Category Archives: Take Action

Reassembling Yourself

Shock and stress can cause pieces of your energy field to scatter. When that happens, it's time to reassemble yourself. This shamanic practice calls back scattered pieces that have become hooked outside yourself and supports reintegration and wholeness.

In stressful times, it is supportive to reassemble yourself daily. Doing this regularly helps your energy field maintain its cohesion, even when things are challenging.

REASSEMBLING YOURSELF

Traditionally, this practice is done with a rattle. If you don't have a rattle, you can improvise. Create a rattle by putting a few small objects, such as beans, small pebbles, rice, etc., in a small container like a jar, pill bottle, etc. I once reassembled myself, in a pinch, with a bag of jelly beans. Get creative!

Instructions:

  1. Notice your state of being.
  2. Focus on your intent to call back any pieces of your energy that are willing to return at this time.
  3. You don’t need to track, direct or "go get" the energies. Simply hold your intention gently.
  4. Begin to rattle steadily with a pace and rhythm which seems natural and comfortable to you.
  5. Allow your rattle to be a messenger, carrying your intention to the realm of Spirit, creating a carrier wave which calls stray pieces of your energy field home.
  6. As you rattle, you may sense pieces returning. Breathe deeply and continue to rattle as you welcome their return.
  7. Rattle until the process feels complete.
  8. Breathe and rest mindfully as your energy field re-integrates these reclaimed parts.
  9. Notice your state of being.

by Ananaia R O'Leary

Easing Shock with Star of Bethlehem Flower Essence

When we're experiencing shock, Star of Bethlehem is a powerful plant ally. When taken in flower essence form, the energy of Star of Bethlehem deeply permeates our energy fields to soothe and stabilize our systems.Star of Bethlehem brings ease and comfort to the places in our psyche which have been recently disrupted and to the deeper places where we hold the memory of past shock. This beautiful plant ally helps to strengthen our capacity to be calm, centered and resilient in the presence of intensity,

Flower essences provide a tangible way to connect to the spiritual energy of plants. Unlike essential oils and tinctures, they do not contain physical plant material. They are water infused with the energetic pattern of the plant (along with a little bit of alcohol as a preservative.) A few drops of the essence under your tongue or in your drinking water delivers the spiritual essence of the plant to your energy field. Star of Bethlehem flower essence is available in most health food stores locally or online. Bach Flower remedies are an established brand, but other options are also available.

Stressed? Sedate Triple Warmer

sedating triple warmer

When we get really stressed, our Triple Warmer meridian goes into overdrive, fueling our fight-flight-freeze mechanism. Sedating the Triple Warmer meridian can help us calm down, release tension and reduce fear and anxiety.

Please Note: the arrows in this image indicate the flow of the Triple Warmer. To calm it down, you want to brush the meridian in the opposite direction. So start at your temple and end at the fingertip of your ring finger.

Here's how you do it:.

1. Place your right hand flat on your left temple.

2. As you inhale, sweep your hand firmly and steadily along
the triple warmer meridian (pictured above) to the tip of the
ring finger on your left hand, exhaling as you release the
energy through your fingers.

3. Repeat 2 or 3 times on your left side as needed. (You can
do this 4-5x if needed)

4. Repeat on the right side.

from Energy Medicine by Donna Eden

When You’re Feeling Down, Look Up

Ever notice that, when times get tough, we tend to bow our heads & forge ahead, eyes lowered, chin tucked, jaw set? This posture compresses our upper chakras: Crown, 3rd Eye, Throat & Heart. Constricting these vital centers makes it more difficult to access the grace, inspiration & clarity needed to find solutions & a smooth pathway forward. Next time you're feeling stressed, relax your jaw, lift your head, look to the sky & welcome luminous possibilities!

by Ananaia R O'Leary

Opening The Heart

OPENING THE HEART
(Tracing the Yin Bridge)

Benefits: softens and opens the heart chakra, enhances receptivity to nourishing energies and spirit support, helps you attend to what has heart and meaning, allows you to express your heart more authentically, strengthens capacity for compassionate presence.

Do this as a regular spirit practice, when you wish to be open and present with spirit, when you are feeling cold or close hearted, when you wish to show up authentically in the world.

Instructions:

1. Bring your hands to your heart chakra and rest your fingertips gently on your sternum.

2. With your hands, trace the shape of a heart on the front of your body from the center of your heart chakra to your navel. As you begin to draw the heart, inhale slowly through your nose. When you reach the navel, release the breath slowly out through your mouth.

3. Repeat this process 3-4 times. The last time continue to move your hands down the inside of both your legs, breathing out as you sweep the energy down your legs to your feet.

adapted from a technique from Donna Eden

Balance Your Chakras with Color Breathing

Chakra are vital keys to our health and well-being, physically, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually. Each of these energy centers resonates in a unique and specific frequency range. When a chakra is stressed, it can become unbalanced and compromised. Its frequencies become dampened or overly intensified. Chakra balancing helps to restore the chakra frequencies to their natural range.

You can help to balance your chakras through using the natural color of each chakra as a kind of "tuning fork" for its specific frequency. Here's a simple exercise which combines breathwork, color visualization and intention to support the health of your chakra.

chakrasfull

  1. Begin this exercise with an intention to offer healing and balancing to your energy system.
  2. Bring your awareness to your root chakra. (Placing your palms on or above the chakra can help your focus.)

  3. Breathe in and hold the air in your lungs for a few moments.

  4. Imagine that the air in your lungs is turning a rich, vibrant shade of red.

  5. As you exhale, imagine that you are breathing out your root chakra. Envision the red energy in your lungs is flowing down to your root chakra and through it out of your body.

  6. As this red energy flows to your root, imagine the chakra itself glowing brightly with this vibrant red light
  7. Send 3 red breaths to your root chakra

  8. Take a deep cleansing breath, in through your nose, and release red from your imagination as you release your breath out your mouth

  9. Repeat for each chakra with the corresponding color. Root: Red, Sacral (belly): Orange, Solar Plexus (diaphragm): Yellow, Heart: Green, Throat: Blue, 3rd Eye (brow): Indigo/Purple, Crown (top of head): Violet or White

article by Ananaia R O'Leary

Welcoming Flow

FLOWING is a state of dynamic ease. When we are flowing energetically, subtle energy circulates freely through our meridians, chakras and energy bodies, reducing physical and emotional pain and dysfunction. Energetic flow also supports healthy function in the physical body, including the cardio-vascular, endocrine and nervous systems.

Energetic flow promotes balance, vitality and optimal function in body, mind and spirit. When we are flowing spiritually, life unfolds sweetly and smoothly, with few obstacles and little stress. Spiritual flow enables us to open to inspiration and possibilities, connect to nourishment and support, think creatively and move optimistically in the world.

There are many energy medicine techniques that help our energy to flow, but you may wish to begin by energizing your intention to welcome flow into your life.

  1. Each morning take a few moments to face East (the direction of the dawning sun & new possibilities)
  2. Take a few deep cleansing breaths in through your nose, out through the mouth
  3. State aloud: Today I welcome grace and ease.  (or similar words of your choosing)
  4. If you wish, open your heart to the support of Spirit. Hummingbird is a particularly good ally to call upon for this. Hummingbird medicine helps us trust and align with the sweetness of Life.

Intention is powerful.  Life flows more smoothly when we welcome grace and ease.

Welcome flow!

by Ananaia R O'Leary

Activating the Chakras in Your Feet

The chakras in the bottom of our feet help to connect us to the Earth's energy field. Shoes, concrete and the stresses of modern life can cause these energy centers to become congested and closed. When this happens, the energetic exchange betweeen us the Mother is curtailed, making it hard for us to release unwanted energies and receive nourishment for Gaia. This simple technique can help.

Benefits: opens minor chakras in the soles of the foot, stimulates energy flow through these chakras and enhances energetic connection with the Earth.

Do this exercise when you are feeling ungrounded, have excessive energy or nervousness, are scattered, flighty or unfocused.

Instructions:

  1. This works best with your shoes off
  2. Sitting or standing, rest your feet on the floor or ground
  3. Curl your toes inward, like you are making fists with your feet. Hold tightly for several seconds
  4. Relax your toes for a couple of seconds
  5. Repeat at least 5-6x
  6. Rest your feet on the ground again
  7. Sense the enhanced energetic connection between your feet and the Earth

by Ananaia O'Leary

 

Mind A-Whirl? Try These Tips

Is your mind a-whirl? Cluttered with plans & possibilities or fears & frustrations? When the mind is buzzing, it can be very difficult to hear the calm, still voice of intuition. We can scheme & strategize, but, in this mental mode, we have only intellect & past precedent to draw upon. This can severely limit possibilities & hamper problem solving.

Quieting the mind & connecting to our intuition helps us find a smooth path through challenges & optimize luminous forward momentum. Stilling mind & opening to inner wisdom is an evolving art, which takes time & dedication to develop. However, a few simple steps can get you started.

When your mind is racing or you are feeling confused, try one of these tips:

Shift Gears:  A wise person once said: When you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is: Stop digging.   If your mental wheels are spinning, stop pushing.  Step back. Take your mind off whatever you are attempting to achieve. If possible, walk away.   Change environment. Change focus.  Redirect your attention & your energy towards something completely unrelated to the task at hand.  Trivial or productive -- just make sure it has no relevance to the issue or initiative that has your gears spinning.  Put your quandary on the back burner & focus on something else.  You might be amazed what emerges. 

Face Fear:   Sometimes when you're struggling for resolution, you are trying like hell to keep your worst fear at bay. We often believe that, if we can just avoid bringing that fear into focus, somehow we can prevent it from manifesting. Ironically, the opposite is often true.  What we resist, gains power.  Those unacknowledged fears have a way of haunting us.  Next time you find  yourself in a dicey situation -- staving off fear of an undefined, but dreaded outcome, you might try this:

  • Turn & face the worst fear you can imagine.  
  • Allow yourself to look it squarely in the face -- to name it.
  • View it as a possibility, not a certainty. Breathe.  
  • Allow yourself to be present with the imagined ramifications of that fear.

It's amazing how often they reveal themselves to be hyperbolic -- over-blown, exaggerated stalkers that seek to terrorize your psyche.    Facing them can help to shrink their scale & bring them back into perspective.  When that happens, their grip is loosened & we can widen out to other possibilities. 

Seek Counsel:  We don't have to have all the answers. When we aren't certain, we can consult other sources: trusted friends, spirit allies, divination, respected teachers & counselors & our own intuition. Of course, it's important to be discerning. If you ask someone more rash or ignorant than yourself, this can either create chaos or bring crystal clarity (through contrast.) Sometimes hearing a bad idea can really bring our wisdom into focus. 

If you have not yet surrounded yourself with at least a handful of sage friends & allies, I suggest divination. Chose a divination tool such as tarot, oracle cards or runes and develop your relationship with them. When stymied or confused, you can pull a card for insight. Personally, I like to work with Brian Froud & Jessica MacBeth's Faeries' Oracle or the Norse runes.  The key to right use of counsel is checking out all suggestions with your inner sense of knowing.  If doesn't feel right, it probably isn't.

Practice Patience: If you aren't clear, wait. Better to defer a decision (whenever possible) than to make a rash choice & have to unravel the consequences.  Time often opens a window for your intuition to sneak in.

article by Ananaia O'Leary

Catalyzing Clarity

Clarity is such a blessing.  When we are clear, we can move forward with confidence.  When we are muddled, momentum slows and tension rises. Often we try to push forward, despite confusion. The results are seldom satisfactory.

Angeles Arrien, writer, cultural anthropologist and medicine woman, once wrote: When we are not clear, we wait. There is wisdom in these words. Baffled action is never advisable. Yet, if we are unclear, do we simply wait passively? At times, yes, quietly resting in ambiguity can be the best possible choice. In this liminal pause, wisdom can surface and insight emerges.

At other times, there is a bonafide need for action. We feel it in our bones, like a pressure pushing us forward, but without clarity how do we proceed? By stepping back from the issue at hand and focusing on the impediment: lack of clarity. If you are unclear, take action on that.

When caught in a spiral of persistent confusion, recognize what's happening, stop pushing, pause, take a breath, redirect your energies. Don't try to punch your way through. Catalyze clarity through ceremony.

If you're conversant with creating your own ceremony, go for it!  Get creative. If ceremony is new territory for you, keeping it sincere and simple is a good rule of thumb. Remember, the point of ceremony is to engage body, mind and heart in a communication with Spirit. Sometimes the best communication is eloquent in its simplicity.

Here are a few elementary suggestions for catalyzing clarity by ... 

1)  Air:  Breath

  • Take a few quiet moments in a comfortable posture and align your intention for clarity
  • Breathe in and hold your breath gently in your lungs
  • Tune to the confusion within, allowing that energy to permeate the air in your lungs
  • Exhale, breathing out confusion
  • Pause with your lungs empty to align with your intent to welcome clarity
  • Inhale, breathing in clarity
  • Repeat slowly until you feel complete
  • Do this daily or several times a day to energize your intent to release and clear

2)  Fire:  Burning Bowl

  • Supplies: paper, markers, crayons or pencils & a safe place to burn paper
  • Be present with your confusion, without immersing in it
  • Make an abstract energy drawing of your confusion. Try to draw from your feelings rather than your thoughts.
  • When your drawing feels complete, be present with it briefly (just a few minutes)
  • Say "Yes!" to releasing this confusion
  • Set the paper on fire and drop it into a fire-safe bowl or fireplace
  • As you watch, invite the cleansing power of fire to burn through your confusion like the sun burning away fog.

3)  Water:  try this Salt Water Purification ceremony

4)  Earth:  Stone Ally

  • Choose a stone willing to help you release confusion and attain clarity
  • Tune to the confusion within, allow that energy to permeate the air in your lungs
  • Exhale, breathing out into the stone -- the stone will hold this confusion for you
  • Carry the stone in your pocket
  • Throughout the day, as confusion arises, blow it into the stone
  • At the end of the day, place the stone lovingly on Mother Earth and ask her to help the dense energy of confusion breakdown and return to her to be recycled
  • Leave the stone on the Earth overnight to clear
  • In the morning, lift your stone from the Earth and feel its clarity
  • Hold the stone and let the energy of clarity flow through you
  • Continue to work with the stone until confusion dissipates and clarity emerges

Personally, I would not do all 4 of these processes for the same issue.  I'd choose the most resonant one for this situation and focus on it.

When working with ceremony, expect change, but don't demand it. Do these simple workings in a spirit of trust and empowerment, not desperation. Spirit moves on its own timetable, so surrender attachment to outcome (as best you can) and pay attention to what is emerging. Clarity may come in unexpected ways from unexpected sources. Expect it!

by Ananaia R O'Leary