From Analyzing to Listening: Birds as the nervous system of the forest

What can the Eagle teach us?

What are Birds Communicating with Their Song?

My friend and I recently started learning bird language. She said that she had come to think of bird language as the nervous system of the forest. The birds "alarm" when predators are nearby, they sing when they’re safe and happy, you can hear juveniles "begging" for food from their parents in the nest if you’re lucky…

Side note: For those of you who have never learned about bird language, there are 5 types of communication:

• contact calls: more simple vocalizations used to communicate with other birds especially within the same flock/family, such as knowing each others location

• alarm: rapid vocalizations used to alert other birds of potential dangers such as predators

• song: melodic and complex vocal expressions, used just because (e.g. at dawn), by male birds during the breeding season to attract mates, to defend territories, etc

• territorial aggression: more intense vocalizations used to warn off rivals

• juvenile begging: young birds making a lot of noise so their parents will feed them!

My friend also noted that just like the birds, she was trying to pay more attention to when her own nervous system was singing. I love this metaphor! It reminds of the metaphor of tracking. Just like we track animals in the wild to learn about them, I often think of therapy as the art of inner tracking.

How to Listen to Ourselves Rather Than Analyzing

On a similar thread: I have been consciously moving away from analyzing myself to listening. This was one of the main intentions and results of a solo quest I recently participated in, where I went and spent a night alone in nature with just a blanket and fire, and deep intentions. One of those intentions was to listen rather than figure it out. I can become so cognitive and focused on trying to figure things out, and it takes away from my ability to hear, be guided, be embodied....

Therapy can contribute to this because it runs a risk of over analysis. I myself have experienced the drawbacks of over-analysis. For example, in recent years of wandering a lot, I was asked by friends and helping professionals alike, what is wrong with me? Why can I not find stability? I also asked myself this question many times. Seeing everything as a wound or an issue that needs to be solved, especially things outside of the mainstream norms and paths, can actually cause harm and result in us not trusting ourselves.

What can be less harmful is listening to the ourselves. This can be more difficult because what we hear inside isn't always logical and doesn’t always work out. 

So how do these all connect? What is it like to listen to when your being is singing, alarming, and everything in between? And what if you followed that instead of analyzed it? What gets in the way of listening?

As Mary Oliver said, "You only have to let the soft animal of your body do what it loves"

This is a rich conversation and I’m curious to hear your own reflections on this…