In shamanism power animals are spirit beings that help protect and empower you. They arrive with you when you are born and help empower you physically, protect you from negative spiritual intrusions and help you ward of dis-ease. Most people have no idea that they are present and, as they get older, feel them less and less. This is due to cultural conditioning - how many times has a child had an imaginary friend or spirit being that is dismissed by their elders?
One of the reasons we become ill, from a shamanic perspective, is power loss. This comes in many forms although usually it is from the loss of our power animals due to trauma or wounding of some sort, and also from neglect (we are told that we are ’too old’ for our imaginary friends). Symptoms of power loss are often persistent or chronic and include physical illness, depression, PTSD, addiction, bad luck, emotional ill health, CFS, suicidal thoughts, ME, the list goes on . . . merely feeling under the weather can indicate power loss.
Retrieving a power animal will help restore your ‘ease’, as opposed to ‘dis-ease’. When power animals return they help to re-establish gifts, strengths and talents (with which we were born). There is a remembering and vitality, at first like an echo and then later, a definite embodied trait. In order to welcome back and recognise a power animal, there is often a ritual or ceremony that needs to be performed, in recognition of, and gratitude for, its return.
From being ‘powerless’ you become ‘powerful’.
