Healing Animals Of Behavior Problems:
The Harmony Programme
by Silvia Hartmann
The Birth Of The Harmony Programme
|
Dominance Reduction Programs |
The Structure Of Attention Seeking Behaviour |
The Attention Seeking Behaviour Evolution |
The Cure For Attention Seeking Behaviour Disorders |
Animal Autism |
Trance Behaviours & Repetitive Behaviours |
The Harmony Programme In Brief |
Harmony In Action |
Positive VS Negative Energy Interactions |
Re-Connecting The Love |
* Exercise 1 – Falling In Love |
* Exercise 2 – Magic Moment |
* Exercise 3 – Remember ... |
* Exercise 4 – The Love Connection |
The Fear Of Love |
Healing With Love Energy |
* Exercise 5 – Ray Of Hope |
A Note From The Author And Copyright Holder |
Energy Healing For Animals
I have been particularly looking forward to this part of
the course; understanding the nature of energy exchanges and
their effect on the behaviour of animals (and people) was my
own first breakthrough experience into the healing realms
that are right here, completely accessible to anyone who
might wish to enter there, make perfect sense in the context
of practical living and results and yet for some obscure
reason, seem to have been missed over and over as old
entrainments are thoughtlessly repeated from one generation
to the next and knowledge and understandings are lost and
become corrupted.
I would like to tell you the story of The Harmony
Programme, how I came to it and what we learned from that
time. It could possibly be the most important single aspect
of this entire course for many of those of you who are
reading it, so and without any further ado, here it is:
In 1993, I was working as an animal behaviour specialist
and had been doing so for the preceding 12 years. At this
time, I was at the top end of the referral chain and worked
closely with John Fisher and a number of other behaviour
specialist to create new approaches and paradigms in the
face of ever growing numbers of companion animals with
severe behaviour problems.
We had by that time already developed major
breakthroughs, such as the role of allergic responses to
food in particular which caused severe and otherwise
inexplicable behaviour problems; most notably the
overfeeding of digestible proteins to under exercised pet
dogs, causing hyperactivity and numerous other kinds of
problems, but also responses to various other additives,
colorants and flavourings in many other species and
including zoo- and farm animals.
John Fisher was working particularly with the so called
“Dominance Reduction Programmes” for dogs, and if you are
not interested in dogs or don’t like them much, I would
suggest you still listen carefully because this is centrally
important and the key points are beautifully portrayed in
the problems of dog owners and the Dominance Reduction
Programmes or Dominance Reduction Programs for short.
Trying to take a “scientific” approach to the problems of
disobedience and behaviour problems in companion (pet, house
kept) dogs across the breeds, it was decided at some time to
try and copy the visible behavioural strategies that
naturally exist in a wolf pack or in a pack of laboratory
beagles, and have the human parts of the “pack” play the
role of the “alpha male” by copying what “alpha males do” –
the idea being that you “speak a language that an animal
might understand that is too neurologically limited to
understand in any other way.”
The owner was advised to “take charge” of all forms of
interaction with the companion dog and to create a “power
gradient” through a brick-by-brick approach that would
clearly show the dog in question who was the ruler, the
leader, the confident “alpha dog in the human pack”.
The areas where this charge was taken were global and
comprehensive and extended over the following:
All forms of social interaction. The dog was not
responded to unless it first “submitted” in some form
- if it would come to the owner for attention, for
example, it would have to go through an obedience ritual
first before it was stroked. It was purposefully ignored in
preference of other creatures/humans in the house upon
greeting, and in many other contexts.
Power Games in movements and exercise. In “the wild”
(what wild!) it is held that “the Alpha dog goes first” –
gets the food first, leads the pack on the hunt, gets every
bone by rights and enforces this entirely, does everything
first. There is a famous picture that at that time just
about every animal behaviourist had on their walls – of a
wolf pack in the arctic in single file with the Alpha male
up front, in strict hierarchy, and not one of these 20
wolves put a paw out of line ever as the snow trail behind
them testifies.
Power Games in food and feeding. Once again, the owner
would eat first – if only demonstratively, a biscuit whilst
the dog was waiting to be fed, and the dog would have to
wait for permission from the owner before it was allowed to
eat. Shock devices such as the so called “dog training
discs” or the more old fashioned (and cheaper) version of
“two stones in a coke can” would be used in set ups, like
having food in the centre of the floor, to “negatively
condition” the dog to the fact that all food belongs to the
owner, the shock device replacing the shock of an Alpha male
flying out, teeth bared, to protect their bone “in the
wild”.
Physical/spatial power games such as forcing one’s way
through a doorway ahead of a dog, up and down the stairs,
making the dog get up and move out of one’s way deliberately
numerous times a day, forbidding “privileged” resting places
such as beds, arm chairs, power hot spots such as thresholds
and landings, “taking the dog’s bed” by sitting or standing
in it just to show the dog “that you can”, ensuring the dog
walking behind the owner as a pack member would follow the
alpha leader and so forth.
As time went on, the Dominance Reduction Programs became
ever more specific and watertight as the power divergence
between dog and owner was extended into virtually every
waking moment of their lives together.
And the results at that time seemed near miraculous. Dogs
started to pay attention to the owners, became more
“obedient”, pulled on the lead less and it is true, we
really thought we had cracked it as far as dog behaviour was
concerned.
In the spring of 1993, two things happened that began to
erode my confidence in Dominance Reduction Programs and gave
me a severe headache at the time.
The first of these was that I was seeing a number of dogs
and their owners with extreme problems that had not become
better as the result of applying Dominance Reduction
Programs, but were getting ever worse.
I must admit to having fallen prey myself to the
unhelpful human behaviour of “if at first you don’t succeed,
try harder”. Dominance Reduction Programs worked, right? The
owners were just not doing them hard enough!
The effect of tightening up on the Dominance Reduction
Programs further and further was appalling. One dog in
particular and one who, it could be said, gave her life for
us all and me in particular at that time, was a Doberman
bitch by the name of Bridget. When we started, she had some
mild moments of general disobedience in an otherwise loving
relationship with her female owner. After 3 months on the
Dominance Reduction Program, she was a ravening mad beast
who turned and tore apart an old cat she had played with
happily her entire life and the owner had her put to sleep
on the spot.
That is when I stopped dead and knew something was
terribly wrong. I closed my behaviour counselling practise
and turned with a passion to finding out just what had
happened and to investigate the whole Dominance Reduction
Program situation from a new standpoint.
And then the second piece of evidence came to me.
Previously, I had been involved in setting up a long term
study of the effects of Dominance Reduction Programs on the
dog/s and owner/s – in order to have scientific back up data
on how good they were and how useful. As the
questionnaires came back from the owners who had undergone
these miraculous changes for the better two years ago it
became blatantly apparent that many dogs had become worse
and Bridget had not been the only example of this at all;
that many owners had stopped using the Dominance Reduction
Program strategies within days of the consultation and the
old original problems had never been resolved at all; and
that many more dogs developed behaviour problems of a
different kind as well as the original presenting ones.
This rang a bell and I looked up a similar study
conducted by an American animal behaviour team in the 70’s,
a husband and wife – Hart & Hart. Their study had been
conducted before the onset of Dominance Reduction Programs
and their popularity, and it mirrored mine quite perfectly
apart from one detail – the statistics of dogs becoming much
worse were absent.
At this time I was also beginning the study of NLP and
this incredible modality suggests that one should model
excellence in order to know how to design trainings and
strategies to re-create excellence in others.
When I looked carefully at people who I regarded as
having an “excellent” relationship with their companion
animals and including myself, I realised with astonishment
that we were NOT applying any Dominance Reduction Program
strategies at all with our own creatures.
Our relationships were NOT that of human wolves within a
pack.
What we were doing was inherently and absolutely
different.
Instead of turning ourselves into wolves, we remained
human and endeavoured to teach our creatures the ways of
human communication.
Instead of waging war with our animals, we were
co-operating with them from a base line of mutual respect
and understanding.
And then one day, it hit me like a ton of bricks what it
was that was so completely overlooked in scientific animal
behaviour and yet so glaringly on display if only one would
open one’s eyes as THE major factor of successful companion
animal relationships:
Love.
With my heart beating high, I went through the many books
on animal behaviour and especially, companion animal
behaviour and I could not find that word in a single one of
them at the time.
It was an absolute revelation to me that opened my eyes
to the universe as it really was in a heartbeat and probably
changed me more than any other experience I have had on this
plane.
Right from the start, I was well aware that what I meant
by “love” was not some kind of mushy, fluffy pink behaviour
that results in putting knitted jackets on Alaskan Malamutes
because “it makes him look so cute”.
It was some kind of energy form that existed naturally
between an owner and an animal and that was a major driver
for otherwise completely inexplicable behaviours.
Why, I ask you, why if this did not exist, could it
possibly be explained that a seventy year old arthritic tiny
lady can walk with that massive, uncastrated GSD by her side
who obeys her and makes sure the lead stays loose as not to
hurt her?
She’s not dominating him, she’s not even hormonally
targettable as an “alpha female” any more. She is asking him
nicely if he would mind sitting there for a while whilst she
goes into a shop and he says yes.
What is that? That is not and never, “dog eat dog”
scientific laboratory beagle behaviour.
This is a fully formed, deeply bonded, highly
interactive, mature relationship between two entirely
sentient beings who are trying to co-operate as best they
can.
Those two look at each other and something passes between
them – and this something is not a result of training
or communication, but the baseline for any of it in
the first place.
An energetic connection of the highest order that will
remain even through extreme suffering, that is at some level
beyond reproach and quite regardless of either creature’s
limitations.
We can call it what we like, but it sure looks like
“love” to me.
With this new mindset I went back and looked again what
happens in the interactions when a Dominance Reduction
Program is being applied.
Firstly, the owner is told that the dog is “trying to
take over”. This sets the war metaphor in place and reframes
the owner’s experiences in that light – the dog coming up
with a toy is not just wanting to play, but it is in fact a
part of a long term, devious strategy to grab all the power
and become the Hitler of the household.
In our last unit, we talked about what happens in medical
interventions when war metaphors are applied, and we had an
experience of accepting the problem unconditionally in the
“becoming the vortex” exercise.
Do please note that the vortex is the same vortex, but as
we change our perspective or frame of reference from war to
understanding, we receive a rush of new insights and the
universe expands all of a sudden.
In Dominance Reduction Program interventions, the
relationship universe contracts as the dog becomes the
enemy.
You contract it too much and you will reduce the
possibility of incidences of “good energy exchanges” to the
point where the creature in question experiences such a
shortfall of this essential energy (and make no mistake, it
is absolutely essential and systemically built into any
species that forms relationships, no matter how
rudimentary, with others of its kind) that a systemic
collapse occurs and the relationship simply dies.
It is this shortfall of essential energy that drives
behaviour disturbances, stress related illness and in the
end, systemic shutdown and death.
With the caveat that you can “drive any creature crazy”
if you put it into insane environments (such as a panther in
a small enclosure), feed it with poison, or torture it
continuously with actions, substances, and behaviours from
the outside, all the rest of the behaviour problems you
might come across can be chunked up to versions of
“attention seeking behaviour”.
This is a very, very interesting phrase.
Just run it through your mind and apply it to a creature
of any kind, a child perhaps:
“She was attention seeking all the time.”
What response, what gut response do you have to that
phrase?
It’s not a good one, I would wager. It’s along the lines
of, “Dear oh dear. Tut. Shake head. Naughty child. Ah,
she’ll learn to keep herself quiet eventually. Her parents
probably “spoiled” her. She thinks she’s the centre of the
universe. Ah, we’ll beat it out of her ...”
It is extraordinary to me just how we have come to that.
Where did this come from? Who was the first to think it was
a good idea to leave a child crying for hours in the dark
and expect this to be “good for them”?
At least now (in the last 30 years or so, to put it in
perspective, and by all means not in all Western parent’s
thoughts) it is held to be the right thing to feed a baby
when it is crying and as soon as possible because
The baby doesn’t cry because it is naughty or evil but
because
it is using a feedback device that is programmed in to alert
the care takers of a shortfall of food supplies.
Attention Seeking Behaviour progresses through the
following stages as the need becomes more and more acute and
more excruciating to the individual who is experiencing the
energetic shortfall in a visceral, whole body experience:
1. Awareness
Here, the creature (child, dog, cat, horse) first becomes
aware that the shortfall exists and begins to look around
for a likely “other” who may fulfil this need.
2. Approach
The creature will get up and start approaching the other
and make some minor signs that it is in need of some
attention. In an animal, that would probably be just coming
over and presenting themselves whilst looking at the other.
3. Escalation
If the other ignores (read “refuses to provide the
attention energy”) this subtle approach, creature A will now
escalate its behaviours to “break on through” the barrier of
ignoring – make sounds, push physically, engage in
behaviours that have previously worked to “gain attention”.
4. Extreme Escalation
If these higher level behaviours are also ignored, the
need turns to a pain and will now drive consecutively more
extreme behaviour in turn in a direct cause and effect
relationship. If the need is high enough, the creature may
even attack.
5. Catastrophic Collapse
If still no energy is forthcoming, the system collapses
in on itself in a catastrophic implosion which causes severe
neurological damage; the stage beyond rage is autism, where
the creature can no longer elicit the energy required nor
process it when it is being offered because of the damage
sustained by the receptors of the energy processing system
during the catastrophe.
Depending on the severity of the neurological/energetic
catastrophe and the age of the creature at which the
catastrophe occurred (obviously the younger the creature,
the greater the impact on the system overall), some
individuals may never come back from the autism stage and
remain there forever.
It is so simple – following the “crying baby” model for
filling the need as soon as it arises, ASBDs can be entirely
avoided as well as cured by giving focussed attention
immediately and as soon as the request has been received.
This does not mean one has to put one’s entire life on
hold or “run rings around the creature” – it is literally a
simple little flash of attention at the right time and
when first asked for it; the classic “a stitch in time
saves nine” principle.
Rather than “rewarding” attention seeking behaviour, it
never gets to escalate, the creature’s energy system remains
balanced and the disturbed behaviours never need take
place at all.
As the babies who are fed when they are hungry cry
markedly less or not at all, creatures who receive attention
energy (or love or recognition energy) when they ask for it,
their attention seeking behaviours become markedly less
frequent, markedly less dramatic and may cease altogether
once the system has been in operation for a while and the
creature has understood that not only can it get what it
needs just the for the asking, but also it’s energy system
has become more robust, more healthy, more resilient and
won’t collapse when there is a time when attention is in
short supply.
It is one of the saddest things I personally find to have
to deal with to meet an animal that has entirely shut down
within itself and is no longer able to make attention energy
exchange based relationships with others.
Autism is a rainbow scale of a naturally existing
neurological function, not an on and off switch and autistic
behaviours in animals are often and once again, very sadly
mistaken for “being stubborn” or “wilful” or “disobedient”.
As autistic animals cannot provide the owners with
“attention energy” in turn (as they are trapped within
themselves), the owners may actually go through the same
attention seeking escalations that can end up with attacking
the creature just so it will take notice, respond at last
and acknowledge their existence.
A safety mechanism of any social creature’s neurological
set up is to induce autistic-like deep trance states to
protect themselves from the systemic catastrophe.
Repetitive rocking in small human and monkey babies who
are left to themselves, head weaving in elephants, flank
sucking in Dobermans, shadow chasing and tail chasing in
collies, crib chewing in horses, pacing endlessly in a
ritualistic way in caged cats are just amongst the many,
many examples of this. In pet dogs, spaniels and crosses
thereof are highly pre-disposed to enter these trance states
in moments of stress and there are many variations on the
theme. Self mutilation and ritualised howling/vocal
expressions also lead to the security of a deep trance state
where the individual may rest inside when external
environmental conditions have become unbearable – these
external conditions being systemically, a short fall of
energy of the correct kind to re-balance the stressed and
hungry system.
It is my supposition that the individual creature’s
choice of which route into trance they will take is a
mixture of genetic pre-disposition and chance; I have seen
many animals who have developed a chance behaviour into
these rituals and the behaviours themselves, which may be
quite bizarre to an unsuspecting onlooker, are, indeed,
secondary to the trance state they are designed to induce.
Let us back up here and go through the main points of the
energetic circumstances and causes and effect of “attention
seeking behaviour disorders” in mammals (and this includes
people too) step by step.
There is a form of energy that is exchanged between
social creatures that is derived from the attention of
another. This attention is focussed, direct and involves eye
contact, no matter how fleetingly this takes place.
This energy form is as important to a social creature as
is sleep, or food. In experiments, human babies died when
attention was withheld (although the babies were fed and
their physical care taking proceeded as normal). Adults
develop severe behaviour disturbances including rage, deep
trance type repetitive behaviours, antisocial behaviours and
autism under similar conditions.
Western humans have been trained from birth to withhold
attention, especially when it is being “demanded” – possibly
a learned response and set up that occurred in their own
energy systems when their energetic attention needs were
repeatedly and systematically refuted when they themselves
were young.
Companion animals vary widely in how great their
tolerance is to living with “not enough attention energy”
being supplied.
It seems to be also specific to an individual if their
first choice response to a shortfall of this form energy is
withdrawal towards autism or escalating fiercely in their
“attention seeking behaviours” before systemic collapse and
those, too, falling into autism.
Attention Energy is Attention Energy – in general,
creatures do not seem to care one way or the other if the
attention energy they receive is of the loving or of the
non-loving kind. Indeed, with the set up amongst the Western
Human caretakers, creatures find it far easier to obtain
negative attention through disturbing/annoying/”naughty”
behaviours than to obtain positive attention. Indeed, a
great many caretakers “train” their animals into ever more
outrageous behaviours by firstly, failing to give attention
of the positive kind and secondly, trying to ignore
developing behaviour escalations in the beginning stages
when they are still fairly mild.
Giving focussed attention in the beginning stages of any
escalation pattern does not only stop the escalation pattern
dead right there but over the long term, actually cures
the individual and re-sets their energetic exchanges with
everyone and not just with the owner to a natural and
sociable status.
With the energy system balanced that needs this social
love energy, a creature truly blossoms, becomes more self
assured, self balanced and gains access to sleeping
resources of problem solving, interaction, communication,
thought and experience that were previously out of reach.
With this part of the energy system balanced, an
individual will be radically better placed to face any
kind of stress challenge including showing a greater
tolerance to environmental poisons, toxic energy systems and
all immune system stressors.
Turning The World Upside Down
Back in 1993, I formulated the appalling idea, based on
my theoretical musings and practical observations, that
instead of playing power games with a companion animal, one
should try and give positive attention right away, as soon
as the animal would indicate a need by a small behaviour
such as coming up, looking at the owner, or trying to make
contact in any other shape or form.
This contradicted about everything I had ever been taught
or learned to do; for example, it was common practise to let
small puppies howl and cry all night until “they had learned
that no-one would come” and “thus never to reward this
appalling attention seeking behaviour”.
So it must be said that it was not without trepidation
that I began to experiment in earnest and put my theory to
the test.
And here’s what happened in actuality.
I would go upstairs and at the first scratching of the
puppy, I would go back down again, open the kitchen door,
cuddle the puppy (“Oh no!” the old fashioned dog trainers
and nursery nurses began to shout, “you’re making a rod for
your own back! The puppy will grow up a monster!!!”), put it
back in it’s bed and tell it with full eye contact and
meaning, “Now then, little one, all is well. I’m upstairs
and if you need me for anything, just call me and I will
come. Good night now. I love you.”
Then I would turn off the light, close the door and sit
at the bottom of the step until the scratching and first
little whimper would start up again, and I’d repeat the self
same thing.
With this particular puppy, a very sensitive 8 week old
poodle cross God-alone-knows-what, it took 8 repetitions and
a total of 1 hour 12 minutes for silence to reign and for me
to go to bed. It called me twice more that night, and once
or twice a night for another 3 days. After that, it did not
call me any more apart from one occasion about a week later
and when I went to see it, it was distressed and a little
while later, threw up something that looked like an old fish
skeleton.
I wrote down my findings in a note book and mused for
some considerable time on the last puppy in my house, that
had howled for hours on end and finally got to sleep in my
bed in the end anyway simply because the neighbours sent the
police round repeatedly.
Realising of course that one puppy doesn’t make a
paradigm shift, I then went back to my referring trainers
and assistants, told them the whole story and asked them to
try it out.
They listened with both eyebrows raised but luckily
enough, I had an excellent reputation and track record for
being sensible and practical in all my dealings and
innovations, so they gave me the benefit of the doubt and a
rather half hearted, “Ahm, ok Silvia ... we’ll try it ...”
One of these, a very conservative lady, had taken receipt
of a rescued GSD bitch that very afternoon and in the night,
grew fearful that the bitch would break through the glass
kitchen door and injure herself severely, as she was
throwing herself against it senselessly in absolute panic of
separation.
As the lady, who happened to be a highly qualified and
supremely experienced dog obedience instructor and trainer’s
trainer, didn’t know what else she could do (and sleeping
with the dog in the bedroom was not an option on account of
her husband and his views on the topic), she half heartedly
tried “Silvia’s new fangled theory”.
She went back into the kitchen and told the dog that she
needed to sleep and that she was just upstairs, feeling very
foolish by her own admission for doing so.
Guess what. The GSD bitch calmed right down and called
the lady three more times before in that household too,
peace and silence reigned that lasted until 7am the next
morning when the bitch began to bark to be let out into the
garden. The rescued bitch never called again after
that – not once and to this very day in 2001.
From mad separation anxiety to total peace in one
single night.
The good people who tried out the Harmony
Programme on their cats, dogs, horses, husbands and
in their boarding kennels, rescue kennels, wildlife parks,
you name it, were absolutely astonished how easy it
was to calm a creature in this way and how it did the exact
opposite of what we all had believed it would do – instead
of a needy monster that would haunt you all your living,
breathing hours, what we were creating were balanced,
satisfied individuals that seemed to find a sense of
confidence in their environments, in us, and most
importantly, within themselves.
Before we go on to Harmony Programme exercises, I would
like to tell you why I am taking my time in this assignment
to tell you all of this.
The Harmony Programme is not something that we can use as
healers from the outside to make “everything all right” in
behaviour problems that are rooted in attention seeking.
It is something that the caretakers need to be told
about and need to at least try, no matter how half
heartedly, to get an understanding of the benefits for
everyone involved.
The “need for attention energy” is a daily one, and it is
important that the owners make changes in their interactions
with the animal in question to supply at least a baseline of
positive attention energy and begin to find ways of backing
away from negative attention energy exchanges.
Although for that part of the system which processes
attention energy it really doesn’t seem to matter what kind
of attention is being given, the kind of attention (positive
or negative) has many repercussions on other energetic
exchanges and on the systems of both caretaker and animal.
Animal carers know that animals will prefer a
shouting at or a beating rather than being ignored. This is
also true for children and of course, the delinquents in the
prisons and mental hospitals that these children eventually
become.
Eliciting negative attention (being shouted at,
threatened, chased around, reprimanded, punished) is so
much easier and so much more freely forthcoming in this
society of ours, it is scary.
You might laugh, but I can’t remember the last time a
policeman stopped me on the road and commended me on my safe
driving skills. I also don’t think I’ve ever had a friendly
letter from the taxman thanking me sincerely for paying up
every year on time, either. But I guess that’s just the tip
of the iceberg.
With the kind of set up that ignores the good completely
but crashes into action for bad behaviour immediately, you
can see how easily animals fall into thinking that the only
way they can get this vital life energy is by resorting to
annoying behaviours and escalating to worse and worse ones
over time.
The problem with this process is that prolonged negative
attention energy exchanges are bad for the self esteem of
both the caretaker and the animal/s; they lead to tension,
terrible stress, less in the way of touch and over time,
less and less desire to interact at all which cannot
help but create a vicious downward spiral where everyone
involved cannot help but suffer. The end result of this
unloving spiral is usually euthanasia or re-homing of the
animal in question.
Even way back then, I began to talk about “reconnecting
the owner and the animal” and using “natural communication”
and “the underlying strand of love” to do so.
Energy therapy in action, only I didn’t even know the
name then.
In the original Harmony programme, I advised my then
assistants and trainees to find moments when the
owner/caretaker had experienced a “falling in love” with the
creature in question – the moment when they chose that one
animal in a litter, or a herd, or from a choice of
all the animals on this planet.
Sometimes, it wasn’t so much an active choice and someone
might have just had a moment somewhere and accepted a
rescued or unwanted animal into their hearts and homes but
unless the caretaker absolutely never wanted the animal in
the first place (which is a very rare occurrence indeed and
not a one you are likely to come across amongst the
clientele that would seek out an animal energy healer) there
is always that moment when two creatures met and fell
in love.
Now and exactly as it is with people, stuff happens,
annoying things happen, bad things happen and that love
connection gets plastered over with daily negativity and
unhappiness until a point may be reached when you can’t see
it shining out any more under all that rubbish that has been
piled upon it, and one or the other creature truly believes
that “the love is dead”.
For one, this is a very sad moment indeed when they
think, “I don’t love you any more.”
But for the other, it is the end of the world as the echo
arises in return, “They don’t love me any more.”
It is one of the very worst energetic
injuries any social creature is capable of sustaining in the
Hard, and can prove to be incurable and fatal, indeed.
To take a client back in time to a time when this love
was still clear and clearly visible and could be touched
just by looking at the creature is a direct energetic effort
at clearing away some of the rubbish and reminding everyone
concerned about the energetic realities of the situation.
Establishing this baseline or base connection of love,
that it is absolutely still there and absolutely still as
bright and beautiful as it was the first time they looked
upon the creature and made that connection with them, is
the most healing intervention you can possibly make in
any situation involving behaviour problems of any kind.
With the baseline love connection in place, the human
client will:
Have more patience under all circumstances. Often,
behaviour problems and especially the type that has lead to
the trance-escape states or even autism, can take a while to
undo, re-route and bring back to an even flow of the
individual and it’s environment.
Have more faith & trust. During this time of
re-balancing, learning new behaviours and dropping off old
and unhelpful ones, the owner/caretaker must support
the creature in many different ways and must be willing to
accept setbacks and plateaus without losing heart or focus.
If you love someone, you can do that and it isn’t even hard.
Have the desire for change and to keep the
relationship alive. Without these two key points, all is
lost. Literally. If the owner gives up, there’s nothing you,
or I, or even the angels can do to help the creature from
thereon in. If you love, you don’t give up easily, if ever
at all.
Think of an older animal you know, one that may have been
with you for many years and might not, at this time, be the
total focus of your attention. If you do not have or know of
such an animal, a human friend is a perfect stand in for
this exercise.
Think back on a time, perhaps long ago, when first you
met this creature. Allow yourself to really remember what
it was like, then – remember details about the meeting,
what time of day it was, where it was, what you were wearing
and so on.
Now, remember the moment when you first fell in love and
also then, remember how you felt at that time.
Holding the feeling steady, allow time in your mind to
pass as it does and consider the animal as it is today.
Reflect on how your feelings towards the animal have
changed as a result of this exercise
For this exercise, remember a time when you connected
deeply with an animal. A time when you looked into an
animal’s eyes and it looked back and you knew that
something extraordinary had happened, a moment that changed
you both in some way and changed your relationship after it
had taken place.
Remember and really re-experience this moment of
connection as fully and on as many levels as you can.
Sit for a moment after the exercise and give grace.
The purpose of the two exercises above is to bring to
your conscious awareness as well as setting up your
unconscious systems, to recognise that special energy that
makes up a “love connection” between two mortal creatures
here in the Hard.
Once you have recognised and experienced it yourself, it
becomes much easier to target and re-call this energy in
others you are working with. To this end, here is an
exercise with another human who will stand in for your
future clients:
Find a willing human and talk to them about an animal of
theirs. Ask them about those two incidences from Exercise 1
and 2. You do not have to make a big deal about it, just ask
them conversationally, for example, “Where did you get X?
When was that? How did you come to choose X? What was
special about X?” For Exercise 2, you can ask, “Did you ever
have a special moment with X? Something you really
remember?”
As they think about it and answer you, keep a close track
on their states and energy emanations. See if you can guide
them to a point where you can absolutely feel the
resonance of their experiences with the love connection in
yourself.
Now, strengthen and nourish that love connection you have
brought to the human’s awareness in any way that comes to
you.
You could, for example:
simply add your blessing and love to it in harmonic
resonance;
add a The Gift style strengthening/re-balancing, such as
sending waves of support of a colour, a bright light that
restores and cleans the connection or anything that your
intuition provides for you;
gently raise the vibration so that the love connection
always remains above and unblemished by whatever happens in
The Hard AND the person knows it does, too.
Give them a silent blessing and continue the conversation
until you have reached a natural exit point.
Do this exercise with at least three different humans and
note how the energy of the love connection is immediately
recognisable in each case.
When this is done in workshops, an objection is nearly
always raised from the participants and it goes like this:
“Isn’t it dangerous to strengthen someone’s love
connections to another creature? Is it ecological? Doesn’t
it make bereavement much worse when the creature dies? Won’t
they become ever so upset if they lose the creature or if it
is ill?”
These questions come from the presupposition that love
makes us vulnerable to terrible suffering and pain and it
might be better to not love at all, or at least keep a lid
on how much we love, so we need not experiences these awful
feelings.
This is a classic Harmony Programme style dilemma, only
it isn’t a dilemma at all, we were just and once again,
taught and entrained to believe that it is.
George Harrison had a point when he said, “All you need
is love.” Oh, for sure, that line has been beaten to death
and heard so many times that it has become hardly more than
“Coca Cola is The Real Thing” in our neurologies but the
fact is that it’s true.
All you need is love. The more you have of it, the more
powerful you become, the more centred within yourself, the
more unassailable you are to doubt, fear and panic; the more
you are able to cope with anything at all the universe can
possibly throw at you.
From a place of love, you can do things that you thought
were beyond you.
You can stand pain, unbelievable suffering and in the
end, if you just love enough, you can quite happily allow
yourself to be nailed onto a cross, drink from the hemlock
chalice or walk voluntarily to the bonfire for burning –
this truly is the only way to overcome and find
strength, courage, perseverance, dedication, and every
single human attribute that’s worth having at all.
Love truly does reach across time and space and it is
truly, in that sense, eternal. It is not love that causes
pain, it is backing away from it, holding back from it and
disturbing its absolutely pure energies with entrained power
games, domination games, possession games, punishment games
and all the other kinds of games that people play.
Therefore, anything at all that you might do or
contribute to strengthen love connections and the flow of
this energy form – between creatures, between creatures and
owners, between creatures, owners and you, between you and
the universe, the land, the earth itself - is a holy
pursuit of the highest order.
Behaviour problems are inherently and structurally
different from health problems in many ways. They are often
linked, of course, and I would encourage you to remember our
planes model and to give serious thought to Hard reasons for
behaviour disorders – the usual mismanagement, environmental
conditions, bad feeding, underlying health or structural or
physiological problems in conjunction with genetic
pre-dispositions towards expressing behaviours that are
often species and breed-line specific.
True behaviour problems always arise as a result from an
individual animal having a disturbed map of
the world, created by trauma or drop-by-drop chipping
away at the individual’s original map over time.
Behaviour problems respond to love energy like a parching
man in the desert will respond to the offer of water.
Love energy, based on the deepest possible connect and
deepest possible regard for the Immortal Beloved as we
discussed earlier in the course, is my first choice
intervention for any behaviour problem.
Simply, the worse the problem, the more love the creature
needs to find a new balance within themselves and to begin
to want to really live again.
Sometimes, we are the first one in many years, if ever,
that could reach into that creatures darkness and loneliness
and give it very literally a ray of hope.
Find any creature at all that might be appropriate for
you to give a ray of hope – a loving, that special energy of
love from one living, sentient being to another. This may be
a zoo animal, a kennelled animal, an animal that you know of
and that suffers in the darkness, or it may be a bitter
little old lady who lives in your street – structurally and
technically, it matters not.
This is a distance healing exercise, so please create the
meeting space as discussed in Unit 8 and invite the creature
to join you there.
Look upon it and leave its physicality as it presents to
you behind and meet the Immortal Beloved in the other.
Allow yourself to love them. I know that that is easier
said than done, for we too have our fears of loving. Accept
what you can give and receive and see if you cannot release
some of your old limitations today and love more, more and
more until you breach the threshold into total brilliance
and love is, indeed, all there is.
Please Note: Do what you can. I ask never any more
of you than you are ready, able and willing to give. If you
cannot breach the threshold as yet or if fears assail you at
this point, it is as it is and the beginning, not the
end. Try this exercise often and be gentle and loving
with yourself, allowing yourself the time you
need to grow into love.
- This concludes the first part of The Harmony
Programme. In the second part, we will consider
communicating with animals, training and animal emotions
in the context of the Harmony Programme.
Please give the exercises in this Unit your very best
attention.
I would also ask that you really observe power-based
interactions that exist all around you and become familiar
with how love and power are rationed out, withheld, and
generally used to shape behaviour and to entrain
individuals.
This Paper is an excerpt from
“Energy Healing For Animals” by Silvia Hartmann.
For the original Harmony Programme and Harmony Programme
based dog training and behaviour manuals, please visit
http://A1Dog.com
Dear Reader.
The Harmony Programme is one of the most important things
I have discovered in my quest to seek a better understanding
of how the Universe works than I had been offered by my
various well meaning teachers alive and across the
centuries.
I have always had problems with charging for this
discovery or should I say, re-discovery of a truth about the
World and our interactions within it. The Harmony Programme,
if it was known and understood, would absolutely
revolutionise not just dog training – indeed, and as much as
I love dogs, it is not even here it is the most needed.
Every single day, everywhere where Western ideologies are
in place, little babies, disabled children, delinquents, old
people, sick people, all people are being treated
with dominance reduction and behaviourism. They still give
and withhold Smarties and privileges to seriously mentally
handicapped, helpless individuals, for Heaven’s sake. It is
the accepted practise everywhere and it perpetuates so much
suffering in so many different ways, it is literally scary.
Not everybody “gets” the Harmony Programme.
Some people do and have done, a long time before I got to
it but it was never properly written up like I’ve done as
far as I know. A S Neill, for example, the famous founder of
the Summerhill School, used to cure delinquent children way
back in the 1950’s by paying them for every time they wet
the bed or broke a pane of glass and their behaviour
would stop, too – as if by magic.
This is just one of a billion possible applications of
the Harmony Programme.
Therefore, and in spite of the fact I have to live in the
Hard and pay my mortgage, I offer this paper to you with
all copyright restrictions removed and for full
public distribution. You can share this with anyone and
everyone, freely, and I would encourage you to do so. You
can re-print it, copy bits from it, re-phrase it, re-name
it; you can even pretend you invented it if you need to. I
won’t sue you.
This information needs to be out there. Every single care
officer, dog trainer, parent, teacher, healer, psychologist
who gets even a little glimpse of the possibilities here for
healing, growth and change and tries it out, no matter how
half heartedly at first, is one more human who can help stem
the tides of negativity we are perpetuating each and every
day into the next generations and beyond by our lack of
understanding of the basic idea that needs need to be
filled in order to establish happiness and Even Flow.
With my best regards to you and all those who look to
gain attention from you,
Silvia Hartmann, January 2002
The Birth Of The Harmony Programme
|
Dominance Reduction Programs |
The Structure Of Attention Seeking Behaviour |
The Attention Seeking Behaviour Evolution |
The Cure For Attention Seeking Behaviour Disorders |
Animal Autism |
Trance Behaviours & Repetitive Behaviours |
The Harmony Programme In Brief |
Harmony In Action |
Positive VS Negative Energy Interactions |
Re-Connecting The Love |
* Exercise 1 – Falling In Love |
* Exercise 2 – Magic Moment |
* Exercise 3 – Remember ... |
* Exercise 4 – The Love Connection |
The Fear Of Love |
Healing With Love Energy |
* Exercise 5 – Ray Of Hope |
A Note From The Author And Copyright Holder |
Energy Healing For Animals
|
