What followed was both genuinely terrifying and, in retrospect, one of the most perfect encounters I could have had with an animal whose medicine I’ve been sitting with for years.

Hippo knows something most of us resist: that limits are not the opposite of freedom. They are the container in which freedom becomes possible.

In this episode, I share the story of that river encounter, what hippo has taught me about the magic that lives inside constraints, and something quite personal — the years I spent fighting my own hard limits around food, and what happened when I finally stopped.

The first rule of magic is containment. — Julia Cameron

Read the original essay here

If you enjoyed this episode, I have a gift. The Anatomy of Reverence is a free guided meditation for coming home to your soft animal body. You can sign up to receive it by clicking here.The Wild Journey Home is a podcast of animal medicine essays — stories from the natural world that find us at exactly the right moment.

Even when we don’t know it. Even when we brush it off and keep driving through the fog.

Ram medicine invites us to pay attention to the breadcrumbs — the unexpected teachers, the practices that keep calling our name, the synchronicities we almost dismiss. In this essay-turned-podcast, I share a personal story about following guidance I couldn’t name yet, and what it taught me about devotion, the body, and the life we are being prepared for.

You can read the original essay here.

And if your body has been trying to tell you something you haven’t been able to discern yet, learn more about Reverence Sessions at nonajordan.com.

The Wild Journey Home is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

In this essay, I take you to the Kafue River in Zambia — and into the medicine of one of nature's most terrifying creatures. Crocodile arrives when the unthinkable has happened, when life has broken apart in ways you didn't ask for and couldn't have planned. This is a meditation on wake-up calls, limitation, mortality, and the surprising invitation that lives inside the thing you most want to avoid.

If you're navigating something unexpected right now, this one is for you.

Read the original essay here.

The Wild Journey Home is a podcast of essays written with honesty and love, for the tender places in you. Learn more at nonajordan.com.