Your body is an animal. You are not your body.

A few weeks ago, coming out of a shower, I saw a frog sitting on one of the stone walls.

It startled me.

I felt a pump of adrenalin spreading through my torso like electricity. My animal body was reacting to the presence of another body sharing my space without my awareness.

It took me a moment to size this creature up to make sure there was no threat.

But even then, although logically I knew I was okay, my body retained its vigilance. There was now a constriction present, a carefulness.

At the same time, there was a curiosity about this new cohabitant. I was compelled to return to the shower space several times, just to see what it was up to.

Ever since that discovery, every time I’d go to my bathroom, my body was in a bit of a brace, preparing for the encounter with the frog.

I started turning the light on where previously I wouldn’t.

I’d look for the frog on the same wall where I saw it the first time, my body relaxing somewhat when it wasn’t there.

But then I’d suddenly see it sitting on the shower handle. It was actually quite funny, the way it was holding on with all the limbs wrapped around the small metal object.

I started enjoying its presence. My conversations with Wladimir became peppered with references to my new friend. I was accessing my cuteness and playfulness.

When I’d go looking for it, it would never be where I was looking. Just when I thought it was gone, it would pop up in a new place, like hanging on the door.

I liked having it around, while still feeling a bit of caution, even squeamishness. Can it do me any harm? Is it poisonous? Wladimir plugged the image of it into a search engine and we found out that it was a common Mexican tree frog.

I’ve never lived in proximity with such variety of animals before.

Sighting many different very loud and vibrantly-colored birds is a given here. Watching coatis with their fluffy striped tales and a sneaky-looking face crossing the street or rummaging in a garbage can is a regular occurrence. We are also on first-name basis with the neighborhood dogs and cats.

The other day three spider monkeys came to our open door. One walked in, completely unimpressed that we were sitting right there, took a mango from the fruit bowl on the kitchen table, and left, as if this was the most normal thing. We were laughing that it knew exactly where to go and what to take, as if they’ve been scoping our house for days.

Living in nature like this adds so much enjoyment and pleasure to our lives here.

One day, Noelia – the young woman who comes to help us clean the house – has lifted the wooden planks in my shower and found the frog. They were both scared of each other. The poor frog, exposed, was trying to shrink and disappear into the corner, while Noelia ran out of the room calling us to tell of her discovery.

We decided to bring it outside, where it belongs. My husband volunteered to be the frog’s transport. We left it in the shade under a palm tree right outside of our door.

When I went to check on it a little later, it was no longer there.

The most curious and unexpected part of this story was observing all the stages of emotions I went through caused by the end of this relationship.

First there was some concern about how the frog will survive in the wild. I had to remind myself that the wild is where it belongs, and that its own nature has endowed it with all the right skills and instincts.

I was surprised to observe how for at least a week I experienced something akin to missing it.

I’d walk into the shower and look for it. My mind knew that it was no longer there, but my nervous system was still playing out a habit.

I entered into relationship with this creature while we cohabited.

It’s as if there was a room made for it in my consciousness and in my nervous system, and now that allocated room became empty.

It really made me aware how devastating are breakups of any sort. Especially when we share living space. My body was going through a sort of withdrawal from relating with a frog for a week or two. Imagine what we go through when longer relationships rupture.

Intellectually we may have good reasons to end a relationship. But for our animal body it is a separate event. We really feel the void caused by the absence of another body, another nervous system that was a part of our lives and shared space.

It takes time to adjust to the presence of someone. And it takes time to adjust to the absence.

We get attached. To people, things, creatures.

This is not right or wrong. It just is.

Here is what I am learning about this process:

The body is an animal.

I am not my body. I am the one observing the body.

My job is to witness and attend to that animal.

I do not avoid, ignore or judge it.

When I miss someone or something, it does not necessarily mean I need to bring them back into my space.

It simply means there is a temporary void in my system from a habit of including someone else in my space and my thoughts.

My job as an attuned observer is to nurture the part of me that feels the void.

Learning to be with the emotional charge means I no longer repress it, suppress it, numb it or fear it.

Instead, I witness it without judgment, and allow it to move through me, while the energy of it blooms and settles, having completed its cycle.

This is what it means to self-regulate.

It is not to calm down. It is to be with whatever arises.

Experiencing emotional charge is not good or bad.

How I respond to it makes it good or bad. It is my attitude that influences how I experience it: as pain or as pleasure.

On the level of sensations, pleasure and pain feel the same. It is our stories about what is going on that cause us to suffer.

As conscious observers of our processes, we can choose our experience of any given situation.