Wisdom Of The Wolf: A Live Journey Into Nature's Medicine

In this special live episode, we take a journey into the world of the wolf, exploring what we have in common with this beautiful animal and what nature teaches us and mirrors about our lives. 

In this episode, you will: Know how nature fuels our evolution in life and the wisdom of our higher self. Explore the wisdom of the wolf, and its qualities, and identify imbalances based on our connection to nature. Discover practical tips for navigating your path with strength and confidence. Leave with a deeper understanding of the shadow side we all carry that impacts our lives.

Join me, your host, Amanda Machado, as I share a live session I hosted for a group of 91 people on Insight Timer, providing practical insights for conscious living.

Transcript

Wild Becoming podcast,

The ultimate gateway to ignite your spiritual journey and unlock a life of harmony,

Purpose,

And conscious living.

My name is Amanda Machado.

I'm your guide in this quest for self-discovery.

As an epidemiologist and devoted teacher of consciousness,

I take my inspiration from spirit,

Science,

And nature and make conscious living practical for your everyday life.

In this sanctuary of knowledge,

We will blend the robust foundation of scientific truth with wisdom woven by diverse communities,

Disciplines,

And niches across the globe.

We're not just connecting the dots here.

We're simplifying the intricate patterns of our world in order to fuel your transformation like never before.

Before we embark,

A quick note.

While I'm deeply passionate about well-being,

I'm not a medical expert.

If you're facing psychological or medical challenges,

It's essential to seek the guidance of a qualified professional.

Your health and happiness matter.

So to all you seekers,

Dreamers,

And curious souls yearning for growth,

This podcast is your catalyst.

All starts and ends with the spirit.

Your spirit holds the key and today we unlock its infinite potential together.

Today we are diving into nature's wisdom through a deeper understanding of what nature teaches us about life.

I'm so excited because this special episode is where I share a live session I hosted for a group that started off small in the beginning or smaller and grew to 91 people by the end of the session.

Last time I shared one of these live sessions on the podcast,

It was such a big hit that we're back to share another so that you too can benefit from this nature's wisdom session.

Together we'll explore the sacred qualities of the wolf and what the wolf tells us about our own human nature,

Including ways you can learn more about yourself and enhance your spiritual wellness.

We'll delve into what it means to have a shadow side and various qualities that are mirrored in nature through animals like the wolf,

Which really help you to discover what it means to be guided by life.

Plus we'll provide you with practical tips to tap into your own inner wisdom and work with the forces of nature to navigate your path with strength and confidence so that you can create a balanced life.

So let's dive in.

We know we are nature,

We are not separate.

All of nature carries codes to our soul to further awaken us to our higher purpose and the light of nature interacts with our very being.

So all is connected and all has very sacred qualities and all has this beautiful divine interconnected intelligence.

So we know that there's a wisdom in nature that we can tap on that we are very highly connected to and it's through our connection with nature we awaken further to our purpose and the wisdom of our higher self.

So nature can really present this mirror to our soul and to our higher sense of being and they say that for example that if you want to connect with spirit just go sit with a flower because flowers have this very have very little density so this is in the world of form flowers have very little density and a very strong flow of spiritual energy and so much of what we take for granted such as a flower in our modern world because of the expectation of what we expect to experience or what we feel we should experience can kind of take a front stage in our minds and so sort of dropping our expectations to the side we're able to truly experience what life has to offer and focus less on what the immediate future holds.

And so what we'll notice is you know when we're out in nature often we feel this beautiful transfer of energy.

Wisdom may come to us in that very moment and sometimes it's wisdom and oftentimes it's wisdom that we don't often comprehend with the mind and then over time as we start to integrate with the mind we can begin to have you know thoughts about our experience and the wisdom that we were granted through our journey in nature.

And so this often happens at a later time as we integrate but as we know in the human experience we can be really impatient and this can actually lead us to become blocked and not hear the wisdom that nature holds for us.

In our human experience you know we like to say negative or positive we have positive qualities but neither are really good nor bad.

So when we think of I guess the positive qualities of the wolf we know that wolves tend to have this sharp intelligence,

This deep connection with instincts,

This appetite for freedom,

Courage and resilience,

This deep inner knowing and wisdom and then they're also very connected to community and they're very loyal and they have these familial traits that offer them the ability to be leaders within the community but also and teachers and warriors but also very connected to their family and so there's this determination and adaptability that they possess as well and then this leads to a I guess you could say a quality of life for the pack so the community and so we can really see how that resonates you know with us and how how we operate within our community because it's not only you know the wellness of us but it's our wellness contributes to collective wellness and so on I guess you could say the shadow side or the negative side of the qualities of a wolf we have you know isolation or greed or and selfishness we might have dishonesty and deception.

Wolves can feel very threatened at times and they may lack trust in you know their path or other animals around them and similar to us we may lack trust in someone in our community or sometimes we lack trust in ourselves.

The shadow side also shows us that there can be this dominance or authoritarianism.

There can be this control and we know that to some extent control is actually an illusion and so really feeding into this control can lead to you know negative side effects or really growing this shadow side and then at times there's this cruel there there can be cruelty in terms of the qualities as well as relentlessness and this you know wanting to win no matter the cost.

If anyone else knows any knows anything about wolves feel free to put what you've experienced or learned about them in the chat I'd love to hear from you.

And so I mentioned this because everything has everything in life has a shadow side and as I mentioned you know often we can think of these things as you know good or bad but further labeling can actually create more shadows so when we actually label an experience as good this is a good experience over this is a bad experience that can actually create shadows within ourselves and we become unwilling to see ourselves in certain lights because when we do we may have felt guilt or shame and we know that guilt and shame are very very powerful emotions and so to avoid feeling guilt and shame at times we cast these shadows within ourselves and we cultivate over we cultivate acceptance over traits that we see as acceptable or good and then we say you know these are bad traits so I'm gonna put these traits that I have within myself over here and I'm not going to look at them and so one of the things that we know is that when we cultivate acceptance and become empowered this actually enables us to release what no longer serves us and so you know maybe there's a trait or a quality like going back to the traits and qualities of wolves such as you know dishonesty or deception that we want to express less in our being if we accept that we've exhibited those traits we're actually able to release them and to choose which traits we want to cultivate and empower so it's really important not to throw our aversions to the side but rather look at what our aversions are and and see you know the traits that we don't like about ourselves are just as important to look at as the traits that we do like about ourselves and usually we'll find for example that when we don't like something about ourselves we project onto what we don't like about others and so we have a shadow around oftentimes what we don't like about others so we might see you know someone exhibiting a certain trait and it might really bother us and this is actually a sign and sometimes a sign to take a look at you know what's truly going on inside around this particular trait or aspect of ourselves.

Kara says that wolves are connected to feminine wisdom yes I love that Kara thank you thank you for sharing.

So there are times when you probably have felt isolated I'm sure we can all relate to this given that there was a global pandemic and many of us were locked down for extended periods of time I'm sure many of us had different experiences during that time when we when we were in isolated and I know that many people had spiritual awakenings others dealt with a lot of shadows others took it as opportunities for for growth and to really you know try something new and go outside of their comfort zone and connect with people maybe they haven't connected with and equally I'm sure there are times where you know you may have felt threatened so you may have felt like you were under attack or angry you know about something going on in your environment and one of the things that we know is that typically when we feel you know threatened or you know this deep-rooted fear or we exhibit anger or emotions that come from this feeling of being threatened there is typically always you will it will always come back to this deep-rooted fear that we have so you might think of you know you're driving and somebody cuts you off our natural reaction is to be angry right we feel threatened we feel for our own safety so we we get angry about that that's our natural reaction and that's typically because of fear we may feel you know if when we're driving and someone cuts off cuts us off that we don't trust people when they're driving we don't trust that you know people have our safety in mind and so we might in those instincts force our control and and really you know try to get in front of them before they can get in front of us to make sure that you know we have control over that situation and a lot of this comes from fear so underneath all of these emotions we typically will find fear when we dig deep enough and so we like to shy away from these.

These are uncomfortable like I would be lying if I if I said that you know feeling fear and anger or feeling isolated or distrust because it's very uncomfortable but they're normal human emotions they come to us to show us what we need to learn and and then they pass right unless we don't let them pass and it can be as simple as that it can be as simple as you know letting them letting these emotions pass through us and moving out of the way and letting life guide us or we can we can become extremely adverse to feeling them because they are so uncomfortable and so we decide to really harness them which we know can create other challenges for our mental and our emotional health and well-being as well as our physical health we start to you know they say that a lot of emotions are harnessed within the hips and so we know with yoga when we open up the hips we can actually have an emotional response because we harness some of these trapped emotions and then what happens typically is when we feel something like anger so when we feel threatened and then we feel anger we can begin to compound these emotions because we feel well I'm not an angry person I don't want to be I don't want to be an angry person or we might feel shame around being angry because you know perhaps growing up we grew up around someone angry and so we have negative associations or conditioning around the emotion of anger and so this can lead to compounding emotions which are compounded energy in essence and we build guilt and shame around how we're feeling and then what ends up happening is we end up strengthening that fear and that flow of energy in that particular direction and so that's something that we want to be careful of and that we want to kind of really just bring an awareness to and on the flip side we talked about the wolf having you know this this inner wisdom and a deep connection with instincts or deep connection to those around you and so we also have that we've definitely felt at times I'm sure that inner wisdom a deep connection with instincts or deep connection with our family or community and then you know like I mentioned we have that isolation sometimes and so we love to be in this place in life of course we'd love to be in connection with our community we love to tap into that inner wisdom but it's important to remember that when we like something not to pull and when we are adverse to something not to push it away because like a pendulum the forces of nature dictate that that is bound to swing back right so when you like something and you and you pull it towards you it's going to swing back in the other direction and when you're adverse to something you push it away that pendulum is going to come back in the opposite direction so what we aim to do is we aim to create balance knowing that we're never in perfect balance but when we feel ourselves pushing and pulling we come back to center we fall out of balance to remember how to come back into alignment and nature shows us that in many different ways how to come back into alignment so what can we learn from the wolf so what does the wolf teach us about life so as we were just saying we know when we push and pull in life we become out of balance when we focus too much on results and outcomes and we try to force outcomes when we push our aversions away and we suppress our emotions but nature is here to support us and to provide that map for our path and as as human beings we have the ability to know ourselves and each element of nature has their superpower and I believe that wholeheartedly that this is this is our superpower to know thyself is the greatest gift because then that means that we have power over our own evolution and we are deeply guided by life not only do we have power over our own evolution our evolution actually depends on us knowing ourselves and continuing to elevate in alignment with our higher self and this is because when we think about the teachings from the wolf for example and use them to know ourselves on a deeper level we're able to see the gifts that nature actually provides for us and that nature is actually here to support us because we've all had times where we sort of feel like oh like life is life is not happening for me life is happening to me but the truth and the reality is that life is happening for us it's just whether we are willing to connect to life and to nature or we fall into the illusion of thinking that we have no control so what is the medicine what is the deep healing medicine that the wolf offers our world so we know that the wolf is a symbol of freedom so the wolf shows us the path for how we might live more freely how we might liberate our minds how we might live more authentically we know that the wolf is not easily domesticated even though our little furry friends our dogs are you know great animals and have become domesticated and descendants of wolves they are they're not wolves right for the most part I mean I know some of us may have a breed that may be a little bit closer so I actually have a husky Samoyed Malamute and we actually at times have wondered whether she has a little bit of wolf because she's from an indigenous reserve and in the beginning we worried about her domestication you know was how domesticated was she going to be turns out she she she's easily domesticated because I think she's more husky than anything but we know wolves are not easily domesticated and so what can we take from that well you know we don't we don't want to live in a sort of authoritarian state right we we want to have control over our own health and well-being and our own evolution as a soul right because we know that while we walk the path in community the soul's journey is very it can feel very isolated at times and so we have to cultivate that inner empowerment to live on a an authentic light and we have to be the ones to cultivate our inner wolf in order to really light a blaze to our inner passion and it's true expression and this happens through you know a trust in life and also a trust in our own instincts similar to the wolf and so the gift of the wolf to us is really following our inner truth no matter you know what's going on in in society or our communities because our communities actually need our inner truth so all you know 52 meditators here today each and every one of us has a special gift for the world a very special gift for the world and yet we're also all very interconnected and because we're interconnected we're all very dependent on that special gift from each other right and so it's really really important that when we're contributing to the pack and the health and the wellness of our communities and our world that we express our inner truth no matter no matter how clouded we are with our perception of what others think because our perception of what others think can really impact how authentically we express ourselves another medicine that the wolf brings us is determination and resilience so in the face of hardships and obstacles and challenging challenging circumstances the wolf always perseveres the wolf is very adaptive no matter the circumstance and so when things get tough the wolf does not give up and the wolf gives us this gift of confidence and strength to continue on our path no matter what because there are going to be obstacles and challenging circumstances and it is gonna feel tough it's not meant to you know I don't think it's meant to feel necessarily easy you I think you're meant to feel the flow of ease so as Cara mentioned earlier the wolf is connected to that feminine wisdom and we know with feminine wisdom we can cultivate you know that ease and flow in life right but we also need to couple that with a healthy masculine energy that lives within us and so we need to cultivate opportunities to flow and ease with life but also cultivate opportunities to connect with our courage and strength to continue on the path and feel free to share you know any experiences you've had on your own you know path to truth spirituality wisdom because I know you know from my own personal experience as well it can be really hard once you make the decision to you know get on the path I I made a decision to get on the path to truth and spirituality I was called to do so through my yoga when I did my yoga teacher training I was not planning on becoming a yoga teacher or a meditation teacher at all actually and I I was gonna take a yin training program to just enhance my knowledge a little bit more because I was really noticing how healing yin yoga was just for my own personal healing and then that actually ended up getting canceled and then I ended up in a program for you know 200 hours to learn yoga and ended up having a deep spiritual awakening that I had not planned so that was sort of you know I would say my second pull to really being on the spiritual path and I can say that you know there will be times on your journey where you'll feel all these universal pulls in certain directions and it'll be very clear from you know life or the universe like where you're being pulled and then there will be like quiet almost like you know it'll be kind of you know chilled out a little bit because you know I guess that's the way of nature and the Creator or God or whoever you identify with the universe the infinite really saying you know okay you're on the path now go right experience go Louise says beautiful things usually happen when we least expect them yes absolutely it's so true it's it's when we least expect them and I think it kind of speaks to what we were talking about earlier about you know coming into you know these talks or even even coming into light with with not really that you know high expectation with the mind because the mind can really throw us off course in terms of having this grand expectation that turns out not to be that grand when we really dive deep and it's actually like what you know what Louise is saying that these beautiful experiences happening happen more when we're just open but we're not expecting anything to happen and then we find ourselves on the path and we're like oh okay I got this but what I think I'm alluding to is that also you know on the path once you've had that initiation happen there can be times where you kind of feel like nothing's happening or you kind of feel like okay all these like exciting synchronicities were happening like now they're all gone so how do I actually stay on this path and they actually say that you know the deepest spiritual guidance is no guidance at all no it's crazy right but that's because I think it's it's coming from the silence within and even when our minds are not talking and especially when our minds are not talking that's when we can actually hear the the wisdom of the universe and the wisdom of the universe actually isn't you know always the way it comes to us you know how we think of wisdom coming or intelligence coming through the mind it's often through a sound right and it vibrates through our system and then it's integrated with the mind and so it's really important to tap into this gift of confidence and strength to continue on the path even when we feel like we're not hearing a lot of that guidance take it as a sign to trust that the universe you know has got your back and that you're on the path right and to continue on that path because when you start to swerve off that's when you start to get some of the negative things or the or the very positive things coming into your life as signs I guess you could call them because you really need to gear back on so what are some other things that the wolf offers our world one of the things is really this guide to community connection so showing us that path of loyalty and strength and having those community bonds and really living our authentic authenticity within our community and so we know that the wolf thrives through cooperation and competition is part of our world too but we really want to be you know empowering that cooperative side so that our ego isn't sort of taking over with competition constantly and so this really offers us the gift of knowing that we are not alone even in our darkest moments because we can lean on that strength of community cooperation and we can lean on that strength of you know community and nature showing us that path because in essence nature has this supreme loyalty to us and our path and that's why nature is you know such a great mirror for this deeper wisdom that we can tap into and so it's important not to be swayed so much by what we perceive or what we think that others think and this does not mean that we you know we want to hold compassion for others and we want to care about people so I know you know sometimes there's like these hashtags that go around that say you know hashtag who cares what people think or you know not caring what people think and things like that and so I think that there's a balance that we can take here where we can hold take here where we can hold you know compassion for people on the journey that they're on in terms of what they actually are thinking because we know that there are you know people within our you know families for instance or communities that may not be as awakened as us and that may actually make us feel very isolated and make us feel like we want to you know isolate ourselves further from those communities or people when in essence what if we're actually being called to not necessarily you know go up to them and say hey you need to be thinking like this but perhaps it's you know really sharing and empowering through just who we're physically and emotionally and spiritually are as a person right like just being who we are around different people in our community can actually transcend community and so we're actually really supporting the health of our communities when we hold that compassionate space for people even when we feel that they are not as awakened as as we may be.

Kara says recently I did something different instead of making the final decision on others opinions I decided it on my gut feeling and that was really huge for me even if they are intuitive or psychic.

Yes I really like that Kara I feel like we really have to tap into you know that gut instinct within ourselves you know because just because someone says it's so you know even this talk go let this talk this talk will percolate and you will experience this talk and go out and see what your experience is of the of the of the things that I teach for example like don't just take my words for you my words for you know face value because allow yourselves to experience these truths right and we have to that is you know being on that path and really tapping into that truth and authenticity within ourselves and allowing ourselves to experience those things within ourselves actually you know it does more for the world and we're able to experience that you know those beautiful truths of wisdom deep deep wisdom that the world offers and also important to remember that all beings we all just want happiness and so when someone is you know seemingly less awake than you or you know just really making you angry how they're treating people or you know not holding compassion for the community it's really important to just remember that even when somebody is very very conditioned that deep down somewhere inside of them all they want is happiness and that could be the reason why they're expressing themselves in such a way because they may not know how to how to really be on you know the path to empowering themselves in a different way.

Louise says we are all in different phases in our journey respecting others just how we want to be respected will make things a lot easier our job is is not to convince others rather we need to convince ourselves whether the path we are on is where we want to be yes absolutely our job is not to convince others but to it's to be the thing so another example of how um how the wolf offers us medicine is really allowing us to listen to our own inner guidance so sharing the wisdom following our instinct like we were just talking about and really tapping into that inner voice on our own unique path and so although we're contributing always to you know our community and our health the health of ourselves is not only you know dependent on nature we're because we're all interconnected but nature is also dependent on us right to be healthy and so cultivating our own inner wellness is also important for that contribution and we still have while we're connected we have this uniqueness to each and every one of us that we need to express and that we've come here to express so the gift of following our path even though we walk that path alongside each other only we can tread that path so only you can tread your path only you have the deeper wisdom to know which steps you need to take and no one can tell you how no matter who is selling what nobody can tell you how we're we're here to you know connect with one another and guide one another but no one can actually tell you the exact steps that you need to take we can learn from the experience of others and sometimes the journey of another can unlock something within us but often the key can come from a number of different integrated factors and so that's just something to consider because there are a lot of illusionary traps out there people you know thinking that they can teach you exactly how to get you what you desire but the truth is only you can do that and so it's important not to fall into that trap so community can help you unlock those keys but the only way we can really learn is from within and so continuing to unlock,

Continuing to unveil,

Continuing to experience and allowing yourself to be connected to nature and all that is in that experience.

So diving into some of the maybe I guess more negative or shadow traits the wolf as we mentioned can have this fear of threats and so the wolf can have the sensitivity to perceive threats when we perceive a threat we often act as if there is a true threat so we sometimes you know our nervous system will act as if we're running away from a bear even though there is no bear and you know we act sometimes on the basis of fear alone and this might actually and is typically due to past experiences and our own conditioning so one of the things is really understanding where we can investigate where this influence is coming from how is this behavior impacting us and so what boundaries maybe do we need to put in place or is this an innate fear of something that maybe something that we came against in childhood that we need to overcome.

Another trait is the wolf is a highly intuitive animal and so at times wolf medicine gives us this medicine to investigate how we might be misguided by our instincts or our own intuitive guidance or what we're perceiving as our instincts or intuitive guidance so really tapping into things like what is the relationship to our inner voice asking ourselves questions like have we spent the time to develop develop our relationship with ourselves have we spent the time to develop a relationship with our soul our inner voice how do we know when it's our inner voice and how do we know when it's actually fear do we trust or mistrust our inner voice and what is our relationship there so no matter what we all harness the spirit of the wolf and it's really up to us in terms of whether we're going to listen so at times in our lives we can actually call upon this medicine to guide us on our path and so I just want to know like how do you relate to some of the things that I've shared so far I have also learned that is perfectly fine not to be happy it is unsustainable to expect for us to be happy all the time feeling sad mad frustrated is part of how to learn to navigate through those emotions absolutely it's not it's not natural to be happy all the time right we go through pain and we go through our aversions because they tell us things about life too right if we didn't have pain for example we would just our bodies would would would not stay in one piece we know not to do certain things because when we touch a hot fire we feel we feel the burn of the fire right and so it's important to allow ourselves to feel the things that we aren't you know sometimes averse to as we close our journey through nature's medicine I kind of feel like you too were part of the live event they say there is no past or future all always exists in the now moment that each moment is an opportunity for growth and harmony and so I'm really excited that you were able to be part of this live event in this new moment and I wish you the most beautiful day.