Honoring Early Animal Communicator, Barbara Janelle

Barbara Janelle left this world early Monday morning, 25 September 2023 in Santa Barbara, California. I remember her as a beautiful soul when she studied with me. A well-loved animal communicator and teacher, known for her compassion and wisdom, I am among the many people who will miss her.

Don, her husband of 56 years wrote,“I will write more about Barb and about plans for celebrating her remarkable life and achievements as a geographer, university instructor at the University of Western Ontario, and multi-method practitioner of Therapeutic Touch, Tellington TTouch® for Companion Animals, Tellington-Jones TTouch® Equine Awareness Method, and animal communicator. She authored two self-published books and more than 200 article publications, all accessible at https://barbarajanelle.com  We will implement a memorial web archive for easy access). Barb's artistic work focuses on seascapes and botanical art, some of which will be featured in the archive.”

I visited Barbara and Don in London, Ontario Canada when she sponsored my teaching there over thirty years ago. She moved to Santa Barbara, California in 2000.

To honor her life and work, I am reprinting the fascinating article about Barbara written by Suzan Vaughn in the Featured Animal Communicator section of Species Link: The Journal of Interspecies Telepathic Communication Issue 69, Winter 2008



“Scan a tree,” were the instructions given to Barbara Janelle by one of her early mentors in animal communication. Obediently, she put her arms around the tree in front of her and began her scan. The next set of instructions came when she was finished: “Now, let the tree scan you.”

“I clearly heard the tree tell me to turn around,” Barbara recalls, “and I felt the scanning as a surge of energy down my spine!”

The teacher who encouraged Barbara to explore the exchange of information with nature and to hone her skills in the use of Therapeutic Touch was Merlin Homer, a Chippewa and a First Nations artist, a highly regarded university professor, and a founding member of the Ontario (Canada) Therapeutic Touch Teachers Cooperative. Support from Homer and other pioneers in the field was a crucial gift to a woman who found little encouragement in her familial relationships.

Barbara’s mother, a registered nurse, viewed animals with a suspicious eye. To her, they were dirty and potential disease carriers. “She never could understand my desire to touch and be with animals,” says Barbara. However, not even one of the most powerful forces in the universe—her mother’s disapproval—could curb Barbara’s intense interest in animals and other species.

Barbara grew up in the Bronx (New York City) in what was then the largest housing development in the United States. Her family lived in a small apartment in a nine-story building where dogs were forbidden, although some folks lived with cats. A whole lot of pleading finally got Barbara her first pet: a goldfish!

The door to experiencing more of animals and nature opened for Barbara with a library card prompted by her mother’s love of learning. Her mother taught Barbara at the age of four how to print her name in order to get this magic card. In addition to reading, interests in teaching, health, and healing were also gifts from her mother.

At least two weekends a month, on trips to her grandmother’s house in New Jersey, the delighted young animal lover played with her cousins’ dogs and cats, met the local horse, and breathed in a big dose of the natural world. “I developed a love for canoeing during wonderful experiences on the lake with my parents and sister, paddling to an isolated beach for picnics and swimming, seeing a great blue heron in a back cove, and exploring water-lily-filled quiet waters,” she remembers.

From ages ten to fifteen, Barbara kept journals of interesting facts about animals and found a shared interest in them with her father and her Uncle Jerry.

“As a child, I knew animals were very special and I knew that I wanted to be with them,” Barbara says. “I pleaded with my parents to allow me to take riding lessons when I entered high school, and they finally agreed. Riding became a huge part of my life for five decades.” In the 1970s, Barbara became leader of the Delaware 4-H Horse and Pony Club. She then entered the dressage world and eventually became President of the London Dressage Association and the Founding Editor of the National Dressage Magazine of Canada.

“Through all of these years, whenever I saw an animal or touched an animal, I would melt internally. I knew a loving and trusting connection with animals that went far beyond words. Whenever I spoke about this with friends or family, I was met with patronizing indulgence and sometimes ridiculed so I just kept these experiences to myself,” Barbara says.

Powerful Animal Teachers
Barbara’s most powerful teachers have been animals, plants, trees, rocks, and the Earth. These teachers came into her life with lessons accompanied by a full range of emotions.

Along the picturesque Thames River in Ontario, Canada, her beloved dog Muskie ran at her heels as Barbara galloped through the inspiring landscapes on her brown-black gelding, Sammy. “We were a three-member team acting as separate senses for one another while moving as a single entity,” Barbara says. “This too is a kind of communication that is seldom put into words and yet it is true for so many dog and horse people.”

Muskie was afraid of thunder, and during a ride one afternoon, he disappeared when a storm blew up. “I searched for him for months, driving fifty to a hundred miles a day and talking with anyone I came across, but I never found him,” Barbara says. “The pain of his leaving changed me, helping me to empathize with others who experience loss and grief. Muskie also taught me about love and companionship.”

A variety of felines like Whimsy, Fudge, Houdini, and Magic Bailey offered her further schooling. “Whimsy showed me that deeper communication was possible in her relation- ship with my then-young son, Daniel. They slept together and played together and got into things that alone neither could physically reach,” she said.
“Fudge taught me about trust and consciously extending our hearts to one another,” Barbara says. Fudge was a feral cat chased into a stream by dogs that were accompanying Barbara. The cat was in shock when Barbara waded in and picked him up out of the water. “My friend led my horse back to the stable a mile away and I carried Fudge. As I got near the stable he tried to get away, but I held him closer. He bit me, and since we were in the rabies capital of the world, he had to undergo observation, but I knew I wanted to take him home.”

Barbara’s use of Tellington TTouch Training® helped Fudge learn that it was safe to be touched, inspiring the traumatized cat to trust. “There were times when I could feel him push the whole of his being out to meet me. He had a tremendous need for relationship and it was an honor to meet that in him. After all of his difficult experiences he could search for relationship and give trust.”

Houdini, a wise cat who lived to be twenty years old, taught Barbara about joy and being an integral part of this planet. “He’d sit under a big horse chestnut tree and look like he was asleep. He said he was singing the Earth song,” Barbara recalls.

“He said every being has a song. It’s part of a web of sound and light that keeps this planet whole and functioning. Whales, trees, and humans have a song. When humans come fully into their hearts, the Earth will begin to function as a primary heart center in the universe. When we are loving, compassionate, trusting, and respectful, we are singing a song. It may not be heard by human ears but it’s a harmonic that makes this planet function.”

Magic Bailey taught Barbara about respect. Wise and feisty, Magic did not suffer fools gladly. “If you treat me like a great horned owl, we’ll get along fine,” he told Barbara. “He increased my sensitivity and respect a thousand-fold,” she says. “I may think I have something that will help, but it can’t be imposed on an animal. You have to work with the animal in partnership.” Just before he died, Magic Bailey gave her apiece of advice: “Be feisty. It gets you more respect.”


Barbara with Nikolas and Machu Picchu

The experience of true partnership was the lesson from Barbara’s horse, Sammy, who lived to the age of thirty. Other horses have also been great animal teachers for her. A decade spent at a therapeutic riding center for special needs children with physical disabilities (SARI in Ontario, Canada) was a significant training ground. There, the horses taught her about conscious communication as they guided her TTEAM® and Therapeutic Touch work.

Sixteen years of teaching and offering consultations at Camp Gone to the Dogs in Vermont also added to Barbara’s hands-on education. “The generous nature of dogs and their people have enhanced my understanding and skill so much,” she says.

Plant Teachers
Barbara’s early experience scanning the tree affects the way she teaches students to communicate with animals today. So, very early in the class she leads students to an exercise in communicating with a tree.

“People don’t have pre-conceived notions of what a tree will tell them,” Barbara says. “In one class, a woman was gone doing the tree exercise for the longest time. She returned saying, ‘I didn’t get anything.’ I asked her what it felt like. ‘It was so peaceful, I could have stood there forever,’ the woman said. I wanted her to understand that’s also communication. I want my students to open their perceptions of what communication is.”

From Barbara’s earliest years, trees, plants, and earth played very important roles in grounding and supporting her energy flow.

“Trees and the plants in my garden continue to be a major source of profound wisdom and support. A few minutes before starting every workshop, I spend time with a tree developing the focus for the upcoming class. Whenever I am stuck with a problem, I go to a tree and ask for insight. And when I am not feeling well I make my way to a tree and put my back against it and ask for healing.”

Human Teachers
For Barbara, feeling a blissful state of connection with animals was completely different from receiving focused information. Barbara talks about how early on this new level of clarity frightened her.

“I wondered if I was going crazy,” she says. “Then a friend sent a videotape to me of a lecture that Penelope Smith had given on animal communication. With a great sigh of relief, I realized that I wasn’t alone and I wasn’t crazy. Here was a mature and dignified woman who had similar experiences and was courageous enough to talk about them, and indeed even offered courses on developing these skills. I brought Penelope to Ontario to teach, and then went to California to take further training with her.

“Penelope demanded that I shift from patronizing animals to respecting them and recognizing their wisdom. With her guidance, I came to see the beings in animal form as very aware and that they hold a vast amount of information and insight that we humans have largely not accessed. I owe Penelope a great debt of gratitude for her clarity and insistence on this highly ethical approach.”

Linda Tellington-Jones taught Barbara about healing with TTouch®. “Through Linda’s teachings, I learned that animals get the pictures we create with our minds when we think and speak in positive ways,” Barbara says. Under Linda’s tutelage, Barbara was also introduced to some of Rupert Sheldrake’s exercises designed to seek wisdom from trees.

Books & University Training
Books that Barbara names as powerfully influential early on include J. Allen Boone’s Kinship with All Life; Penelope Smith’s Animal Talk, Animals...Our Return to Wholeness (now published as When Animals Speak), the Findhorn Garden community’s The Findhorn Garden; and Machaelle Small Wright’s Behaving as if the God in All Life Mattered. She also enjoys Species Link Journal as a supportive forum for ongoing learning.

Barbara holds a B.Sc. degree in geography from Michigan State University and an M.A. in medical geography from the University of Colorado. Her academic interests answered her thirst for knowledge about the spread of disease and its relationship to the spread of innovations and ideas.

Life-Changing Experiences
“In September 1984, shortly after my 40th birthday, several things happened. I was hospitalized for ten days with a life-threatening immune disorder. Two days after I was released from the hospital, I took my first week-long training in TTEAM work (Tellington-Jones Equine Awareness Method) with Linda Tellington-Jones,” Barbara recalls.

Doctors and nurses were very jittery at the news that Barbara was planning to attend a workshop, feeling it was very risky. “Because I had no blood-clotting ability, a nurse caught me as I was going to the washroom and told me, ‘If you so much as sneeze, you could die.’ But I felt okay and I was determined to go,” Barbara says.

Then her father died, which was a conclusion and rebirth on several levels for Barbara. Her father departed within a few days of his daughter finding a connection that she had desired for a lifetime. Barbara explained, “Finding the piece that would move me into the next part of my life freed him up to go. A week later, I was introduced to Therapeutic Touch.”

These energy disciplines taught Barbara how to see energy fields. By 1985, she was taking Feldenkrais Awareness through Movement classes, which continued for the next fifteen years. About the same time, she also joined and later led a meditation group for several years, which taught Barbara how to quiet her mind and develop a deep inner peace.

Deepening the Bond with Animals
Energy work as well as meditation brought Barbara into a state of awareness where she began to recognize that the horses she worked with were sending her pictures that directed her work with them. Asked to see a horse at the University of Guelph Veterinary College in Canada, Barbara sensed a wave of depression sweep over her that she knew was not her own. “I had spent the morning with the horse’s caretaker having lunch so I knew it did not belong to her, either. I knew 100 percent it was coming from the horse who was terribly ill. Vets were unable to diagnose the problem and ultimately the horse died,” she said. However, the problem was clear to Barbara.

“They had isolated the horse. The stalls were in buildings with concrete floors and ceilings; he was literally in a concrete box. Social animals need contact with other life forms to thrive. To isolate an animal like that puts them in a tailspin. Plus, he wasn’t feeling well. Therapeutic Touch helped. I now say to people, ‘If you just put your hands on your animal with caring, it will help.’ We have magic in our hands. We live in a holographic world, so if I approach a person or an animal with caring, the world changes for the better.”

Becoming a Professional Communicator
Barbara focused on developing skills to make her work with animals more effective. She had no thought of becoming a professional animal communicator. However, Spirit had other ideas.

“One of my very first formal communication sessions came in the early 1990s, when a well-known Canadian singer called me on the recommendation of a friend to ask about her dog,” Barbara relates. “The animal was eleven years old and had a large benign growth on its throat. The owner was in a quandary about whether to have it surgically removed or not. My own thought was that the surgery would be too hard on the animal. However, when I connected with the dog it said, ‘If I do not have surgery, I will live for one more year. If I do have surgery, I will live for one more year and be much more comfortable.’ The owner arranged for the surgery and I learned later that the dog came through it well and lived for one more year.

“Then, more calls started coming in,” Barbara says, “and today my clientele is world-wide. I prefer to rely on word of mouth recommendations and let my work, my writing, and my teaching speak for me.”

New Frontiers
Interspecies communication is a new frontier in human awareness and thinking, Barbara says, which continues a family heritage her grandmother traced back to George Rogers Clark (of the famous Lewis and Clark expeditions). That genetic history perfectly pairs her with being on the edge of uncharted territory. “Like Clark, I feel that I am exploring every time I consciously enter into communication.

“Beings in other forms have great wisdom. They’re engaged in a symphony of existence—a truth and an experience that humans have largely ignored. I hear so often that we humans have the right to destroy other forms of life at will. Ah, ants in the compost—well, get the hose and flood them out.
“Slowly, steadily, I am replacing these long-accepted ideas with respect and the conscious choice to enter into communication and move toward cooperation. When I find ants in the compost pile, I explain that I would like to spread it, and I ask them to leave. They do.”
For Barbara, it is a tremendous honor to enter into communication with other forms of existence. “As I process my experiences through writing and speaking, I hope in that in some small way it is contributing to a shift in human awareness and behavior,” she says.

Teaching Humans and Animals
Concentrating on teaching human students that communication is heart-centered work, Barbara focuses on several messages: that only three percent of communication comes through words; that a meditative peacefulness and awareness are the keys to receiving information; that non-judgment is essential; and that communicators make a deal to speak the truth even in the face of disapproval. Barbara gives a telling example and what she learned from it.

“At Camp Gone to the Dogs one year, a woman came to me with her two dogs. One of the animals, Sushi, walked up to me, looked me straight in the eye, and said, “Tell her that Buddha (the other dog) is ill.” I was in shock because I knew how much these animals meant to this woman. The dog repeated it, “Tell her!” I thought about ignoring this and even running from the room, but I knew immediately that if I did so all communication would cease.

“I told the person, ‘Sushi demands that I tell you that Buddha” is ill.’ Three months later the woman e-mailed me to say that the dog had been diagnosed with a hereditary illness. The dog died shortly after this.

“I look back at this episode and recognize three things: the information gave his person warning time that made the dog’s leaving easier, this experience taught me that an inherent ingredient in communication ethics is honesty, and as I relate this experience to others they, too, learn about honesty and integrity from it.”

Barbara also reminds animals that when they encounter humans they are fulfilling a contract to help people remember their spiritual essence. “They are here to help people remember that we too are magnificent spiritual beings and that we are an integral part of All that is,” she says.

Sessions
With the human companion’s permission, Barbara connects to an animal through love, and most of her work is done by telephone. Prior to the session, Barbara requests the name of the animal, a brief physical description, its location, and how long the animal has been with the human.

“I try to develop agreements between the human and animal,” Barbara explains. “An example of this is an agreement that was made between a therapist and her cat. The cat monitored both his person and the house and would pee on the rug whenever the therapist got overworked or whenever energy from clients built up to an uncomfortable degree. The cat agreed that, before resorting to peeing on the rug, he would inform the therapist that things were becoming too much by leaping on her lap, looking her straight in the eye, and meowing several times. The therapist then agreed to clear the house and herself energetically. With this in place, the cat stopped his inappropriate peeing.”

Barbara sees one of her primary duties as a communicator is to empower people both by increasing their understanding of their animals and by giving them tools to support their animals. She will often include additional services as part of the communication session, such as basic training in communication awareness, Tellington TTouch® and Therapeutic Touch, grief counseling, and a form of soul retrieval for animals who have experienced some form of trauma. After a session, she sometimes does a Yuen Energetic Clearing and/or Long-distance Therapeutic Touch for the animal.

Following a consultation, Barbara’s personal homework begins as she asks herself questions like “Why is this person and this animal in my life right now?” “What am I being asked to look at in my own life?” “What have I learned from this session that I need to integrate in my own life?” Each session, she says, offers powerful lessons.

Passing along Her Wisdom
“Have you always been able to communicate with animals?” is a question people ask Barbara frequently. “For a long time, I interpreted the word ‘communicate’ to mean receiving thoughts from animals, as so many people do,” she says. “Now I answer, ‘Animals have always been a central focus in my life but I only began to develop conscious communication skills in my 40s.’

“As my understanding of communication deepens, I recognize that I have always known a form of communication with animals and trees. Communication as I define it now encompasses so much more than thoughts. Nature in all of its forms reaches into the depth of us and changes us,” Barbara says.

“I am learning how critical it is that humanity move into our proper role on this planet,” Barbara adds. "As Machaelle Small Wright says, ‘Nature is just waiting for humans to move into their role within the community.’”

To help in this movement, Barbara has published two books, Our Healing Power: Therapeutic Touch for Humans and Animals, and Embodiment of Spirit: Learning through Therapeutic Touch and Interspecies Communication. Visit https://barbarajanelle.com for more information about her background and accomplishments.