After a quick chat about Astuce walking away when peace is offered, we diverted off into a remote healing conversation at about 1.30 minutes. Just watch how Anah is watching us while we discuss this. It is as though she is assessing the feelings around the discussion and deciding if she is happy with that or not. She is fascinatingly astute.
At about 4 minutes we are discussing relationships. What has to change, to change a behaviour? What has to change to improve physical health? What has to change to create a better relationship? What emotion needs to be acknowledged? Is it Anah’s or is it yours? Is it Astuce’s or is it yours?
We had a brief chat about boundaries at 8 minutes 40 as one of the donkeys presented herself quite forcefully.
At 13 minutes I felt the need to walk up quite directly to Atuce and scratch her. There was a little upset where thinking levels were raised within the herd and I just followed their energy. Then we bought it all down again by going Present.
16 minutes in the session we took a little time to practice finding our Present Moment, and then how to Regard what the donkeys were doing. We then talked about (19min 40) what we are doing/asking of the donkeys and how that is being communicated. Are we wanting to scratch them? Are we wanting to feed them? Are we wanting to be present with them? Currently we are trying to do it all so it is necessary to break it down further. Just beacuse Astuce decides she wants to be present with us doesn;t mean she is inviting a touch. At the moment it is the humans that are bringing thinking levels up with the donkeys.
You can see Anah releasing a lot (yawning) at 23 minutes, as we talk about being specific about what we need to happen or would like to happen, and how we bring thinking levels up instead of down after being present. She is very attentive around how confusing that can be and how good it is to slow things down.
We did an exercise at 30 minutes to practice going into the Present Moment. Anah and Astuce both joined us after a while. They said ” This is lovely, I want to join in”. We then did some more Present Moment with the donkeys.
At 36 minutes Astuce moved to touch both of you. She was asking a little bit for scratches but I sensed there was something more to this. It was more about understanding the need to be specific about what was happening Now, in this moment, rather than what you would like to happen. Allowing Astuce to touch without touching back, was enabling focus in the present.
We summarised everything at 47 minutes as follows:
Let go of the halter and the worry about trimming. Break the cycle. Practice PM and Regard. The halter will happen when it is meant to.
There was a couple of things in this session I wanted to note for myself and anybody else who may want to explore this area, and I welcome any alternative or additional thoughts.
The first one was a question asking ‘Why did the donkeys come to me when we were practicing the present moment and not to you?’ This is because when I go into presence I have no agenda, no expectations and no needs. I do not have an emotional relationship with them, so there is no confusion. We are just right here, right now. This is not the same with my own herd. I have an emotional connection with the herd of five that live with me and we have days where our connection is fabulous, and others where I wonder what happened, the same as you.
The second was around ‘remote healing’. This is an amazing talent when done properly but it does not take into consideration two things :
1) The changes that need to be made at the relationship level between you and the animal. It only focusses on communicating with the animal. The animal may have something to share about the relationship but your perspective is likely to be different; and
2) Time. Time is a man made concept and energy healing does not consider time as we intellectually consider it. As a human you may be looking for the ‘fix’ or the ‘change’, but this may not occur immediately. Something may need to change in you for you to be able to recognise the change created by the healing so in terms of time this could take months or years.
How Animal Connection and Beyond works is this. What we are not doing is teaching your animal to be what you want it to be. We are teaching you how to be the human your animal needs you to be.
For a bit more of an insight into my journey into the concept of time I have put a link to a post I wrote in september 2020.