The Practice
My experience of communicating with animals doesn’t include human-type conversations. Just as I do when I work with dogs I’m training, I approach it from the point of view of the animal. So in that traditional sense where people want to have a full-on conversation with their animals, I don’t do that work. Mine is to create a bridge of understanding from human to animal, in a way that is based on how the individual animal thinks and expresses his/herself.
Shamanism, the practice that gave what I’ve always done framework and language.
Shamanism is the ancient spiritual practice from which all others and all religions have emerged, based on a principle called animism — everything that exists has a spiritual component or soul, and can be interacted with on a spiritual level. Evidence of ancient shamanic cultures appear through rock paintings and carvings all over the world, dating back 100,000 years or more.
Scientific hypotheses are proven when the theories are erased and the evidence reemerges organically anyway. For a spiritual practice to have existed successfully for this long, on separate continents where peoples couldn’t even communicate with each other, it is scientifically proven in my book. Again and again, we are seeing modern science catching up to measuring just how successful shamanic practices are.
​
I grew up an only child with pets, left to my own devices for hours everyday while my Mom worked from home and my Dad slaved away at the office. With pets as siblings, I was able to begin cultivating this way I work now from the time I was a 3-year-old. I didn’t know everyone couldn’t “speak animal” like I do, and I’ve felt a bit like Mowgli from The Jungle Book.
​
I first learned of shamanism when exploring my own personal healing from childhood trauma and extreme grief. I began studying with local legend, world-renowned, and highly respected spiritual leader and teacher, Sandra Ingerman, in 2018. She gave my experiences with animals words, she taught me practices that explained how I was able to do what I do when working with my dog training clients. That deepened drastically when I began studying at the Scandinavian Center for Shamanic Studies with Zara Waldebäck and Jonathan Horwitz in Sweden in 2020. If you are interested in learning more, you can visit my Animal Song Healing Shamanism website here. Now, I am incredibly honored to be co-authoring a book with Sandra, who is a multiple-time best-selling author, as she heads into retirement after 45 years of successfully bringing this work to western cultures.