Power Animals: 'The Camel'

People with Camel totems have the ability to remain positive in the harshest of times and experiences. Their philosophy is always “the glass is half full.” Camel people often have unusual sleep habits, rarely sleeping through the night. They often power nap instead. The appearance of a Camel totem can signify hard times ahead, but everything will turn out good in the end.

Remain positive and all will work out. Camel people can accomplish the impossible. Perhaps one of the most obvious lessons of camel is learning how to create reservoirs of energy within your body and life so that you are able to hold on and keep going when times get tough. Camel teaches us how to stay strong, and not burn ourselves out. Unlike animals like the hummingbird or shrew, which need vast quantities of food just to maintain their ferocious metabolisms; camel teaches us that we can afford to slow down!

We create reservoirs of energy in varying ways. It is possible to store energy in the body through learning meditation and working with healing energy like Reiki. However it can also refer to storing energy as body weight and storing mental energy by not over-taxing yourself. In each of these ways we create an internal fuel source, and instead of burning it out, it can be maintained and contributed to.

There may be sparseness and aridity in your life at a time when camel wanders into it. One of the reasons camel teaches us to maintain reservoirs of energy is precisely so that when things are difficult, we survive and continue on. When life doesn't present us with material wealth, it is up to us to pull from the resources within instead.

There is a saying that goes 'make it through each day at a time,' when things are tough. When things are really tough, it's just important to make it through the next minute, and the minute after that. Sometimes life throws us an obstacle that hits us hard, physically, emotionally or spiritually (or all three). When this happens, it's time to grit our teeth and just get through it as best as we can. Camel teaches this strength. The 'one day at a time' mantra is a good one to remember when you need to make it through the tough times in life.

Camel acts as a connection to desert energy and magic. Deserts often have pools of energy, or oases of energy located across them. Finding these places in the desert can take time and skill, but camel has a natural dowsing instinct for finding such energy places in the ground. They may be literal oases or waterholes, or they may be indistinguishable from the environment around us. Camel also teaches us how to contact desert spirits and wisdom, and can also provide a method of spiritually journeying across desert landscapes.