The Human Herd

Awakening Our Natural Leadership

Beth Anstandig

• Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781631956942
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Animal & Comparative Psychology
• Index: Psychology

The Human Herd is a guidebook that helps readers unleash their mammal instincts and shows them how to heighten their self-awareness, experience their lives more deeply, improve their relationships, and step into a more natural—and powerful—way to lead.

CHAPTER ONE

Mammals

No matter where we are, the shadow that trots behind us is definitely four-footed.

CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTES

One often hears a horse that shivers with terror, or of a dog that howls at something a man’s eyes cannot see, and men who live primitive lives where instinct does the work of reason are fully conscious of many things that we cannot perceive at all. As life becomes more orderly, more deliberate, the supernatural world sinks farther away.

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

The Story: Raised by Wolves

We call it The Back, an untouched two acres of land, its privacy guarded by a wall of thick lilac bushes on one side. On the other side are dense rows of trees lined up like soldiers who never move a muscle. When the lilacs bloom, they’re full of bees who make it near impossible and terrifying for me to pass. But I do it anyway. I do it almost every day. To get there, I make a sweeping arc, dip into the neighbor’s field, and race slightly downhill, dropping into this lush green layer of my secret life, busy with bugs and birds and imaginary horses who I gallop across the field. Sometimes I ride them. Sometimes I become them. The field holds the most relaxed parts of me. This is the space where I can lie down and run my fingers through my own hair or through the wild alfalfa flowers. It’s where I roll on the ground and stretch and sniff the soil, where I hum or sing just to hear and feel the vibration of my own throat. It’s mine, this uninterrupted space where I’m free to learn the gifts of nature’s wildness.

Most days the dogs come with me, and we explore The Back together. I follow them, and they follow their noses and their curiosities. They’ve shown me how to follow my own nose and how to use my eyes to see details, how to catch a glimpse of something and track it. Annie is an English Setter who cradled me as a baby, held in the curve of her body as I laid on the floor gripping my own bottle, her fur against my face. My single mother resorted to desperate measures of all kinds, even recruiting Annie into co-parenting. I was a baby with her puppies, alongside them in the whelping box. The nascent wiring of my nervous system synced up with their sounds, their smells, and the warmth of litter life. There’s a precise weight and presence of a dog’s head as it rests on you that I know in my bones. I always have. Tanya is a young Samoyed who is gradually filling in the gaps as Annie ages and slows down. In the winters, Tanya sleeps outside my bedroom window in an expertly dug hole in the snow. I talk to her through the double panes of storm windows and plastic sheeting taped to the walls in a meager attempt to keep the frigid Michigan winter from sneaking through the failing windows. In the warmer months, I learned to take out the screens and coax Tanya into my room. She then perfected the skill of screen removal on her own and could let herself through any window. For a long time, no one knows how she figured it out. No one knows our process or that I’m her teacher. We have secrets.

I walk myself to the bus stop for school. When the mornings are still dark, Tanya stays close. I’ve told her I need her nearby. With words, but also with my heart. And I’m quite sure she can hear what my heart needs. She leans against my legs while I stand in the awkward huddle of other children waiting for the bus. Her fur is more like a thick pelt, and when she pushes on my shins, I can push back, nearly resting on the warm cushion of her coat. I talk to the other kids, and we throw rocks at mailboxes. We use sticks to draw in the mud or we pretend we’re waiting for a spaceship to land. But there’s always this part of me straying, pulled somewhere else. I’m drawn into Tanya’s attention, her world view, watching birds scratch at the snow or drops of water fall from icicles. It’s like there’s a song playing in the background of my life, and you have to have dog ears to hear it. But I hear it. Always. Sometimes Tanya follows the bus to school and the principal has to call the house so someone can come pick her up. She’s ever-present in the quietest way. Protective. Calm. Concerned.

It’s a confusing place where I live during this era of my childhood. The Back makes sense. So do the dogs. But the house and the people in it worry me. Nothing adds up. The house is a maze of hallways, additions, and remodels pieced together with twists and turns. It’s as if certain parts of the house can break off and float away at any moment. They call the house The Mushroom Manor, complete with its own colorful mushroom flag. The flag flies at mast even in the worst weather. When I ask why, there’s laughter, and the adults glance at each other and smile. When my mom and I moved in, it was a revolving door of divorced guys and their bachelor buddies. For a while, my room had ten twin-sized beds. It reminded me of the boarding school in the Madeline books or the orphanage in the Annie play. On the weekends, I’d go stay with my dad in his fancy apartment, and the room with the ten beds would fill up with children who I barely knew. On Sunday, I’d go back to The Mushroom Manor, and it would just be me in that strange room with ten beds.

When I ask questions, which I do a lot, they say, “This is okay,” or “It’s good,” or “Everything’s fine.” When I keep asking, they say, “You’re too sensitive, Beth. Stop worrying so much.” But I’m right there, and I’m wide-eyed, aware, alert. I’m seeing and feeling it all. The drinking and drugging and lying. People not taking care of themselves or each other. It’s like they hold up two fingers and say, “This is ten.” I grab a hold of some part of myself that is whole and complete, and I begin to guard it. I take truth and trust and begin breaking away. It’s subtle and internal. I’m still there in body but I begin wrapping up my spirit, almost as if the tenderest part of me has run away from home. I stop looking to them for answers.

There’s this moment when I’m standing in the darkest hallway of the house. It’s in front of the bedroom that will become mine in a year or two. It’s a tight spot, full of adults, and I’m squeezed in, but they seem not to notice me. I feel stuck, physically and emotionally. There are loud voices, shouting, a lot of adult bodies moving up and down the hall. I make my way to the wall and run my hands along textured wallpaper. My nails catch the ridges, and it feels like it’s slowing me down. I wait and watch and try to understand. There’s a broken-down humidifier gurgling next to me. I’m listening to the adults’ words but they’re all running together and soaked in emotions and confusing inflections. I can’t tell if people are shouting or laughing, if they are enjoying the interaction or about to hurt each other. Behind me, the dogs are standing there. I can feel their noses push on my legs. Their breath is wet, and the rhythm of their panting is a ceremonial drum I can feel in my sternum. I tell myself to pay attention: Watch this, Beth. I want to remember. I tell myself: This is important. It’s like I can carve this memory into the tree trunk of my childhood, and I’ll go back and find it later. This is a choice point, my choice point. I lean into the dogs and slowly back my way down the hall, into a darkness that I can live with. The sounds of the human voices fade out. And that feels right.

I guard the girl who knows what she needs. I keep her close to books and dogs. I take her to The Back so she can watch clouds or hear grass soaking up the rain. It’s hard to be in the world and take care of her. She doesn’t like tights and stiff shoes. She’s not a fan of sitting. I mean, she can do it for a while. But the hard plastic chairs at school are like torture. Inherently, she wants to learn and to please and to do well. She wants skills. She gets excellent grades. But social pressures will increase, running on the playground will decrease, and teachers will seem to care less than they used to about her emotional needs. She can sniff out lies and insincerity, and more and more, the human world seems full of that. Pressure to achieve and succeed takes the place of being in the moment, noticing things. As her body changes and matures, she will struggle to find her way into the reverie of glowing fields and dog fur, the imaginative space of an afternoon meandering in textures and movements. She can’t find her way back. She will begin to live in her thoughts. Thoughts of self, fears, obsessions about the past or the future. When she’s taught to put her hand out and make eye contact, she learns and obliges, but her wholeness will take a hit. She often feels like she’s dying inside, a life force dimming. The answer, it seems, is to continue backing away, going inside, into a dangerous desire to be in another world. She wants to run away. But she doesn’t know where to go or how to be. She will become a master of disappearance with a handful of unerring tricks that allow her to reside in between worlds. Somewhere between the human world and the animal world is a kind of purgatory. She stays suspended in it, fossilized it seems.

The idea comes like an emotional meteorite. Instead of mass destruction, its impact is an exquisite opening, the first notes of a song I had forgotten I love. I need a dog. I’m twenty years old. I need a dog now. No one thinks this is a good idea. They say I can barely take care of myself. They say I need to focus on college. They say people can’t have dogs until they’ve settled down. Not one word of that rings true. Not one. Besides, I had stopped listening to them long ago. I was raised by wolves, those childhood dog companions. They were the stewards of my true self, and I know they would approve. There is no brake system for my plan. Before long, I’ve met my heart-dog, Levi, who will become my most significant partner as I stumble and falter through a decade of early adulthood.

There’s another big moment a few months after Levi came into my world. I’m standing on the edge of two or so acres of rocks and dust, about the same size as The Back. Angora goats nibble on pieces of hay hanging on the wire fence. I tuck my hands in my jean’s pockets and I squint past the Arizona sun to watch the goats meander and mull about. Levi is at my side, and I can feel his whole body trembling. It’s windy, and sections of tumbleweed scatter past our legs. We both know something significant is about to happen. It’s already happening. He’s a Border Collie and nearly a year old with a thick puppy muzzle and a flighty eye. He’s already so capable and has shown his intelligence in everything we’ve done. Our connection happened in an instant, two beings fused into partnership as soon as we touched. I’ve made my way to the outskirts of Phoenix because I’m called to provide for my dog, to fulfill what I learn is his genetic destiny, to give him an opportunity to herd livestock. I’ve had no exposure to herding, but knowing he has a biological roadmap for it excites me like nothing I’ve felt in years. I tremble with him as we stand there and track the wooly bodies.

Dodie is the old rancher who has invited us into her world. She’s as thin as a goat leg and carries a crook, her minute fingers resting on the polished ram horn handle. She’s kind and seems humored by me and Levi as we stand there vibrating with an energy neither of us have ever known. “We’ll put him on those goats in a minute. Let me get them settled with my dog.” We watch as she and her smooth-coated dog move together. She whistles and this dog turns on a dime, his eyes laser-focused on the goats. He’s moving them with his eye. His feet barely touch the ground as he slinks about. It’s like he’s hunting—but with total control of his own impulses. Dodie watches him, gives a couple more whistles, and he circles, slows, turns, and then sharply drops to the desert ground. As his chest hits the dirt, I feel my own body drop, a downshift into a new gear; something guttural and primordial has woken up.

The mammal part of my being is flooded with sensation. It’s like my blood and bone marrow are on fire. Levi feels this too as we are invited to walk toward Dodie and the goats. “Drop the leash,” she says with conviction. I can’t. I can’t seem to uncurl my fingers from the leather. “Just let it go,” she says. Those words reverberate and echo through my brain like an old church bell. The moment slows down. Letting go of the leash seems to take minutes instead of seconds. Memories of The Back come into focus, my pristine freedom and peace with my dogs, the safety and clarity and aliveness I could find with them but had lost with those of my own species. I’m standing in this dusty corral finally reacquainted with the wisest and most intact part of myself. As the leather lead slips out of my hand, I watch my dog ignite into his truest form, body lowered and energy intensified as he slinks around the small grouping of goats. He shifts from dog into wolf. He knows how to move and where to look and when to slow. It only takes a few passes, watching him, feeling him, and I can predict the rhythm of it. Our energy and movement sync up. No words. No commands. No whistles. This earliest experience of herding is raw and untouched.

He lifts the goats from where they have paused, pivots his body to turn them, and using his eye and intention, moves them in my direction. He’s bringing them to me. It takes my breath away. He’s bringing them to me. He knows when he feels a balance point, that exact moment and angle to stop. He drops to his belly like Dodie’s dog and doesn’t take his eyes off the goats. They slow and settle at my feet, an ancient configuration of human, livestock, and dog. The leash is only a memory in my hand, that object of restraint and control. What has emerged is instinct and partnership, consecrated, intact, and wholly accessible. It’s right there like it never left, potent and persistent within me, within my dog, within the goat herd. It runs between us, this mammal vitality, an invisible circulatory system bringing blood flow to all of the places where I have been mostly numb. I stand there with this beautiful dog before me, his breath an impossible tempo to follow. He is now my partner, and a new purpose and focus has been born between us. It isn’t that he brings me back to life. Rather, he brings my life back to me. And from here, I can go forward and figure out how to live.

The Concept: We Are Human Animals

Human beings are the only animals who are happily lied to by our own minds about what is actually happening around us.

CESAR MILAN

Human beings are animals. We are sometimes monsters, sometimes magnificent, but always animals. We may prefer to think of ourselves as fallen angels, but in reality we are risen apes.

DESMOND MORRIS

To think of ourselves as mammals, or human animals, is not that far-fetched if you pause long enough to consider your basic knowledge of biology and the animal kingdom. We all know what constitutes a mammal and that humans are situated on the food chain just like every other living thing. Yet, most people recoil at the idea of ourselves as animals. People of all cultures have been moving away from our connection to our mammalian roots for thousands of years. It seems the more sophisticated our capacities become for rational thought, innovation, industry, and creative expression, the less we have remained consistently connected to the primitive parts of us that signal our fundamental needs. The more lost and busy in thought, language, relationship, and daily transactions, the less we can access or attend to ourselves in the simple and honest ways that our basic organism needs. Desmond Morris, in his book, The Human Animal, explores our species from the unique perspective of a zoologist, reminding us, “We owe far more to our animal inheritance than we are usually prepared to admit. But instead of being ashamed of our animal nature, we can view it with respect. If we understand it and accept it, we can actually make it work for us.” With our robust rational brain dominating, we live without nearly enough access to the wealth of messages and inner resources that are designed to guide us to care for ourselves and others. These include our natural instincts, drives, body signals, and wise survival practices. Sound ancient and mystical? Well, they aren’t! These are powerful and practical tools for living and relating, and they are at the heart of how we stabilize ourselves as individuals and make the cultures and relationship norms safer in our groups, families, teams, and communities. Recovering this aspect of our innate capacities as mammals is how humans can connect with and begin to use our Natural Leadership.

So how did we become what Morris refers to as “this compulsively curious, constantly chattering creature” who moves about the world with fundamental blind spots in our survival system? How did we lose touch with this mammalian part of us that is so crucial in interpreting our needs and the needs of others? And how do we reignite our human animal so that we can integrate its signal system and enhance the functioning of this magnificent modern brain? It turns out that as the human brain evolved over time, it developed a bit of a glitch. To understand it better, it helps to have a basic understanding of the brains and how we differ from other mammals.

The Power of Understanding Our Brains

Emerging research and technologies in the last thirty years have helped us to understand our brains in a much more comprehensive way and this allows us to become strategic and empowered in a process of working with the brains we have. I had a front-row seat to this new perspective as a psychotherapist in training during the time when cognitive neuroscience came on the scene and began to shed this new and crucial light on human brain functioning. Since the 1990s, positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have been used to provide real-time brain imaging, showing how blood flows in different regions of the brain during our whole range of mental activities. With this technology, we can see which parts of our brain are recruited and which parts are abandoned during a variety of circumstances. This allows us to understand how our complex emotional and survival system impacts our daily experiences. We can also see how our capacities to cope are influenced by the different regions of the brain. The work of eminent psychiatrist, Daniel Siegel, has been instrumental in bringing the field of neuroscience first into the field of counseling and therapy and then into the mainstream. Siegel writes, “In a brain scan, relational pain—that is caused by isolation during punishment—can look the same as physical abuse.” While we don’t need to take a deep dive into neuroscience, it makes good sense to use the knowledg...