Mind/Body Equine Therapies – BodyTalk

BodyTalk can be used with humans or animals and can be done in-person, or surrogately, or remotely (distance healing). A friend of mine said he’s had amazing results for himself after a few sessions. But I was really interested in how it works with horses, dogs, cats and other animals.

BodyTalk is one of those therapies with a complex charting system, so even practitioners can find it hard to describe succinctly exactly WHAT it is.

After experiencing a live session with BodyTalk practitioner, Güliz Ünlü, I had a good feel for what it is and then found this pretty nifty, concise explanation from Sima Chowdhury:

“Body Talk is a holistic therapy that involves the practitioner tuning into the client’s energy field. The traditional way it’s done uses muscle testing and questions. By asking the body’s innate wisdom what it needs, the practitioner can help the client feel better on a physical, emotional and spiritual level depending on what the client needs.

The practitioner often keeps track of the session by writing down notes and linking them together to keep the issues focused in her mind. When the innate wisdom indicates that no further linking is needed, the practitioner will tap the head and heart to co-ordinate healing within the body.

Tapping the head commits the instructions to the head and tapping the heart allows those instructions to be circulated by the heart to all the parts of the body.

The Body Talk System combines different modalities of healing including Traditional Chinese Medicine, anatomy, and physiology, energy systems such as chakras and meridians, knowledge of microbes, environmental factors, DNA, traumatic events, astrology and families as well as other groups of people that may impact the individual. There are 9 levels for the advanced certification, with more available to help practitioners continue learning and growing.

What makes the Body Talk System unique is the amount of detailed information you can get in a session. Depending on the practitioner you can go deep into the DNA to do cellular repair. Because I have a chemistry background, I often go into the atoms and molecules that require extra attention, or if the practitioner is skilled in counseling, emotional issues might come up first.”

I really like Sima’s explanation, because she recognizes that the practitioner (and their strengths and preferences) are definitely part of the session.

I felt led to book a session with Güliz (pronounced geuw-liz – her name is Turkish) for our cat Stitch. She and her sister were chosen by my children from a feral litter on a friend’s farm who were getting eaten one-by-one. My eldest son chose Stitch and she very quickly bonded to both him and me. About three years ago Stitch came home with an entire strip torn off her back – down to raw flesh. We surmised that she had gotten into a fight with one of raccoons that lived in our yard and the neighbours’ yard; a mother with 4 young ones.

Raccoon cooties

Although some people told me that it’s rare for cats to survive a raccoon attack (their saliva is pretty noxious) and that the hair was unlikely to ever grow back, through a rotating application of various herbs etc. and her own strong will and healthy self (she is fed raw meat, bone, organ, salmon oil and probiotics) she healed her back to where it now looks like this:

However, new wounds kept appearing on her neck and shoulder where she would literally rip her own hair/flesh out:

When I connected with Stitch, I got an image of things crawling in her bloodstream, under her flesh. So I gave her 2, 2-week courses of oral wild oregano oil. Yes, you must be very careful dosing cats with essential oils and many herbalists/vets say you should never do it. However, I have used it numerous times on cats, dogs and horses – always listening to the animal’s body wisdom – with only positive effects. Except nothing changed for Stitch.

When I connected with her again, I received, “Can you appreciate all the good things about me? Can you just accept me the way I am, without trying to change me?”

Yes, I can. So I left her alone for about 5 months and then had the idea to book her with a vet who does acupuncture and homeopathics. At $200 per visit, I told Stitch she gets one kick at that can! The acupuncture improved things (less heat on her back, lessening of wounding for a while – although hard to tell as this is cyclical anyway), but nothing significant.

Stitch and I experience BodyTalk

Another 4 months passed – where I just left her alone and loved her. Keep in mind that aside from this wounding, she is perfectly fine and healthy in every other aspect. Then I felt moved to book a session for her with Güliz. I had been wanting to experience BodyTalk anyway, and none of my horses had any need for it (Güliz works a lot with horses) so this was the ideal opportunity.

In our session with Güliz, BodyTalk was only one of the techniques she utilized with Stitch; because she is also trained in Equi-Bow equine bodywork (Feldenkrais, Craniosacral and Bowen Technique) and Linking Awareness (intercellular and animal communication). Güliz defines her work this way:

“My work is Psychospiritual. It combines psychology, hard science and physics. It’s taking a look at energy at all levels and interpreting it into something tangible and understandable to the untrained mind. It is years of travel and gathering wisdom, information, techniques, courses, and certificates from teachers of the human kind and the animal kind. I like to think of my work as Life Support through the eyes of your animals.”

BodyTalk can appear like a whole lot of unintelligible mumbling and hand movements as the practitioner runs through charts of physical, energetic and emotional factors that are all linked and cross-linked. As you can see from the chart below – there is a lot to run through.

BodyTalk founder/creator, Dr John Veltheim says, “We believe the body contains all the information and all the abilities to heal itself in the vast majority of cases. All we have to do is set up the right conditions for that to occur.”

The important piece of Veltheim’s story for me, is that through healing himself of a chronic virus, he pieced together a protocol that can then be used to align the body for self-healing. Here’s what that protocol looks like:

There. Is that complicated enough for you? I have to say – as someone who healed myself of a supposedly incurable disease – that over the course of my Healing Journey I visited many practitioners who were utilizing complex, cross-linked, multi-layered systems like this (all called different names) and I have to say that none of them stood out as being particularly effective – or more effective than any other.

What I found does make a difference is the quality and sentience (ability to feel and perceive) of the practitioner. So what I always try to look for is someone who has a heart for healing; I look for people with multiple healing modalities in their toolbox. In my experience, healing is rarely a mapped out chart. It is a full-color painting, or a complex, woven tapestry. The good healers understand this and their thirst for fluency as an artist or weaver of healer is unending.

Like EFT Tapping, BodyTalk can be done surrogately for an animal, or for remote/distance healing.

So would I use BodyTalk on it’s own? No. It is too regimented and systemized for me. It also relies heavily on Applied Kinesiology (muscle testing), of which there are clinical trials showing it is useful, and others showing it is unreliable. My own experience with Applied Kinesiology is that the practitioner’s intent (beliefs etc.) can easily enter that feedback loop, so unless the person using it is aware of the energetic transfer, and skilled at removing or blocking their own stuff, then it can be inaccurate.

So although BodyTalk has some really great tools to offer, I prefer practitioners who are simultaneously drawing from a number of talents or methods; being guided by flow and intuition. In Güliz’s case, her direct communication with my cat, Stitch, provided a lot of the direction for the session. It also resulted in our two biggest take-aways:

Raccoon guilt

Güliz received information that Stitch was feeling guilty over the raccoon, that they were actually friends and the raccoon hurt her by mistake. And the raccoon also feels bad. This actually makes sense, because I remembered marveling that the cats did not run away from the raccoons and would often run after them, ducking under a hole in the fence to follow them.

So then Güliz had a process to bring the raccoon in for healing too. After the session, Stitch disappeared for two days and we wondered if she’d gone to find her friend – the raccoons left our yard when our dog Tiah arrived.

Stich has a lot to say

Right at the beginning of the session, as Güliz tuned into Stitch and began the BodyTalk process, she said what was coming from Stitch – but also from the greater animal kingdom – was a desire for witness. To have the story realized; there is something in the animal world spirit that wants to come out.

Then about an hour later, towards the end of the session, Güliz said, “Stitch has so much to say, it’s hard to keep up – too fast for us humans. You know, this might sound really weird, but put a pen and paper up in her perch. It can just be a little scrap of paper, just as a symbol”

I grabbed a small spiral notebook and a pen embossed with Listen To Your Freedom (the name of my biz program) as I felt that was particularly fitting. And as I placed them there I had a sneaking suspicion as to what would come next.

Sure enough, the next day Stitch fixed me with her intense green laser stare and I knew she wanted me to record her words on paper.

Although I had tons of pressing biz stuff to do, I felt the gravity of her request, so pushed all work thoughts out of my mind, grabbed a notebook and Listen To Your Freedom pen and swiveled my chair to face her and link up. This is what she dictated:

“I love life. Life is really exquisite. Sometimes it gets complicated, but when my paws touch the good green earth, all is right again.

I am a medicine cat – this means I can transmute energy. All you have to do is ask. I am listening always.

I have lived many lifetimes. I am wise. I am a sage. I have lived in many forms; energetic and physical.

I could have healed these wounds, like Luna [a medicine woman horse I once had], but I was waiting for you to notice WHO I AM. To listen. To seek me out for what ALL I had to say – not just as it pertains to you. Or what you desire from me. Just in witness of me. Of the magnificence that I am embodying. My manifestation in this form (wise, sage) has taken eons to develop and embody. I simply ask you to see. Regarder. I AM. Namaste.”

Then Stitch asked me to read back to her out loud what I’d written down. I felt this as a sacred request – something of tremendous gravity and importance to her. As I began to read, the power in the room was palpable and almost made me dizzy; like right on the edge of dizziness.

As I read, she continued to stare intently at me from her perch atop my bookshelves. Then half-closed her eyes – the way cats do – and rested her head on her paws. We just exchanged love for a while and then I turned back to my work.

The next day I was again working at my desk. Stitch had come in (through the dog door) during the night and was once again sleeping on her perch. I must have felt her gaze on me, because I swiveled my chair around and she was staring intently at me. Oh my gosh – again? Is this going to be a daily occurrence?

So I grabbed my pen and paper as she said:

“If I need to leave, you must not be scared. I can do my work from anywhere. Sometimes the effort to heal is more – far more – than the effort to transition. So why bother? Why suffer and get caught in the illusion?”

Then I felt the word, POEM. Okay, so I turned to a fresh page. And here’s what Stitch dictated next:

LIFESTREAM

by Stitch Medicine Cat

Life is a sparkle

existing simultaneously on many stages

flowing effortlessly one into another

and in the spaces in-between

Sweetness is in many forms

Will you allow yourself to partake

to revel, to swim, to submerge

in the green pool in the forest glen

in the clear running icy mountain stream

in the pounding surf of the white sand beach

in the hanging tendrils of the mangrove swamp

There is no good and bad

All is about experience

Descend into the murky green of my eyes

and see what treasures lurk there

The thing I find hilarious is that I do not write poetry! Yet both Stitch and my Andalusian mare Zorra have dictated poems to me (and others). It kinda makes me chuckle. The other interesting thing I just noticed – after re-reading these a few times – is how many times she uses the word green, which is the color of her eyes.

And so, we continue on this journey – that may, or may not, result in the physical healing of Stitch’s recurring wounds. If not, it’s because there is more to learn, more to be revealed. At all times, I find it useful to ask myself: The body is speaking; what is it saying?

Güliz came out to my barn to do the follow-up session with Stitch and she said the only thing coming up was “Kesia” which mystified Güliz. But she has been doing this work long enough to not question seemingly bizarre bits of information! Güliz has never met Kesia – she has just connected with her through this blog. I, of course, instantly knew what it meant and emailed Kesia that Stitch wanted to dictate something to her. Perhaps, like Zorra, Stitch will give her a song… or a poem, or??

BodyTalk Cortices Technique

And so I shall leave you with a direct experience of BodyTalk – you can follow along as BodyTalk founder, Dr. John Veltheim, demonstrates The Cortices Technique. If you have hit your head recently, or experience dizziness, brain fog, headaches, etc. this technique is fabulous and I felt the difference immediately. I changed it a little bit, by tapping longer (7 taps each) on the head and heart and then by switching hands and doing the whole sequence again – because that felt better for me.

The video description says:  The brain is the core of the human body it controls the way the body communicates with all it’s various parts. This in turn controls our amazing healing abilities. When the brain’s function is compromised the body cannot properly heal.

The Cortices Technique allows for increased brain function and connectivity between all the parts of the body. Since the body communicates using electricity and quantum energy this technique has an amazing effect on the body by allowing the body to reconnect broken or overloaded circuits. The technique has been demonstrated by EMS Response teams to bring trauma patients out of shock when at the scene of accidents. The basic ideal is to hold the point of injury and to perform the technique on the patient. This has the effect of allowing the body to address the injury and to do what is necessary. In the case of a trauma victim they could be bleeding to death and the brain is so overloaded that it doesn’t send the healing instructions to clot the blood. The victim then dies due to the fact that the body can’t respond. By performing the Cortices Technique on the patient the brain is able to address the problem and allow the body to engage in the healing crisis and to clot the blood.

Dr. Veltheim recommends that in this day and age where we have so much electromagnetic radiation, that this technique can be performed twice a day for 2 or 3 months as a general maintenance routine. The person performing the technique will notice many changes in their body due the increased ability of the brain to deal with the daily stresses of life.

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If you have any questions for Güliz, just leave them below. Or come on out to the Healing With Horse Symposium in Arizona next month, as both Güliz and I are presenting some juicy stuff there!

Jini

Jini Patel Thompson is a natural health writer and Lazer Tapping instructor. She began riding at age 2 in Kenya, and got her first horse at age 8 in Alberta, and so continues a life-long journey and love affair with these amazing creatures.