Shadow Animals: How Animals We Fear Can Help Us Heal, Transform, and Awaken

Description

A guide to shadow work with animal teachers * Explains how the animals we fear or dislike can help us recognize and investigate our shadow side: the hated, abandoned, judged, and denied aspects of ourselves * Explores the lessons of a wide variety of shadow animals, including snakes, rats, bats, and spiders, as well as those that only seem shadowy to some, such as dogs, cats, birds, and horses * Looks at the elements of the psyche each shadow animal represents and presents thirteen animal-inspired exercises designed to examine, embrace, and integrate our shadow selves We often project qualities onto animals that we don't wish to admit in ourselves. Thus, snakes are evil, spiders are creepy, rats are dirty, and so on. As Dawn Baumann Brunke explains, the animals we fear or dislike can help us to recognize our Shadow: the hated, abandoned, judged, and denied aspects of ourselves. As teachers and guides, shadow animals can help us to reclaim the inner strengths, abilities, and wisdom that we have forgotten or disowned. Brunke explores the lessons of numerous shadow animals, including those that many think of as shadowy, such as snakes and bats, as well as those that only seem shadowy to some, such as dogs, cats, birds, and horses. Though shadow animals may initially appear frightening, they offer profound healing and expert guidance in helping us identify, learn from, and embrace our shadow selves. Brunke explains how shadow animals represent unexamined elements of the psyche--from secret fears and suppressed emotions to unacknowledged prejudices and repressed trauma. She presents thirteen animalinspired exercises, each uniquely designed to help us find and better understand the lost, wounded pieces of our psyche. Presenting an animal-centered guide to shadow work, Brunke reveals how shadow animals protect and advise, challenge and encourage, inspire and offer support to the spiritual adventure of enlightenment as we awaken to who we really are.

Dawn Baumann Brunke is an animal communicator and dream enthusiast who has led workshops and offered animal consultations for more than 20 years. Her many books include Animal Voices, Shapeshifting with Our Animal Companions, The Animal Wisdom Tarot, Dreaming with Polar Bears, and Awakening the Ancient Power of Snake. She lives in Alaska.

"What we most dislike in others is often ourselves. We tend to project our shadow side--the aspects of ourselves we have repressed or denied--onto other people and situations. Recognizing and recalling such projections is a key to becoming whole and to healing all our relations. With her new book, Dawn Brunke makes a spirited and original contribution to shadow work, showing us how our buried histories and childhood fears take shape in our feelings and phobias around animals. She encourages us to ask: Is the spider or snake an aspect of my own power if I can move beyond fear in a conscious encounter? She reminds us that shadows are caused by the obstruction of light, and the clear light she turns on her subject includes personal dreams with the power of revelation and transformation. The book is worth its price for the chapter on bats alone. Studded with precious vignettes from mythology and folklore, honed with a naturalist's eyes for the social habits of the animal world, stocked with simple and effective meditations and exercises, Shadow Animals is a marvelous addition to the literature of shadow work and inter-species communication. Highly recommended." * Robert Moss, author of The Secret History of Dreaming * "Shadow Animals is a beautifully written, profound, and timely book. Brunke skillfully guides us to explore the shadow aspects of ourselves that we project onto animals. With helpful, practical exercises, she reveals how to reclaim those repressed or rejected aspects of ourselves and how to see the animals we once feared as teachers, guides, and healers. This book is particularly valuable given the increasing polarization in our world. By seeing and integrating our shadow aspects, we move toward wholeness, coming back into right relationship with ourselves, each other, and all sentient beings on our planet." * Heather Ensworth, Ph.D., clinical psychologist, astrologer, and author of Finding Our Center * "Shadow Animals focuses on your waking and dreaming animal connections, providing practices to uncover the profound treasures and transformative insights waiting there. Read this when you feel ready to go deeper into your psyche and return to the nature of nature. Highly recommended!" * Robert Waggoner, author of Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self * "Brunke's Shadow Animals is a tour de force. Using the world's ancient mythologies and folktales to explore modern humanity's shadow, or hidden self, we learn from rats, bats, wolves, spiders, horses, and many other horned, hoofed, clawed, and winged creatures that can arouse fear in us. Sharing exercises, multicultural stories, and dream translations, Brunke's book holds a mirror to our psyche, gifting the reader access to the hidden, wounded, or shadow self that resides 'in the subterranean levels of the collective psyche.' A remarkable book, Shadow Animals shows how to respect and treasure these fascinating nonhuman beings, as they become our allies, teachers, protectors, and healers guiding us to wholeness on our shared journey home." * J. Zohara Meyerhoff Hieronimus, D.H.L., author of White Spirit Animals: Prophets of Change * "Shadow Animals is a fascinating book that beautifully sheds light on the animals that help us to tap into fear-based emotions and the powerful role they play in our own inner transformational journeys. Dawn explains how each of these animals is in fact a bearer of light that has intentionally crossed our path to bring us their unique soul-healing medicine. She provides a rich and detailed history of the most common fear-triggering animals, their message and gift for you, and exercises to gently induce deep healing, safety, and peace. Shadow Animals is an important and muchneeded book that I highly recommend!" * Tammy Billups, author of Animal Wayshowers, Animal Soul Contracts, and Soul Healing with Our Animal * "A compelling read that makes you look at yourself and the relationships you have with your animals. Shadow Animals makes you delve a little deeper than normal, think, and then heal." * Diane Budd, author of Energy Medicine for Animals *