Page 192 - Dark Matter Women Witnessing

Over the next two years, I began developing ‘Wild Animal Prayers,’ a practice of spontaneous

movement and authentic sounding that engages our bodies’ primal wisdom. Though this work

may appear similar to other techniques using spontaneous movement and sound, my intention

was to access this new language of communion, not just with the animals but with all creation.

Gradually I found my way into this ‘common language’ through my soft animal body.

In his book Becoming Animal, David Abram writes about a terrifying experience he had while

kayaking near large herd of enormous sea lions in the ocean near Alaska. “My encounter with

the sea creatures initiated me into a layer of language much older, and deeper, than words. It

was a dimension of expressive meanings that were directly felt by the body, a realm wherein

the body itself speaks... It was a dimension wherein my verbal self was hardly present, but

where an older, animal awareness came to the fore...”1

Rather than facing real dangers, my Wild Animal Prayers are done in the peaceful quiet of my

living room, in my garden, or the open spaces of Georgian Bay. Yet even though the settings

are safe, as I move and make my strange, unpredictable sounds, I am often aware of a

distinct shift in the quality of atmosphere around me. It is as though a veil opens and I am no

longer in ordinary space and time. During one session, a squirrel hung, upside down, on the

trunk of the tree outside my living room, completely captivated by my sounds and movements.

Only when I stopped after several long minutes later did he scamper away. On Bartram

Island, I did a Wild Animal Prayers near a large water snake as he lay shedding his skin in a

shrub. As intensely aware of me as I was of him, my own serpentine movements and slow,

primal chant created a thick and intensely alive communion between us.

We sometimes judge others by saying, “You’re behaving like an animal” but this attitude

conveys our ignorance of the tremendous integrity and natural wisdom of creatures. I sense

the animals, whales and wolves, raptors and lions are anxious to access our consciousness

not only through dreams but through our full body-listening. Allowing our bodies to move in

uncensored, instinctual ways while releasing the sounds that want to pour out of us, we begin

to loosen our ‘humanness’ and open to the ‘other’.