What are Power Animals?

By entering a meditative trance state, the shaman can travel to other worlds in non-ordinary reality to connect and build relationships with guides and helpers. The trance state involves the shaman being in an Alpha/Theta Brainwave; in this brainwave, the conscious mind can more easily receive messages and psychic impressions from the subconscious mind.

Shamanic Power animals are guides and helpers for the shaman; during shamanic healing, the shaman becomes what’s known as ‘the hollow bone’ and acts as a conduit of healing powered by spirit guides and helpers. The shaman’s power is directly connected and related to their relationship with shamanic power animals.

Through shamanism training, one can learn a shamanic method known as journeying. This involves getting into a trance state through repetitive drumming and travelling to one of the three shamanic worlds: the upper, middle and lower.

Power animals are mostly likely to be mammals, birds, fish or insects and are never domesticated. These animal allies live in the lower world, with mostly natural landscapes such as jungles, deserts, forests, oceans and lakes. A power animal is essentially a guardian spirit; when acquiring your power animal, it is important to remember that they represent and protect their entire species; therefore, by having that guardian animal, you are drawing upon the collective entire power of the species. A shaman does not choose the power animal; the animal spirit selects the shaman/ shamanic practitioner.

What Power Animals Do

The power animal offers protection, guardianship and guidance and greatly assists during shamanic healing. For example, a shamanic practitioner clears entities attached to spirits and blocks negative energies from the recipient; therefore, the shaman must have protection to conduct healing sessions safely. The shaman offers the spirit guide devotion and respect in exchange for this.

These animal allies also enable us to heal problematic relationships, achieve challenging goals, receive healing and guidance or find lost objects. Building relationships with these power animals through Shamanism Training and Journeying is a very personal and self-experimental experience. The person making the journey can often only interpret its messages from guides, as they are directly relevant to your intentions and inner energies.

Guardian animal spirits are always beneficial, and you possess the power of an animal. It never possesses you. Your power animal and allies guide and protect you on your journeys, and you build relationships with them like you build relationships with new friends; it takes time. You can send your power animal to faraway places to heal, help or counsel others using the power animal’s energy. It is possible to have many power animals or just one; we get our first power animal at birth. As a person’s vibration changes, they may naturally acquire a new power animal. It is important to pay respect and build a mutual relationship or respect and reverence in exchange for guidance and protection from the power animal.

A power animal comes to you specifically because of what it can teach you – its ‘medicine’.

A power animal’s medicine represents their archetypal energy, which can be called up when necessary in various situations. Our power animal’s medicine can provide us with what we need to be more fully in our power, more conscious, more aware and healed. This is particularly the case regarding the healing required for one’s sacred wound and what we can offer others.

During shamanic practices, your power animal can be your guide in the other realms. This can be by working beside you or with you both in one form, with you shapeshifting into your power animal.

A person may have several power animals, which may change over their lifetime. Sometimes, a power animal comes for a specific time and purpose and leaves when that is over. Groups can have power animals, people can share power animals, and the power animal may express itself differently for each person.

Your power animal connects you with the whole genus of the animal, not an individual animal. It is said that a power animal chooses you, not vice versa. There are several ways this can happen.

How to Meet Your Power Animal

You can do a Drum Journey into the Lower Realm to connect and consult with your power animal. And you can hold the space and drum for others when they need to do this.

Your power animal may come to you in a variety of ways. It is generally accepted that if ‘it’ shows itself three times within your journey to meet ‘it’, then that is the sign that it has ‘arrived’. However, it is always more important to listen to your inner knowing than rely on a count of viewings.

For drum journey instructions on how to connect with your Power Animal, see the Opening Gathering Shamanism handout.

Honouring your Power Animal

Another strong belief about power animals is the need to maintain your relationship with them. This can be done in various ways. It is basically about honouring their nature and holding a place for them in your daily life.

Gather pictures, statues, etc., of your power animal for your altar, and also have reminders of it around your home, office, etc., on display - to keep you engaged with its essence. Wear jewellery and clothes that represent your power animal. Work for the animal’s survival in the wild, and donate your time or money to organizations that do that work. Learn as much as you can about your power animal.

It is believed that without this sort of attention, a power animal will leave you. You can call it back and seek a new one, too.

Invoking your Power Animal

You can call your power animal whenever you need or want to. You may require the essence of an animal that isn’t your power animal at a time, and you can also call it to you. Each animal will speak to you specifically and metaphorically; with practice and increased connection, the wisdom offered will be understood.

Many shamans work with their power animals in their healing practices, as the power animal can do certain things in other realms that the person cannot. Establishing boundaries with your power animal may be necessary, which is seen as part of defining your relationship.

Dancing with your power animal will maintain your connection and give you a deeper relationship. There are many ways to do this privately and with a group. As always, creating a safe, sacred space and clear intentions will determine the experience and outcome of such a process. Moving as the animal does, making sounds, and opening up to how they use their senses are all part of dancing your power animal.

Many people in societies all over the world have dances that honour animals. Costumes, elaborate or simple, help awaken the individual’s experience of the animal’s energies. Dancing to the animals is a way of honouring them and activating their energies dramatically within your life. One of the most common forms of sacred dance was imitating nature and life within it. Individuals would perform the dance of an animal to align themselves with its power and to awaken it within their lives. It is a powerful tool in conjunction with the shapeshifting exercise described later in this chapter. We can shift our energy through dance to a pattern similar to our animal totem.

To understand how this works, you must understand the human body. It is a complex, bio-chemical, electromagnetic energy system. Every time a muscle is used, there is an electrical stimulus. The study of the electrical impulses associated with muscular movement is part of the study of kinesiology. When we move or dance in imitation of animals, we help adjust our own body’s electrical frequency to one similar to that of the animal. We create resonance.

For this to be most effective, you must closely study the animal. Learn about the way it moves and the way it stands. How does it hold its head? How does it place its feet when it walks? Practice pantomiming those same postures and movements. These movements will be at the heart of the dance. They do not have to be extended. If done appropriately, several minutes is necessary to invite the animal’s energy into your life.

No matter how fierce a guardian animal spirit may appear, you are in no danger because the power animal is completely harmless. It is only a source of power; it has no fierce intentions. It only comes to you because you need help.

If one wishes to maintain shamanic practice, one has to alter into one’s animal regularly to keep the animal contented enough to stay. This involves exercising the animal through dance, singing songs of the animal, and recognizing “big” dreams as messages from the guardian, the power animal. 

Dancing with your animal is important for keeping it content, making it unwilling to leave you. The guardian animal spirit resident in a person’s body-mind wants to enjoy once again existing in material form. It is a trade-off, for the person gets the power of the whole genus or species of animals represented by that guardian spirit. Just as a human may want to experience a non-ordinary reality by practising shamanism, a guardian spirit may also wish to experience an ordinary reality by entering the body of a living human.