Blue Sands - Animal Empath

If You Could Talk to Your Animal....
Empathic Medium Feels What Animals Feel
By JOANNE L PAPAIANNI

Blue Sands says she knew she had it even as a child.

First with people, then with animals.
Sands is what is called an animal kinesthetic intuitive, or empathic medium, meaning she can not only feel the physical pain of others, she can feel their emotional pain and joy as well.
Sands’ psychic feelings for animals really became pronounced when she decided to “close down” her empathic feelings for humans, after finding it emotionally draining.

Sands explains that she would feel people’s emotions just walking down the street, much as someone else would smell another person’s perfume.

“As they walked away, it went away,” she says. “It comes off them, like perfume.”

Sands works as a therapist at The Sacred Circle in Long Branch, a new age center focusing on spirituality from around the world.

Several years ago Sands went to therapists in New York to help her understand what she was feeling and to learn how to “hone her skills” and use them productively.

She said she initially went for help to try to get rid of the sensations she was feeling.

As a child Sands, whose parents she says are hippies, taught her to be open to nature and natural things.

“There’s a relationship to nature - I had more of a relationship to nature than to the mall,” she says laughing.

As a young adult her talent for communing with animals first became evident to her when she visited a pet store for birds and found herself sensing something was terribly wrong with a young parrot there.

“I felt something wrong in my liver,” she says. “Me and the parrot formed a relationship.”

She mentioned it to the store’s owners but they assured her the veterinarian had looked at the bird and it was fine.

Sands purchased the parrot, which is named Takkum, meaning truth in Japanese. When she brought him to the vet he discovered that the bird had a horrible bacterial infection in his liver.

“It was rotting his liver,” she said.

That was two years ago.

Now when she goes back to that pet store, ‘the ‘owners ask her to stand by a particular animal if they sense a problem might exist.

“A lot of times I pick up on things with owners” she says.

“If there is some upheaval in the owner’s life, I pick up on it through the animal," she says.

But Sands says she adheres to a strict code of ethics and although she may feel or sense certain things, she makes it clear “I am not spying on the owner.”

Like any type of therapy much depends on whether or not the pet owners follow her advice.

“So far I have had good feedback from people, as long as the owners and animals are willing to take advice and use it.”

Sometimes, however, she says, “I’m sort of a party favor.”

Sands participates in psychic fairs at The Sacred Circle, but admits that for many its just a novelty.

“It’s cool, a novelty and they’ll tell me I’m dead on, but then they will not take my advice and use it.”

Most of her clients are by Word of mouth.

“I'd rather help anyone who needs me.”

Sands says her parents were very artistic and encouraged her gift.

“They were not afraid of it.”

In fact Sands’ mother and grandmother also had psychic feelings which she attributes to her Russian background where Siberian Shaman are well known.

According to  Wikipedia, Shamanism refers to a range of traditional beliefs and practices concerned with communication with the spirit world, mostly animal spirits.

“It’s in my genetics somewhere,” she says.

Part of Sands’ services include bereavement services for those who have lost their pets.

She has found that her talent generally only works on pets who have passed away in the past year.

“I’ve been quite successful, up to a year.”

Sands admits that skeptics probably do not seek out her advice in the first place.

When working with dead animals Sands says she only needs to hear the name of the animal from its owner or someone emotionally connected to the animal before the session starts.

 “The owner is my Tarot card,” she said. “I don’t want them to tell me anymore than that. then I'm in and feel sensations and emotions."

Toward the end of the session, she will then discuss details of the person’s pet with them.

“But when I start I don’t want it to be cloudy,” said Sands.

One time Sands was in a session with a woman whose dog had died, when she began getting an excruciatingly painful toothache.

“I was taken through the entire illness, death and present experience. It was very emotional. When I started talking to the woman about how her pet opened Christmas presents, she started bawling.”

Sands said she sees the events almost as a memory of her own.

Sands also told the woman that her dog wanted her to be happy and knew about the “new love” in her life.

After the session she and the woman rehashed everything.

“We went over everything because I don’t understand it at the time,” she said.

She once held a session for a personal friend who had lost his cat.

“I started crying, I felt the love, I felt like I was at Disney Land. I felt healthy, like I could take on the world.”

After comforting her friend and assuring him that his cat was fine, she witnessed a change in him.

“He was more positive about his cat’s passing.”

Summing up her gift and her services Sands says, “I give them information that they normally wouldn’t have- that’s really all I am, information.”