Holistic Healing: It’s not just for people anymore.
It is commonplace for rescue animals to have behavioral problems but it is not always simple to fix the problems. A rescue pup was always shaking and panting whenever she was in the car. It had been going on for many months. She turned to an animal healer for help. After two sessions the problematic behaviors ended and the dog has since thrived. It has been over 8 months and the pup continues to feel good when driving in the car.
Holistic medicine has become a widely accepted alternative and supplement to “western medicine” in this country — for people, that is. In fact, according to a 2016 New York Times article, it has become a $30.2 billion a year industry. Yet relatively few people are aware either that holistic healing for animals also exists.
Like its human counterparts, holistic animal healing comes in many forms, from those that are relatively familiar such as acupuncture, nutrition, massage, and aromatherapy to less well-known approaches that include Tellington TTouch, Reiki for animals, and applied zoopharmacognosy.
Tellington TTouch was developed by Linda Tellington and is used principally for training and behavior work on dogs and horses. It is a gentle and respectful method of training that, according to Tellington improves cooperation and respect between all animals and their people. Over 1600 practitioners in 36 counties have been trained and certified in this approach.
As in the area of human medicine, there is beginning to be an overlap between traditional veterinary medicine that depends exclusively on pharmacology and more holistic veterinary practices. Indeed one of the best-known zoopharmacognosists in the UK, Carolyn Ingraham, author of numerous books on animal healing, including “Animal Self-Medication” commonly works with veterinarians.
In the wild animals eat plants that have medicinal properties to heal themselves. She has demonstrated through her work that domesticated animals have not lost this ability and can, given a range of natural substances to choose from, select those that will best address their particular ailments.
Again, in common with its human counterpart, animal holistic healing takes a whole “being” approach, addressing balance at all levels between mind, body, and spirit. One of the best-known veterinarians to adopt such a holistic approach is Dr. Marty Goldstein whose work is the subject of the award-winning documentary “The Dog Doc”.
Goldstein’ philosophy is to improve the overall health of his patients rather than merely treating a disease. The movie poses”a serious question about whether we are over medicating our pets, our children, and ourselves”.
Because holistic healing addresses the whole animal, and because the physical and psychological are often so interrelated, it can help both problems that present as being physical or those that appear to be behavioral.
So, for instance, returning to Carolyn Ingraham, she has often found that what presented as a behavioral problem — cowering, aggression, anxiety or depression — in fact came from undiagnosed pain. Hence an animal being offered herbs like violet leaf for emotional problems would ignore this and choose something for pain, such as arnica.
It has to be said that despite the growth in holistic veterinarian practices, many remain highly skeptical of non-traditional approaches, largely because of the lack of scientific studies proving their effectiveness. In the face of this skepticism, healers ask, how then do you explain the thousands of stories like that of the rescue dog.