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Posted by Sarasvati Fautheree BUT: One good place to start is that for most of the shapeshifting materials i've ever read, the most important part of a shifter's life is learning how to get in touch with his or her animal self, not any actual shifting itself. For me, it's an astral/emotional thing--for instance, when i'm threatened, i have been known to hiss like a cat, or when i'm feeling good, i might do "cat-type" things like jump on things for no reason or stalk or pounce on friends, and occasionally i realize i've been watching a squirrel for fifteen minutes, just sitting there, totally absorbed. Most shifters, from what i've read and experienced, tend to be more trusting of and understanding of other animal species than of humans, and may be heir to some sensory shifts from time to time (shifts in how well you can smell, how you see color, etc. Once, i smelled what i thought was really appetizing meat out on the highway, and was really puzzled because there were no restaurants around. it got more pungent the closer i got to the source, and i think you can see where this is going--i was smelling roadkill. my human self was absolutely disgusted, while my cat self was only curious and slightly amused at the human self's reactions). You might also find yourself undergoing distinct shifts in consciousness and how you think about and perceive the world--for instance, when i'm stressed, i tend to revert to the inner cat, and that tends to change my general thoughts from "just deal with it, you know you have to" to a fairly non-verbal thought process which can generally be summed up as, "but why? let's do _____ instead" (for instance, strong desire to leave the office and go stalking the squirrels, or getting distracted by the smell of a coworker's cycle, or other random things). Acknowledging and working with my feline tendencies has actually been very enriching, and has helped somewhat in dealing with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). You can learn a lot from your inner animal, and if you stop fighting with it all the time in some attempt to be what capitalist consumer culture would tell you "civilized humans" are supposed to be, you can free that energy up for other things. My recommendation to you is, if you suspect you have shape-shifting tendencies, the first thing you might want to do is get in touch with your inner animal. If you're having symptoms, it may be that your inner animal is attempting to communicate with you. Obviously, don't do anything particularly dangerous or anti-social under the pretext of "my animal self made me do it", which some people have probably tried before (hence our legends of werewolves ripping people up with their teeth, etc), but dont' be afraid to let yourself experience the world in different ways, or to explore how it feels to go ahead and do some of the things that part of you wants (and maybe has always wanted) to be allowed to do--like sniffing and wandering and such. My other recommendation would be to start developping some coping mechanisms now, because if you do have that inner animal, there may be times--particularly when you're feeling stressed--when you'll wind up getting what i call "the fever"; hot flashes, total restlessness, insomnia, sensory shifts, altered consciousness, etc. It's helpful to have some semi-wild area where you can get rid of some of that energy by running, jumping around, and just in general letting yourself play until you wear yourself out. it always passes in time; it's just that, if you don't have some way of coping with it, it's hell until it does pass. Disclaimer: i might be totally nuts, and i may just not be aware of that, so if any of this seems off to you, just disregard it. possibly helpful book: the magic of shapeshifting by rosalyn green
on 11/16/2006, 1:04 am, in reply to "Shapeshifting"
152.163.101.5
There's actually a lot of debate about that. Some say you can not physically shapeshift, due to things like how much energy it would take to accomplish (meaning your metabolism would have to be hella-high, at least during the shift), laws of conservation of mass, etc. Some say that it's possible, whether we can explain the mechanism that causes it yet or not, but that it's rare.
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