Marta Williams - My Animal, My Self: A Breakthrough Way to Understand How You and Your Animal Reflect Each Other

My Animal, My Self is a must-read for everyone who has animals in their lives. Marta Williams clearly explains the important concept of mirroring between animals and their people; her engaging style and heartwarming stories can help everyone understand how to benefit from this wonderful gift our animals have to give us.

Marta Williams has created a book with thought-provoking elements that combine both scientific intelligence and deeper intuitive perspectives that offer us unique ways of thinking and great solutions. The valuable exercises included here give us the opportunity to improve our lives with a deeper and broader understanding of who we are, how we are operating, and how we can make changes for the benefit of ourselves and our animals, based on the truth and reality of our connections to them. The collection of wonderful, worldwide case histories provides solid confirmation of these ideas. I feel honored to have been included in this stunning gift to all of us on the planet. Thank you, Marta Williams!

Our understanding of the animals in our lives is finally evolving from a need to dominate and control them to a sense of the deep connection we share with them. Marta Williams brings this connection into focus by showing how we and our animals mirror each other, picking up each others inner world and reflecting it back, giving us insight and healing. My Animal, My Self is essential for those of us who want to understand the profound relationship between our animals and ourselves. This is a groundbreaking, enlightening book.

Marta Williams breaks new ground by presenting unexplored aspects of animals as mirrors to human qualities and frailties. She uses an intriguing variety of practical examples, exercises, and a mirroring questionnaire that will have readers recalling and relating to animals, past and present, in an entirely new way. My Animal, My Self shows us how to go beyond training and fixing animals to changing the images of ourselves reflected by their honesty, love, and compassion. This is a book we will heartily recommend to everyone who has chosen and been chosen by an animal. Now they will understand the expanded and true significance of those choices. What a gem of a book.

This book is an extraordinary gift to each of its readers and to the animals who love us. The perceptions and feelings revealed in these pages are presented with clarity and vulnerability as the author honestly shares not only her own heartfelt experiences but also those of colleagues, friends, and students who have had the grace to step forward and honor the profound wisdom of their animals. If my own experience is any indication, tears of the private kind we only share with the animals we love will be shed in different moments by every reader of this book.

Copyright 2013 by Marta Williams

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, or other without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

The material in this book is intended for educational purposes only. No expressed or implied guarantee of the effects of the use of the recommendations can be given or liability taken.

Flower essence remedy descriptions used with permission of Bram Zaalberg, www.bloesem-remedies.com.

Text design by Tona Pearce Myers

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

First printing, June 2013

ISBN 978-1-60868-169-3

Printed in the USA on 100% postconsumer-waste recycled paper

New World Library is proud to be a Gold Certified Environmentally Responsible Publisher. Publisher certification awarded by Green Press Initiative. www.greenpressinitiative.org

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To the animals in our lives who have taught us, helped us heal, and shown us a love that knows no limit

N o book is an island; many people contribute to the creation of any book, even if they are just the inspiration for it. In the case of My Animal, My Self, this book would not be before you without the input of a good number of animals as well. My thanks to everyone, animals included, who lent their stories for you to read and to all those who helped make this book a reality most especially to Gerrie Huijts from the Netherlands, who kept asking me, When are you doing the book on mirroring? When will it be coming out? If she hadnt kept asking, I might not have pursued it so doggedly. I must also thank Monique Muhlenkamp of New World Library for encouraging me to repitch the book to my editor, Georgia Hughes. The second time was the charm. Thank you, Georgia, for taking a chance on such an unexplored topic and for your skillful editing.

Thanks to the many professionals who lent their time and expertise to this work, including psychologists Margot Lasher, Dickelle Fonda, Jay Rice, and Marie-Jos Hakens; holistic veterinarians Dr. Marty Goldstein and Dr. Lisa Pesch; horse expert Tina Hutton; horse-assisted learning practitioner Dr. Beverley Kane; animal communicator Carol Gurney; human/animal chiropractor Dr. Maryanne Kraft; Lily Peters, who translated portions of Bram Zaalbergs book; and Bram Zaalberg, the Dutch flower essence creator, who allowed me to design an exercise for people and their animals based on his material and sent me the translation of his Dutch flower remedy guide and his mirroring exercise for balancing your inner self to share with you.

W hen I was just starting out in the world of living with dogs, I took my seven-month-old female puppy named Brydie, who was part Border collie, part Dalmatian mix a combination I now know was just asking for trouble to a beginning dog-obedience class. The class was held outside in a weed-strewn, concrete lot in the middle of the small town where I lived. The woman who taught the class was one of those classic dog people whistle around her neck, leathery skin, hair bleached and dried to straw by the sun and wind. Pretty much within the first five minutes of class, Brydie and I had a training-crisis meltdown. I had Brydie on a leash, and a woman in the class came up to us with her dog to visit. My erstwhile sweet and loving baby girl turned into The Alien: huge fangs appeared out of nowhere, a hideous scream issued from the depth of her chest, and she lunged with full force at the womans dog. For the record, I cant recall anything about the woman or her dog, though Im sure I would have remembered if her dog had been in any way aggressive. I have so little recall because I was in a complete state of shock. What I do remember is hearing the thin, cheery, Barbara Woodhouselike voice of the trainer calling out something like, Oh, dont worry thats perfectly normal. I was incredulous at the idea that this behavior was normal. Then as I stood there nonplussed, Brydie did it again: lunged with all her weight, saliva flying and eyes ablaze. I thought to myself, If this is normal, I want nothing to do with it. I was so freaked out I just left the class. Today, I couldnt tell you if the trainer tried to stop me or reason with me or even if I got my money back. I was in deep distress.