TS: You’re listening to Insights at the Edge. Today my guest is Sarah Seidelmann. Sarah was a physician living a nature-starved, hectic lifestyle until a walrus entered her life and changed everything. She’s trained at the Martha Beck Institute and at Michael Harner’s Foundation for Shamanic Studies, and is the author of Swimming with Elephants. With Sounds True, Sarah has written a new book called The Book of Beasties: Your A-to-Z Guide to Illuminating the Wisdom of Spirit Animals, where she invites the reader to explore why certain animals show up in life and what teachings they may be trying to share.
In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Sarah and I spoke about making midlife career transitions, and the role that are connection with what she calls “beasties” or “spirit animals” can play in that process. We also talked about her experience with several different beasties including bears and elephants, and how she believes that everything has a spirit that wants to connect and be known. We talked about beastie synchronicity, how to identify your own core beasties, and the unconditional love that can come from those relationships. Finally, we talked about the power of asking yourself the question, “How good are you willing to let your life be? ” Here’s my conversation with Sarah Seidelmann:
Sarah, every book, I think, has an origin story, and to begin with could you share with us your sense of the origin story of The Book of Beasties?
SS: Yes, well, really it was the beasties that saved me in my own dark night of the soul. Back in 2010, I was working as a practicing physician, specifically as a pathologist in a hospital practice; and feeling just really lost, not engaged in the work I was doing and wondering what was wrong with me because everybody else seemed to be able to continue on doing their work and it seem like I was the only one who’s disconnected. I took a sabbatical from work just thinking, “I’m going to explore some things that had been intriguing me,” and thinking maybe I’ll find some clarity and get my mojo back for this work.
Instead, what happened is I ended up spending a lot of time out in nature and during that time I stumbled into this old ancient concept that the animals that cross our path—the wild animals in particular, may have messages for us, helpful messages. If we’re feeling lost or confused, if we would pay attention to those it might help us. Being a rational person, a science nerd from the get-go, this seemed like the most wacky and wild idea to me, but it was also encouraging because at the time I really didn’t have any other idea, I was feeling really lost at sea. As I started to play with this idea—could the animals have messages for me? If they did, what were they? Were they going to be helpful? As I experimented, I found out they really helped me.
Eventually, that led to a podcast, sharing it with many more people and eventually having this longing to invite others who may be weren’t familiar with this idea to discover this for themselves so that they too could find the beauty and empowerment and buoyancy that I found through this path.
TS: You wrote a previous book, Sarah, called Swimming with Elephants: My Unexpected Pilgrimage from Physician to Healer. What happened for you with the elephants that was part of this transition for you?
SS: Yes. Well, the first beastie I met was a mother bear, which was the beginning of this finding my way from that work—from being a practicing physician to the work I do now. Just as I was feeling quite a bit better and a little bit stronger having made this connection with this bear and learning lot of things about myself through the bear, I was needing a little extra dose of courage because it was time for me—my sabbatical time was up. My six months was up, and it was on schedule for me to go back to work, but I had this really strong feeling that I wasn’t supposed to go back.
Right around then this amazing elephant, Alice, showed up for me in one of my shamanic journeys. For those who aren’t familiar with what a shamanic journey is, it’s really a deeper meditation that is undertaken typically or most commonly by listening to drumming music, a drum beat. But in any case this wonderful elephant, this spirit elephant who was very funny and very loving and very buoyant, really came to encourage me to continue to explore. She gave me the courage to embrace this really strange new path that I was on and the courage to tell the people, my practice partners at work, “I just don’t think I can come back. At least not on a full or part-time basis.” I went part-time—I was like a fill in for a while. But she gave me that courage I needed because I think as anyone knows who’s been on a journey of major change, it takes a lot of courage to face the things that scare us.
TS: OK, let’s take this a little bit piece by piece. You started with a bear during your sabbatical that helped you move forward. What happened with the bear? Did you meet an actual bear in the wilderness, or was this again a bear that happened through this shamanic meditation experience?
SS: Yes. Well, what happened was as I started exploring this idea of animal spirits in general and started sharing it with other people, I started learning that many people have one particular wild animal or beastie that is very special to them, like a lifetime beastie or some people call it a power animal. I began calling it a “core beastie,” this idea that’s the core of who you are. I couldn’t figure mine out for the life of me. I mean, I wrote lists, I was meeting all sorts of people who are just easily stumbling into who their beast, their own core beastie was. And I was completely flummoxed, I think because I was so caught in my head, caught up in my head in that intellectual left-brain way of thinking. I eventually realized that there was one way that I could find this beastie out that was non-logical way, and that was to go on a shamanic journey and allow the spirit to show me who it was.
So that’s what I did, and so I listened to a recording by another Sounds True author, Sandra Ingerman, and it was laying on a bed in South Africa listening on my earbuds that this amazing mother bear stepped in and rubbed my back and sort of said, “Sarah, you know, where you’re going isn’t that far, and just enjoy the journey.” She showed me off in the distance that where I was going could be not so far and it was going to be fun. We rolled down this hill in this journey, and we’re laughing and crying like children. You know when you roll down a hill, and as an adult if you roll down the hill you’ll get nauseous and throw up but when you’re a kid you can do that! [Laughs] It was just the most marvelous, reassuring experience. I felt really loved. I hadn’t experienced that kind of full love ever. I have loving parents and loving family but it was that unlimited, divine kind of love.
TS: Now, this word “beastie,” it’s an unusual word. I think people are maybe more familiar with the idea of power animals or spirit animals. Where did you come up with this word “beasties”?
SS: Yes, well, I started realizing there were so many different creatures that could get your attention. It could be a ladybug or a dragonfly, or something strange under the ocean, or it could be something mythical like a griffon or a unicorn, or maybe something you’ve never seen before even. Really, anything was possible in these realms. So I wanted to have a fun and buoyant term, too, that invited people to feel playful with this. Because one thing I noticed as I was beginning to explore the path of shamanism and spirit animals in general is that a lot of what was written was very—or felt for me like heavy or very serious. What I discovered was not that the spirits can’t be serious and stern and you know, very much that way as well, but there was a lot of buoyancy and lightness in this work and that was really what I craved and needed so much during that dark period. And that’s why I created, started using “beastie,” because I felt like it invited people to play with it especially if they were feeling scared.
TS: OK, let’s address right at the front here, the person who’s listening who might be a bit skeptical. What I’m imagining going through their mind is something like “Yes, it’s great for people to use their imagination and roll around with the strengths of various beasties, various animals, because it taps them into various capacities that are latent within them that need to come forward. Let’s just not concretize this as in there’s an actual ‘core beastie’ that is associated with my entire life and it wants to find me. This is just an imaginary process that helps people tap into their capacities. Good.”
SS: Yes, I mean, that’s OK too. I always tell people it’s wonderful to come to this work skeptical or come to this ideas being skeptical. It’s totally fantastic. And of course, I was massively skeptical. I mean, I was a pathologist. I was like, “If you can’t show it to me, prove it to me, or if it’s not written up in a research document or in the New England Journal of Medicine, really I’m not that interested. I pooh-pooh it.” So bring your skeptical mind to it but then see what happens.
I often invite people to go out in nature and see what animals, what creatures are showing up for them and play with this idea with some of the simple concepts [like] what’s going on with you? What’s happening in your life? What might this one that you see that particularly showed up or jumped out to you today, what might it, with its postures and the way it’s being, what might it be trying to point you towards or show you? Just see, how do you feel after you maybe received the message? How do you feel after you read part of one of the things that was in a book about this particular beastie?
If you feel better, fantastic. Really the proof—the only proof that we’re ever going to get is accumulated over time. Faith is not granted in this; it’s not as if I stumbled into this path and was like, “I’m going to choose to believe that spirit animals are going to help me.” It was that little by little as I worked with these ideas and began to build a relationship and experiment with it much like a scientist, I discovered that there was a helpfulness, a usefulness, a power to this work that I cannot really prove to anyone else but I know it to be true for myself.
TS: OK, now let’s address that person who says, “You know, I’ve always been curious what my core beasties might be, but I just don’t know. I like this particular animal, but I like that particular animal. I don’t know, it’s a part of maybe my self-image or my ego. It makes me feel good to think that I would be associated with it, but I don’t really know if it’s a core beastie for me or not.”
SS: Yes. Well, I think the traditional teaching on that is that we don’t really choose the beasties, these spirits choose us. I would encourage a person like that who’s really not sure, not clear on who theirs is, whether they’re in control of it or not is to—well one way would be to invite them to go on a shamanic journey and see what happens for them. That would probably be my number one suggestion. The other suggestion might be to signal to the universe that you would like some clarity on that. You would like to know, you would like to really know. So set that intention to request a clear message—if you pray, to pray for a clear understanding of who your spirit animal is, who your core beastie is so that you can really begin work with them and honor them and own it. Until we’re sure, until we get that inner confirmation, it can just feel like one more thing in our life that we’re not sure about. [Laughs]
TS: Now, in the beginning of The Book of Beasties, you referenced a walrus who played an important role actually in your life, and it sounds like in the creation of The Book of Beasties as well. Tell us a little bit about the walrus and the messages you received from the walrus.
SS: Yes. Well, that summer when I went on my sabbatical and left the hospital and my medical practice behind for a little bit, I had some free time and I happened to be stumbling around in some stores down in our little downtown. In this one store that I walked into there was this huge taxidermy walrus head up on the wall. I remember just thinking, “Wow, that’s unusual. I’ve never seen anything quite like that,” and just being really drawn to it. So much so that I started wondering, am I supposed to—it was just a strange connection, like I thought, “Am I supposed to buy this thing? What is going on with me?” I had some interior design background so I knew it was something unusual, and at that time I wasn’t even really, probably the image of the—anyway, I won’t go into too many details, but I really felt drawn to it and I actually went back to the store, just being curious.
I finally called the owner and we got into a conversation about it. He turned out to be Native American and just told me how—it felt like something powerful to him, and he had wanted to keep it at his home but his wife didn’t want it around [laughs] so it didn’t fit in with their design.
I started thinking, well maybe—as I had been learning this concept of spirit animals, maybe this walrus has a message for me. I began with this simple concept, which those of you who are listening can play with this too—asking myself what’s been going on with myself the last 24 hours; and I was feeling just this utter confusion about wanting to maybe go into writing or coaching or some other kind of therapeutic work other than what I was doing but feeling a lot of fear about that. Money, fear of money, like “How are we going to put the kids through college?” All these fears—how am I going to replace my income, that kind of stuff.
Then noticing and learning a little bit more about the walrus. I went on YouTube and just looked at a few videos of walruses and what I noticed—I watched this marvelous video of all these walruses that are accumulated on a beach. They were all lying there, just completely surrendered to the beach and just enjoying themselves. I realized, “Wow, walruses are just being. They’re accepting their walrusness. They’re not sweating it out or trying to be something they’re not. They’re just being walruses.”
The other thing that I learned about them is that walruses are apex predators in the sense that they have little to no competition. About the only beastie that will mess around or tangle with a walrus is a polar bear. The message that I got from that seemed to be that if I could just be myself, who I am, if I could just embrace my Sarahness, my walrusness-ness, that I would have no competition. If I could just somehow manage to be myself that I would be able to create a career for myself, or create books or things that other people couldn’t create because I would just do it from my own self.
Those were the powerful messages that the walrus gave to me, and many more, but that’s just an example that the spirit animals don’t necessarily have to come to you in a dream or you don’t necessarily have to encounter them in the wild. Sometimes they show up in the strangest ways. [Laughs]
TS: Now just to ask you a question, do you believe that the spirit of the walrus came to you to help you, or do you believe this was some part of your own evolution that needed to happen and manifested through this encounter in your imagination?
SS: Wow, that is a deep question, Tami. I think it can be—the more I do this work, I think that I don’t understand what is exactly always going on. I do believe that everything has a spirit and everything that we see that we call ordinary—like we might call a taxidermied walrus ordinary, right, but that there is some aspect of that that is spirited and alive. That the universe or the creation or maybe what we might call God depending on what terminology you use, can speak through that in its own unique voice to us. I believe that I am part of that, that you are part of that. I guess the way that I imagine it is almost like the creation reaching up to touch itself and communicate back to itself through us, so this connection of the walrus connecting to me if that makes sense.
TS: It does. That’s beautiful. That’s beautiful. Now, you also wrote a book called, Born to Freak: A Salty Primer for Irrepressible Humans. In hearing you talk about the walrus and you fully coming into your Sarahness and walrusness-ness, I thought of that title, Born to Freak. I want to address that person, Sarah, who might be listening who perhaps knows that they’re on the edge of some kind of transition in their life. Maybe it’s a career transition or geography transition or relationship transition, something like that, but they feel afraid. They’re in that place that you were in before you stepped forward. What would be your suggestions for them to have the courage to move forward?
SS: Yes. Well the first thing I would say is that you are here; you are here to share something really special and unique that only you can share with the world. When you find the capacity to do that thing or that combination of unique things, you will be bringing balance or restoring balance to the world when you do that. Also, encouraging others who are feeling lost. That’s the first thing I would say.
The second thing is I would invite them, I would invite you to make a little space in your life to explore the things that really, really light you up. Whether that’s maybe you’re feeling really drawn to a yoga teacher training or maybe you’re feeling really drawn to Rumi poetry or really drawn to learning about herbs or something unusual that you’re fearful that people are going to judge you or your mother is not going to like it or your spouse is going to leave you or you’re going to lose your job somehow if you dabble in this or people find out what you’re really like [Laughs].
Find a safe way to do it. Maybe it’s checking books out from the library under a pseudonym, getting a secret library card. I don’t know. But somehow to allow yourself to play with in some small safe way, and it doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. I’m reminded like most of these things that are enchanting us are free, like going on the woods—that might be a great place to spend more time in. Because when we make more room for what it is we’re yearning for, a lot of magic can start to happen. We don’t need to quit our job. We don’t need to immediately leave our spouse or move to Las Vegas or move to Hawaii. It can happen right where you are.
TS: You know, Sarah, one of the things you write about is something that you call your “feel-good vocation” and in your work helping people find their “feel-good vocation. ” I notice I had a mixed reaction to that that I want to pass by you. On the one hand I thought, “Yes, sure, people should be involved in work that is meaningful and helps them feel good.” Then I also thought about how part of my work makes me feel good, and sometimes it’s a lot of just plain grit and hard work and I don’t feel that good at it. I mean, it comes with the territory. I thought, “God, I wonder if people could get misled. Go towards your feel-good vocation, but what about one that doesn’t feel good?”
SS: Right. What I find is the people that are drawn to me and I think myself included now—I guess I’m drawn to myself. [Laughs]
TS: That’s good.
SS: We tend to be overworkers, like really hard workers, really with a huge work ethic. So typically that is—the people that I write to, typically that is not their issue, like not being willing to have the grit, not being willing to put in the extra hours and that kind of thing. But I agree, it could be confusing. But what I—yes, we want things to feel good and that whatever it is we’re doing whether it’s if our feel good—one part of my feel-good vocation is writing. So writing—when I’m writing I mean, often once I’m writing it’s so delicious and it’s moving, it’s emotional, it’s a lot of things. I’ll often have tears running down my face and just thinking of all kind of beautiful memories. But then, there are aspects of writing that are really hard like getting myself to sit down when I’m really afraid to write or I’m afraid what I’m writing isn’t good enough.
So what that feel good, though, is still connecting with is the fact that if I don’t write, that feels terrible. [Laughs] So it’s learning to train ourselves to be in integrity with ourselves I think is the deeper kind of aspect of that feel-good work or that feel-good vocation. Being willing to face the fear. But yes I agree that just because—when you’re doing your feel-good vocation, it doesn’t mean that there won’t be moments of fear, that there won’t be moments that are like, “Wow, this is much harder than I thought it was going to be. Things don’t seem to be going very well.” But a clue that you are doing your feel-good vocation is that when you do that work, when you do that—when you completed a day’s work, there is a deep down-in-your-bones satisfaction that you’re headed somewhere good, that what you’ve done is leading you to something, that you are staying with yourself. You’re extending this love and compassion towards yourself to continue on no matter how dark it gets, no matter how challenging the night may be.
TS: That’s very helpful. Now, let’s say somebody wants to move in a different career direction and they have a sense that a beastie might be helpful to them, but they’re not familiar with shamanic journeying or necessary called to that form. How might they be able to find a beastie to help them with having a feel-good career of integrity?
SS: OK, one of the really simplest ways to explore this is just to ask yourself has there been a wild creature that you’ve always felt drawn to your whole life? When some people ask themselves that question, the answer bubbles up really quite easily and quite simply. That may be your beastie. Another thing is sometimes we get nicknamed as kids by our beastie’s name for different reasons. That is another place to look.
You can also just act like an anthropologist and go explore your home and see, is there artwork in here that has particular beasties? I remember we had a podcast for a long time called Squirrel! Radio where people would call in and there was a person who called in and it was like, “I really have no idea who my core beastie is and I’m just so confused.” I said, “Well, sometimes just take a look around the house because sometimes you’ve been like—unbeknownst to you, you’ve been collecting, I don’t know, foxes or something.” This person was looking around their house and then suddenly said, “Oh my gosh,” and it just got really quiet for a while. He said, “Over my fireplace there’s this enormous painting of a wolf that I bought years ago.” And there was emotion behind his voice. Sometimes it’s been hiding in plain sight so I think that can also be a way that we discover it.
Also, other ways is we’ve had a really radically amazing encounter with a particular beastie. Maybe we had a beastie repeatedly coming to us in our dreams, even attacking us in our dreams, which could be quite—feel unpleasant maybe or feel scary but maybe feels important to you somehow. That may be a clue, or maybe in some shamanic cultures if you’ve been attacked by a particular wild animal and you survived the attack, that might be a clue to people that this was the medicine, this was the spirit of an animal who wanted to walk with you and work with you.
TS: Now, you mentioned Sarah your radio show Squirrel! Radio, where you talked about beastie experiences with call-in guests. Why did you call it Squirrel! Radio?
SS: [Laughs] Well, It was right about the time that movie Up came out from Pixar and a lot of us who are born to freak or have been diagnoses with ADHD or ADD, there’s that marvelous golden retriever character who’s always like, “Squirrel!” The minute there would be something distracting, a tennis ball, a squirrel, he would be off, off on some adventure. I think that was our loving way at saying, “Yes, we do get distracted by amazing things that excite us and it’s OK. If you’re like that too, come join us and have some fun,” because I find that a lot of people who are hypersensitive—maybe not hypersensitive, just highly sensitive, beautiful, amazing individuals have had that maybe squashed out of them were told that their diffused awareness of the world is not welcome in school, for example, or in different environments. But it’s that same diffused open-minded awareness that maybe causes you to get distracted during maybe a lecture you don’t find so interesting that can also lead you to discover amazing things about life.
TS: OK, OK, this is interesting. You mentioned being diagnosed, or other people who have been diagnosed with adult ADHD. That’s part of your life, and how did you come to that? How did you come to see the positive side? I guess I’m curious to know what the challenges are as well.
SS: Yes. Well, on that radical sabbatical for medicine I started exploring a few things like, “Why is it that I feel so different from everybody else?” I was trying to figure it out and ended up reading some of the classic books on ADHD and as I read them I was like driven to distraction. I was like, “Wow, that’s really strange, because I’m recognizing myself on almost every page of this book ” Suddenly I had this understanding of why for so long I had really felt like I didn’t fit in or had been shamed for being too loud, too silly, too ridiculous. I remember I was on a rotation as a resident at the University of Minnesota on the bone marrow transplant lab in their clinic and I remember somebody—the professor there was very serious and he one time called in the chief resident to tell him his concern that he thought I was drunk, that I was showing up drunk for work because I was so irrepressible and seemed to be having so much fun. And it was a very somber place; we weren’t seeing patients there, we’re just studying bone marrows under the microscope, but I remember being so confused by like, why did people think I’m drunk? It was just that I was feeling delightful and having fun and laughing a lot, and I don’t know. Anyway, this book just made me realize, wow.
Eventually, it led to I got evaluated and went through some testing and was diagnosed with ADHD. In a deeper dive on that—and that’s about the same time that Alice the elephant showed up—I started realizing that these people who have ADHD may also be the same people who are the dreamers. Maybe you have this shamanic proclivities because one of the things about people with the daydreamy ADHD, the inattentive type—the kids who look like they’re spaced out and staring off at the trees when they’re supposed to be staring at the blackboard. They tend to when you do a brain EEG studies of them, they tend to be spending a lot of time in theta brainwave state, which is the same place that a shamanic journeyer is in when they’re on a shamanic journey.
I started wondering, “Wow, maybe all these people we’re now diagnosing are really these poets and these seers, and the healers, and the magicians, the beautiful soul-fixers, the bonesetters.” I started to see it everywhere and everything and realized that wow, we have to encourage all these people who are being discouraged right now by our culture, and our schools in particular, and even maybe job places. We need to encourage them and send a message that they need to find a way to express this stuff, this irrepressible stuff that wants to come out of them, because it’s good stuff and it’s helping bring balance to the world.
TS: Just to understand Sarah, you were able to become a surgical pathologist and succeed in that career despite the ADHD? Tell me about that.
SS: Yes. The thing about ADHD, it’s such a terrible name because they talk about attention deficit disorders, talking about the fact that we lack our ability to focus attention. The truer description would be that we have an ability to hyper-focus on things we love. So because I loved pathology for so many years, I was obsessed with it. I mean, I was so into it, and that’s how I got to be eventually very good at it and to get a wonderful job and get wonderful recommendations and all those things because I was really passionate about it.
One of the keys if you’re a person who has ADHD or you’re raising a grandchild or you have children or you yourself are, when you find what you naturally are drawn to and you love it, if you can find a way to work that into your employment situation, you’ll be set because you will never be bored. Until, maybe like me—I started to come to the edge of where I knew. I discovered everything I wanted to know about pathology and started getting curious about other things. I started to be curious about, instead of diagnosing disease—which was my job description, to identify and diagnose disease—I started being curious about what makes people well. That curiosity would not leave me, and so that’s why eventually it wasn’t safe for me to stay in my job because I just didn’t have it in me to focus on disease anymore, but for years I had loved it.
TS: Now, in terms of seeing this dreamer power, potential buoyancy, the joy, really, in the ADHD part of you, was there a beastie that’s specifically helped you with that?
SS: Yes. Alice, I think, was the one who really helped me the most with that. She just really helped me to, I think, get out of my head more into my heart. One of the things about ADHD which I guess is a curse and a blessing is that you can really think and hyper-focus very well, and sometimes that can lead you to, maybe you would say like obsess or perseverate on something like a thought that isn’t helpful; that can also happen. I think she helped remind me to disengage when I was thinking all kinds of thoughts that were bringing me down or making me feel scared, or she would remind me to lighten up when we would go on shamanic journeys.
I remember when I wrote Born to Freak, I put it’s a “salty primer” as the subtitle says, and there were quite a few swear words in it because one thing I noticed about myself was that I really quite enjoyed being salty. A lot of the people that I really, deeply love—Martha Beck, Elizabeth Gilbert—these women, they were salty women. I mean maybe not on all the time, but when you got to know them they had a lot of salt, too, in their language.
It still scared me to use some of these words, and I remember journeying to Alice and asking her, “But Alice, if I put these swear words, is it going to offend my mother, or are people are going to think I’m a bad person for putting these in here?” Because that’s where I was coming from; I was just scared. And she was like, “Just relax. It’s the spirit in which they’re said, and just check in with yourself,” and that allowed me that freedom to be able to put those words in. I was so glad I did because readers came forth and we’re just like, “It was such a relief to see these words and realize it was OK to sometimes say them.” Sometimes they’re the holiest words we have. [Laughs]
TS: OK, let’s talk a little bit more specifically about The Book of Beasties; it’s an A-to-Z Guide to Illuminating the Wisdom of Spirit Animals and that means that you can look up in the book many different types of animals and find all kinds of descriptions. And you’ve categorized these descriptions to make it particularly useful to somebody who’s looking to see the wisdom that might come from this beastie into their life. Can you talk a little bit about what information you decided to include, how you came to that?
SS: Yes. Well, I wanted to have a lot of different ways for people to access each animal that we profiled. At the beginning of each profile there is a more poetic description to help put that person in the scene of really being present with that particular creature—whether it’s a unicorn or a dragon or an elephant or a dragonfly, to really put them in that place. Even if they’re not in nature right now, to kind of invite them into that space.
Then there’s a second section which is the kind of the largest power where we talk about a theme that this beastie maybe inviting you in to explore in your own life. For example with the elephants, that if Elephant is showing up in your life that it may be an invitation for you to be joining the larger family of seeing yourself in this place on the earth, connected to more beings as part of this larger family which is more inclusive of all beings.
Then, because what I’ve realized and I’ve learned is that often people are like, “OK, I’m really struggling with a work issue,” or “I’m really struggling with, I’m seeking a partner and I’m just not—I’m struggling with the online dating world,” or whatever it is. That we have these specific areas or maybe it’s an area in health, and we wrote a little brief section, an invitation for you to explore depending on what’s going on with you. If you’ve got a work related problem with a colleague you can check in to see what the walrus’ suggestion is to help you find your alignment, find your feel good, a suggestion for you. There are also some different practices you can do; maybe you’re really drawn to like, spiders showing up a ton in your life, here’s a practice you can do to go deeper with that and to engage with that.
TS: Sarah, one criticism I’ve heard and I’m curious how you’d respond to this, to these dictionary-style books, whether it’s about dream analysis, or in this case beasties, is people saying, “What’s really important is the inner associations, not turning to a dictionary of symbolic meaning. ” And I’m curious what you think about that; like, somebody might have some weird inner association that’s not covered in the dictionary.
SS: Right. Well if you have your own association, I heartily encourage in the book and I talk about that a lot—how to get your own unique messages from the beasties. I think that is definitely number one what you must honor and it’s so important and beautiful. What I know to be true also is that when I first was discovering this path of the spirit animals, the way that I learned was by reading the works of others and reading the words of others and finding out—well, and listening to other people on Squirrel! Radio and finding out, how did they receive this message or what did this spirit of this beastie—how did it inform them?
To this day, I use many different things to support myself, using what I call divination, which is seeking hidden information to help myself by looking at resources other people have created through writing and on a variety of things. One of my favorite resources is reading Osho’s tarot cards, for example. Now, tarot is a great example because there’s a million different takes on all these different symbols, or these sort of archetypal energies, for example, in the archetypal cards. The way certain people write about them really touches me and informs me, so that’s kind of— and I definitely give, the first part of the book is all really instructions on how you can begin to receive your own messages.
TS: Let’s talk about something that I think many people have had the experience of—you call it “beastie synchronicity,” which is I’m walking to my car and suddenly there are six geese flying overhead. I’m thinking about something or other and I immediately see these geese flying overhead and I think there’s some kind of message, so I pick up my iPhone and I [type in] “Symbolic meaning of geese—what about six, the symbolic meaning of six?” How do you suggest people work with what you call beastie synchronicity?
SS: Yes. Well the really simple method that I kind of briefly outlined earlier: just kind of asking—you’re standing there at your car, the geese are flying over, asking yourself just really quickly, “What’s going on with me? What’s on my mind?” Maybe it’s worry about a meeting you’ve got coming up, let’s just say. These geese are flying overhead, what’s the feeling you get from them? Maybe—I’m just tapping into a memory of my own watching geese fly over, it could be the softness of the air that’s coming off their wings because they’re flying pretty low and you can almost feel that softness. Maybe it’s an invitation.
So then asking yourself, “How do I connect those two?” I might make the connection, “Oh my gosh, all I need to do is soften before I step into this meeting.” Take a few moments in the ladies’ room or wherever I am, whatever it is to soften myself before I walk in, when before that I was feeling like going in guns blazing. Often they’ll just invite you into this shift, so you can just ask yourself.
The other thing is you can open up an app, and I have an app that I created called [the] What the Walrus Knows app, and you can go and look up geese. Just look up—just read through the lines there and see if any of them floats your boat or kind of lifts you up or makes you feel a little more buoyant. If it does, take it, use it, apply it somehow to your life and to that moment to your approach for the rest of the day.
I often get messages from people who were like, “Oh my gosh, the app was so spot on for me today; you have no idea, it’s just crazy.” I know that these things—from my own experience and from all the feedback I get is [that] sometimes we need that outside input, especially if it’s something that maybe we feel really attached to or we feel really scared about. Sometimes we need that helping hand from a resource we love and trust. So if you find a resource you know and trust, go with that. Part of why I really wanted to create all these things, the app and the book, is that I wanted a resource that felt really good and gentle and loving and buoyant and uplifting because that’s what I so desperately needed in my hour of need—and I still need that!
TS: It’s interesting, Sarah, one of the words that you used several times in this conversation, which you don’t hear people use that much, is this word “buoyant.” That’s an interesting word. I wonder—it seems like it has a feeling in it for you.
SS: It definitely does. I feel like, as I was saying, often when I get caught up in my head I will get really weighted down if I’m trying to solve a solution from simply that intellectual space; whereas when I use my head and my heart or I use my head and connect with a beastie or the spirits that help me, I often find that sweet place which is lighter, which is ease, which is trust. That always feels very buoyant to me, like you’re being lifted up by something. I don’t have to carry this burden, I don’t have to do it all myself, there’s this lightness and this sweetness.
TS: You know, sometimes when I experience the rational part of me in a conversation like this I’m like, “Oh Tami, really? You’re trying to bring a part of your mind that just doesn’t fit here.” But I noticed when you talked about unicorns and dragons I was like, “OK, The Book of Beasties doesn’t only have beasties that I might meet out in the wild, although maybe I’d meet a dragon or a unicorn—really?”
SS: Right, well, the thing about shamanism which is so wonderful is that in shamanism, our imagination is not considered fake or false in the way that I think in our culture—in parts of our culture we have said that imagination is equal to being false or made up or therefore does not exist. As I’ve tapped into this, tapped back into this part of me that is connected to everything that is, I’ve realized that the only way, out of a stuck place is to imagine a way forward. The only way we ever created new solutions is through our imagination. The only way great things—great things come from our imagination, and just because we haven’t seen it or we haven’t experienced it does not mean that it does not exist. [Laughs]
TS: OK, the note I wanted to end on, Sarah, is a question that you were willing to ask yourself during your radical sabbatical and that you encourage other people to ask themselves that I think is a very powerful question. That question is, “How good are you willing to let it get? How good are you willing to let your life be?” Tell me a little bit about that question and how you suggest people work with it in their life?
SS: Yes. That question I came up with that summer in the radical sabbatical. I made a prayer to the universe, “Boy, I really don’t feel like I’m supposed to go back to the hospital and do this, go back to that old work, but I don’t see a way forward financially with our family to do this. But if this is what I meant to be doing, exploring this path, show me the way.” Two weeks later, my husband got a raise that was almost to the dollar amount what my part-time salary at that time was. Basically, my lost income [was] completely replaced. And it felt so good in the moment, I couldn’t believe it. I was like, “What a miracle, this is amazing.” Two weeks later, I was back to doubting: “Well, maybe this isn’t a miracle, maybe this . . .” What I realized was, no matter how good it got, there was something inside me that wasn’t willing to allow myself to allow these miracles to happen, to allow the goodness to flow. So I started asking myself like, “Could you raise—” I had self-imposed the glass ceiling on myself. “Could you just allow that? Could you take that off?”
So if you’re ever facing a difficult question or you’re like, feeling stuck about something, just to ask yourself—and do this with friends, because Lord knows we all need to be reminded of this—how good are you willing to let it get? How much good? How much love? How much abundance? How much opportunity? How much amazingness would you be willing to let flow in your life, or would you let in? Because we are often the gatekeepers for that, I discovered.
TS: Yes, I want to talk about that a little bit more. What do you think keeps people from letting—sometimes I’ve heard this referred to as our set point for happiness. What do you think in your experience of working with people, coaching people, keeps people from letting themselves get a whole lot happier?
SS: A really common one which always surprises me, but then I’m reminded, is that we worry that somehow if our life gets really good or we let our life get really good, somehow someone we love or it will be bad somehow for somebody else, somebody we care about. If I find work I love and quit my job and find me something meaningful somehow somebody is going to suffer—like that’s going to harm my husband somehow or something bad is going to happen if we—he shoe is going to drop.
Alternatively, we just feel that we don’t deserve it. Maybe that’s not what life is about, maybe we’re here to be punished or maybe somehow we’re a bad person because we got that message in childhood; we were scolded for, I don’t know, being too big for our britches or not being kind enough to a sibling or something like that. Somehow deep down we feel that we’re not worthy of all the love and the adoration and the beauty and the abundance that wants to come to us. I think those are some of the biggest misconceptions but ultimately that we don’t believe we’re somehow worthy or something terrible is going to happen if we allow that in.
TS: It was interesting, when you were talking about your meeting internally with the bear and you were saying it was the most loved you’d ever felt. I thought that was interesting that that came from an inner meeting with a spirit animal, more so than your husband, your kids, your parents. And clearly you have a family life that at least from the outside seems like it’s filled with a lot of love, but it was this connection with an inner beastie that helped you have so much more love and joy in your life. Just as a note to end on, this idea that when we discover our relationship with beasties, that this could be a big factor in helping us have more joy and feel-goodness in our life.
SS: Absolutely, yes. I mean, if you can begin to just be curious who might that beastie be, or maybe dare to take a shamanic journey and discover them. A lot of amazing things can come from that place because these core beasties, they’re here to empower us and offer us all that love and compassion that—not that our human families can’t do that and our dearest friends, and they do, but being human we also have limiting beliefs about each other, or we have grudges or fears about each other too. Whereas the spirits have unlimited—they kind of believe in us in an unlimited way, which is pretty darn encouraging.
TS: I’ve been speaking Sarah Seidelmann, she’s the author of the new book, The Book of Beasties: Your A-to-Z Guide to the Illuminating Wisdom of Spirit Animals. She’s also authored the book Swimming with Elephants: My Unexpected Pilgrimage from Physician to Healer, and a book called Born to Freak: A Salty Primer for Irrepressible Humans. Sarah, thank you so much for bringing the wisdom of beasties to Insights at the Edge. Thank you.
SS: Thank you, Tami. It was a joy.
TS: SoundsTrue.com: many voices, one journey—one buoyant journey. Thank you so much everyone.
