The Touch Tells All, a day with Linda Tellington Jones

July 2010 has seen its share of venomous bites and high temperatures in Santa Fe, New Mexico. "My" assistance dog Emma was recently bitten by a slithering critter ( the vet suspects a dry snake bite, but it could have been a six inch centipede) which caused her fragile face to swell and her eyes to become light sensitive. After a few visits to the vet and opthamologist, Emma had greatly improved. As part of Emma's healing curve, the Founder of Assistance Dogs of the West, Jill Felice, had extended to me and Emma an invitation to attend a lecture with world renowned animal healer Linda Tellington Jones.

I was not new to Linda's work. In Kentucky, where I had worked with Event Horses, I had attended an Equitana Trade Show and had purchased books and DVD's by her and had handily applied that knowledge to my horse and some horses who balked at hands near faces, and vets approaching. The results were quick and dramatic. These lessons were available to me again with a different concentration ---- the knowldege was now to be applied on smaller four legged creatures of the canine variety.

And so Emma and I arrived to the Santa Fe Rodeo Grounds on Saturday July tenth and entered the conference room replete with dogs on fancy cushions, dogs on well clad laps, dogs in well fashioned crates, and dogs sequestered in elaborate playpens with owners and caretakers nearby. I felt naked with Emma. We had entered the room with merely a halter and leash. But as Linda Tellington Jones warm words were delivered and hands took action, the self-consciousness abated and the healing began.

Our morning session began with the subject of anxious dogs. Specifically Dogs made anxious by fireworks, thunderstorms and the like. We've all known dogs that lay frantic and shaking under beds or in our arms when those thunderous sounds bellow after the flash of light. On the farm in Kentucky, I had known a typically bold and courageous Heinz 57 dog named Hanna who would cower in the corner with tail "barnacled" ( a new word for Websters) to her haunches with the onslaught of thunder. What to do? Linda had suggestions. Linda brought one thunder-fear-filled client's dog up to a table and applied a "thunder shirt"( a soft shirt made of formidable fabric) which wraps securely around the dog. Once securely wrapped, the dogs feels fortified in the presence of thunder and sudden such noises. I mentioned to Linda that it reminded me of Temple Grandin's (see earlier blog entry) squeeze shoot which she used to help her during bouts of anxiety spawned by her autism. Linda nodded appreciatively and said that it worked off a similar principle.

Linda moved on to illustrate some healing moves, all a part of her now famous "T-Touch"-- A series of hand movements used
to increase cellular communication so that a tense and or traumatized animal would become a healed and well integrated one. The corner stone to her touch technology involves using one pointer and middle finger, pressing gingerly and gently in just over a full circular movement clockwise, resting for a moment, and moving on to an adjacent area, covering the totality of the creature, avoiding senstive areas, until the creature is calm. The various hand movements and techniques read like a list of zoo animals, "coil python, raccoon, abalone, bear claw, lying leopard", and it is no wonder as Linda Tellington Jones has been called by many a world class zoo to help heal animals that zoos haven't been able to heal utilizing conventional methods. But how does it work, and where did this Tellington Jones T-touch come from? Inquiring minds wanna know!

Linda's work arose out of her life long commitment to animals sparked by her childhood home, where animals of all sorts lived and dwelled. Linda began riding horses at age four, traveled on horseback to class through Canadian snow bound lanes, soon began competing on horses, only to later join forces (both in matrimony and career) with fellow equestrian and mentor Wentworth Tellington. Together they opened the Pacific Coast Equestrian Research Farm in Los Osos, California which conducted clinical research for the "improvement of equine performance and care as well as the Pacific Coast School of Horsemanship. After over a decade of success there, Linda divorced, went off on her own, searching for a different destination where she could expand her world beyond equine education. She sold her stable full of horses traveled to Zurich, Germany, collaborated with fellow equestrians involved in Equitana Horse Trade Fairs, and returned to the states to study under Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais over the next four years. Feldenkrais, now famous for his revolutionary methods of mind body reintegration, taught Linda how to utilize non threatening movements to activate unused neural pathways to bypass areas of tension and trauma spawning healing and transformation with humans.

Linda took what she had learned from Feldenkrais, a lifetime of living amongst animals, and some massage techniques her Grandfather had learned from Russian Gypsies while training Tsar Nicholas II's prized Thoroughbred Race horses, added a hefty dash of her well developed intuition, and voila, T- Touch for Horses, Hounds, and now Humans...........

From the front of the room, Linda came to where Emma and I now stood. She bent down to greet Emma. Her well honed hands cupped Emma's eyes in the "Abalone" movement. She gently massaged the spot between Emma's eyes, the spot that Yogi's would call the "third eye". She gently gathered ground across Emma's bodies donning the healing circles with raccoon touches all across little Emma's golden coat. Emma emanated joy. And in the end, I had a special communication that my hands could deliver to Emma. We walked away from the Rodeo Grounds with a prescription for improvement and healing.

To learn more about Linda and her Touch visit her website www.touch.com