Mesmerizing a Chicken - Part 1
Mesmerizing a Chicken - Part 1
My friend told me a story they had heard at a public speaking conference about "mesmerizing a chicken", which I happen to know is a thing that you can do to chickens because of how their little brains work. My sister has chickens on her farm.
My instant thought was "Oh my God! I was a mesmerized chicken!".
First, here's how you mesmerize a chicken (in case you have chickens in need):
Hold the bird facing down with its beak near the ground. Using a stick or your finger, draw a straight line directly away from the beak. Alternatively, gently lay the chicken on its back and stroke its chest. Both of these induce a natural, temporary state of paralysis.
What looks like hypnosis is actually a natural defence mechanism known as tonic immobility. In the wild, when cornered by a predator, some animals freeze to feign death. When you draw a line in front of the chicken, its eyes focus on the movement, putting it into a brief, harmless trance.
When my brain wouldn't work after I had my injury, for a long time I would get stuck by any line on the floor I had to cross. Sometimes it was only the threshold of a door or a line in the wood. Other times I would be bedevilled by a cat toy with a trailing string left on the floor. You'd think I'd be able to navigate around such a thing. Nope. Not a chance. My brain would just screech to a halt, and I'd freeze. Like a chicken.
This is common with many different brain injuries or disorders, from concussions and PTSD to Parkinson's, where there is "movement hesitancy" because your brain sees the transition or the line as a solid barrier.
It was always such a weird sensation. I'd be looking down at the line on the floor and logically know it was only a line on the floor and still be frozen and stuck to the spot. I would think things like how screwed I'd be if a gunman came upon me frozen in place. This type of thought never helped, oddly enough.
In life, humans often get "mesmerized" by unexpected circumstances that come along, and we don't know what to do. Usually not as literally as my inability to move past a line on the floor, but the broad strokes are remarkably similar.
Cruising along in life. Unexpected barrier is perceived. Stop. Freeze.
What I generally did next, innocently mind you, is also what a lot of people do next when confronted by unexpected perceived barriers.
Create a lot of thinking about it. Feel stress. Panic. Blame the Perceived Barrier.
I would get more and more upset by thinking about how my brain was really messed up (or potential gunmen), which would make the frozen feeling worse and then other parts of my brain would start switching off.
I would lose the ability to say what I needed or describe what was going on for me; I would lose the ability to speak the word I intended, so sometimes a word salad would come out; I would sometimes lose the ability to speak entirely.
I would lose the ability to stand or to get away if I was in a busy environment. My right leg would disappear suddenly from my brain's knowledge, and I would fall down "like a puppet with the strings cut," and then I would be REALLY stuck because Guess What?!? My "dead" right leg weighs a LOT! It's really hard to drag around. Then my right arm would start to disappear, and I'd lose that too.
If you happen to be told the diagnoses for all these various losses of function, as I was, or look them up on the internet, as I did (trust me, don't), it's REALLY BAD!
So, I'd have even more thoughts about variations on how this was terrible (I was directly told that it was permanent and terrible, so it seemed reasonable to worry about how terrible and permanent this all was), and I was trapped and panicking.
Right around then I would lose my vision - my right eye was especially fond of betraying me.
Now it seems so obvious: I created panic out of the infinite energetic potential of the Universe we call Thought. I used my sacred creative potential to think about gunmen, panic, and a messed-up brain. My body said, "Ok boss lady, leave it to me. I'm on it." And so it was.
In writing this, my right eye is starting to cut out. It is particularly fickle. I won't rely on it when pirates attack.
I haven't experienced these symptoms in a couple of years, and still, if I describe them, I have to remember what it was like, and then I'm thinking it and Ta! Dah! My right leg goes to an alternate dimension.
We experience things like this because we've told our body that's the wanted reality. (Not on purpose.) Our thoughts and thinking are the language the body hears and then takes to heart.
When I started to wonder - could this (the panic, the triggers, the body dysfunction) really be "Made of Thought"? Like a cheap garment with a “Made in China" label, it all started to unravel. I experimented with relaxing and dropping all thought and thinking in the moment and seeing what stays and what goes.
Over time, more and more went and less and less stayed.
Check back next week for the rest of the story!
With Love,
Sara Joy
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