You Are A Human Animal: The benefits of re-wilding yourself

We often forget that we are human animals when we talk about ourselves as human beings; but I believe that reconnecting to many of our animal instincts and responses is essential to healthy living.  When our animal nature comes up in mental health, it’s often spoken about in a negative way - how can we “turn off our fight or flight responses?” and “get control over our reptilian brains” are two common psychological questions and cures.   While I appreciate the usefulness of helping us get along during times of stress and hyper-arousal, I feel we have gone too far in positioning the animal part of ourselves as something to be gotten rid of or completely suppressed.  I see our animalistic responses as ones that should be deeply respected, well-used and context-driven - like building a fire - which can both burn and warm us.  Thankfully, there is a re-wilding movement that begins to outline and describe how we can not only help the Earth and our wild animals return to more healthy states of wildness, but also how we can help ourselves do this too.   The exciting part of about re-wilding is that it is a mindset and something you can work on even if you live in a more urban environment.  There is nature to connect to wherever we are and there is a wild nature inside of you that is always with you.  

With clients, a place I often bring up in relation to our animal selves is the dog park.  A common issue I work with is that people have trouble sharing and communicating their needs and boundaries with others effectively.  Our training since childhood at being civilized and polite have (in some of us) cultivated an unending need to please others and avoid conflict to the detriment of our own wellbeing.  Dogs usually have no trouble telling each other things we need to be able to know and communicate with one another - “hey, I like you;” “let’s play;” “don’t touch me there;” and “back off.”  While I’m not suggesting we make our behavior exactly like dogs, I am suggesting that finding our inner human animal can help us know our boundaries and when paired with more civilized communication can help us tell others how we want to be treated and what works for us and doesn’t.  

Animals are wonderful at using their right-brain functions, ie their intuition.  And so are we when are young humans - this functioning is basically all we do as very young children until our capabilities grow and develop to use left-brain functions.  Starting very young, we are instructed to follow reason and logic and use analysis - again, useful functions when combined with right-brain functioning.   I believe we are taught to stop using a big part of our ability to instinctively go for a decision that just “feels right to us.”  In fact, this isn’t often accepted as a “legitimate” enough backing in our culture.  But our feeling-sense, our intuition can often know much beyond our rational minds.  My dog knows when my wife is a 5 minute drive away - he lifts his head and goes to the fence.  You have this power too!  Intuition is not something only psychically gifted people have - it’s your birthright as an animal.  And I invite you to use it, even if completely privately.  In a world in which we have to make so many choices daily and in our lives, this can be great comfort for the anxiety of having to make a million “right” decisions.  A simple exercise I do when I’m trying to choose between a few options is put them in my mind’s eye on either side of my body or in front of me visually written and see which one my body is drawn towards physically or which option leaps forward to my eyes.  You don’t need to have fancy skills to do this - just an openness to believing you know something in a part of yourself you don’t often make contact with or use.

If you are interested in re-wilding and reconnecting to nature, a great practice can be the sit-spot practice.  In this practice, you choose a spot with nature nearby (it can even be a window view of a tree outside) and intentionally sit in it or observe it for 15 minutes a day.  Slow down, notice the weather, any animals (ants? bees? flies? ) and the way the plants move through the seasons, with changing color or leaves or flowers.  

Just creating an intention to connect to the animal part of yourself can start to bring you back into connection to a greater lineage of ancestors and greater web of life.  You can start to feel less like a lonely human dominating and hurting the earth (but sorry about it) to a human animal with many other forms of life constantly surrounding and in relation to you that you can connect to.  This may help you feel less alone in the world - something many of us are hungry for.