Animal Tag

In my experience:

Sometimes people will change the scenarios that you give them, this might be because they do not trust or believe what you are telling them and they may wish to test or challenge what you are saying. I have come to learn that this can be really positive because in challenging you they are also challenging themselves and are more likely to believe their own outcome based on how they see their world.

While playing this game with some of my peers I asked a friend to take on the role of a fox and to stalk its prey, the intensity of his focus was very strong, so much so that one member of the group in the circle felt that intensity and he felt that he needed to react to it. However, I then observed his body language changing, he seemed to relax and he then started to look around the surrounding environment, even putting his head back at one point to look up at the sky.

During a normal session I would normally ask what was going on for that person in that moment. However, on this occasion it was not necessary and we discussed what had happened afterwards, what he had to say was new to me and very interesting indeed. He said that when he felt the intensity that the fox was sending out thought the fox was going for him and he just wanted to respond to it by taking off.

However, just like a zebra on the plains of Africa, once he had realised that he was not the prey and that the lion inn this case the fox was after a different animal he relaxed just as a herd of zebras would do in the wild. He ten said that because he felt that he was not in any danger he could just relax and watch what happens and was quite happy to look around and up at the sky and to just watch the fox make its kill.

When you watch wildlife programmes, you’ll see this behaviour all the time when a herd of animals realise that they are not the intended prey they carry on eating but maintain a watchful eye on the predator and that’s what happen here.

I was unaware at the time of giving my friend who was playing the fox his instructions that he had decided to change them. However, it soon became apparent that something had changed as the prey had changed her behaviour in mid flow of the game.

At first she responded to the danger by turning and facing the direction it was coming from (she was blindfolded) and as the fox stalked more slowly and softly she then turned away from the danger and continued to face away from it. Her body language showed that she was relaxing with just one minor flinch and the fox was able to stalk right up and touch her gently at which point she jumped.

When I asked what had change my friend (the fox) informed that he did not want to stalk in tunnel vision with the intent of killing his prey he wanted to stalk in peripheral vision and to honour the prey for giving up its life, and so asked for that to happen in his thoughts.

This is what I believe our ancestors would have done and indeed many so called primitive cultures today still do this Aborigines being a good example of this.