HEALING HANDS

 

Linda Tellington-Jones is the world's most famous animal therapist. Her methods of massage have successfully treated behavioral problems and stress.

Head bent, eyes half closed - "Day Dream" looks like he is in a trance. Making circular movements with her hands, Linda Tellington-Jones strokes and pats the horse's neck and back. Whispering calming words to the horse, when her fingers come across a painful spot.

Nicole Uphoff, Olympic medallist and world champion dressage rider, is amazed. "Day Dream", a difficult horse, rarely lets anyone touch him. Later when she takes him for a test ride she discovers to her joy that the chestnut hardly shies and is no longer stubborn, and his distaste for being groomed has disappeared into thin air.

All Thanks to al little petting?

It's not as easy as it looks. It took the American animal therapist and internationally acclaimed trainer many years to develop her special technique.

A major source of inspiration to her were the theories of Moshe Feldenkrais, according to whom body and spirit, movement and consciousness are all connected. From his discoveries, the physicist and physiologist who died in 1984 concluded that you can approach the brain in a new way with gentle kinetotherapy.

Under her hands and fingers, animals relax. They calm down and their awareness becomes more acute. They show increased cooperativeness and the level of stress hormones in their bloodstream goes down. It awakens new nerve cells, activates unused nervous pathways and improves circulation.

Apart from horses, the patients she sees most often are dogs and cats. But even the San Diego, Frankfurt and Moscow zoos have called Tellington-Jones to their aid when they have run into trouble with their valuable inmates. The "Tellington Touches" even relieved stress in Kaiko the killer whale, who played in the movie "Free Willy".

So far, Linda Tellington-Jones has taught her method of healing to more than 400 people in twelve countries. She has published numerous books and videos and even has her own Web site: www.lindatellington-jones.com. Animal lovers practice her method at workshops and seminars - where they also learn how to treat their pets the way they should. After all, stress and behavioral disorders in animals are rarely the animalsī fault.
The 64-year-old American, one of five children, grew up on a farm in Alberta, Canada. As a multimedal dressage rider, show jumper, Western rider and successful horse breeder, Linda Tellington-Jones is at home in every saddle. Sometimes she clearly hear the word an animal speaks to her. She writes the words and the message in her diary. Many consider this to be esoteric non sense, but Tellington-Jones is immune to such skeptical views: She has made enough horses and different animals happy, after all, and with them their owners.