Animal Healers: The Pet Whisperers

As Mallika Sahota, 43, entered the home of her newest client in Gurgaon’s Sushant Lok Phase-I, she started noticing changes in ‘energy fields’ from the front lawns all the way to the patient’s bedroom. Inside the room, her patient, as previously advised by her, was seated on a spotless white blanket on the floor, wearing nothing more than a red bindi on her forehead. In all four corners of the room, silver bowls of crystal- charged water, lavender candles and white marbles had been arranged in concentric circles. Sahota wasted little time. After quickly unpacking her amethyst wand, she began her 45-minute session by getting down on her knees and meditating silently for 15 minutes. This, she explained, was her way of gaining the patient’s consent and connecting with her ‘white angels’, an essential step in the process of colour cleansing. She then carefully drizzled a mixture of elderflower essence, tulsi, neem, chandan and crushed damask rose petals onto the forehead of her bewildered patient—Dixie, a six-year-old French Bulldog.

“Dixie’s owners approached me two days ago for help. The dog had been limping for the past one month and has become increasingly lethargic. They tried allopathic medication and treatment, but it only worsened the condition as the frequent injections and drugs made her hostile and fearful of strangers,” says Sahota. When Seema and Sudhir Mattu, Dixie’s ‘parents’, heard about Sahota’s energy healing and psychic practices for animals, they decided to give it a shot. “The minute I walked into Dixie’s circle of energy, I immediately sensed that the animal was in pain and her aura was that of severe depression. My treatmentwill take around two months and will involve a mixture of aura cleansing, water therapy, colour correction and reiki,” adds Sahota, who only takes on clients through references. “I want to avoid people who are non-believers and sceptics. There are people who fix appointments just to mock my practices. Thankfully, such people have reduced over the last few years. Genuine interest in animal healing and therapy has become much more prominent as people turn toward alternate forms of treatment.”

The interest is certainly there. While a decade ago there wasn’t a single certified animal healer, the country now boasts of nine different clinics run by certified healers in the National Capital Region, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata. Charging anything between Rs 2,000 and Rs 4,000 for an initial consultation,followed by a recommended course that can cost around Rs 750 to Rs 3,000 per day, healing for animals has emerged as a cost-effective alternative to expensive—and often painful—veterinary treatments. Many healers, such as Madhu Kotiya, who founded the Shezaim Delhi Tarot Network and now runs her own animal healing clinic in Delhi’s Alaknanda neighbourhood, claim a nearly 100 per cent success rate.

“If we weren’t successful, then why would my clinic still be running today, nine years from the day I first began? Wica magic and healing is about the transfer and rectification of energy flows. Almost all pain that we experience today stems from unbalanced and negative energy. I heal this,” says Kotiya, adding that she was born a psychic and has been healing people from the age of six. “I started healing animals with my own Golden Retriever, who had injured her hip in a car accident. The result was almost immediate; not only did she start to heal faster physically, but she sought the energy from my crystals and wand by moving closer to each and getting excited before each session. It’s ironic, but animals are easier to heal than humans because they ask less questions and keep their mouth shut,” she jokes. Kotiya, who has healed all types of animals from wild cows to pet Dobermans and German Shepherds, says that she has never once been attacked, bitten or harmed by any of her patients. “Healing is not a forced therapy like surgery, oral medicine and injections. It is a two-way process and happens with the consent of the patient. An animal can immediately sense the positive vibes, spiritual energies and the genuine warmth coming from the healer; they instinctively know that we mean no harm. Moreover, I always connect to the animal’s white angels on a psychic level, they help guide me to choose the correct form of treatment and healing for the animal.” Kotiya currently offers crystal healing, angel therapy, energy correction, hypnotherapy, spiritual healing and tarot healing for animals. She charges no fees for healing a pet. Instead, she urges her clients to donate to Red Paws Rescue, an animal NGO founded by one of her psychic students.

Two years ago, Kripa Randhawa, 21, nearly lost her pet Persian cat to a bout of severe pneumonia. A two-week course of heavy antibiotics only added to the animal’s distress, leaving her weak and irritable. “She used to love chasing a shoestring but the medicines made her so weak that she could barely lift a paw. I kept going to the vet but he only prescribed more and more medicines. He never treated her as a living being, never once took into consideration her feelings or emotions,” says Randhawa, a history graduate residing in Chennai. That was when she came across a blog on animal healing run by Naran Mudra, an animal psychic with a private practice in Delhi. “The more I read about energy, the more I felt that it was a concept worth exploring. My cat wasn’t ‘sick’, she was depressed, weak, uninterested and unhappy. Even as a layman I could sense that her energy resonated with negativeness,” adds Randhawa, who went on to take a course in healing and reiki from Animal Reiki Fellows in Canada.

For six months, Radhawa learnt about the theory of energy, chakras, pressure points and spiritual balance. She invested nearly six hours every day in practising and perfecting her understanding of reiki. “It is a misconception that a person cannot pick up healing at a later age. Reiki is not voodoo and it requires the same discipline, understanding and hard work as any other academic subject. There is a large amount of theoretical text and practical work that goes into the course,” she explains. Randhawa completed the course and the first patient she took up was her own cat. “The change was truly surprising. All the toxins left in her system from the antibiotics and pneumonia were cleansed and she quickly recovered her lost zest for life,” says Randhawa, who now heals people on a freelance basis. She regularly maintains her personal ‘altar of healing power’ at home; a solid teak table on which she has carefully arranged 12 healing quartz crystals, a 24-karat gold goblet containing water from the Ganga, several aroma candles and incense sticks, an evil eye charm, a crystal ball and a picture of her cat. “I draw my power and inspiration from my altar. Nobody is allowed to touch it or disturb the arrangement.”

Priya Saklani, who practises animal healing in Mumbai, is one of the first Indians to have received international certification in the field. Having started her practice in 2012, she has treated a number of animals till date through a combination of energy or quantum healing and vibration healing with flower and herb essences. She offers her services either through home visits or via remote healing, which requires only a picture of the animal to be left with her. “I studied holistic and spiritual healing for animals and humans from a variety of different institutes in Nevada, California and Texas in the US. I was also trained by Kathleen Prasad, the founder of animal healing,” says Saklani. According to her, the biggest challenge in animal healing is convincing people to realise that an animal is an equal. “What is healing? Healing is fixing the balance of energy or the flow of energy in your body. This could be in an animal or a bird or an insect or a human being. Any and every living creature has an energy flow in their bodies as well as the mechanism to fix it. But sometimes this mechanism stalls, and that is when a healer comes in, to help unblock the passage of positive energy in your body. It’s foolish to think that humans can attend reiki sessions but animals cannot. Healing is devoid of language, it is about energy and energy alone. If you are a living object, you can be healed, and any sort of past abuse, trauma or shock can be removed from your physical, mental and spiritual being,” she affirms.

Saklani adds, “I make a mixture of oils depending upon what the animal is suffering from. This can be rubbed, inhaled or fed to the animal. Again, everything depends on what the animal wants. They give me the signs and show me what they are comfortable with by moving closer or further away, making certain gestures or sounds, rolling over or simply by communicating through their eyes and energy fields. This is what makes healing treatments so powerful. It puts the patient and his or her needs above everything else. A healer respects every patient as an equal.”

Margrit Coates, one of the world’s most celebrated animal communicator and healer, adds that the process of healing animals is only slightly different from healing humans. Coates, who is registered with the Healing Trust in the UK and has penned six different books on the subject, says, “The process is only slightly different with animals, in that when channelling healing energy to humans, you may only touch the head or shoulders and mostly the session is conducted with hands held above the patient’s body. With animals, there is the option of actually touching the body, provided that the animal is happy with this contact. From animals, I have understood so much more about how the transfer of healing energy actually works. This is because I am able to feel the energy flowing in the animal’s body and can sense the response through my hands.”

Despite the growing popularity of animal healing, there are many who debate the validity and efficiency of healers. Veterinarians say that if the ailment is serious, like heart trouble, cancer or broken bones, then ‘fixing energy levels’ can do little more than calm the animal down. “It’s a myth if people believe that alternate healing is cheaper than allopathic treatments. Some of these clinics can charge up to Rs 3,000 for a single consultation and can go up to Rs 50,000 for an entire course. Additionally, there is always the fear that the treatment may or may not work. If I had a lot of money and time to waste, then I would recommend [going to] a healer. But then, why gamble with the life of someone you love?” says Dr A Malhotra, a Mumbai-based veterinarian.

To counter that, Jeena Peters, a Delhi- based animal reiki and healing expert, says that no treatment can ever be foolproof. “The fight between alternate healing and allopathy has gone on for decades. If I am to be honest, neither can guarantee hundred per cent success. Sometimes one form of treatment just works better for one patient while another for another patient,” she says. “But in my own opinion, the best treatment is usually a combination of both. This is because while allopathy works on a symptomatic level and is usually effective for any sort of immediate, short-term relief, energy healing is more on a core, long-term level and will stay with you for the rest of your life. Ultimately, whether you are a human, lion, donkey, dog, lizard, snake or rabbit, energy healing will always benefit you. Healing is a form of treatment that has no harm, only good.”

About The Author

Sonali Acharjee