How The Animals Brought Me Home

Twenty-three years ago, I got sober.

In those early days, stepping onto the path of recovery, I found it to be like running through quicksand. Slow, sloggy, bogged down with the weight of self-hatred and mistakes. I had spent years trying to run away from the trauma of an abusive childhood, which turned into running away from myself. I had always been at war with my body: ignoring her, punishing her, drowning her nightly, hating her for every reason under the sun. I didn't know how to live inside my skin.

Were the birds always there?

As the fog began to clear, I started noticing the birds. Outside my apartment, on hikes. I would sit for hours, mesmerized. A jaw-dropping convocation of bald eagles feeding on salmon at the headwaters of a northwest river. The blue heron standing in perfect stillness, waiting for his prey. The buzz of two hummingbirds arguing like lovers in front of the feeder. As a twenty-something, it was a little strange, but these creatures held something for me that I desperately needed. Hope.

I like to joke that birds were my gateway drug.

They were the first teachers who showed me that the more-than-human world had been waiting to speak to me all along. I just hadn't been quiet enough to hear it - the birds opened a door, I stepped through, and I haven’t looked back.

What I didn't know then, but I know now, after my own healing and two decades of working with women, is that the animals weren't just teaching me about the world. They were teaching me how to see and experience my own soft animal body differently. With reverence.

The animals showed me a pathway back to myself.

We are nature. We are mammals. In our instinctual, more-than-human kin, we see profound wisdom at work. Play is serious business for lion cubs, and that teaches us that play grows us in meaningful ways. The predator that is backed into a corner will instinctively lash out and protect itself by attacking indiscriminately, though this may not be their natural temperament. The giraffes gather to grieve their dead with what appears to be a ritual. These are just a few ways that animal kin have taught me more about myself and being human. Through witnessing the wisdom of animals and their incredibly unique behaviors, bodies, and ways of being, I was able to turn toward my own soft animal body with kind eyes and an open heart.

Turning toward myself disabused me of the idea that the brain and the body are separate. I recognized this false separation as a mechanistic inheritance that has disconnected us from our most fundamental intelligence. The nervous system permeates the entire body, and more than 80% of the information flowing between body and brain moves upward, from body to brain. The body is not the brain's servant; she is a primary source of knowing.

Our natural state is not fragmentation and disconnection; it is wholeness. And wholeness is innate: it is something we remember.

And when you remember, your wholeness offers access to a greater capacity that can hold the complex fullness of life. Through a deeper, wider capacity, clarity expands, and discernment grows. Your truth is revealed, and your next steps are apparent.

This is what I want for all of us.

Grow in wisdom by resting in your soft animal body.

It seems inevitable that the animals began showing up with greater frequency, even as unseen guides and allies in my frequent journeys to the imaginal realm. The yoga nidra that I love and adore so much reflects this. When we rest in the silence together, I intend that you enter a liminal space of wisdom — where the body, mind, and energetic body soften, and you become open to mystery, to guidance, to the deep sustenance of your own knowing. To meeting the animals that have a teaching for you, that may help you turn toward your own soft animal body. Yoga nidra became the place where I could offer other women what the animals had offered me: a doorway into their own body's wisdom, without having to do anything except arrive and rest. If you haven't found me on Insight Timer yet, I have five free yoga nidra tracks there just for you.

In fact, Yoga Nidra For Peace With What Is has been played over 2,000 times. A Blessing For Your Body (one of my favorites) is rated excellent by 92% of listeners. I'm moved every time I think about that — strangers resting in practices I made with love. Find me on Insight Timer

And if you are ready to join a community of kindred spirits on the wild journey of life, I would love to welcome you to the inner circle of The Wild Journey Home, my Substack that celebrates the wisdom of our soft animal body through story and sacred practice. It's a community of women who pick up shells, stones, and feathers, who feel most themselves in the presence of animals or exploring the silence. If that sounds like you, join me at The Wild Journey Home.

With love and wild blessings,
Nona