Unleash Your Primal Power

As with animal totems from any culture, it can be tempting to consider a certain animal symbol as good or bad, but I encourage you to refrain from quick judgment. Think about a time when you went to a Chinese restaurant with friends and, while waiting, you looked at the placemat to check out the zodiac symbols. Before finding which animal your birth year was associated with you may have wished, much like Harry Potter – not Slytherin. This is likely due to the strong association of snakes with danger, Satan, or deception. It is important to remember that the snake is also associated with rebirth, renewal, intelligence, and problem-solving. I recently experienced a strong reaction when I plugged in my birth year for an online calculator and it said my Chinese sign was pig. I felt amazingly let down because I believed I was born in the year of the Dog, an animal that I have a strong affinity for. Fortunately, when I did it a second time it said year of the dog. In spite of my knowledge that both pig and dog have positive and negative characteristics if not in balance, I fell prey to the same discrimination that I’m urging against. Tapping and Totems Together Mention any animal. I dare you to avoid conjuring an image, feeling, or characteristic associated with that animal. Animals are a powerful way to become aware of subconscious associations, personal motivations, and intrinsic desires because of the relative ease in eliciting these common representations. If I say that someone was a mouse, I’m sure you get an image of someone that is small or timid. If I refer to someone as being a real shark, you instantly have a reaction. More often than not, your reaction or association is going to be somewhat similar to mine, particularly if we are from similar cultures. These animal stereotypes exist for a reason. The Native American Medicine Wheel was used, in part, as a method of self-knowledge and self-realization (Meadows, 2002). The word Medicine in this context translates to energy or vital power. Therefore, a being’s medicine was an expression of its energy system. We can use this energy to understand ourselves, discover our potential, find meaning or purpose in our lives, or simply take control of our destiny. Obviously, there is not sufficient room within this book to include tapping examples for all of the animals, birds, and insects on this planet and my purpose in writing this book is to stimulate you to unleash your own primal power. It would be impossible for me to guess what animals might be important to your growth and development. I considered using only animals that have been important in my own journey, but eventually chose to include animals based on some more random factors such as animals that happened to pop into my mind, literally ran across my path, were visited at the zoo, or happened to be a favorite animal of someone I love. Keep in mind that the primary goal is to demonstrate how to use the animal totems for tapping, not necessarily to focus on the actual animals themselves. I believe there are enough examples to assist you in getting the hang of this. If you already know what your animal totems or spirit animals might be, grab a piece of paper and write them down. If you don’t already know what your totems or spirit animals are, write down your three or four favorite animals, your three or four least favorite animals, and perhaps an animal you have seen recently that isn’t common in your usual daily life. Those all have a good chance for teaching you something important. I would encourage you to tap along with all of the examples, whether you think they might be your totems or not, because there may still be something to gain. Why Tapping? You are energy. I am energy. Anything that changes our energy changes our experience of life. That includes our thoughts, our feelings, and our physical body. The Chinese used this knowledge when they devised the system of acupuncture which manipulates the body’s energy to create and maintain health. Through the combined brilliance of several pioneers and multiple methodologies, we have learned how to change our energy in much the same way as acupuncture – but without the needles. Instead, you are going to gently but firmly tap on some of the same spots where an acupuncturist would insert needles Because of this, some people call meridian tapping a form of psychological acupuncture. Our energy has a frequency. Our bodies, our thoughts, and even our feelings are a constantly changing form of electrical energy. The exciting news is that this electrical energy can be utilized. I would bet that you have seen images on television or in the movies where there is a flat line on a heart monitor, but then the doctor applies electricity to the person’s chest and the heart rate changes. Although it may be an extreme example, meridian tapping works in much the same way. A subtle change in the electrical energy applied in one place impacts the electrical energy of your entire system.