My friend Magaly and I travel regularly to a monkey rescue rehabilitation center where we offer Reiki to the monkeys in most need. In this article, I will focus on my Reiki experiences with a Black Howler Monkey named Esperanzo. He was born in South America's forest. He is almost completely blind because of cataracts and he is also very small, 1/3 of the normal size.

Elba, the owner of the CENTRO DE RESCATE Y REHABILITACIÓN DE PRIMATES in Peñaflor, Chile where Esperanzo now lives, thinks he was captured when he was a baby. When his mom was killed in the hunt, he must have fallen from her arms. Surely he didn't receive treatment, and so his bones healed in bad positions, leaving his skeleton with several damaged places. He had to spend a long time suffering before he finally found a place to be cared for and respected as he deserves. Elba received him in 1992 when our Zoo gave him to her. They had received him from the police, who found him on the street, sick and undernourished. He needed almost one year to recover his health and learn to trust humans. Thinking of all the mistreatment he has suffered during his whole life, I can't understand how his soul still reminds so gentle with us. He just wants to touch us and be stroked.

Before starting the Reiki treatment, Magaly and I spent some time feeding him and talking to him to make him feel comfortable. He was resting in his beautiful room when we arrived, but as soon as we called him he came to us, moving his body as fast as he could. He looked for a good place on a rope and started to smell our hands looking for the peanuts and the seeds we had for him. He made some delicate noises to tell us how he was enjoying that moment. He took our hands in his and put his face near the bars to look at us.

After some minutes, I started sending him Reiki while he stayed on the rope touching my hands and eating some seeds. He looked so relaxed as if he knew we wanted to help him. I put my hands in front of him for nearly 10 minutes and then Magaly did the same for 15 minutes more while Pilar (his keeper) and I took some photos. Esperanzo didn't move at all during the session, he just received all the energy he needed and after 25 minutes he decided it was enough. Moving very slowly, he turned and went to his private room. It was starting to rain when we finished. At first he sat by the door silently, but after a short moment he started to sing a beautiful song with his strong and deep voice. He sang for more than 10 minutes, making us feel happy. We took it as a gift from him, a way to say to us that he received the Reiki and he was ok. We waited until he finished singing and left when he finally went to sleep in his room.

We will return next week for the second session and every night we send him 15 minutes to keep him healthy and make him feel happy. We wish he can go on having a beautiful life in the refuge. It will depend on the people who go on helping to support it. He will be always restricted to a cage because of human cruelty against defenseless creatures. He will never be able to go back to live free in the forests as he should, but at least he is in a beautiful place. Here he can share with a lot of other monkeys also rescued by Elba and also all those people who work with her to heal the physical and emotional damage humans caused them.

If you want to know more about how you can help Esperanzo and his monkey friends you can visit them at www.macacos.cl.

About the author: Patricia Perez G. lives in Santiago, Chile, and started working in alternative therapies in 1998 after studying past lives therapies and hypnosis. Since then she has gone on to study different techniques as a way to understand how energies work and heal. Her first exposure to Reiki was in 1998 when she took Reiki I. She immediately realized cats always could feel the energy flowing through her hands and started to give Reiki to animals and study the way they react. Last year she joined the CENTRO DE RESCATE Y REHABILITACIÓN DE PRIMATES in Peñaflor, Chile. There she received the blessing of being near these gentle creatures and is starting to learn how they respond to Reiki. Patricia offers Reiki treatments, tarot readings, and past life therapies to her clients. As she speaks English and Spanish, her clients come from many countries around the world. To schedule a reading, Reiki treatment, or for further information, contact Patricia at 56 - 2 -(08) 444-86-51 or at her email bassalisa@gmail.com.