Barton Glasser © News Bonnie Startek, of the Misha May foundation, performs reiki on Zeb, a golden retriever, at Journey Books & Gifts. Foundation volunteers provide foster care to homeless mutts having a hard time finding a good home. The assistance includes big doses of affection.

Ancient technique behind group's way of calming animals

By Rebecca Jones, Rocky Mountain News
September 1, 2003

LAKEWOOD - They yelp. They jump on people. They're hyperactive, uncontrollable and frequently destructive.

They're usually adolescent mixed breed dogs, and they arrive at animal shelters in droves. Sometimes, they stay there a long time.

Shelter workers know that with time and training, they'll become great pets, but in the meantime, they require more patience than most potential adopters have to give.

Rena, a 2-year-old lab/Chesapeake/ coonhound mix, was just such a dog not so very long ago. She was one of the Denver Dumb Friends League's longterm residents, a tough luck case who'd stymied all efforts by shelter workers to teach her some manners.

But at this moment, Rena - who still has the boundless energy and curiosity of a dog just emerging from puppyhood - is sacked out, limp and utterly relaxed, on the floor in front of Lorraine May and a circle of her friends.

For the past 30 minutes, they've been practicing the ancient art of reiki on Rena, sending her a steady stream of healing energy - May by placing her hands directly on the dog, the others by "beaming" waves of love at her.

The theory is that, like aspirin knows where to go to stop an ache, the energy transmitted through the reiki practitioners' hands travels through Rena's body, removing blockages and allowing her to generate her own healing energy.

"This gives Rena a calm place to come back to," said May, who adopted Rena a year ago, after the dog spent most of her first year of life in a shelter. "At the shelter, she never experienced any relaxation. Now her body knows what to do, how it feels to relax, and she doesn't always have to be so anxious and hypervigilant."

May has a soft spot in her heart for dogs like Rena. Last year, she founded the Misha May Foundation - named for another ill-mannered stray who became a beloved pet - specifically to help such dogs.

Misha May volunteers provide foster care to homeless mutts having a hard time finding a good home, and they give them heaping doses of love and attention. They also give lots of TLC to those brave souls who are willing to adopt a hard-to-place dog, helping them with training techniques as well as reiki sessions, which they believe will help calm hyperactive animals.

"We want to know if they're having problems, and if so, how we can steer them," says May.

In time, May hopes the foundation will have its own training and emergency placement facility. But for now, meetings and reiki sessions take place at Journey Books & Gifts, 6731 West Colfax Ave., Lakewood.

Journey Books & Gifts is the fund-raising project of the nonprofit Self-Actualization and Enlightenment Center, founded by May's husband, Robert Blond. May, a psychotherapist and reiki master, teaches a number of classes at the center.

Among the Misha May Foundation's most successful projects are the monthly reiki sessions they offer for shelter animals. Animals from the Dumb Friends League, Every Creature Counts, Longhopes Donkey Shelter, and Cavy Care Guinea Pig Rescue all have visited the bookstore to receive reiki's touch.

May and the other reiki masters - usually a half dozen or so - do the sessions on the animals for free, but they hope patrons will pay to sponsor the shelter animals. Owners of non-shelter animals can also pay to have reiki done on their animals, typically at a cost of $50 an hour.

Ten percent of all the money the foundation raises is set aside for obtaining a facility; another 10 percent is donated to other animal charities.

"I believe dogs and cats invented reiki," says Ann Burdick, a member of the foundation Board of Directions and a reiki practitioner. "Reiki is essentially just love, and dogs and cats are offering us reiki all the time. This is a rejuvenation for them."

jonesr@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5426

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