It isn’t just Dr. Doolittle and Ace Ventura who can talk to animals. There are animal communicators that live and work everywhere, even here in Addison County. One of these communicators is Alyson Young, a certified energy medicine practitioner and animal communicator (as well as certified practitioner of several other holistic healing practices).
Young believes she has been communicating with animals throughout her life, but it became most apparent when she was a student of wildlife biology at the Washington State University, where she had an opportunity to work with Mari, a young moose that was abandoned by her mother.
“For my whole life I was perceiving things from animals and people, but it really started to become very solidified in the experience (of working with Mari),” Young says.
The young woman and the young moose worked together from when Mari was only three weeks old until she was full grown. Having bonded over that time, the adult moose continued to snuggle and lay her massive head on Young’s lap.
Young’s animal communicator practice developed as she began learning more about energy work and shamanism and the opportunity to do specific work with animal communication.
“It gave me a tool to utilize and ability to practice what I had been doing all along with intention and clarity,” she says.
In her practice, Young routinely works with animals to establish a relationship of trust and compassion. Whether in situations of abuse, neglect, anxiety, trauma or loss, Young connects with an animal and begins to learn about his or her complex histories and experiences.
Using information that comes to her through sensory cues such as images, words and visceral or emotional reactions, Young is often able to help bring owners and their pets to a deeper understanding of each other.
“Sometimes animal communication becomes as simple as offering myself as a liaison or facilitator between the people and the animals that they live with,” she says.
When behavioral or health issues present themselves, a more complex energetic component is called for, which Young employs, incorporating energy healing methods similar to reiki and other touch healing practices.
Consulting a professional animal communicator could be appropriate in many ordinary as well as complex situations. If a rescued animal displays signs of trauma or stress, is sick or injured, or acts aggressively or violently, an expert may be able to work with that animal to correct or understand behavior.
The communicator may also help find lost animals, too.
Communicator services can be relevant for families bringing a new animal into their home or to determine whether a specific match is going to be positive or negative. When families are going away on vacation, moving, experiencing a change in their household or experience loss, an animal communicator can help facilitate an easier transition for the animals.
Young says that in these types of situations, communicating with an animal as well as working with them through energy medicine and therapy can be an effective way for understanding why an animal is behaving the way it is and helping that animal realize that they are safe and secure.
“In discovering what is really the issue, we can learn what’s going on with the animal and what it needs, so that the family understands better how to support it,” Young says.
ENERGY WORK
The other piece, Young says, is finding the energetic component that is present in the animal’s body. Young works with the energy fields until the balance is restored and it’s no longer causing a continuous problem.
“Everything in its most basic form is simply energy,” she says. “So when things exist within our energetic body that cause imbalance or inhibit the flow of the life-force energy — when left like that unresolved, it can begin to manifest into physical or emotional conditions: discomfort, illness, disease.”
Young has had opportunities to work with animals on short-term bases for specific traumas or illness, as well as long-term sustained care with animals. She says her services can be helpful alone or as a part of a larger healing process to help facilitate care and recovery.
A typical course of work with an animal first involves a remote healing session, Young says. During these sessions, Young works to establish a connection with the animal while there is as little disruption to that animal as possible and they can remain in a neutral, safe environment.
Animal communicators and healers have many different ways of receiving information from animals. Some feel it kinesthetically, some empathetically, some receive images, words, scents or telepathic messages.
Young says she is able to receive many different kinds of feelings from animals, but most often she feels during these sessions as if she is present with the animal and is able witness what they are experiencing. Sometimes she says she can feel a particular energy in her own body when she is communicating with an animal, indicating to her that the animal has an issue with that body part. Other times Young will receive images of such things as plants or flowers that may be helpful in finding an aid for the animal.
Young combines these clues to draft a picture of that animal and what it needs. She conducts research on words, images, maps and other information she receives, to make sense of how each piece can help solve the puzzle.
Sometimes it doesn’t make sense at first, Young says.
“But inevitably when I go look it up I find that it makes perfect sense. It’s amazing!”
An office visit can be followed by home visits to see the animal in their environment, which helps the communicator collect more information and observe how that animal is reacting to various objects, other animals and people. Hands-on work that could include energy healing, use of herbal or floral essences and further dialogue with that animal would help supplement further care.
Young was once brought in to help with a donkey who had ongoing behavioral challenges that owner Pam Dunne was seeking to understand and better adapt to.
“Alyson’s work with my donkey Jenny was a special experience for all of us,” Dunne said. “She showed me that there is indeed a wider and deeper relationship that we can have with animals, especially the ones we share our lives with.”
Young works with many species of animals, from cats and dogs to horses and other barn animals. She has also communicated with wild animals, from Mari the moose to a swarm of hornets following an incident where a young child in their neighborhood was stung after stepping on the nest.
Young says she communicated the safety concerns to the hornets and requested that they relocate.
“I never saw them again after that,” she says.
This case demonstrated a universal truth for Young.
“When you’re speaking authentically with an animal about their safety and well-being — it’s not just ‘I don’t like you,’ but it’s ‘Here’s the situation,’” she said. “There’s usually a response.”