NLPers often talk to me about "alternative therapies" - I regularly have crystals thrust into my hands so I can feel their "energy" and recently had the strange experience of one person enthusiastically tapping their face whilst apparently doing "surrogate EFT" asking me, "Can you feel that?" All i could answer was that, no, as she was tapping her face and not mine, i couldn't feel the tapping. I learned that i didn't "get it" and that it's all about the energies, apparently. And guys, I ought to add that anyone who tries to sneak up on me and tap my face is likely to get my thumb in their eye.

Anyway, I am increasingly being told about "Dolphin Assisted Therapy", something that sounds quite ridiculous to me. "They sense your energies" I was told, "and they have sonar and everything." My bullshitometer went off the scale at this, but everyone else in the room enthused at how amaaaaazing dolphins were and exchanged anecdotes about the `friend of a friend` they knew who went and was cured of something and had such an amaaaaazing experience and everything.

I was pitied for my skepticism. Personally, when I see a dolphin imprisoned in a swimming pool, it makes me want to drown the person that put it there.

So, it is partly in response to this that I post a link:

Dolphin 'Therapy' A Dangerous Fad, Emory Researchers Warn

""Dolphin-assisted therapy is not a valid treatment for any disorder," says Marino, a leading dolphin and whale researcher. "We want to get the word out that it's a lose-lose situation - for people and for dolphins."

While swimming with dolphins may be a fun, novel experience, no scientific evidence exists for any long-term benefit from DAT, Marino says. She adds that people who spend thousands of dollars for DAT don't just lose out financially - they put themselves, and the dolphin, at risk of injury or infection. And they are supporting an industry that - outside of the United States - takes dolphins from the wild in a brutal process that often leaves several dolphins dead for every surviving captive...."

I reccommend reading the full article, and for those with a suitable disposition, watching this video: YouTube - Dolphin Swim Programs & SLAUGHTER Linked!!!!

Watch the brutal capture of "the Taiji Twelve"

Added: 16 January 2007

Watch the brutal capture of "the Taiji Twelve", twelve dolphins culled from the annual Japanese dolphin slaughter who are being sold to the Dominican Republic for "swim with dolphins" programs. Amidst the bloody slaughter of 200 dolphins, these twelve were selected and kept alive as they watched their families, their calves and their pods beaten, stabbed and drowned to death.

There is another highly distressing and graphic video on youtube about the dolphin slaughter that many may wish to avoid viewing.

Regards,

Andrew "full of Christmas cheer" Austin
Integral Eye Movement Therapy Training with Andrew T. Austin

I'm really annoyed at the amount of dolphin-friendly tuna about these days. I used to be able to get trace amounts of dolphin in my diet, with the old tins, but not the new ones. How am I supposed to imbibe tasty dolphin energy without it?

So many things are like that. Take illegal drugs, for instance. There's lots of human damage involved in producing and selling those drugs and yet people (yes, even the "beautiful" people) who entertain themselves by using these drugs are implicit in the suffering caused to others when they support this "industry" by buying the "products."

John Lilly wrote some cool stuff about Dolphins. I've never met a Dolphin though. I imagine a Dolphin in the wild is quite different to a Dolphin who gets messed about with in a swimming pool.

(Why do I keep capitalising Dolphin? It's like they have some strange power over me...)

As are all the people who have voted for governments whose insane policies also contribute directly to that suffering.

But let's stick to the Dolphins on this thread.

Having swam with dolphins, my view is that they are not the cute and friendly creatures they are painted to be. They just happen to always look like they're smiling.

Like humans, they can be trained to behave, but they are still wild predatory creatures.

But there is one huge advantage to Dolphin Therapy - you can charge an awful lot more than you can for many other kinds of therapy. Imagine trying to market tuna therapy!

or Piranha as a new form of acupuncture technique

J

I agree having been around dolphins both captured and in the wild, they are meant to be free.
I co-facilitate sessions with horse, which we have done a similar thing to. Some horses are unable to react to people (namely race horses), they seem to highly strung (my words I don’t know what they are feeling).
Anyway the horse do have an effect with client, however the challenge is ‘how’. We guide the client through a metaphorical session. In life we are in motion metaphor therapy can be very static, think about an image usually it will be a picture rather than a movie. While we are doing the session the horse becomes part of the metaphor bring movement into the environment.

If we think about taking this in the context of the scenario that a patient/client can sit with the best NLPer, therapist or whatever and if the client does not fulfill their role they will gain nothing from it. Equally a person ready to change can have an interaction with the worst NLP'er, an inanimate object or even a cows arse and that can be the trigger to instigate change. What changes are enduced during a session is more about the client rather than the therapist, we are all mammals!

If interaction with dolphins spark that motivation to change then it works. You could dig around and argue that if I paid alot of money to play with a dolphin then I'd be motivated to have a purpose full memory of it and buy into the changes it claims. I guess a little like another post we have had where NLP sessions given away for little or no charge seem to get less impressive results.

I learn so much from my dog, working with horses and even from watching lines of duck congo'ing around where I live. Interacting with nature and animals is a tried and tested although results maybe unquantifiable using a medical model- so what, it may be a placebo or whatever, results are results. If the tests are not good enough to be able to measure what is being monitored then that is an inadequacy of the test, not the activity.

Animal cruelty suck- end of story.

We can add diamonds, mineral and metal mining throughout Africa, dafodil pickers in Scotland and winkel pickers on the south coast to the list of unethically managed practices.

Anybody know if the 'fair trade' label is a genuine stamp of ethical codes of practice? Are there others to look out for?

Thanks,

Matt

I don't know anything about dolphins and whales but I know horses and dogs are used for change work by several different groups.

Horses can calibrate a person in a flash. They will then adjust their behaviour instantly. They are experts at mirroring and with an expressive 'open' horse of whatever breed you could say the mirrored picture is then magnified by the horse (so everyone can see it). Some breeds 'close down' in conventional handling and become less expressive (heart rates show that they are in fact as/ or more emotional than the more expressive thoroughbreds). I have found that I can quickly learn masses about a person by introducing them to my horses and by watching how the horses respond. They often show me something that I might not have picked up on.

There was something about John Grinder and horse whispering