A New Way of Talking
by Marta Williams • Northern CA

Each of us has the ability to communicate intuitively with animals and nature– to converse with other life forms by mentally exchanging thoughts, emotions and images. I believe this is an ancient, innate characteristic of all life, and that it is the foundation of spoken and written words and the common link between all species. Modern-day humans are born with this ability, but we are subtly conditioned to repress it as we grow up. However, it is possible to recover your intuitive skill; I did and I now teach others to do so as well.

Intuitive communication is not the same as reading body language. It is the ability to send and receive thoughts, images, feelings and other sensory data mentally, without using sound or gesture.

Most of us can relate to the idea of intuition. We have had hunches or gut feelings about things, such as whether to trust a stranger we’ve just met, to take a job offer or not, or whether someone is angry with us. Intuition is a useful survival tool, and even when suppressed, it will often surface in a crisis to inform us of some threat or critical event, such as an ill or dying relative. Animals recognize the survival value of intuition and never disconnect from it.

Intuitive communication can be done at a distance. You don’t have to see or know the animal you wish to speak with. Here is an example of how it works: At a workshop held at a farm, my students interviewed four Norwegian fjord horses. We knew the horses were female, and we could see that one was young and one was pregnant.

The students mentally spoke with the horses and then got feedback from the woman who regularly cared for them. This woman was skeptical, but as the students relayed their questions, she became amazed. One student asked, "Was that mare brought in from another farm? Did they use her for jumping and then get rid of her because they wanted a bigger horse?" The caretaker nodded. Another asked, "When they got rid of her, did they get a big black Friesian horse instead? That’s the image the mare showed me." Again the caretaker nodded.

More questions followed. "Were the other three horses all born here? Is that mare over there the mother of this baby, and is the mare next to the baby her grandmother? That’s what the baby said." The caretaker confirmed this, too. Most of the information the students got from the horses turned out to be accurate.

There are two parts to intuitive communication: Sending information and receiving information. Sending is much easier. Try this experiment: For a two-week period, talk to your animal out loud as if he or she understands you completely. Tell your animal how you feel or how your day went, just as you would tell a person. Politely ask your animal to change any behaviors that might be bothering you. If there is something you would like your animal to do, just ask for it.

Keep a written record of any changes in your animal’s behavior. If your animal complies with your requests and suggestions, be sure to give lots of feedback and appreciation. Many people who try this exercise discover that it works so well they make it a permanent change in the way they relate to their animals.

After you’ve been talking for a few weeks, you can ask your animal to do something or act in such a way as to provide you with indisputable proof that you have been heard and understood. For example, my sister asked her food-obsessed horse to leave his hay and come give her a kiss, which he did, to her complete astonishment.

Receiving intuitive information is harder than sending, because you have to learn to recognize the incoming information. Once you contact an animal intuitively and initiate a dialogue, any information that pops into your head at that point is potentially about, or directly transmitted by, the animal. The information may come in the form of visual images, feelings (both emotional and physical), ideas, words or phrases.

Part of the art of receiving is to trust this incoming information and record it without question. Then you can check with the animal’s owner to verify what you received.

Here is an example of how information can be received intuitively. In a workshop I taught in Chicago, a student, Marian, used a photograph to connect intuitively with a thoroughbred gelding horse named Blue, owned by another student, Joel. Marion mentally received a clear but frightening visual scene once she contacted Blue. She saw him bare his teeth at her and then turn and try to kick her. She could feel his anger and didn’t know what to do. I advised her to mentally send Blue the message that she wanted to help, and to ask him what was wrong. She connected again and then said, "He’s curling his lip and showing me a number on it. He said they made him a slave and put the number on him when he was a racehorse. He hates it. What should I say?" I didn’t know why the horse was behaving that way and wasn’t sure what to tell her. I said, "Tell him you’ll tell Joel about this."

When Marian began telling Joel about Blue’s behavior, Joel said, "Oh, not again!" He told us that other people had talked to Blue intuitively in the past, and had received this same message. Joel explained that racehorses are tattooed on the lip with a number, something neither Marian nor I had known. There was no way she could deny that the intuitive information she received came straight from the horse’s mouth!

Oddly enough, it can be easier to receive information intuitively from an animal you don’t know than from one you do. That’s because you know so much about your own animals that it may be impossible to get around the feeling that you are just making things up. Also, there is no easy way to verify the data you receive from your own animals.

To counteract this, I recommend that you try this experiment: Ask your animal, "Do you have a question for me?" If a question pops into your head, no matter what it is, assume it came from your animal and answer it as best you can, either by talking out loud or sending thoughts. Ask for more questions and keep answering until your animal is finished. If you are successful, you will bypass your inner critic and experience what it feels like to receive information intuitively. You may also find that you and your animal end up in a back-and-forth discussion of a subject that your animal has chosen. If your animal doesn’t have a question or you just don’t get anything, let it go and tell your animal that you will ask again another day.

The preceding was based on the book Beyond Words:Talking with Nature and Animals, 2005, New World Library, Novato, CA. www.newworldlibrary.com or 800-972-6657 ext. 52.

Marta Williams has always had an affinity for animals and has worked in wildlife re-habilitation, habitat restoration and environmental regulation. She is an author who now lectures, teaches and offers clinics on animal and nature communication worldwide. See her website: www.martawilliams.com