Horse communicator and energy worker believes everyone can talk to the animals
By Andrea Barrist Stern
The Woodstock Times
December 26, 2002

Cindy Brody could almost be your typical soccer mom. The 45-year-old Hutchin Hill Road resident has intentionally arranged her schedule so that she can devote her weekends and late afternoons to her two teenaged children, chauffeuring them and their friends about town. She keeps a long mane of blond hair that would be glamorous in other circumstances, tied back at her neck and she's most often found in a comfortable pair of jeans and boots.

But on a recent, bitingly cold day, Brody is spending the morning doing what she is well aware could have resulted in her having been burned at the stake a few centuries ago. Brody is healing horses with her touch. And, as she does so, she chats with them about oh so everyday matters like equine cookies, who did what to who in the barn yesterday, and a bad case of wintry critter blues.

Brody's hands-on healing is a combination of energy balancing, kinesiology, reiki, deep tissue massage, accupressure, animal communication, intuition, and innate talent that she has blended into a method she calls"CinergE." Based on the premise that pathways of invisible energy govern the body, energy work in general is designed to free up blockages and disturbances along these pathways to allow the energy to move freely. (Think of the old strings of Christmas tree lights that used to go out if just one bulb blew.)

Through kinesiology (an alternative healing practice that uses the muscles to locate imbalances), Brody first determines where the blockages are. With her fingers in a V shape over a horse's body, she says she can isolate weaknesses and injuries because her fingers will pull apart as they pass over these areas. Brody may then use a rubber mallet and rubber-tipped dowel to tap gently on the spot to unblock the energy. She also uses reiki to channel "universal life energy."

"When people first see me work, they wonder how something so non invasive can be so effective," says Brody. "Once you change the flow of energy, the energy can go where it is needed...I like to feel I am channeling the universal life energy. It is not my own."

Brody visualizes this energy coming down through the top of her head into her shoulders and out through her hands into the animal. When the blockage is released, a horse will often respond by dropping its head or yawning, she says. Sometimes, as she works her hand under the tail close to the rectum, the animal will pass gas. (Whoa-aaa...) Although she says she works in a similar fashion with humans, one hopes there are some differences.

Brody and her human clients - the jury is still out on what the animals are saying- claim her treatments can help relieve a horse's mental and physical stress, muscle tightness, joint inflammation and colic. And when she's done working on the horses, their owners are often lined up waiting to be treated. In many cases, they will bring along a dog with canine leukemia, arthritis, a joint injury or just a bad attitude.
Her clients are her testimonials and there are now so many of them in Ulster and Dutchess counties that Brody can no longer take on new patients unless the case is an emergency. Of the opinion that everyone can treat their own animals, at least to some degree, she plans to offer a two-day program on horses and a one-day session on dogs this spring for area residents, who want to learn more about energy balancing and animal communication. She has already taught half a dozen similar clinics in other parts of the country.

Brody has been talking to the animals and curing what ails them since her childhood, when she spent summers on her grandparents' farm in northwestern Nebraska. Holding feral barn cats tightly until they relaxed and began purring in her arms, the animal lover sensed she had a unique gift in her hands. "I knew if I could lay hands on I could help," says Brody, who admits to being something of a "walking Band-Aid" for her family that includes husband Jeff Brody, a Kingston attorney.

In the early 1980s, she took courses at the New York Open Center, a school for alternative healing. Using crystals, she found she could move energy through a person's body, freeing up blockages that allow the body to heal itself, but Brody says she stayed "in the closet" until she took a clinic in energy balancing from Montana horse professional Pat Young seven years ago. Suddenly, all of the healing techniques she had been practicing in some form or other for much of her life gelled into a head-to-hoof system that brings her patients such relief she claims they often "hug" her with their necks or nibble her face in gratitude when she is finished.

She had been riding at Southlands Foundation in Rhinebeck and, after taking the clinic with Young, started treating horses there. As other horse owners witnessed the results, they asked her to treat their animals and she soon had a word-of-mouth business. Most of the horses she sees are show animals with numerous ribbons so all improvements are taken seriously.

Andrew Pokowitz, farm manager of Anjes Farm, a private training and Shire/thoroughbred breeding facility in Marbletown, met Brody about five years ago after a mutual friend suggested she might be able to help a jumper with a bad back. The horse had returned to the farm for a short layover during a particularly rigorous competition circuit because it was bucking and rejecting riders, according to Pokowitz. No one was able to ride the animal and its owners were desperate to get her back in competition before the end of what had been a winning season. Brody aggressively treated the horse for two weeks, tapering off during the third week. The horse recovered and resumed its regular schedule.

"After seeing how well the horse did, I said, "I'm next,", recalls Pokowitz, who suffers from a disk problem. The farm is one of eight in Ulster and Dutchess counties that comprise Brody's regular circuit of clients. At most of them, she treats humans and dogs along with the horses. "A professional horseman is always seeking alternatives because of the increasing number of regulations at horse shows that limit the use of conventional medicine," says Pokowitz. "This is an active competition season and we've been able to keep the horses going without a lot of medicine."

Pokowitz cites a horse that had developed a bad "pasture cut," an injury that could easily prove lethal if left untreated. Under normal circumstances, such an injury would have required antibiotics for at least a week. With Brody's intervention, the horse was "back to normal in 48 hours," he says.

A few years ago, Dr. Paul Mountain, a veterinarian with Rhinebeck Equines, was stomped by a horse that cracked his ribs and scapula and left his back in spasm. He was still in considerable pain a few days later as he watched Brody work on a horse. "I jokingly leaned against the horse and said, "Now me," recalls Mountain, describing how Brody relieved his discomfort immediately. "I'm a believer," says the vet. "She has been very helpful with a lot of our clients and farms who use her for energy balancing" When she tells you the horse has a headache or doesn't like its owner, I might have more trouble."

While some owners see Brody's animal communication as,well, horseplay, others take it very seriously, changing saddles, bits, diet and barn conditions as a result of her intervention. Brody claims to be mostly on the mark when it comes to hearing what the animals are telling her.

"Sometimes, owners will say they just don't know what I mean; then they will call me a day or two later after figuring it out."
Last week, as Brody worked on a very large, 19-hand horse, she says the animal kept repeating to her forlornly, "She's gone. She's gone. She's gone." Brody later learned the owner had been away for four days and would be away for another three. She assured the animal that its owner would return eventually and made a mental note to advise the individual to share this information with the horse the next time that an absence was planned.

Horse owners often want to know only whether their animals are happy. Once, while working on a male Appaloosa named Duffin, the horse allegedly told Brody he missed the special cookies he had gotten used to eating. The owner didn't understand what the horse meant until the owner of another boarder at the stable admitted she had taken pity on the horse while the owner was away for a month and had given the animal gourmet equine cookies during this period.
One horse, when asked whether she liked her home, kept sending Brody a mental picture of corrugated aluminum with red paint on it. Several days later, the owner called the energy worker after having solved the mystery. The individual had owned the horse for seven years and, early on, a bad storm had flipped over the aluminum lean-to shed the animal used for shelter. Brody hadn't initially understood the picture of the upside down shed. The horse was still apparently frightened by the incident.
These are big animals, and horses have been known to inflict serious damage, yet Brody is unconcerned. "Some horses bite and have been known to kick, but I never get bitten or kicked," she says, kneeling beneath a horse as she works on its leg. "I never worry."


Brody says she is not a "horse whisperer," a term made popular by Monty Roberts, the inspiration for the book an film by the same name, The Horse Whisperer, and the author of the 1996 best-selling autobiography, The Man Who Listens to Horses. A well-known horse trainer, Roberts' gentle methods are based on the premise that animals are often confused by mixed messages or made resentful by harsh treatment. "People who pay attention to their horses are already communicating with them," says Brody. "Anybody can communicate."

At first, she received "mental postcards" from the animals. She has now refined her communication skills to the point where she says she can feel a horse's emotions and think its thoughts.

Communication is just a small part of what Brody does but she says it can be helpful in treating the 50 to 60 horses she now sees regularly. Often, she will use it to determine how a horse was injured. "If a horse keeps repeating something," she says, "I have to investigate it." Otherwise, she is "constantly yakking with them." One horse she treats is forever "telling on everyone else in the barn," says Brody. A jumper may inform her it would prefer to be doing dressage, or she may learn about ill-fitting equipment or a riding technique that is causing discomfort or even a chronic injury. Horses have memories and feelings and experience pain just as humans do, according to Brody.
When one owner asked Brody to inquire whether her horse was happy, the animal allegedly responded that it didn't like the white ropes. It was only a few days later after speaking to her sons, that the owner learned the boys had been using white lunge lines to slap the horse across its shoulders when it tried to steel hay from other horses in the barn.
On a recent day, Brody is treating a medium-sized gray horse with a gentle disposition, who is complaining to her that her long-time friend hasn't been taking her riding and she misses having a "special person like the other horses."(Break my heart.) This particular horse, Kelly, also describes a rider who is using the inside rein too much, a technique that causes the horse, in turn, to want to run as fast as she can." Brody says she can feel the wind in her hair as the horse describes the emotion. It cannot be determined, at least for now, who is overusing that rein, but Brody learns Kelly's "friend," a teenager, has become preoccupied with other teenage pursuits and has been ignoring the animal. Before the day's end, Brody will advocate for Kelly as she has for numerous other horses.

"In my job I get to say, 'I love you,' a couple of hundred times a day if I want," says Brody later, nuzzling Will Scarlet, a large Shire/thoroughbred. "How many people can do that?" As if on cue, the horse rests his head gently and silently against hers. "All of the mares love him," says Brody. The feeling appears to be mutual.

For more information on Brody's method or upcoming clinics, visit her website, www.cindybrody.com, or call 340-7355

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