Level 2 Chi Kung (strange cramping tightness in left thigh, otherwise good). Microcosmic orbit.

As today was the last proper day of the school holidays (Jack and Katie don’t start back until Wednesday but Dash starts tomorrow) I thought it merited special occasion treatment, so I made gingerbread pancakes with maple syrup for the children’s breakfast. Ever since she overheard Denise Ball and I discussing shamanic journeying, Katie has been desperate to meet her spirit animal. After breakfast had been made, consumed and cleared away, I thought ‘why not?’, so I looked up the instructions in the Integration course manual and found some appropriate drumming on-line. I put my Alexander-technique mat down on the floor and talked Katie through the instructions and the importance of coming back when called. She lay down and immediately sat up again, complaining that the room was too bright, so I gave her an old t-shirt to put over her eyes and we got started. Frankly, I wasn’t really expecting her to be able to stay still long enough to have any kind of experience. So I was surprised when she lay, quite still apart from slight puppy-sleep-chasing-rabbits twitching, for the duration of the drumming. When she came back, she was breathing hard and I asked her why she was panting. She said, matter of factly, that there had been a lot of running. When she had got her breath back enough to talk, she told me that she had met a lemur, which then lead her through the forest (the aforementioned running) until they came to a brown bear. She hadn’t really thought about a question to ask her spirit animal so she just asked “Will I see you again?” and got the answer “Yes”. She was eager to tell Dash about her experience but he was initially a bit dubious, given that she regularly concocts outrageous stories to wind him up! Later though she came back and told me that he said he doesn’t need to do the journey, as he already knows that his spirit animal is a lion, and he goes to “that place” all the time. Given Dashi’s relationship to lions in this world, I guess I’m not that surprised.