When we talk of transforming ourselves we can often underestimate the effort and impact such endeavours entail. In order to understand how much trauma can play a role in such a major alteration, it is worth looking at the animal world for indications of what can be expected. For some creatures, transformation can be as simple as shedding skin like a snake. While for others it can involve a barbaric total acidic immersion. There is a lot to learn from these processes as there are parallels to our own process of transformation.
Unlike humans who shed their skin continually, roughly 30, 000 to 40, 000 cells every minute, snakes lose their outer layer in one continuous sheet. This process can happen every few weeks, for young snakes, and only a few times a year or even less for adults. The signs that shedding is about to happen are
1. Snakes have specially-adapted scales over their eyes called eye caps. Snake’s eyes that are about to shed their skin turn a cloudy bluish colour temporarily (this change arises as a result of a lubricant secreted just under the outer layer of skin). During shedding, even these eye caps usually come off
2. Their old skin looks dull coloured and their belly may appear pinkish.
3. Habits change, the snake spends more time hiding and its appetite may decrease or it even may stop eating completely.
4. The snake, whose eyesight during this period is poor, becomes more nervous or defensive.
5. In an effort to get rid of their old skin snakes may look for rough surfaces to rub against or search for water to soak in.
6. Snakes should not be handled during shedding as this shedding process causes stress.
In preparation for this transformation, snakes change habits, their colour, their habits and their normal nature. Until it is complete even their eyesight deteriorates.
So, look out for these signs in your own transformation. You may not be able to see clearly and feel insecure and slightly defensive. You long for closeness while on the other want to run away.
Perhaps one of the most dramatic and total transformations is that of a humble caterpillar into a glorious butterfly. The caterpillar hatches from an egg and stuffs itself with leaves until it grows plumper and plumper. Like the snake as it grows it sheds its skin. Then, suddenly the caterpillar stops eating and hangs itself from a twig or leaf having spun a silky cocoon around it.
Inside the cocoon, a bizarre nightmare begins. The caterpillar releases enzymes that like an acid bath dissolves all of its own tissues. If you cut into such a cocoon an amorphous gloop would pour out. However, among this gooey mess, there are survivors of this digestive process, a group of cells known as ‘imaginal discs’. These dormant discs have survived since the caterpillar was developing in its egg and each one will provide ultimately each of the adult body parts it needs as a mature butterfly (one disc for eyes, another for wings, yet another for legs etc). The discs use the protein-rich soup from all the rest of the disintegrated tissues to generate the rapid cell division necessary to make wings, antennae, legs, eyes, genitals etc for the adult butterfly. This magical metamorphosis is at a pace hard to get your brain around. The imaginal disc for a wing can begin with just 50 cells and end up with 50, 000 cells.
It seems although transformation is incredibly varied there are powerful parallels of the caterpillar’s metamorphosis that mirror our transformation process. It often starts with being broken down into a very basic form by challenges external and internal. This process is painful and feels that almost everything that is you, experiences slow and almost total destruction. Then, following this an amazing reconstruction begins at an incredible unbelievable pace. The person you were before crawled leaving slime behind. The transformed you can soar skywards in a blaze of beautiful joyful colour.
"The most important journey you will take in your life will usually be the one of self transformation. Often, this is the scariest because it requires the greatest changes, in your life.”
I have learned a lot
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