Category: Soul + Grace + Comfort

Hamani & Following What Lights You Up

(Excerpt from Flowering Within)

Every spring thousands of sakura trees (cherry blossom trees) in parts of Japan break out in bloom. The landscape comes alive as a blanket of soft pink and white spreads across its vast expanses. When the wind washes through the trees, the delicate sakura petals shake and fall quickly to the ground, some filling rivers and turning them pink. For more than a thousand years Japanese culture has honored this enchanting picture of beauty through the practice of hamani – flower viewing or flower watching – with people coming from all over to witness  and celebrate the serene unfolding of spring through these ancient forests of sakura trees.

Hold the image of these blooming sakura trees in your mind’s eye for a moment and imagine something. Imagine that when you are inspired, when you’re attuned to your inner essence and when you tap into the flow of grace, your heart flowers with the same kind of wild splendor and spreads a special kind of magic across the landscapes of your life. You light up in your center and your inner petals open to let your spirit shine. Your authentic Self steps forward and when she does, can you come to her with eyes full of wonder and honor her inner flowering through your own practice of hamani in the same way that flower viewers in Japan bear witness to the sakura blossoms?

The Flowering Within Paperback is now available on Amazon. Click here…

7

Create a Crystal Grid for Nurturing Support and Self-Love

Are you flowing gently today? At the end of a long demanding week, it’s a gift to be able to exhale and come back to the essence within.

I’ve always known how to show up for others, how to be a friend and a nurturer. But like too many women, one of my great struggles has been to show up for and nurture myself. Fortunately the shifts that have taken place in my life in recent years have set in motion a learning curve that’s led me to approach myself in gentle ways, soothing ways that fill me up. I’ve understood that in order to feel loved and supported in my life, I need to love and support myself first. The deeper I drive into my spiritual practice and learn to apply various healing or empowering principles in my life, the easier it becomes to remember and honour my own worth.

Even so, I still have my off days.

We all go through rough patches. We’re faced with stresses, illness or various other life challenges.

We have those days where our shadows rise and we lose touch with our truth or feel disconnected from Spirit. You have those days where you forget how to be strong, or how to be compassionate with yourself. There are moments when you feel abandoned, stressed out and question why certain things are happening to you.

What I’ve learnt is that those very moments where you don’t know how to love youself are exactly when you need to be there for YOU in a bigger way, practise radical self-love and draw on Spirit for extra support.

For those who are open to working with crystals, one way to draw in the energy of love and light when you are stuck in the midst of struggle is to create a crystal grid for nurturing self-compassion. What I love about crystal grids is that once they’ve been created with a specific intention, they hold the vibration of your intention so that you or the person who you’ve created it for, keep on receiving the loving or healing vibes.

self-love grid 2

Few things carry the energy of love the way rose quartz crystals do. When I work with rose quartz, I always think of them as little light workers who’ve spent eons embedded in the Earth absorbing love’s vibration so that could share them with us some day. So they are the perfect allies whose energy you draw on for this crystal grid. Since I like to keep things simple, the grid that I’ve created is a very basic, but still very effective in my experience.

What you’ll need:

  • Rose quartz crystals (I’ve used 8 in my grid)
  • A photo of yourself
  • A sacred space to lay the grid where it will not be disturbed

 How to Create the Crystal Grid

  • Sit quietly, relax and centre yourself.
  • Ask yourself: What do you need right now? Love? Acceptance? Peace? To feel supported? Listen to the answers that rise from you inner essence.
  • Focus on the feeling that you want to experience. What does self-love or acceptance feel like? What does being nurtured or supported feel like? Tap into the energy of this feeling. Now set the intention to offer that to yourself through the crystal grid that you are creating.
  • Lay down the photo of yourself on the surface where you are creating the grid and then lay the crystals one by one around the picture in a circle. As you lay each piece, visualise loving white light flowing from the centre of the Universe, through you and into the grid.
  • When you’ve laid out the grid, spend a few moments focused on your intention and continue to charge it by sending love and white light energy to the grid.

self-love grid

You can keep the crystal in place for a few days or a few weeks depending on how long you feel you need it for. You can also add additional touches that resonate with you. I felt called to place two pink roses over my photo because they have a special place in my heart. They remind me to recognise my own inner beauty and to love and accept myself. Whenever you feel down or unloved, visualise yourself receiving uplifting love energy from the grid.

You can also create one for a friend or family member who is ill, going through a tough time or are in need in some way. Simply use a photo of them and use the same process to send them love and white light.

If you do decide to experiment with this, please to let me know what the experience is like for you. I’d love to hear from you.

May the love and wisdom of Mother Earth and Goddess keep guiding you to a place of light and healing.

Lavender New Moon

My New moon is full of soft shades of lavender and violet, along with touches of dreamy yellow too. The morning was made of flower picking in the herbal garden – borage, lavender and jasmine blossoms for tea. I put some in a small vase next to my writing desk as well. Late afternoon will be spent making calendula balm as gifts for a cousin and a friend, both who’ve been struggling with eczema.

Overhead, grey tufts of cotton clouds are gathering in the sky. I’m longing for the soothing touch of rain, but I know that this time of year the clouds often come to tease. They bring false promise, maybe a just few minutes of light rain before they disappear again. October/November is usually when the real spring rains begin. But we’ve already had some unusually early showers this year. So perhaps my wishes will be fulfilled today. I live in hope

Emotions are rising from my shadows and stirring some chaos within. Yesterday, I found myself feeling down, angry, frustrated and out of sorts for reasons I couldn’t understand. The new moon card I pulled from the Medicine Woman tarot seems to speak directly to that, encouraging me to work through fears and release my internal resistance so that the seeds and dreams I plant this cycle are imbued with clarity, faith and love.

What I like about using these Medicine Woman cards is that I don’t have a proper guide book. Each card comes with a simple one line explanation (in this case “Allure through opposition or inertia”) and the rest of the message is left up to my intuition. I love that the card I picked mirrors the subtle lavender and yellow colours that I’ve been noticing around me in recent days. I feel that the medicine woman in this card is blowing her pan-pipes to draw the shadowy creatures out from the dark corners of the wild forest into the light. Shadowy creatures are scary when hidden in the dark places of our wild unknown forest within. Yet, when we draw them out into plain sight, surrender them to the light and become better acquainted with these unknown parts of ourselves that we often learn to fear, they are no longer frightful things. Instead, they are transformed into treasures, newly claimed aspects of our wild essence that can begin to serve us and restore us to wholeness again.

As I set out to sit with my feelings, exploring my internal resistance, my fears and whatever else my arise from my shadows, I’ve been burning purifying sage, incense and aromatherapy oils to cleanse my aura, my writing space and my home. Already I feel things shifting and a lightness returning in spaces where energy has been stagnant and stuck for a while. Now is a good opportunity for me to practise the patience and tenderness that I’m learning to approach myself with, so that I plant seeds of self-compassion, acceptance and self-love.

What is this New Moon bringing up for you? What kinds of seeds are you planting?

image