New Feathers

The red-tailed hawk is one of my favourite teachers. They exist in abundance in my area so they are a permanent totem in my life. In 2020, I had the blessed privilege of working with my first juvenile wild red-tailed hawk, Shai. This bird taught me many lessons, including the lesson of connecting with my breath. I could go on and on about the lessons that hawks can teach us but I will stick to one - that of the power of breath.

Most birds shed or moult their feathers once per year and, prior to their first moult, red-tailed hawks have a striped tail (like the one on Shai, pictured above), rather than the more identifiable rufous-red tail. It is in their second season of life that they grow in their adult tail feathers, a mark of maturity. A bird's tail is critical to every aspect of flight - without it, they are simply unable to survive. So, rather than moult their entire tail at once, they moult out two feathers at a time.

Humans are also constantly being re-shaped by time and experience. Like the red-tailed hawk we tend to let go of old ways in increments. If we were to discard all of our ways of navigating the world at once, we would be rendered as vulnerable as a bird with no tail. Likewise, we tend to grow in increments because that is what our bodies are programmed for.

Admittedly, working with this new bird brought up my tendency of wanting to rush things. Like relationships with humans, it takes time to build a trusting and meaningful relationship with a hawk. It did not take long for me to realize that this bird was experiencing and mirroring my own anxiety back to me. Despite being completely different species, Shai and myself both possess an amygdala - the part of the brain responsible for the fight/flight/freeze response. Working with the breath is commonplace in my professional field, particularly with regard to anxiety. However, it was not until working with this bird, that I fully experienced the power of my most basic function.

As Shai's amygdala was 'pinging' off of my own in an exchange of anxiety, I recall making the conscious decision to focus on slowing my breathing down. To my surprise, Shai seemed to relax her open wings a little bit! In that moment, the anxiety in both of our brains decreased. From then on, I have been working on taking a breath when that anxiety of wanting to rush the process (whatever that process may be) floods in. I am not perfect and am still on a journey to learning to utilize my breath to ease my nervous system. In a way, it feels like I may have moulted one set of 'anxiety feathers' and grown in a new set of 'anxiety management feathers' but my 'tail' is not yet complete.

We all have 'tails' made up of different behaviours that govern our functioning in this world. Fortunately, there are many teachers in nature that can help us function more optimally. Next time you see a red-tailed hawk, take a breath. Maybe that's what they're trying to tell you as well.

Feathered blessings.