How do I build and deepen my relationship with Power Animal?

Who is responsible for deepening the bond? #

You are. “With most relationships, the extent to which the relationship is healthy, and will grow and blossom, is dependent on both the individuals within it. However, the extent to which your relationship with your Power Animal is healthy, and will grow and blossom, is entirely up to you.” The gift is already given: “Your Power Animal though, is already fully committed to you. But if the relationship is to develop then you need to open up and commit to it too.”¹

And it will not withdraw if you drift: “If you abandon it, or drift away from it, or get distracted, whenever you do come back to it then it will always welcome you when you return.”

How do I strengthen the bond with my Power Animal? #

Begin with commitment. “First and foremost, is to make the decision to commit.”² Then journey with it, always. “When journeying, always journey with your Power Animal… There are no exceptions to this. None whatsoever.” The more time spent together, the better you will know each other, and depth in shamanic work means letting it lead: “You need to develop the habit of constantly asking your Power Animal what to do next; of constantly checking in with it and watching its behaviour and reactions. You are the apprentice and your Power Animal is your principal teacher.”

Simply being together counts too. Do “lots of journeys to strengthen the bond with your power animal – just hanging out with it, becoming it, asking it for healing, exploring the Lower-WorldLower-World. The realm of Mother Earth: pure, unspoilt, wild nature, with no technology and no agriculture. Home of the Peoples and of our own Soul, and completely safe: feeling threatened in a journey is a reliable sign of not having reached it. Read the full answer together etc.”³ See What does it mean to commit to a Power Animal?

Why ask my Power Animal for healing? #

Because it is both healing and apprenticeship. “A major way that you can deepen your bond with your Power Animal is to regularly journey and ask it to heal you.” Trust, love and respect grow, and “by paying attention to exactly what it is doing when it is healing you, you will begin the process of being its apprentice.”⁴ Over time this builds trust in another way too: “Your Power Animal, if you pay close attention to it, has your back.” Like a good parent or teacher, it lets you make mistakes but not dangerous ones.

What else deepens the bond in journeys? #

ShapeshiftingShapeshifting. Becoming another being within a journey, fully enough to know it from the inside: one of the two routes to grokking, a transformation practice, and a direct experience of interconnection. Read the full answer and dismemberment. One way “is to practice shape-shifting into it often”, either flowing into it and becoming it, or asking it to flow into you, and really experiencing what it is like to be it, with its body and senses. The other “is to ask for a dismembermentDismemberment. A transformation practice in which the Power Animal takes you apart (classically: eats, digests and regurgitates you), reformed and healed. A practice of trust, cleansing and death-and-rebirth. More about this”, one of the classic transformation practicesTransformation practices. The family of journey-practices in which the self is deliberately taken apart, reduced to something formless, and reformed: burials, burnings, dismemberments, sky burials, dissolvings, cocoonings, poisonings, shapeshifting. A mini death-and-rebirth: cleansing, loosening of identity, and preparation for the greatest transformation of all. Read the full answer, in which the Power Animal takes you apart and puts you back together healed. “Dismemberment greatly strengthens the bond between you and your Power Animal.”⁵ See What are transformation practices and shapeshifting?

Can I meet my Power Animal in the middle-world to help bonding? #

Your Power Animal is already meant to be with you in the middle-worldMiddle-world. Ordinary physical reality together with its energetic layers: the realm of individuality, separation and mixed intentions, and the only realm where harm is possible. “If there is a hell, then it is the middle-world.” Read the full answer. “Your Power Animal both can and should come with you to both the Upper-WorldUpper-World. The realm of Father Sky and of Spirit: spacious, rarefied and clear, layered in tiers, offering not escape but perspective. Not better than the Lower-World: we ascend rooted, and bring the gifts back down. Read the full answer and the middle-world too”, and that means in day-to-day life, not only in middle-world journeys: “That was the point of the retrieval – to have your Power Animal with you here too.”⁶ The practice is to sense its presence beside you as often as you can remember, “whether you are watching TV, lying in bed, walking through town, or doing your shopping.” You will not always be aware of it, just as you are not always aware of what is in your pocket, but it becomes “a familiar, real and reassuring presence that you can rely on, and turn to when needed and at will.”

You can also connect with the physical species: pictures, a carving or jewellery as reminders; reading about the physical animal; and finding “video clips of it, or even documentaries.”⁷ What you meet in the middle-world, though, is an individual animal, whilst your Power Animal is the Lower-World Oversoul of the whole species (see What is a Power Animal?).

What can I give back to my Power Animal? #

Gratitude, and practical help for its species. Rewilding Yourself includes an exercise for showing gratitude and appreciation to your Power Animal, in this spirit: “This is about you expressing gratitude and appreciation to them, with no strings, conditions or expectations attached. This is about you giving.”⁸ Then there is the middle-world side: “support it in this physical reality by finding a relevant charity and volunteering and/or donating money to it. It is not respectful to ask it to teach you and heal you shamanically, and then to ignore its plight in the middle-world.”⁹ See What is right relationship and reciprocity?

What gets in the way? #

Mostly what we bring with us. We tend to bring our human relationship patterns into our relationships with our GuidesGuides. The Lower-World and Upper-World beings a practitioner works with and learns from, of whom the Power Animal is the first and foremost. True Guides are ethical to their core; the shaman’s power comes from the depth of these bonds, not from the shaman. More about this: someone afraid of being hurt may find it hard to commit; someone who feels undeserving of love may struggle to let it in; someone who likes to be in control may find it hard to let the Power Animal lead.¹⁰ Becoming aware of these patterns is part of the work. Never committing, or keeping the Power Animal at arm’s length, also holds the relationship back; the Power Animal, for its part, never stops being available.