Jaguar Medicine Can Be Good For Cat People

I read an essay from Toward 2012, Perspectives on the Next Age the other night called Jaguar Medicine.

It mentions how shaman, don Ramom would often,"sing the patients jaguar down from the tree", because he said like many people, the patient lived in constant fear, and that the patient's fear was the result of a trauma experienced early in life that had not healed. 
He said,"This patient's soul is like a terrified cat who escaped danger and quickly clambered up a tree, where it remains, hissing at anyone who comes near. 
The cat must come down, relax, and resume walking on the terra firma of the rainforest, or there will be no healing of the illness this fear has engendered in him." 

The author Alberto Villoldo told him that in the west, we call the primitive, fearful response to trauma the "fight-or-flight" response, because it causes a creature to run away from danger or lash out in self-protection. 
The old shaman nodded, and said,"Yes, but when the danger has gone, an animal no longer holds on to its fear, while people will often remain in this state for many years." 

The danger is that our physiological response to chronic stress is the same as during instances of danger. 
Our fight-or-flight hormones continue to wash through our system, and we soon have an oversupply of cortisol and adrenaline. 
Excess levels of cortisol break down tissues in virtually every corner of the body, accelerating the aging process. 
High cortisol levels weaken ligaments, muscle, blood vessels, and bone and can cause elevated blood sugar levels and high blood pressure, eventually leading to easy bruising and thin, nearly transparent skin that we associate with the elderly. 
Abnormal function of the fight-or-flight system has also been correlated with inflammatory diseases and deficient immune function. 
While in this state, the body suppresses the healing hormones we need to recover from stress. And while most animals have systems that allow them to shake off the fight-or-flight response as soon as danger has passed, we humans seem to have lost that ability.

You can read  the rest of the essay at the above link, and it's worth reading it all. 

I like the mental image of the stressed cat up the tree, and the solution to sing the cat down from the tree to sooth it and stop it hissing and lashing out in fear.

My 28 year-old panther/cat tattoo (or cattoo?-)

I've had this tattoo on my right arm for 28 years and now and I think that it's found it's purpose in my life, rather than being a just a drawing I wanted to put on my arm as a teenager, to be like the other teenagers who had them.
It will now be a reminder to practice meditation and pursue the study of shamanism, so I won't have to sing the jaguar  
(panther in my case) down from it's tree that often.