at Jupiter to ask him one of the questions from Amelia, I felt another wave of love washing over me, soaking into every pore of my skin and reaching deep inside my heart. His love was so strong it might be compared to the love that pours out of your heart when welcoming your first newborn into the world or to the power of Niagara Falls. His love was instinctual, all-encompassing and utterly powerful. Jupiter was blasting my heart wide open and enabling me to connect with my emotions.

At that moment, I vowed never to give my power away again. I will always be hugely grateful to this magnificent horse who managed to see straight through to the core of me. He tuned into me, even when I was unable to tune into him, and he helped me in the exact way I needed, by opening my heart connection. Later I’d learn that this could also be called heart chakra healing. Horses seem to have an extraordinary talent in this arena.

After this immensely healing experience with Jupiter, my communications with animals went from strength to strength. I could sense an emotional connection with them, whether they were sad, happy, grieving, joyful or confused. With my heart reawakened, I could understand any emotion they were feeling and this enabled me to connect with them on a deeper level. It helped me on a personal level, too, because now I was able to ascertain whether I was truly connected to an animal or just making it up.

As I left the island I felt more experienced, inspired and whole again. In just one weekend, Amelia and Jupiter had managed to put me right back on track.

It wasn’t until I was flying through the clouds over the Irish Sea that I remembered that my zodiac sign’s ruling planet happens to be Jupiter, and I wondered whether this was merely coincidence or a strange twist of fate. As someone born under the sign of Sagittarius, my zodiac symbol is a hybrid of half human above and half horse below – maybe this was a sign of synchronicity.

CHAPTER 5 (#ulink_16dc30e3-8977-59a3-b08d-358772e47608)

Opening the Door of Opportunity (#ulink_16dc30e3-8977-59a3-b08d-358772e47608)

VERY EARLY ON in my animal communication experience I was drawn to two dogs, Mono and Riki. I discovered both of these animals in January 2006, when there were pleas on their behalf on separate web forums where I had membership. Each time an impulse made me want to contact their guardians to volunteer my services as an animal communicator. It turned out eventually that I wasn’t solely helping the dogs, they were also helping me, as if fate, or the universe, had brought us together for a reason. They taught me a lot about ill-health and positive attitude and were instrumental in building my confidence as an effective animal communicator. More on Riki later, but first let me tell you about Mono.