Rosendale Blue Stone Press
Susan Krawitz (7/7/2000)

Cindy Brody's job as energy therapist isn't an easy one to explain. It's hard to describe a kind of healing that is performed on a level beyond what the eyes can see, the ears can hear and scientific methods can certify. But as more and more people are discovering, provable or not, the results of her work speak for themselves.

Energy work is based on the premise that the body is governed by invisible pathways of electricity-like energy. Energy, just like anything that flows, is subject to blocks and disturbances. What energy work does, Brody says, is open up energetic pathways to allow the energy to go where it's needed. Its a lot like a line of the old type of Christmas tree lights if one bulb is out, the rest cannot function. Brody describes her work this way; Say you have a lower backache and your back feels like its tied up in knots. You have an energetic traffic jam of blockages. When I open up those blockages, it lets the energy go where its needed, allows increased circulation, and reduces swelling, loosening muscles and helping the subject feel better.

The urge to put her hands on people and animals and make them feel better has been with her since childhood. When she was a little girl, she used to tame barn cats no-one else on her grandparents farm could go near. In her early 20's she studied energy balancing at the New York Open Center, a school for alternative studies in New York City, then started a home visit practice. Just touching people, she found, helped them feel better, but touching with knowledge and intent of the power of energy work seemed to help even more. Desire for a rural lifestyle led her to upstate New York in 1986. Marriage, and the arrival in quick succession of children Sam and Sarah sidetracked the development of a private practice for a few years, but she kept studying and honing her skills on family, friends and pets. After her children were school age, she began to offer her work to the public again, adding Reiki to her repetoire.

Riding was another pursuit she renewed at that time. Lessons at a nearby riding academy put her in contact with lots of horses with a wide variety of physical problems, and she found herself putting her hands on them in an effort to help. Soon she was practicing regularly, with good results, on the 30 plus lesson horses there. Because I rode these horses, I could feel the difference afterward she says.
When Pat Young, a Montana based equine energy balancer specializing in kinesiology,(a form of muscle testing that determines imbalance) gave a clinic at the barn, Brody knew she'd found an important piece to add to her work and a role model for combining a gift for energy work with a love of horses.

Brody started taking on equine clients in 1996. In the last 3 years, her practice with horses has snowballed. It just took off she says. It was like getting on the zoom flume. It was; can I have your number? I have a horse that needs work, can you come over? I have a couple of horses that eed help, and my friend has a couple of horses... need help, and my friend has a couple of horses...

Her thriving equine practice has given Brody thoughts of giving up working on humans, but then the horses started referring their owners. People saw the results with the animals, and wanted the same results for themselves.

Most of her current human clients are horse owners and equine professionals. But in many ways, Brody finds horses easier to work on than their people.With horses, the barriers of doubt are much smaller or non-existant. Horses get it she says. They don't block it off and they dont question it will I feel better now? Will I feel better an hour from now? That's the part of working with horses that is so engaging. It's hard to describe the intensity of the connection. The bond that Brody feels with horses has an additional facet; she's also an animal communicator.

Intuiting is another ability she says she's just always had. Her equine intuiting work began as a habit of starting every energy work session by silently asking the horse where they were hurting. Often when she did this, she received wordless impressions"like a snapshot" from the horses about the location of their pain. When she shared the results with the horse owners, they would more often than not, request more information.

Some of the most common questions are: is my horse happy? What are his least and most favorite things? What would he like to change? She's gotten back some interesting answers. Some horses complain to her that their stalls aren't clean enough, or they don't like the horse stabled next to them. One, whose owner had cut way back on his riding time told Brody that that there was a hole in his life, and another said her favorite dog wasn't being treated well.

It's not at all unusual for Brody's results to be confirmed by the horse's human. She once worked on a horse who showed her a mental picture of a large ice chest, and insisted she'd just been through a horrible ordeal. Brody was puzzled until she spoke to the horse's owner, who told her that a large cooler kept in the horse trailer had come loose during a trip, scattering ice cubes all over the floor. She's also occasionally had to break bad news to owners, such as the jumper who'd rather be doing dressage, or the dressage horse who'd prefer to be a trail hack. Sometimes she relays messages about equipment that doesn't fit, or a riding technique that's causing discomfort. Horses and humans, says Brody, are more emotionally similiar than they are different. "Both" she says "have memories, feelings, and pain."

Her greatest current priority for this work is to get the word out. To that end, she's in the process of making a video and is beginning to give clinics around the country. She's determined to make as many people as possible aware of her work, which, when you come right down to it, is as much about changing people's views of what is possible, as it is about helping them and their horses feel better.

She sees herself not as a healer, but a facilitator. "We are all healers for ourselves", says Brody, "but I can help."

See Cindy's feature article from the Woodstock Times
January 2, 2003

Wildwood Farm clinic Oak Harbor, Washington article

Article from the Kingston Daily Freeman September 10, 2001