Discovering Your Spirit Animal: The Wisdom of the Shamans - Lucy Harmer 2009

How to Reinforce Your Connection with Your Spirit Animal

Discovering your spirit animal is just the first step. As in any relationship, you then have to work at it. In shamanism, it is necessary to develop a strong relationship with your main spirit animal. It is the one who accompanies you on all your shamanic journeys and is your main guide for all that is outside the visible world. It can, of course, also be with you in the everyday world and act as a guide, counselor, source of information, or companion. As in any relationship, it will expect certain things from you.

In order for its medicine to be effective in your life, you must honor it and pay attention to what it says. The greater the importance you give to its medicine, the more powerful it will be.

✵ Don’t ignore it in your daily life. Don’t seek it out only when you want to go on a shamanic journey. Get into the habit of greeting it when you wake up. So that you won’t forget it, put a picture or a statuette somewhere prominent, or wear a pendant with a small figurine representing your spirit animal. Ask it what you can do to make it happy. Try giving, rather than taking. Is there anything you can do for it?

✵ When you go out, take your spirit animal with you. Whatever the activity (going for a walk, jogging, cooking, cleaning your teeth, working on the computer, etc.), visualize it beside you. If you perform some type of creative activity, such as painting or writing, let it inspire you. I take my wolf everywhere, even to the movies. I don’t like it when someone sits in front of me blocking my view, so I ask my wolf to sit there and nobody ever takes that seat!

✵ If your spirit animal exists in the area where you live, go and watch it in its natural habitat. If this isn’t possible, you can always learn more about it by reading books or magazines, watching documentaries, etc. For example, one of my favorite books when I was a child was The Call of the Wild by Jack London; it taught me a lot about nature and the evolution of dogs and wolves. Rereading it, I felt a strong call from my wolf and that seemed to draw us closer together.

✵ Invoke your spirit animal every time that you want to feel safe. One of my friends lives in a neighborhood of some disrepute. Coming home late one evening, she came face-to-face with two men with knives. She started to panic and silently called her Panther, her animal guide. At the instant that she called him, the two men turned away from her and walked off in the opposite direction. One of my students always calls his coyote before going to sleep, and one night was awoken by the coyote growling in his dream. He heard a window break downstairs and turned on the light. The would-be burglars ran off immediately, and my student thanked his coyote for having roused him.

✵ When you’re seeking a reply or a solution to a problem, or wondering how to deal with a difficult situation, ask your spirit animal for help.

✵ In most shamanic cultures, spirit animals and animal allies are kept secret; they are mentioned only in exceptional circumstances to people in whom you have total confidence, or during a healing or teaching ceremony. Your spirit animal must always be honored, and it is important to ask it outright in what circumstances its presence may be revealed to others.

✵ Don’t forget that in order to forge a strong bond, mutual respect is essential. You must learn to listen to your spirit animal’s point of view, and it may take a certain amount of time before you have confidence in it and it can learn how far your boundaries stretch.

✵ Dancing to honor your spirit animal is a very effective method of reinforcing your link with it. Learn to observe its movements and to reproduce them in your dance. If your guide is a bird, imitate it by moving around, waving your arms as if you’re flying; if it’s a tortoise, crawl in the same way, and, for a lion, stride around majestically.

✵ Donate time and money to organizations working for the protection of the environment. Think of every possible way to contribute to preserving the planet, whether by recycling, reducing your consumption of water or electricity, buying organic food grown locally, perhaps participating in the creation of an open space in your town, or helping to set up or take care of a nature reserve.