Chapter 81 Sensing Danger - from my book Changes

Tom Brown Jr writing in his notebook during a class break.

Chapter 81

Sensing Danger

There was an Apache woman named Lozen, who was also a warrior and had special abilities to sense the position of the enemies of her people.  She was the sister of the Apache Chief Victorio.  She was able to tell when the enemy was near by facing different directions while holding her arms out.  She could feel them if they were near in any of the directions she was reaching out to.

In one of our Trackerschool class exercises, Tom Brown Jr had us practice this to a degree.  Here is an exercise that you can try:

With a small group of people, go out onto the landscape away from any other people.  Find a trail that splits in two.  Have one person walk away from the split in the trail, back up the trail, making sure they cannot hear, or see, which of the two diverging trails the rest of the group take.

After a few minutes, enough time to let the rest of the group get settled and hidden down the trail they took, whether to the right or left, the person left behind approaches the place where the trail splits.

While hiding, the rest of the group creates the intention to hurt the individual at the fork in the road when they walk by.  In essence, they are lying in wait to ambush that individual.  They, even though they know deep down they would not really hurt the individual, they must create the feeling of the ambush to harm, so it feels real.

The individual standing at the place where the trail splits takes a minute to sense which of the two trails, the right or left one, would be safe to take, and which of the two trails would be dangerous.  This is done when the individual pays attention to how their body feels when contemplating one of the choices of the trails, and also doing the same for the other choice.

The trail with the hidden attackers will have a feeling of tension and unease, while the safe trail choice with have a feeling of release, relaxation, or peace.

These feelings are felt within the body of the individual standing at the fork in the road.

Once the individual believes they have figured out which trail has the “danger”, they can call out to the hidden group  to come back to the split in the trail.  The person sensing the presence of danger can find out if they were correct or not, and discuss how each of the trail choices felt.

Then, a different individual gets to be the one to sense the difference in the two trails while the group hides again.

This is one of the many exercises that helped me learn to trust my body and how my body reacts to the energies around me.

Sometimes the feelings are very subtle, and sometimes the feelings are more pronounced.  With practice, a person can become very sensitive to the signals the body gives.

You have probably had experiences where something, some place, or some person just gives you a hinky feeling.  Or maybe you feel a little dirty after an interaction.

Alternately, you may have an experience with a person, place, or thing that leaves you feeling excellent and clear minded.  You may have that experience stay with you and impact your life.

Either way, it’s the same principle of paying attention to how your body reacts and what that may be telling you.

This sensing technique can also be used during prayer, especially when asking about something specific.  If it is right for you, you will feel peace and a clarity of thought.  If it is wrong for you, you will feel a confusion of thought and lack of peace about it.

Some people living close to nature have fine tuned their inner senses, or inner vision, to know the directions by the way each direction makes their body feel.

Tom Brown Jr told us one of Grandfather Stalking Wolf’s stories about how the Apache youths, as a rite of passage, were taken 50 miles away from the tribal encampment and blindfolded.  They had to find their way back to their encampment without using their eyes.  In other words, they had to feel where camp was and go there.

In scout class, we were told to put our lances out on the landscape somewhere, and walk back to camp.  We were then blindfolded and asked to find our lances without the use of our eyes.  There was one in class that achieved this (not me).  My son, at Coyote Tracks, the family version of Trackerschool, got within a few feet of his lance when they called everyone in.

Sensing is a tool that can be cultivated and grow stronger.  A person can learn to turn their ability to sense presence up and down, like the dial on a rheostat, so that sensing does not have be turned completely off, but only turned down.

Grandfather Stalking Wolf told Tom, “It is better to sense than to see.”