The Pursuit of Wellness: Healing Touch for Pets
An ex-chemical engineer directs healing energy to and through creatures great, small, and fluffy
The first order of business is to assess Winnie’s chakras. Winnie is a 6-year-old, mixed-breed rescue who shares a domestic arrangement with this magazine’s associate editor, Tess Allen. Winnie is fluffy and, like many rescues, somewhat anxious. She looks a bit unsure about all this—her eyes dart back and forth as she licks the air—but eventually settles down through the intercession of treats. Jennifer Arnold Parsley produces a conical dowsing crystal. Jennifer is the expert here.
“This is just checking the energy centers,” she tells Tess, then dangles the crystal before Winnie. “You want to see that first? You’re curious?” Winnie sniffs it. The diagnostic process begins.
This assessment is happening in a back room at Okra Charlotte, a Plaza Midwood yoga and wellness center. (Jennifer used Okra’s space on occasion, as she did for this meeting in November, but no longer does.) She founded her own wellness practice in 2014 and kept it going after she and her husband, Simon, moved to Charlotte from Memphis two years ago.
Simon is a chemical engineer. Jennifer was one. She’s originally from Midland, Michigan, a small town that happens to be the world headquarters of Dow Chemical Company. “I did almost 20 years in the chemical industry, and I just burned out,” she says. “In the later years, I was doing international marketing for the chemical industry. I was traveling all over the world, and I got into a cycle of work, travel, get sick; work, travel, get sick. My body was saying, ‘You can’t keep doing this.’”
Jennifer, now 51, gravitated toward PSYCH-K, a trademarked process that adherents say conquers self-limiting beliefs at a subconscious level; and Healing Touch, which aims to restore harmony in the energy fields of clients, human and animal, to reduce pain and anxiety.
That’s why Winnie’s here at Okra, along with Tess, a photographer, and me. Winnie’s past is mysterious. Tess explains that Winnie’s prone to nervousness—she tends to pant and tremble during storms, for example, and cower when she sees a raised arm, as if she has memories of being struck—and that we’re curious to see if Healing Touch for Animals helps. We’re also, we believe, appropriately skeptical. A one-hour session with Jennifer costs $150, although she’s offered this one gratis. Some of the subject matter strikes us as a bit balmy: the root chakra, the hara line, “vibrational grooming.” Yet we keep our minds ajar.
Jennifer dangles the crystal above Winnie’s fluffy form and follows her spine from head to tail. This is the aforementioned hara line, a “tube of energy” that runs along the spinal column. (“It’s kind of an Eastern concept,” Jennifer explains.) The crystal’s movement indicates whether Winnie’s energy is “compromised” at any of three main points on the line; the pendulum-like back-and-forth—oddly, a sort of wag—indicates compromise at all three. Winnie’s head, or “crown,” though, is “beautifully open.” Above the crown, the crystal moves clockwise, as it should. “Good connection to the Universe,” Jennifer’s handwritten notes reveal. “Was holding past anxiety & despair in her energy field. It slowly released throughout the session.” She recommends “supportive energy” when Winnie exhibits anxiety; Tess can reassure her by saying, “You are safe. You are loved.”
No lies detected on that last point, by the dowsing crystal or any other gauge. At hour’s end, Winnie does seem more relaxed, having keeled over onto her side. Is it Healing Touch? Jennifer’s soft-spoken and gentle manner? Doggy autosuggestion? Too many treats? Or is she just tired?
Does it matter? “You’re just chillin’ now, aren’t ya?” Tess says as Winnie smiles and gently pants. Whatever
the energy source, she’s a happy dog.
