Photo credit: Jodi Frediani
Below is an excerpt from a longer article published in the Santa Cruz Sentinel on January 2, 2011:
Boonmee was depressed and in pain.
The 10-year-old Asian elephant was separated from her mother and her foot looked like a cauliflower. She’d stepped on a land mine near Thailand’s border in September, which blew her foot apart, and traveled for two days before arriving at the Friends of the Asian Elephant hospital in Lampang, Thailand.
By early November, the hospital’s staff worried that Boonmee was giving up, said Bonny Doon resident Jodi Frediani, 62, who visited the hospital last month. Boonmee wasn’t eating, was withdrawn and couldn’t walk easily. And, “she repeatedly, gently touched her cauliflower foot with the tip of her trunk,” Frediani said.
But then, Frediani tried using TTouch on Boonmee. The touch-based therapy is similar to gentle bodywork and can help relieve physical and emotional distress in animals.
TTouch appeared to revive the elephant’s spirit, and her previously glassy-eyed stare gave way to tears. Soon, Boonmee was offering areas to be worked on — like her enormous, large-eared head, which “she lowered so I could do some of the circular TTouches,” said Frediani, a 30-year practitioner of TTouch.
By the end of the day, Boonmee had become playful, even letting Frediani peel bananas for her.
“Boonmee had a new brightness and a twinkle in her eye,” said Windy Borman, a San Francisco-based filmmaker who traveled to Thailand with Frediani and observed the TTouch process. “The elephants definitely formed a connection with Jodi,” Borman said. “They remembered her and would come greet her.”
To read the rest of the story and view more photos by Jodi Frediani, click here.
-Windy Borman
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