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By David Bowser CANYON, Texas — Standing in the dusty arena of the West Texas A&M University Equine Center, the horse begins to droop his head as Lynn Davis places her hands on the animal, until finally relaxed, the head drops almost between the horse’s knees. It is the same technique the Shawnee, Okla., woman used on a Thoroughbred son of Secretariat. Using a method known as Healing Touch for Animals (it is derived from a program for humans called Healing Touch), Davis is one of a growing number of practitioners across the nation who works on animals with injuries, stress and behavioral problems. "There was a little lady," Davis says, "and she owned three or four Thoroughbred stallions. She lived by herself, and she had just moved on a new property." The woman had a valuable Secretariat son, Davis says. The stallion, however, was disturbed by being in a strange place, and the mares weren't where they used to be. "He was just pacing and panicked and rearing and pawing," Davis recalls. The owner was afraid he would hurt himself. "She practically had to lasso him," Davis continues. "She couldn't get a halter on him." Davis went up to the horse and performed one technique on him for five minutes. "This was a horse you couldn't halter," Davis reminds. She used the communication technique of putting her hands on his withers and his chest. "I said, 'This is your new house,'" Davis says. "'Your job here is to stay in your paddock, stay safe, get fat and sassy so that you can breed mares and mares will want to come and see you, and your mares are safe. You don't need to worry about protecting them.' "I just kind of explained what was going on to him. I used words so the owner would know what I was saying, but what he was understanding was the energy." The stallion relaxed almost immediately. "It was like, 'Whew, I'm glad somebody told what is going on,'" she says. "Within three minutes, his head had dropped between his knees, he was totally relaxed, and he didn't pace the paddock after that. If he'd get a little wound up at feeding time or something, I told her to tell him, 'Remember.'" Davis is excited about the results she gets from these holistic energy medicine techniques. "It's really amazing some of the outcomes that you can get," Davis says. Healing touch for animals was developed by a Colorado woman almost a decade ago. "Carol Komitor was the founder of healing touch for animals," Davis says. Komitor established HTA in 1996, after years of experience in the veterinary field, private energy medicine practice, and studies with healing touch, reiki and other energy modalities. Healing touch for animals, Davis says, was derived from healing touch, a technique used on people. "Carol had been a veterinarian assistant for 13 years," Davis says, "and she had been doing healing touch on people. People kept coming to her and saying, 'How would this work on my dog?’ or ‘Do you think this could work on my cats?'" Davis says Komitor kept getting calls concerning healing touch and animals. "So she essentially founded HTA," Davis says, "and has developed all of the techniques." Komitor used her knowledge of healing touch with people to develop the techniques that she and her disciples use to help different types of animals. They work with horses, dogs, cats and other mammals, plus reptiles, birds and fish. Komitor has worked with individual cattle and with a couple of herds of cattle. Healing touch for animals is a biofield energy therapy that bridges holistic animal health care with traditional veterinary medicine, Komitor says on her website, www.healingtouchforanimals.com. "Because of the way it works," Davis says, "there is a physiological basis that makes the animal relax. Because of the animal relaxing, it releases endorphins from the brain. Those endorphins cause further relaxation of muscles and increase blood flow. Out of that, more nutrients, hormones and oxygen get to the cells. That promotes healing. Physiologically, there is a scientific method to how it works." Healing touch for animals improves an animal's health through complementary energy therapy, she says. "It works with their energy fields," Davis continues. "It's a technique that uses intention to balance the energy field and promote health and healing." Davis explains that all living things have energy fields. Those fields are essentially what register on EKG and EEG machines. "Every living being does," she says. "If we intend for energy to go in a certain direction, that is an intention of changing your energy field. By thinking about that, intending for that to happen, that allows it to happen." It's directing energy, Davis continues, and changing energy patterns. "That's the easiest way to think about it," she says. She says it can be used with any living being. "We do it with small animals," Davis says. "We do it with horses." Several of the practitioners have used it on cattle. "We had a gentleman a couple of classes ago who was a cattle person," Davis says. "He came specifically to learn how to work with his cattle." His goal, she says, was to work with "throwaway" cattle, cattle that were sickly and wouldn't have brought much at the sale barn. "When they ran them through the auction, they didn't sell well," Davis says. "He would get some of these cattle and he would work on them and get them healthier, and then run them back through the auction at a later time when they were more marketable." The applications are broad, she says. "Really, your imagination is the only thing that limits how this works," Davis contends. For example, she says, cows have a herd mentality. Dogs have individual personalities, but cows all follow the leader. "You can actually do some techniques with the intention that you want the whole herd to understand what's going on," Davis says. Several practitioners have reported success in dealing with herds of animals. "Let's say I was trying to round up a whole herd and get them on a truck and dealing with the stress of transportation," Davis says. "Or I needed to vaccinate them and do all the kinds of things you do with cows. Having an ability to communicate with them, having the ability to calm the herd and keep them cooperative, they know they're not being rammed around or going to be hurt. ‘We're trying to help you and do things you need done.’" It can help facilitate that process, she says. "There are specific techniques, such as if someone had traumatic calving or traumatic lambing problems, you could use certain techniques immediately after delivery to help the mother recover from the delivery," Davis says. One of the first areas with which Komitor became involved in her therapy was cutting and reining horses. Some of Komitor's techniques were used to help a horse that had a torn ligament and had to be pulled from competition. Komitor, Davis says, was able to bring the horse back to where it could successfully compete again. "It made her back into a world champion," Davis says. "This particular horse's name was Delight. I don't know what her full registered name was, but she was a cutting horse." All the techniques are used to complement veterinary medicine. Davis is quick to point out that they don't replace veterinary skills. "We don't diagnose," she says. "We don't treat medical problems. We use this to augment traditional medicine." Delight's ligament had reached a plateau, Davis says, and hadn't healed any further. She was going to be permanently out of competition. "Carol actually developed some special techniques that allowed this horse to continue healing and get back into competition," Davis says. "We see this on a regular basis." She says it has been especially effective with competition horses suffering minor injuries that prevent them from doing their best. Healing touch helps them relax prior to the competition so they can give the competition their best effort. "Basically, the techniques involve placing your hand on different energy centers and balancing the energy," Davis explains. "One particular technique that's very useful in competition animals is called ‘bridging’." The practitioner places her hands on different energy centers. "With the bridging of those two energy centers, we're able to communicate in a very special way with that animal," Davis says. "It's not like the animal all of a sudden learns to speak English or anything, but energetically we're able to communicate and say, 'This is the big day. We want you to do your very best. This is the competition. You're in a strange place. You're going to be okay.'" Being able to communicate to the animal what the expectations are, what their job is, can really help them, Davis says. "I've been a nurse for 24 years," Davis notes. "When I got my master's degree in nursing, I learned some things about energetic and complementary practices." She says that about four years ago she found out about healing touch for people. Shortly after that, she learned of healing touch for animals. "I've been an animal person all my life," Davis says. "I have horses. I have dogs. I have cats." She shows horses, and says she was hooked on healing touch for animals immediately. "You can just do so many fabulous things," she says. Davis works with her own animals and with others, mostly around the Oklahoma City area. "We're growing all over," Davis says of the program. "There are actually people in Canada and all over the United States." On this day about a dozen people are gathered for the workshop in the horse barn at the equine center. Some of the people have never been around horses before, Davis says. Others are horse savvy. Davis explains to them that they will be using similar techniques to those used on dogs and small mammals, but which have been adapted to be safely used with horses. "The neat thing about horses, comparatively speaking, is that their energy fields are huge, so it's really fun for the students to be able to experience how much energy they possess," she says. Many of the horses here this Sunday morning have been used in the university's handicapped therapy program. "Many of them are elderly, and they have ‘issues’," Davis says. "It's nice to be able to help the animals as they helped our handicapped children." She says she and the students learn from these animals as they try to help the horses. It's a never-ending educational process. "Our goal is to make this a mainstream way to help animals in collaboration with veterinarians," Davis says, "so that someday it's available to everybody and all the animals." Healing touch for animals is a business, Davis says, and conducts workshops across the nation. Davis was in Amarillo for a workshop dealing with dogs, then came to Canyon for a session with horses earlier this year. Having just finished weekend workshops in Amarillo and Denver, others are planned this month in Baltimore and Minneapolis. Workshops are planned during April in Cincinnati, Detroit, and Charlotte, North Carolina. |
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