power animal – follow your nose

Ceremony

February 6, 2013March 18, 2013 Katharine AsalsLeave a comment

We arrived late the first night, stumbling into the lodge in the dark, into ceremony in process. Burning sweetgrass was offered from the fire to cleanse ourselves. We found seats along the outside ring of the circle.

Cindy, the master of ceremonies and Contrary leading the event was speaking. She was dressed in a kind of shredded brown burlap sack. A hood with the eyes cut out and a long cloth nose attached was thrown back over her head while she spoke, but brought down over her face when she began the active ceremony.

We sat with tobacco in our hands, as offerings of thanks to be burned in the fire. Cindy would come around to each of us, singing and shaking her turtle rattle inches in front of us, the eagle wing resting on our heads.

In the dark of the lodge, lit only by the big fire in the center and a few lanterns, I’d steal glimpses of her standing so close – the piercing strength of her voice and the trancelike power of the drum, the rattle, made her feel like a huge powerful brown presence in front of me. Among the necklaces around her neck was a very large claw. I asked her later – grizzly bear claw, she said. Of course! That was what she felt like standing there – a massive grizzly bear.

Bears are known as powerful healers, and healing was the purpose of the ceremony – four phases of it. First the mind is cleared, restored to the Good Mind to allow the healing of the spirit, source of vision, that which should lead. Next the heart and finally the body.

Cindy spoke about trauma – said we carry it in our DNA. That we carry all the heartaches of our own personal lives, but also the agonies of our ancestors – that it weakens the body.

She spoke of releasing the hurts we’ve received from others – of being able to see them as lost souls stumbling and hurting in the dark just as we are – to take pity on them, to allow our hearts to soften.

She said the heart that heals from grief and hurt becomes a place of great generous love. Reminded me of Hiawatha and the Condolence Ceremony, how his life was moved from a place of deep grief to one of healing others.

The second night I had a vivid image of an eagle coming at me, talons forward, grabbing a loop of the barbed wire from around my heart like some kitsch Mexican art and flying away with it, yards of it ripping out of my heart until I thought of Eustace in the Narnia series, when he’s turned into a dragon and one night has the layers and layers of dragon skin peeled away from him by the lion with deep painful gashes until a fresh-skinned boy steps out of the leathery husks.

Air and expansion rushed in to the newfound space.

And a sensation began of an animal inside my skin about to burst out like the Hulk bursts out of his clothes – the sensation of fur and claws and ferocity coursing through me so overpowering I thought I might spontaneously shape-shift and slink away into the night.

More rounds of the drum, the tobacco.

Later a feast was held in the kitchen. New friends were made.

No mind

August 17, 2012August 17, 2012 Katharine Asals1 Comment

Early this morning a dream of a deer, come to the door of a house I was just leaving. I thought he was an unusual sighting in a suburban neighbourhood as he turned and ran away revealing a fox tail rather than the little white cotton puff. Excited, I turned to my host, who seemed non-plussed, as though deer were frequent visitors in his neighbourhood. But when I went out again to the street, the deer was back, his expression deliberate, gesturing with his head for me to follow him around the corner, where it turned out an old friend was giving birth.

Today on Facebook, I see that a photo I took up north weeks ago is featured on the Ontario Travel page.

I took a lot of photos while I was up north.

I loved the experience of it. Of getting up early, heading out into the morning light and feeling a kind of no-mind creative process – different from writing. Different because it seemed like the best way to connect with my surroundings was to be empty, to just be present in my body in the space…..waiting, feeling, breathing, sensing.

Riding and walking the trails around Collingwood, I found it easy to get very quiet inside myself. I’d heard in the past about “walking with your power animal”. It sounded faintly pretentious and I wasn’t sure really what was meant by it.

But I started to feel it. I started to feel like that’s what I was doing. Walking as if. Walking inside the animal. Walking AS an animal – listening, smelling, feeling the light shifts in the air.

Rustles and snaps of twigs in the brush, in the forest made me stop and listen, waiting to see who was there. All senses poised as carnivorous predator, hunting for the next shot.

Strangely enough, sometimes it seemed as though the hunted waited, wanting to have their picture taken.

Animal Friends and Strangers

June 11, 2011October 6, 2013 Katharine Asals5 Comments

At Nicky’s Sunday morning Nia dance class there is a dance she does every once in a while that involves a series of moves which she performs as if she is both a hunter and a bird – several steps take her over to the right where she draws one arm back as if drawing an arrow in a bow, then several steps to the left are taken as the bird flapping its wings, flying away. I’d always thought it was the nature of the dance that drew out this bird and hunter characterization.

But in this Sunday morning’s class, during a totally different routine, she tried to get us to do a chicken flap of the wings while carrying out some steps, and it occurred to me, no it’s not the dance. The thing is, Nicky IS a bird.

What kind of bird? I don’t know, I don’t know all the different birds that well or I can’t see it that clearly, I don’t have that kind of shamanic sight, but something slender, with quite a long neck I think – perhaps a heron.

And her husband is just so obviously a bear – big and bumbly and sweet and generous but with a surprising sudden temper – all around larger than life. As a couple they are quite an interesting combination.

My animal is described in one book I read as “short and stocky”. Oh well. I still love her.

I was thinking about this whole animal spirits idea on the plane coming back from Santa Fe and Ohki’s teachings. My first flight was from Albuquerque to Atlanta, where I had a changeover to a flight that would take me up to Buffalo. But looking at my itinerary on the first plane I realized I only had half an hour to get off one plane and onto the next, and I knew from the flight down that Atlanta is quite a large airport.

First I tried speaking to one of the stewardesses to see if they might help me out – make an announcement to the other passengers to let me out first given the tight time frame. As I told her my plight, her face remained unmoved – no help forthcoming there.

My seat was just behind first class and beyond them was the front door of the plane where we had boarded, so when the plane came to a stop in Atlanta, I grabbed my purse and shot forward into first class, hoping to get close to that front door when it opened.

The passengers in first class were already getting to their feet, so I was stuck in the midst of them and could feel the hostility instantly. I made noises about having a very tight changeover time, explaining my presence. One man on my right looked at me with a sour face and said, “In Atlanta they usually use the middle doors of the plane”. I thanked him for this information and together we stood watching out the window to see where the accordion corridor contraption would go – front or middle. When it became clear that it was moving towards the center doors and I was therefor even worse off than I had been, his look was a triumphant smirk.

I turned towards the back, to see if I might be able to push my way through the crowd somewhat, improving my time, but the man directly behind me had risen to his feet and stood towering over me. He was maybe 6’5″ and wearing a tall cowboy hat and sharp nosed cowboy boots. He had a bit of bloodied kleenex stuck in one nostril and as I gazed up at him with a mixture of amusement at the kleenex and the stress of my hurry and the decades of training in Canadian feminine politeness, he looked down at me with a cold glare that clearly said, “I do not move for you”.

We stood for a minute, feeling each other out for size, attitude, power, and I wondered, where does this man derive all his self-confidence, superiority and entitlement. Clearly physical size and class are a big part of what was going on there, but it did also cross my mind….What animal is that?