Beyond Exercise: The Practice Of Seeing Animals As Gods

For eons, mankind has been fascinated by the wild animal in some form or another. Even in ancient times, animals worshipped as deities or the embodiment of god or as gods. The shaolin monks mimicked animals for practicing martial arts, the greeks saw the Bull as a being beyond the physical of a beast, the lion is called king of the beasts, cats were considered deities of ancient Egypt and other animals such as the Turtle were represented as a symbol of longevity.

Animals throughout history were seeing as mystics or mythological representation of our imagination. Look at stories about Dragons, the mythical Griffin that is a mixture of the Eagle & Lion, the amphomorphic Greek/Roman god Pan that has the upper body of a man and the lower body of the Goat representing our inner desires, the wild of the forest and living life to the fullest. The wolf has always looked at from two different sides such as the evil incarnation of man becoming the beat within or the ideal leader of the pack.

It's a desire to be a part of nature even though in today's society we have lost sight to what makes us hone our instincts, our inner power to fight and reveal our taste for mating. It is a fact that we cannot develop the realistic strength and condition of animals in their respective skill set, it's just not possible. We can however, adapt our human strengths and create other skills that has allowed us to run, jump, climb, crawl and condition for sport. In early man, we hunted, fished, used our minds to take down the toughest beasts in order to survive but, there was still a level of respect of man and animal. That respect is based on primal fear and when the dawn of civilization came about, we used animals in many ways, more cruel than others but we also bowed down to them in fear of killing us if we pissed them off.

We celebrate animals, they're part of the signs of the zodiac, they're represented in either evil or good (depending on your intrepertations) and used in many stories including the bible. In Greek Mythology, Hercules conquered many animals on his quest of the 12 Labors; he killed what was thought an unkillable lion and used his Mane as protective armor, destroyed the Hydra and even a wild boar. Early Fairy Tales depicted animals mainly as a hellish entities, giving us a reason to not go into the woods or trust a snake in the jungle, get involved with a Mermaid or piss off a family of bears. Animals gave us lessons in how to treat life and using your conscience to make choices and decisions that will affect your journey one way or another.

Whether you see Animals as Gods, deities or just plain mystical; it is important to respect what they can do and what they represent on this earth whether they were real or mythological. We may eat animals as food but good meat brings us nourishment, testosterone giving properties and giving man strength and primal power. When we practice the art of movement, mimicking their actions, we become more in tuned with nature itself, getting our bodies back to a more primal state and opening up our inner beast to develop the real strength and power of the species that came before us. We are bringing forth more of the respect, the natural laws and giving feedback to what makes us animals ourselves.