My Animal, My Self

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 15 APR 2013

The extent to which pet owners will benefit from this guide to communicating with their animals depends on their reaction to passages like this one: "If you already know how to do animal communications, you can ask your animal to tell you about any past lives that may still be creating problems in this life." Those who believe, or are willing to believe, that their dogs or cats can provide insight based on reincarnation experiences, will feel right at home; others not so much. The book concentrates on the concept of "mirroring": not only understanding pets' feelings, but experiencing them as well. Biologist Williams, who claims to teach people how to communicate with nature and animals, takes for granted that her readers are completely comfortable with bizarre notions, such as the idea that a person's negative feelings about "constant debt" can be reversed by changing these feelings to "beliefs" that "money comes easily to all the time." A seven-page chart identifying "Possible Related Core Emotions/Thoughts/Trauma" for illness may offend some readers who have suffered serious ailments and resist accepting blame for them. Although emotional pet-master understanding is a worthy goal, it seems unlikely that "stubbornness" can lead to brain cancer, as Williams suggests, and that "animals can actually take on our symptoms or physical conditions," such as Crohn's disease.