Cindy Myers, Animal Listener, helps a dog feel secure after being rescued

I’m Cindy Myers, Animal Listener   I would like to share a little about what I do and how I got here working with both animals and two-leggers (humans...you will understand that terminology in a few minutes;) One of the frequently asked questions I get from my clients and workshop attendees is if I have always been able to communicate intuitively with animals and have empathic energy skills. The answer to that question is no, not really. I’ve always loved animals, but I was not aware of having any intuitive senses or that I could do healing energy work until I was an adult. I’ve always been a good listener. But, if twenty years ago, someone told me I’d be living on a farm with about 30 alpacas, 3 dogs, and 2 barn cats working as an intuitive energy healer and animal communicator, I would have laughed and thought that was the craziest thing I ever heard!   Why I call myself An Animal Listener...   Communication entails two elements; talking and listening. It has been my experience that when you ask someone to define what makes a good communicator, they often say, “She has a great style of talking to you,” or “He is really assertive and makes you feel at ease.” Almost everyone describes just the talking piece in good communication. It is pretty rare that someone describes the listening component of communication. Yet, the best communicators, the healthiest relationships, all have the ability to be effective listeners. Listening isn’t just done with our ears. To listen well, we must use all of our senses including our “sixth” sense. Most have heard of using their “third eye” to indicate their intuition. I also like to use the term, using our “third ear.” It is this “third ear,” that I use in listening to and communicating with animals. To be effective communicators with our animals, we must first be willing to listen to them. The beauty of improving our listening skills with our animal companions is that same skill can make our human relationships richer, deeper and more connected as well. Our animals can teach us much about how to be better listeners. Here’s what I believe...   I believe that all of our life experiences lead us to our true calling in life, however, sometimes we take a roundabout way of getting there. Boy do I get that. It has taken many years, different career paths and life challenges from tending to and being my mom’s caregiver during her final years and then a house fire caused by an arsonist, before discovering and finding the courage to finally embrace and pursue my calling of intuitive energy work for people and their animals and teach others how to open up to their own intuitive listening abilities. What I used to do that drew me to my calling...   It is quite amusing to watch people’s reaction when I tell them my career began working as an engineer. On the surface, it does seem a far stretch going from engineering to an intuitive healer and animal communicator. I enjoyed my engineering career in the beginning but in the end, it wasn’t quite the right fit. But when you are in your teens and early twenties, deciding on a career, it was a very good choice. I was drawn to engineering because of my interest in Physics. My first job was working on radars and that was no fluke. I was not ready to open up to my intuitive personal radar, but studying and working on equipment that sends out and receives frequency signals and then interprets the data was fascinating to me and I know that was a strong foundation in my eventually opening up to my own intuitive abilities. And it was that work and basic understanding of physics and quantum mechanics that validated in my mind that my intuitive experiences were real. My second career, I found myself drawn to Counseling. Another career that seems on the surface to be polar opposite to engineering yet I was supervising people and trying to be a good leader and you need to have excellent people skills for that so, counseling was a better idea than going and getting an MBA. I pursued and earned my Master’s Degree in Counseling with an emphasis in Depth Psychology. It was during this time that my intuitive abilities began to open up and I had a place and an outlet to begin sharing my experiences with others. I began experiencing people’s pain in my own body! How freaky is that to suddenly have a pain in my side, headache or migraine? It was pretty darn scary at first and I often felt isolated because no way I was going to share those experiences with my engineering colleagues. But, at the same time, I knew I wasn’t crazy and that these experiences were very real. I also thought, it would be pretty cool to learn how to use these experiences for others’ benefit. I began reading a lot of different books. I was drawn to memoirs of intuitive healers. It helped to read about how they got started and how it all worked for them. I found they experienced things similar to what I was going through. That made me feel a little less alone and that it was more real. Then I found a book on Animal Communication and couldn’t wait to learn more. I practiced on my dog Rusty and we had the neatest experiences! Being able to communicate merely by thinking to him was so amazing and it made our connection and bond all the more special. I was hooked! I wanted to learn more and practice communicating with more animals. Although it was really amazing to communicate with animals, I never thought of it being a profession so I began working to get my Marriage Family Therapy license. I thought going into Counseling was the right fit and that this was my calling. Like many people, life can throw you quite the curve ball. Being the caregiver of my mother her final years was challenging. As her health declined, the responsibilities of her daily care and emotional upheaval of tending to her, working full time as an engineer all while still working on my Marriage Family Therapy license took its toll. I burned out. Both figuratively and literally! Only weeks after my mother passed away, I lost my home to arson fire. It was devastating. I only had the emotional strength to rebuild my own life and home. I couldn’t ethically care for others’ tender psyches. So I took a leave of absence from both counseling and engineering to tend to me and rebuild my life. My true life passion comes about...   It was then that I discovered alpacas and I bought my first two, a mother and newly born daughter. I boarded them at the time and I learned the ropes of caring for alpacas and while doing that, I honed my intuitive skills. They healed me as much as I learned about doing healing energy work on them and on people. I became a student of Reiki and Healing Touch for Animals. I studied clicker training and adapted all the techniques I learned to work with alpacas. I wore a Phoenix necklace during that time to hold the intention of rebuilding my life up from the ashes. I often tell people that the blessing of that very hard time was that I got my “life do-over.” It was like these personas and reasons why I had to do the things I was doing were all written on a big white board. But when the fire happened, in a flash, that white board was wiped clean. I was no longer a caregiver, I stopped being an engineer and a counselor. I didn’t care about material things any more. Funny how when they are all taken in a second you realize how little importance they really are. The only thing that mattered was my family, friends and my dogs. After having the slate wiped clean, I was then handed a marker and allowed to start putting up on the whiteboard what I wanted to do with my life. That was very empowering and it allowed me to walk away from things that weren’t working for me anymore. I now had the time, space and energy to explore a totally different life. I went from living an “in the box” life to not just being out of the box, but having no box at all! Becoming an alpaca farmer and living with these amazing animals, provided that new life. They are quite ironic animals. They are prey animals and have no real means of defense so are driven by the flight response. They are incredibly skittish animals and vary wary of humans. Yet, for people that have experienced terrible traumas or live in a high stress environment, being around alpacas is incredibly calming and soothing. They pump out this very calming, zen-like energy. Alpacas are amazing teachers and are incredibly intuitive animals. When I first began using alpaca to teach others how to communicate with animals, I wasn’t sure how that would work having total strangers in the pasture with them, trying to mentally communicate with these skittish animals. I remember holding my breath that it would work the first time students went out into my pasture. But, true to form, they worked beautifully with all the students. Each student walked away having a special connection and knew they had actually communicated intuitively with an animal. Two leggers (I know you’ve been waiting for this)…   In one story I tell in my book, “Alpacas Don’t Do That,” I was intuitively communicating with an alpaca for the first time, and she did a triple take and sniffed my face and I heard in my head, "hmm, I didn't know two-leggers could do that." Ever since then, I use the term two-leggers to refer to us humans. (There is your explanation from the first paragraph that I promised you). Why I love what I do…   I know how busy we all are and that in our society and way of life, we have a hard time making time for ourselves. We can spend years trying to understand our dynamics and that is all great to go and do. However, it has been so exciting to find that my energetic techniques I use with both people and animals can facilitate those personal growth issues. These techniques remove those balls of trapped energies that created our old behavioral dynamics and support our bodies in healing and it can be done relatively quickly and easily. And the beauty of it is that I can be here in Oregon and people or their animals can be anywhere in the world. Not only can I do this work for anyone anywhere, I can do it all through email! You don’t even have to be on the phone with me as I tap into your subconscious. So you don’t even have to change your schedule or stop what you are doing in your busy lives. I take care of it and send an email to you telling you what emotions were trapped and I can also tell you what age they were trapped. Some like knowing that information and it will trigger a memory. Others don’t want to remember it at all and are just happy to have those energies that cause problems out of their body and system. Some people like to have me work on them in person or over the phone and experience the releases as I’m doing it, however, many more people, are very happy that they don’t have to schedule one more appointment into their busy and hectic lives. It is very rewarding releasing these trapped emotions and energies in people and animals, but even more rewarding is teaching people how to do it for themselves and their animals. It fits with that saying, provide someone a fish and they eat for the day; teach them to fish and they eat for the rest of their lives. This is true for learning to release your trapped emotions. We pretty much get a trapped emotion each day of our lives. Individually, a trapped emotion may not cause harm, but after awhile, it can keep attracting more similar trapped emotions and they tend to accumulate in similar areas of the body. I like to say, “We store our issues in our tissues.” Some very learned individuals such as Louise Hays has written multiple books on the subject. So learning how to remove those emotions that cause those issues is of everyone’s benefit. I like to set people up for success and with these techniques, you will experience for yourself how incredibly rewarding and useful these tools are in our daily lives. I love sharing my intuitive abilities with both animals and humans. I look forward to getting to know both you and your animals better soon!   Certified in: Emotion Code as a Practitioner Level II Reiki Level II Healing Touch for Animals