Chakra Animal Work | Earth Encounters

Chakra Animals

Deep Imagery and the Personal Totem Pole Process©

In this work, you will be shown how to access states of deep relaxation, where you can see, talk to and go on journeys with inner guides, usually animals, that spring up spontaneously when you focus on different parts of your body.

The aim is to offer every participant an opportunity to discover the feral strength, wisdom and power that lives within them and to craft it into an expression that can direct and inform their lives.

In working with the animals we begin to:

understand and accept ourselves more
discover facets of ourselves previously inaccessible
deepen our awareness to a merging of conscious and unconscious
become more in harmony with ourselves, with others and with the universe.

As human beings, much of the time we are unknowingly controlled and directed by our subconscious and unconscious, which in turn are being directed by our life experiences, especially those of our early childhood. As a result we sometimes feel that something is missing in our lives, even when everything is going well. When things are not going well, we may feel lost, desperate, hopeless or worse.

We can re-establish a sense of harmony within ourselves and with others. Latest developments in guided imagery provide a direct and an effective means for accomplishing this.

The Personal Totem Pole Process© is a unique blend of the theory of active imagination which was developed by Dr. C. G. Jung, the Eastern theoretical orientation which understands the human being as a system of interrelated energies or chakras, and the Native American practice of speaking to and learning from the animals.

In this process a person is guided using deep imagery to encounter an animal in each chakra or energy centre. The condition of the chakra is reflected by the particular animal and its circumstances. In some cases an animal is seen to be caged or injured which indicates that the energy is not as free or as healthy as it should be. In others the strength and stability of the chakra is evident. When all the chakra animals have been reached they are brought into a council in which they work toward each other’s growth and health. In doing so they typically raise issues which the person has not adequately faced, but is now supported and even coached in doing so. As the person faces the issues the animals grow, and as the animals grow and come to be more supportive of each other, the individual feels a growing harmony and centeredness in his or her own life. The inner support of the chakra animals comes to be deeply appreciated and richly felt. The work is deeply healing and transformative as the animals know how to guide us with precision through the sequence of experiences that lead back to our own original wholeness.

Use of this process with clients has shown that it effectively and efficiently brings about the resolution of longstanding conflicts and leads to a newfound maturity.

The value of this process for someone who has already done much growing is that it clearly indicates the strengths of the person’s component energies and the relationships between them, and provides guidelines for further work.

View the International Institution for Visualisation Research website here.

Chakra Animal Workshop

These are all day workshops which include two journeys. One to meet your chakra animals and the second to perform a healing ceremony with them.

Online classes and private sessions with David are available.

Meeting and Journeying with Personal Animals

Walking with my Power Animal

It’s late at night, you’re walking home on your own. You know you have to walk down the ally and into the estate to get to your flat, and you know that they will be there waiting. You can hear their voices. Your shoulders tighten, your knuckles turn white, and you can feel the fear in the pit of you stomach. Your head bends, your pace quickens. Somehow you have to get through them. But tonight something strange happens; the fear in the pit of your stomach begins to growl. It’s not fear any longer, it’s a large Siberian Tiger and it’s walking beside you. You can feel its power; its presence is almost overwhelming. As you approach your tormentors they move away, they give you room. Maybe they don’t notice you; maybe they don’t want to notice you. You feel strong, confident and powerful. You are not alone; you are walking with your “Power Animal”.

Deep Healing Journeys

I am putting my hands into the water. There is something here – it is a baby boy. I am lifting him out and holding him in my arms, on my lap. He is newborn and wrinkled but healthy and whole. His eyes are closed. I know this was the boy who was still born to me when I was twenty. I’m just sitting here and crying….. Now there is another boy here in the clearing. He is older, maybe 25, a young man. I think he is the grown version of the baby I am holding. He is sitting down in front of me. He wants me to look at him. I don’t want to look at him. I feel ashamed, guilty. He is insisting that I look at him but he is very gentle….. He is saying that he forgives me. He keeps saying it over and over, making me look at him.

Now Deer has come over to me. She is young again, her softest most gentle self. She is nudging my heart with her nose, she wants me to pay attention to my heart. As I look down I can see that my heart has opened. It’s like a glittering cavern, deep red inside but encrusted with jewels all around the walls. Guided by Deer I take one of the jewels, which is like a pale blue diamond and I place it in the middle of the forehead of the baby in my arms, pressing it into his skin. He opens his eyes and looks at me. We are looking at each other now. I am telling him how much I love him and he is showing me that he understands. Now he has turned into a child of about 14. He still has the blue diamond in the middle of his forehead. He says that he is leaving now but that we will meet each other again. The two boys – 25 and 14 – hold each other’s hands and walk away into the surrounding woodland.

A Polarity Journey with Hawk and Tortoise

I said that I had ‘easy’ on my left side and ‘hard’ on my right. When I called for an animal to represent ‘easy’ to come, Eagle flew over. He was relaxed, comfortable, amused, chuckling to himself – laughing at me but in a way that was fine with me. Very familiar.

I asked Eagle what he had come to show me. He said we should fly together. I wasn’t sure whether he meant to merge or if I could fly on his back or fly along side him. I asked him and he said it was up to me. I said that I would like to merge. He flew down from the tree and we tried to merge but it didn’t feel right. He tried to take off but couldn’t – I felt like I was weighing him down. I said – can we try from a tree top? I can climb up a tree and it might be easier than taking off from the ground. He said fine, so that’s what we did. We merged in a tree top and swooped down out of the tree then up into the air.

The air was cool and swift, I could feel it moving my feathers, feel the strength of it lifting me. We found a thermal, rose higher and higher in a growing spiral. The sun was hot but the air was cool. We rose above the English countryside, saw the curve of the Earth. Eagle said – we can go wherever we want to go. There are no borders, no boundaries in the sky. If we are hungry, we can catch food to eat. If we are tired, we can rest on a mountain or a tree top. It is all here for us, the whole world. We enjoyed flying around for a while. Then an image of Water came. Water running down stream. We found a stream and flew down it, following the sparkling light. In between trees and banks, the stream grew wider and wider until it spread out into the ocean. Eagle said – enough.

Eagle took me back to the clover field. I asked him if he had anything to give me before he left. He said that he had already given me something. It was not something he could say in words. But he had given it to me and I had accepted it. He had put it in my heart and it was safe there. It didn’t matter if I knew what it was or not. He left, saying that he would return shortly, when needed.

I asked for an animal to represent ‘hard’ to come. Straight away there was a tortoise sitting a little way in front of me. I laughed, he was such a good animal for ‘hard’. Everything about him was hard, his shell, his movements, he looked old and tired. I walked over to him. He was very small. I told him that he was very small. He said he could be any size I liked and I said that I would like him to be bigger. He grew to the size of a small dog.

I asked him what he had to show me. He said: If you want to you can go and hide inside your shell. It’s okay to go and hide inside your shell sometimes. It’s not a bad thing, not something to be ashamed of, not something to avoid. Everybody has a shell and everybody hides inside it sometimes and you can do that too. It’s okay to be like everyone else.

I asked him if life was hard for him and he said: Yes it is. Everything is hard. It takes effort. And that’s okay. It’s okay for things to be hard and slow and painful. That’s how some things are.

I asked him if he needed anything from me. He said that he needed my acceptance. I asked him if he had anything for me. He said that he did but it wasn’t open yet. He showed me a nut, like a walnut, with a hard, thick shell. He said that he was going to put that in my heart with Eagle’s gift. That it wasn’t ready to open yet but it would, in time. There was a treasure inside that was worth waiting for.

I called Eagle back. It was fascinating seeing their relationship with one another. Seeing them together their oppositeness was very obvious. But they were old friends with deep affection for each other. Eagle liked the fact that Tortoise had such a hard shell because it meant that he couldn’t eat him so they could be friends. Eagle said that he had been listening to our conversation and he wanted to offer to carry Tortoise anywhere he wanted to go if he wanted to see more of the world. Tortoise thanked him for the offer but said that there were as many wonders on this small hillside as there were in the whole of the world and he was perfectly happy exploring them, there was a lifetime’s worth of interest and beauty right there for him.

I knew the time had come for these two animals to merge but I felt slightly panicky. I had no idea how these two different animals could come together but I really wanted them to. There was a sense of easy and hard flowing together, neither one in charge, working together producing something rich and deep. I wanted that thing.

Eagle flew over and landed on top of Tortoise. He sank into him and they merged into a large egg, about a metre high. It was yellow with blue flecks. It started spinning around and rays of brilliant white light came off it. As the egg opened it revealed a small, ruddy coloured Dragon. I was absolutely delighted. I said – of course that’s what you get when you merge an Eagle and a Tortoise. It was very joyful.

She was a small, red, baby dragon with big eyes, wide, fine, leathery wings and pointed armour on top of her head and along her spine. A flying, armoured dragon. She looked a little surprised to be there. Even as I was describing her, she was growing and changing. I asked her if she could stop for a while, so I could just get used to her being there at all.

I asked Dragon if she had anything more to show me. She said that she had come to be my new throat chakra animal. She said that she was going to teach me to speak with Righteousness and Authenticity. She said that Righteousness is not arrogant or condescending – it is simply speaking from my own place of deep truth. I have a mind to call her ‘Heresy’ a mixture of ‘hard’ and ‘easy’ and it seems to suit her.

I asked if she needed anything from me. She said she needed to be fed and nurtured. I could feed her meat. As it happened, I had some in my hand, which I gave her and then she left.