Primal Instincts

primal instict of sharkPrimal Instincts – that is really the theme of my upcoming book Primal Power: Totem Tapping for Health and Happiness. We all have primal instincts.  What follows is a sneak peek at a tapping exercise included that considers what we can learn from the primal instincts of sharks.

I find it hard at times to rely on my instincts. For much of my life people in charge have made me question whether my instincts were valid and reliable.  It happened  in some subtle and not-so-subtle ways.  For example, were you ever so angry as a child that you told a grown up that you hated someone and they responded back by telling you that you didn’t really hate that person? Maybe you had an experience in which you felt frightened but you were told that what you were afraid of wasn’t really scary.  I’ve had both of these done to me and have done both to others. Being told that what I was feeling was wrong made me less in tune or able to trust my primal powers and instincts.  Although I’m doing better I still sometimes find it hard to rely on my gut, even though it is pretty accurate.

illustration for karate chop pointSetup (karate chop point): Even though I find it hard to listen to my gut, I deeply and completely love and accept myself.  Even though I often second guess myself when it comes to following my instincts, I am learning to love that part of me again.

 

diagram of the tapping pointsEyebrow…Afraid to trust my gut

Side of Eye…Afraid to trust myself

Under the Eye…Afraid to trust my inner guidance

Under the Nose…Afraid to trust my primal nature

Chin…Afraid to follow my intuition

Collarbone…Trained to believe they are right and I am wrong

Under the Arm…Even about my own feelings

Top of Head…And my own experiences

Eyebrow…When I have trusted my gut

Side of Eye…It has been amazingly spot on

Under the Eye…But much of the time

Under the Nose…I don’t even listen for it anymore

Chin…Or worse, I hear it, but ignore it

Collarbone…Bad things usually follow

Under the Arm…When I ignore an instinct or a gut feeling

Top of Head…Learning to trust again

Eyebrow…Learning to trust ME again

Side of Eye…Not giving up on the facts

Under the Eye…But acknowledging a knowing that is sometimes beyond the facts

Under the Nose…Knowing what I feel

Chin…My feelings can’t be wrong

Collarbone…It doesn’t mean that I have to react to them

Under the Arm…All of the time

Top of Head….But I can learn to hear my inner voice again and reclaim my primal power.

 

Know It All…Or Know It Not

Have there been times when you believed that you knew something, but found out later that what you thought you knew was either completely wrong, or at best incomplete?  This was my situation last month in Alaska. I thought I was a know it all, or at least a know it a little bit, found out that I was a know it not.

After a magical helicopter ride I was standing on top of a glacier.  It didn’t look anything like what I thought a glacier looked like.  I had certainly seen pictures of glaciers calving on National Geographic.  As I stood there, I realized that I had a very “kindergarten” or one-dimensional view of a glacier.  In reality I knew nothing at all. This was quite sobering.  I found that I couldn’t really wrap my brain around it.

on top of a glacierI walked on the glacier, looked into the deep tunnels, drank from a glacial stream, and marveled at the beauty.  Soon after we boarded an air boat and viewed the glacier from that level.  I got to see another aspect of a glacier, and it looked a little bit more like what I had seen on TV.

The next day we entered Glacier Bay.  There I saw two distinctly different glaciers.  One wasn’t even white.  They were close enough together that I could view them by simply turning my head.  That totally blew my mind.

I continued to grapple with the question what is a glacier for the rest of the trip.  I looked it up on the internet and found “a slowing moving mass or river of ice formed by magnificent view of glacierthe accumulation and compaction of snow on mountains or near the poles.”  I also found “a glacier is a persistent body of dense ice that is constantly moving under its own weight; it forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation over many years, often centuries.”  Even by the time we left, I couldn’t tell a glacier from a mountain most of the time.

majestic glacierI was left wondering how often in my life I have been convinced that I understood something and been totally wrong because I had only viewed it from one vantage point.  I will need to be more careful in assuming what I do and do not know.