Welcome!
Here's the heart behind my work, who I was and became.
PHOTO: Lucy Snowe
The Gateway
Animals don't talk.
As a hard-core skeptic, I spent decades as a prolific visual artist, headstrong in metaphysics, anorexic from rigorous ballet training, and rolled my eyes at animal communicators—the most ridiculous thing I'd ever heard.
Then, one quiet Sunday afternoon, in my mid-forties, my pen ran out of ink, and I had a huge awakening.
,As I was about to enter my partner’s music studio to grab another pen, five startling words halted my entrance:
Look out! I'm down here!
I looked down at my feet and saw my cat Bubby, lying in the studio doorway. Had he warned me? I dismissed it as a coincidence, and I ignored two more similar attempts that followed, until I finally realized my cats were talking to me.
However, it wasn't until my cat Ku Ku's tragically sudden death that I started communicating with animals professionally. His death woke me up, drastically changed me with hard lessons learned, and placed my artist’s life aside, and my Buddhist meditation practice dead center.
Ku Ku taught me the joy of being fully present.
I wanted to listen to animals and help them, because I hadn't listened to Ku Ku.
When animals are in our lives, we experience unconditional love and forgiveness, their greatest gifts to us, and our compassion naturally expands.
As Gandhi said,
"Become the change we want to see in the world."
Don't we all aspire to be more like the animals who live with us?
Who we are radiates outward and impacts others.
Wanting to enrich children’s lives, I began introducing intuition and telepathy at summer art camps, with surprising results, alongside teaching art, Kundalini Yoga, and meditation to thousands of children throughout Los Angeles for over 30 years. One of my goals is to introduce animal communication into the public schools.
What I love about teaching children to communicate with animals is what I learned from my cats: become more aware of the thoughts and images in our minds, the feelings in our bodies, especially the belly, and trust what we deeply know to be true.
The Vision
PHOTO: Lucy Snowe
The expansion and grounding
PHOTO: Lucy Snowe
The driving force behind everything I do comes from being vegan and a spiritual activist for over thirty-five years, rooted in the practice of Ahimsa—the commitment to living with compassion and minimizing harm and suffering.
My spiritual path has included decades as a certified Kundalini yoga teacher, trained at Golden Bridge in Los Angeles under Gurmukh, Tej Kaur Khalsa, and other master teachers; a Vipassana practice with Noah Levine; and Tibetan Buddhist meditation under Ken McLeod, along with teacher training in the Kadampa tradition with Gen Kelsang Lekma.
My heart practice has always been Zen; I took Bodhisattva vows in the 1990s under Rev. Ryugen Watanabe, was given the name Byakko, and took formal householder monastic vows in 2020 under Jyozen Anjyu.
I believe years of sitting in silence during meditation, art, and writing opened my inner ears to the silent language of animals.
My commitment to ahimsa continues to shape my daily life and work with animals and people.
As one of my students once said after a workshop,
"Once you walk through that door, there's no turning back."