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THE HARMONY PROGRAMME
Welcome back. I have a notion that I am today speaking to a very
different person – more confident, more centred and more purposeful
– than when we first embarked on this course of learning and
exploration together.
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:
The Harmony
Programme
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 DRPs 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 DRPs 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 DRPs 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 DRPs, 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".
DRPs worked, right? The owners were just not doing them hard enough!
The effect of tightening up on the DRPs 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 DRP, 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 DRP
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 DRPs 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 DRP 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 DRPs
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 DRP 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.
What exactly is love?
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.
DRPs Strangle Love
With this new mindset I went back and looked again what happens in
the interactions when a DRP 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 DRP 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.
Understanding The Structure Of Attention Seeking Behaviour
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;
- a baby fed immediately has a better immune system, less sleep
disturbances, even more intelligence (!) as umpteen scientific
studies now decree;
- the caretakers of a baby that is fed immediately experience
massively less stress, less psychological disorders and less
psychosomatic disease because the baby is easier to satisfy
and cries markedly less overall.
This process is the exact template for energy exchanges of the
"love" kind.
Attention seeking behaviour is a feedback device designed to alert
those who can do something about it that there is a shortfall in an
energy system that cannot be alleviated by other forms of energy but
specifically needs to be fed by the attention of others.
As an aside, it is my supposition that even universal Christ love
cannot satisfy the human circuitry set up to process and utilise human
energy input. It can, however, feed the overall system enough to
stave off full collapse if it can be successfully received on a regular
basis.
Attention seeking behaviour is set up so that reflexively and unless
there are mitigating circumstances, western humans will automatically
draw back and refuse to give that attention.
It is extraordinary how we have been programmed to think of
"neediness" as a terrible character flaw and to jump on it
viciously and trying to extinguish it at every possible opportunity, no
matter how insane and totally crippling such behaviour may be.
For example, you may have come across the way that young medical
doctors are kept awake due to an insane rota system for days on end.
Here the "need that must not speak it’s name" is sleep.
Everyone needs sleep for maximum functioning. No-one whatsoever is
served by a tired, unconcentrated doctor – not the system, not the
doctor, not the nurses, and most totally not, the patients. Yet that
system is still in place and there is tremendous resistance to changing
it.
Tutor Comment: The Attention Seeking Behaviour Evolution
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.
The Cure For Attention Seeking Behaviour Disorders
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.
Tutor Comment: Animal Autism
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.
Tutor Comment: Trance Behaviours & Repetitive Behaviours
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.
The Harmony Programme In Brief
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.
Harmony In Action
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.
Positive VS Negative Energy Interactions
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.
Re-Connecting The Love
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.
* Exercise 1 – Falling In Love
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.
* Exercise 2 – Magic Moment
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:
* Exercise 3 – Remember ...
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.
* Exercise 4 – The Love Connection
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.
Tutor Comment – The Fear Of Love
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.
Healing With Love Energy
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.
* Exercise 5 – 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.
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://A1Harmony.com
and http://sidereus.org/eha.htm
Details are on http://sidereus.org/eha.htm
but The Harmony Article is specifically NOT an EFT course in any shape
or form although the protocol is in the addendum in Unit 8 on distance
healing. Please visit the site to discover more about energy healing.
A Note From The Author And Copyright Holder
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 withold Smarties and priviledges 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 |
