Have you noticed how much of what we call “healing” is still organized around making the Animal Body more acceptable, polite, and calm?

 

It’s like our Animal Bodies need to be more acceptable to the social field instead of making the social field more capable of tolerating the Animal Body.

 

A lot of therapeutic, spiritual, wellness, and self-development spaces say they are helping people “come home to the body” and “listen to their body” while still subtly rewarding bodies that are calm, quiet, articulate, coherent, contained, pretty, emotionally legible, and easy to be around. Which means — the body is welcome only after it has been translated/domesticated into something polite and socially acceptable.

 

That’s not how Animal Bodies work.

 

The Animal Body trembles and shakes. It burps, farts, sweats, and gags. It clenches and braces. It wants to kick, push, bite, growl, spit, scream, crawl under something, be held, be left alone, or move in some strange, non-aesthetic way that makes no sense to the rational mind.

 

But humans — especially women, especially in “healing” — are trained to apologize for every visible sign our Animal Bodies make.

 

Have you ever apologized right before you started crying or while crying? You’re apologizing for your Animal Body’s visibility.

 

Have you ever apologized for being shaky or sweaty during a hard conversation? You apologized for your Animal Body’s visibility.

 

Have you ever been sitting still for so long that you couldn’t sit still any longer, so you got up to move and stretch — but then apologized for not being able to maintain stillness? You apologized for your Animal Body’s visibility.

 

Over and over, we apologize for our Animal Bodies, as if they’re doing the wrong thing.

 

“Sorry, I can’t explain it.”

“Sorry, I need to pee.”

“Sorry, my stomach is weird.”

“Sorry, I’m really overwhelmed.”

 

Those apologies we’re constantly making on behalf of our bodies isn’t neutral. You’re not just “being polite”.

 

The apology is the socialized human part trying to cover the Animal Body before someone else sees it and decides it is inconvenient, disgusting, manipulative, dramatic, unsafe, childish, unstable, unprofessional, or too much.

 

For female bodies, this is centuries-old training.

 

Female bodies are trained to make our animal signals invisible.

 

Menstruation is gross, smelly, and dirty, we’re told, so we do anything we can to hide and conceal it. God forbid our pads leak and someone sees what our bodies naturally do each month…

 

Hunger must be managed. Eat enough, but don’t over-eat. If you happen to find comfort in food (which all mammals do, by the way), you have “disordered eating”.

 

Fear has to be softened so no one feels accused. Exhaustion has to be overridden so overfunctioning can continue. Anger has to be metabolized privately so you can bring your “hurt” forward calmly.

 

Birth must be sterilized. Pain must be proven. Aging has to be reversed. Hair has to be removed. Smell must be deodorized. Breasts must be covered, lifted, maximized, sexualized, de-sexualized, hidden, or displayed but always managed.

 

The female Animal Body is treated like a public nuisance requiring lifelong supervision.

 

Therefore, a woman’s “healing journey” often begins inside a body that has never been allowed to simply be a mammal in front of anyone. Even in “safe” spaces, she may still be performing an acceptable version of embodied healing. She cries beautifully. She trembles quietly. She names her inner child. She takes a breath and places her hand over her heart. She says, “I’m noticing activation,” but she’s full-on bracing. She has done the work of becoming emotionally fluent, which can be valuable, but sometimes that fluency becomes another leash.

 

And, yes, language can liberate. I can’t tell you the number of times I have finally found accurate language for my experiences and felt utter relief. There’s a place for narrating our stories and making meaning. It’s important that we be able to name “this reminds me of when I was 7” or “this is my anxious attachment,” but underneath alllllll of that, there is an organism that does zero narration and meaning-making.

 

Survival is very black-and-white and boring. The mechanisms of survival are very sophisticated, but the questions of survival are very simple.

 

Can I move? Can I rest? Can I play? Can I eat? Can I poop? Can I make sound? Can I be seen? Am I protected? Am I wanted? Can I take up space without being punished or abandoned?

 

When the answer has historically been no, the body adapts.

 

That adaptation may later get named anxiety, depression, dissociation, people-pleasing, perfectionism, chronic pain, emotional dysregulation, executive dysfunction, low libido, eating disorders, gut dysbiosis, attachment wounds, relational sabotage, spiritual bypassing, overfunctioning, underfunctioning, or whatever else. Those names can be useful. They can also obscure the fact that the body is still working with ancient mammal questions.

 

The Animal Body also learns over time that some animal signals are also socially rewarded: productivity, overriding exhaustion, high-functioning, dissociated politeness, forgive and forget, even being able to speak intelligently about your trauma.

 

Body learns that certain adaptations make you more enjoyable, employable, fuckable, healable, spiritual, respectable, and safe from social punishment.

 

A domesticated body can look very regulated. Women are masters at disguising how we really feel. We can sit still, smile, comply, speak the right words, breathe deeply, and remain sexually and relationally and emotionally available — and still be internally caged.

 

A regulated woman who still has no appetite, no play, no territorial agency, no sexual sovereignty, no sensory pleasure, no deep rest, no access to anger, no freedom to smell like herself, no capacity to be inconvenient, and no relationship with her own instinct is still living inside a domesticated Animal Body.

 

I’ve created a 10-day immersion to come into contact with the wild and feral animal in all of us called ANIMAL BODY.

 

Inside ANIMAL BODY, I won’t be telling you how to take deep breaths to stay calm or modeling some docile, trad-wife version of “femininity”. 🤢

 

We’re going to normalize the Animal Body for its instinctive wisdom and explore the ways our own Animal Bodies adapted to keep us loved, chosen, and protected.

 

Each day for 10 days, I’ll drop an audio transmission. Think of it like a private podcast.

 

Inside our private Discord server, you’ll be able to interact with the other women in our herd through daily reflection prompts and a group chat.

 

We’ll also have 3 live calls:
Tuesday, May 12 @ 10am CST and Sunday, May 17 @ 3pm CST. The third call date/time is TBD.

 

Finally, you’ll have access to all of the immersion materials after the immersion is over, including call replays.

 

I’m giving the same amount of presence and value inside ANIMAL BODY as I give in a $2500 program — for only $17.

 

Over 120 women have joined our herd already… Are you next?

 

JOIN ANIMAL BODY HERE FOR $17 →

 

The first audio drops in 2 days. The Discord server is already open. All we’re waiting for is YOU.

 

I love you, you wild animal,

Lindsey