Chicken energy comes to teach you how to scratch more, obsess about your position in social hierarchies, fight for dirt-encrusted corn kernels, and die young. If you encounter Chicken in your daily life, you should probably be taking growth hormones. Then Chicken will teach you to fight for dominance when alarmed, and spend the rest of your time brooding. People whose totem is the Chicken should expect to have their creations stolen from them on a regular basis.

Periodically I’ll be sharing the animal totems you wish you knew more about: the marginalized, the disrespected, nay I say, the lame. [...]

PEOPLE, IT’S TIME TO SET MEN FREE!

I started my career back in the 90s writing about the way social change was tearing women apart. Twenty years later, I think women have made huge strides toward an altogether new way of viewing themselves and moving through the world. Our wonderful tribe of coaches is made up almost entirely of women who have found ways to be true to themselves no matter what society tells them.

Now, it’s time for our boys.

Even when I was researching the crisis of role stress for women, I could see what was coming for men: while [...]

Having just returned from another amazing African STAR (Self Transformation Adventure Retreat), filled with magical people and astonishing animal encounters, I’m even more obsessed with non-human creatures than usual.

Anyway, I’m getting a bit confused by the number of different of meanings various sources associate with a given animal. Do bats really represent the ability to navigate in the dark, or is that a toad attribute? Does the lizard outside my window mean I need to relax in the sun or be more compassionate?   Furthermore, it seems odd to me that no negative qualities are ever associated with any animal. I mean, really—malaria mosquitoes? Plague rats? [...]

When I was 20, I got a fellowship to travel mainland China gathering folktales for my undergraduate thesis at Harvard. I was expecting the kind of stories I’d seen animated in Disney films: handsome prince and beautiful maiden overcome evil and unite in a happy-ending marriage. To my astonishment I found that this archetype is incredibly rare in Chinese folktales–they always ended with the protagonist getting rich.This was the first time I realized that my experience of romantic love was just one more set of socialized beliefs. Some of them made me very happy, and still do. The presence [...]