 Hello and welcome to another spirit animal video. My name is Ona Christi and today we're going to be looking at the spiritual meaning of sloth. So if you're one of those people that keeps seeing sloth everywhere or if you're just really, really connected with this animal or maybe you dreamed about it, just stay tuned because we're going to be covering a lot of things about sloth, including some of the characteristics of a sloth person, sloths your totem, the shadow side of sloth, things to look for, as well as some healing practices for people with sloth medicine. Before we get started, just a few pieces of housekeeping. One is that I just want to let you know that sloth is one of the cards in my spirit animal awareness deck and leave the link to this below if you wanted to check it out. Also, I do have a playlist of spirit animal videos, so check that out as well. And as you're watching this video, if you find yourself going, wow, I really resonate with this, you know, that's really me. Hit that like button and subscribe. People can work with more than one spirit animal, so that way when I do more videos, you'll be the first to know. And one more thing, stay tuned at the end because I'm going to share my personal sloth story with you at the end of this video. All right, so let's get started. So let's start by taking a look at this fascinating animal. The sloths come from a class of animals that's found exclusively in the new world. And there are a lot of extinct species of sloth, but there's really only two anymore that are living sloths. And these are the two-toed and the three-toed sloth. And if you're thinking numerology here, absolutely. I'd say if you are working with a particular sloth, if one of them comes, find out if it's a two-toed or three-toed because those have different numerological meanings. And I'll let you look those up yourself. So one of the first things that people think about when they think a sloth is slow. And so let's take a look at this slowness of sloth and what it means spiritually, really to fully understand the spiritual symbolism of sloth's slow habits. It's going to be a good idea to explore some of the physical characteristics that contribute to its slow mode of being. Both two-toed and three-toed sloths belong to the order full of vara. That means leaf eater. And they spend nearly all their lives in the treetops of Central and or South America. And these are rainforests, okay? Because leaves are really plentiful in the rainforest canopy. They're available year-round. Sloth really doesn't need to run or jump or go very far to get in order to get enough to eat. But have you ever tried getting all the calories you need just from leaves? They have this diet that's like super nutritious, but it doesn't supply a lot of calories, not a lot of energy. So the sloth has developed a super low metabolism and it's learned to be very, very efficient, okay? And so it moves really slowly so it doesn't burn extra energy. It sleeps up to 18 hours a day and it has a super low body temperature. It can lower its body temperature to about 68 degrees Fahrenheit. That's 20 degrees Celsius, which is super low for a mammal. But that's not the only thing. Sloths are like the only animal that I'm aware of, the only mammal I'm aware of that can do like the reptiles. It can actually switch from a self-regulating temperature like what we do is we generate heat to a more reptilian way of being, which is to let the environment influence your temperature, okay? A sloth can go back and forth between these and they'll also sun themselves like reptiles. So you can think of it as as though the sloth, like if the sloth were a house, it would be putting in like some of these passive heating and cooling techniques in there. Okay, so some of the spiritual meetings of sloth, the slowness of sloth, okay? One, of course, is efficiency or conserving resources and only expending energy when you have to. So this might be a really good time to look at your resources and see how can you become more efficient? Maybe you're hitting a slowdown in your business or something, you might have to cut some expenses. You know, this sloth may be kind of showing up to say, hey, you know, take a look at this or look where you're spending your energy. So everything is energy. So sometimes even your possessions or maybe the relationships that people at your round might be just demanding too much of your energy. So where can you pair down? Another possibility is that maybe the sloth is just showing up to ask you to slow down. We live in this culture that's so fast paced, we're constantly go, go, go, go, go. Sometimes when sloth shows up, it just like a slowdown and smell the roses kind of message. And because this is like a super, super important aspect of sloth, we'll cover, we'll touch on this later as well. So returning to stillness can happen physically, mentally, spiritually or all three. And if you're feeling that this is the message for you, don't stop here because there's more later. And another spiritual message of sloth could be to be deliberate, right? If there's no need to rush palmel into a situation, you can slow down in your decision, slow down in your attitude or just how you move through life and be a little bit more deliberate. So these are some of the positive meanings of sloth, slowness. But it's got a shadow side to it too. So let's take a look at that. The word sloth literally means laziness and it was considered one of the seven deadly sins. So it could just be that this animal's showing up just to tell you to get off your butt, right? If you've become really stagnant in life or life seems stagnant to you and sloth shows up, it just could be showing you where this might be going, right? Keep in mind that sloth actually grows algae and it can harbor things like cockroaches and stuff in it because it's so slow. But there's more to it than that. If you're dealing with a shadow element of sloth, keep in mind that the word sloth itself, that root word means without care. And that doesn't mean carefree. What it means is it's a loss of passion, right? It's like indifference. It can lead to depression and that can cause indifference about one's work. So this was a meaning of the word that was applied to monks and nuns when they were neglecting their spiritual duties. So sloth is coming up for you and if this meaning of it resonates with you, it might be a sign to get back on track with your spirituality, whether it's your spiritual practice or actually bringing your spiritual beliefs into your everyday life. Finally, some will translate that root word as self-pity, okay? So really watch for victim consciousness here. And sometimes when we get slide into that victim mentality, it can lead to depression or procrastination that doesn't serve our best interests or anybody's. Moving on a little bit more back to the overview, a sloth belong to the same class of animals as anteaters and armadillos. One characteristic they share with these cousins is color blindness, all right? So we're going to be looking at the vision of sloth. Not only does it see without color, but it also has really, really poor focus and it doesn't deal with bright light at all. Okay, so really poor vision. And scientists think that's because it was once an underground animal and then kind of during that period of its evolution, it lost the ability to see color because it went to rods instead of cones so it could see the more in the dark, right? But then it came up out of the ground up into the sky. So we can look at kind of ascension as actually being one of the characteristics of sloth or evolution, right? But then sometimes there's a one step, you know, two steps forward, one step back aspect of ascension. So that might point to something there, right? Or something it's like what did you miss a step or something? Maybe it's time to slow down and maybe assimilate just a little bit before moving forward again. Aside from having poor vision, we also have poor hearing. So these poor little creatures, maybe like largely untouched and smell to get around and find what they need. And I suspect that they're also probably really sensitive energetically or magnetically as well. I'm not aware of any research around this, but it'd be really interesting to find out. If you know of anything like that, type in the comments below. I'd love to hear, but it wouldn't surprise me if they're super sensitive in this way. And so that's kind of what I'm speaking of picking up around sloth people as well. If sloth is your primary totem, you are likely to be pretty sensitive to energies, right? But you're less likely to be clairvoyant or clairaudient, more likely to be clear sentient, have that sense of feeling energy, or you might even have the clear smelling, right? The clear alienates, their sense of smell. So another huge meaning of sloth is interconnection, right? As it lives in the trees, it lives in the rainforest and its metabolism is so slow, it's really closer to the wavelength of a tree than most of us mammals, right? And so think of like the ants from the Lord of the Rings, right? How they're really so connected with the forest. Sloth spirit animal has a connection with the forest too in a very similar way. And if sloth is your totem animal, you may really, really connect with the forest, the rainforest, the trees, okay? But that also is going to give you this sense of interconnectedness with all of nature or with like universal energies. So you also, with sloth, we have something called symbiosis. And that is when two or more living beings kind of are interdependent with each other, they're mutually benefiting each other, okay? So interdependence, sloth is a total master at this, okay? We already mentioned that sloth will grow algae in its fur. And what that does for the sloth is that it helps to camouflage it because if you see a sloth in the wild, it's going to have a green tinted fur if it's a little bit older sloth. And that really helps it looks like just this clump of vegetation up on the tree's tops. So it helps to protect it from predators who are looking for it with their eyesight. And also, it becomes this little mini ecosystem, the sloth itself becomes a mini ecosystem. It's got moths and insects and all sorts of things living in the fur. Doesn't seem to bother the sloth. But it just becomes a host for all these things. And so it's sort of like very similar to a beaver. When a beaver does its thing, it just creates habitat for all sorts of other things. Sloth is very similar to. There are actually moths that are called sloth moths that are only found with sloth. And so the sloth is sort of like the spiritual principle as above so below, right? So that we have within ourselves ecosystems, or you can say we have universes within ourselves, but we're part of a greater universe. Sloth embodies that. So we're looking at multi-dimensionality, interconnectedness, interdependence of each individual person and of the universe itself. So it's pretty deep stuff for such a quiet, slow, gentle, non-aggressive animal, right? Okay, so let's look at some of the elements that are connected with sloth. And so one of them is earth, but with a caveat, right? Because remember that it's ancestors with ground dwellers. There are actually some ancient prehistoric extinct now sloths that were ground sloths. So it sort of got a little bit of that earthy vibe. However, it's just completely abandoned earth and gone to live in the treetops, okay? Which couple of things. One, it gives sloth a really special connection with the element of air. But it's a different way than you find with like winged animals, like birds. Because with the birds and anything with wings, we're looking at like the currents and the motion and the flakiness of air. Sloth gives us this different quality of air. It gives us this quality of the still space that everything exists in, right? And the breath of life that connects all of us. So sloth reminds us that even when we're interacting with air, we can still ground ourselves in stillness, right? Or even if we're on the very spiritual point, we can still ground ourselves in stillness. And it also reminds us that we're always being provided with what we need, even if it's not visible or top of mind. Super important. Okay, so sloth has these very strong claws adapted for gripping tree limbs, even when the animal is relaxed. So you've probably seen sloth memes that say, hang in there, that's definitely one of the spiritual meanings of sloth, hang in there, you know, you're going to get through this. And this is especially relevant at times like now when the winds of change are blowing and we're talking about the air element and just kind of being grounded, even when things are all up in the air. Okay, so on the other hand, sloth people can sometimes have a difficulty grounding, right? Sloths can actually swim, they do have an affinity for water, but they are really slow and awkward on the ground, okay? And their front legs are strong, their back legs are super weak. And so if they're, to get along on the ground, they have to literally crawl and drag themselves by their arms across the ground, it's really, really slow and it leaves them super vulnerable to predators when they're on the ground, okay? So this is when, this is where sloth people can sometimes have this thing from, you know, whatever their, their cautious holding and they may have residual fears, right, that they have to, you know, that will hold them back or make them feel very vulnerable in everyday life, right? When it comes to coming out of the spiritual realms and down to being practical, sometimes that can be a challenge, okay? And another thing about sloth that pertains to that is that they are prone to being electrocuted by electric wires, right? So they account for about half of the accidental wildlife electrocution in Costa Rica. This can symbolize like too much energy, too big of an influx of energy. So if you find yourself in some of these like Lionsgate energies or eclipse energies, if you're feeling like super wiped, you know, you may be just super sensitive to that kind of thing, or if you're really super sensitive to being around a lot of people, it could be just sort of like too, too much, right? Or it could be an overdose or sensitivity to electronic energy, right? The EMFs, the computer screens, that kind of thing. So if sloth is your spirit animal, you might find yourself feeling ungrounded easily. And there are some solutions that sloth offers itself, right? One of these is to take time to rest and hang out and do nothing, right? So things like zero-point meditation, yin yoga, coming to stillness practices, could be really great things to do. Or make like a sloth ahead for the trees. You can really just go and hang out with trees in the forest that will probably bring you back down to earth in a really healthy way, make you feel a lot, lot better. Or just get away from your screens, go in the garden, earthing, some barefoot walking, that kind of thing. Can be an antidote, right? To this over sensitivity, right? Okay. So what about sloth poop? I mentioned already that they are really vulnerable on the ground. The one time that they actually do come to the ground is when they poop. They only do this once a week, but they come all the way down their tree and poop at the bottom. Sloths usually hang out most of the time in one tree. So they have a really personal relationship with a single tree. And when it's time to poop, they come down and poop right at the bottom of that. So why did they do this? Because it's such a great risk. The scientists think that it has something to do with the reproductive cycle. So it might be like the scent marking kind of thing. It might also help to fertilize the tree that the sloth lives on, which would be a symbiotic relationship with that particular tree that's offering it shelter. But it is a little bit of a mystery, okay? One way to interpret this behavior is to look for Achilles' heels. If you remember the story of Achilles, who was the Greek warrior who had like his heel was his vulnerable point, and sloth is kind of the same way. It's got the super vulnerable point in its little weekly cycle. And so if sloth's coming up, it may be like you may have an Achilles' heel that you're not really aware of. So look for that. See if there's somewhere where you're being vulnerable that you weren't really thinking about. But there's another interpretation of the significance of this behavior that I kind of was given when I inquired in the Akash about this sloth behavior. It's the poop inquiry. So basically, I was told that the weekly descent is like a ritual of cleansing and purification. When a sloth person goes into a ritual space, he must be like super aware of any potential negative forces and just wait for them to clear, okay? So be really discerning, okay? As part of this is patience and just waiting for the right time. And part of it is awareness and being discerning of what's going on around you. And this all has to do with purification or letting go of things, right? The interesting part talks about vulnerability because releasing your old baggage, your stuff often puts you in a really vulnerable spot. And it's just not easy. We all know this. It's not easy to go there to be that vulnerable, but you need to do it in order to let go. So sloth is saying be really aware and selective when and how you unload your stuff. So either you may be feeling vulnerable or you're unloading may kind of make other people feel vulnerable, right? So it's time to really just kind of be aware, discerning, respectful, and don't be scattering your crap all over the place. I do it with some ritual, do it in an appropriate way and be discreet, right? This doesn't mean have shame about it. It just means like find the appropriate place where it's really going to be done in a way that is healing for everybody involved. So anytime that you're dealing with the shadow side of a spirit animal, you can look to its predator-prey relationships for balancing, okay? So we already mentioned going to the trees, which is like they're kind of that's what they eat to help in grounding. So now we're going to look at what eats sloths and those animals can potentially balance other aspects of sloth that may be coming forward as challenging. The major predators of sloths are the big cats like jaguars and ocelots, margays, some of them aren't so big, but you know they're bigger than house cats, and birds of prey and some of these are the crested eagle, the harpy eagle, and the spectacled owl. And so these are all what they have in common is they're all predators that hunt largely by sight and so remember that the sloth has super poor eyesight. So this is where the balancing comes in. If you see this aspect of sloth coming up as a challenger, this eyesight deal that can be sort of like blind spots, you know, being unclear about your future, anything like that. You can just do any kind of clearing work on the third eye or working with these predators of the sloth as spirit animals to assist in strengthening that third eye and clearing it out, okay? So some other ways to address this might be to take a good look at your priorities, right? Where might you have been losing sight of your goals or things that are important to you, taking some time out for visioning work, maybe a vision quest of some kind, or perhaps it's time for a life review or a business review, right? So while a vision quest looks forward, life review looks backwards and you can shine that bright light of examination on your life, analyze where things went well, where things didn't really, it's a chance to really fess up to the truth, right? That aside self judgment and look really honestly for wherever fear has played a role and for wherever dissatisfaction raises its head, okay? If there's things that you're really unhappy with in your life, sometimes it's hard to admit that. So, you know, it's easy to say there's no problem, but if you've come to a standstill and nothing ever seems to change for the better, then sloth coming up at this time might be an indication that it's time to take one of these reviews and be really honest with yourself, where am I really unhappy? Where am I feeling fear about things? And only when you're aware of it, then you can do the work to clear it out. Okay, so working with Jaguar and or any of the other cats as well as the owl can help you with this seeing in the dark aspect because you've got to sometimes look into your blind spots. These animals have very, very strong third eye energy and the cats also have this energy of independence and they're good with boundaries too. So, the cats can help you work with that solar plexus energy, right? Because the sloth is so interconnected sometimes, soft people can lose sight of their own boundaries, right? Even though sloths do have territories. So, it's not going to be like super hard for you as an animal that doesn't have a lot of boundaries, but still just because it's so interconnected with the whole environment that there may be some issues with kind of solar plexus strengthening the solar plexus can help to come back to that sense of sovereignty, right, of yourself. And then also if you're having trouble bringing things into focus or just need clarity, Eagle is really great at doing that and has the strength to swoop in and just take out whatever's been holding you down, right, in terms of not being aware of stuff. All right, so more healing practices for sloth people. One thing that sloth could be bringing up, and I think this is related to the stillness that I mentioned before, but it may just be time to take a vacation, you know? So, what would it feel like to take the time for yourself to really slow down and or even shut everything down for a while, right? So, an ideal vacation for a sloth person might just be to sleep on the beach for, you know, a week or to rent a cabin and just sleep and veg or just take a few days of home even staying in bed or sit on the couch or, you know, just whatever just lays around. Sometimes we need that. Sometimes the most healing thing for mind, body and soul is actually come to zero point and shut it all out, right? Just take a break from everything. Just allowing yourself to sit and stare into space can be a really amazing, amazing healing experience. And it can be even just for a few minutes or it could be, you know, three, four days, right? Whatever it is that you need, just tune into that. Or, you know, if that's not possible for you, and I would say if you don't think it's possible for you, then you probably really need it, right? That's the story. But if it's not resonating with you, you know, then maybe consider some like practice like yin yoga or stillness meditation or something like that that will help you to access that still quiet zero point within yourself. Now, a couple of the biggest threats to sloth include the habitat destruction and the resulting isolation. Okay, so sloths reproduce really slowly, just one baby a year. And the tendency to stay put can impact their fertility, right? Or their ability to bring forth babies. So, isolation is another thing, another shadow side thing that can show up. But sometimes we really need that isolation. It's super healing, but it can also be a destructive kind of isolation. So, remember that the sacral chakra governs both reproduction and creativity. So, if you're having a creative slump, sloth's message might be to just get out and mingle with other creative people, share ideas, fertilize your mind with different viewpoints, different thoughts and energies. So, as much as we've covered, sloth has so much more to share. If you have insights, stick them in the comments below. And before I share my personal sloth story, I just want to let you know that I've written most of this material up into a blog. Check that out. If you like the link to that, we'll be in the description. All right, so my personal sloth story is when I was, oh, early 20s, I spent some time at Costa Rica and I had relatives there, some cousins. And one of them is my cousin, Julia. And she is an amazing person. She's an amazing artist. She does silver jewelry, which is beautiful. So, look her up flying fox jewelry. She does bats. But at the time, she had a sloth. And the reason was because she had done some animal rehabilitation. And so, Tilly was this little orphaned sloth, and she was given to Julia to raise and reintroduce back into the wild. So, I was there, was locked out to be there at the time when she was raising Tilly. And she had this setup in this cabin that she lived in, where Tilly had a branch that she could go from outside to inside the cabin at Will. And one time I was over there visiting Julia, and I was just kind of standing there. We were talking, I think she was making gingerbread. And so, it was just talking. And all of a sudden, I feel this little tickle at the top of my head. I look up and there is Tilly. She was so quiet. And it was like, and I had just been looking there. So, sloths can move a little faster than you think they might. Sometimes they can move a little faster. So, she had just in the last minute or so had come in and was super curious about me. Now, she could have probably ripped me open with those claws of hers, but she was so, so gentle. Just touching, just curious about this strange new being in the cabin. So, that's my sloth story. Hope you enjoyed. Enjoy your sloth. We'll catch you again soon.