In my early twenties I was mending heartbreak and doing a great deal of spiritual self-work (still a big part of my regular process) and I read a lot of helpful books (The Invitation, Ask and It Is Given, Ishmael, Celestine Prophecy, this list goes on…) and I was receiving a great deal of body/energy work from all types of places. I was cleansing my vessel and my energy. I was listening and learning.
Still, there was a great deal of cynic in me, having been raised by an intellectual who would refer to such experiences as those I listed above as “airy fairy” or “hippie dippie”. I knew that you cannot practice magic when you do not believe in it, or you ensure a convolution of results that are sure to be bad; just like you cannot hold on to what is behind you and move forward. I made assertive decisions that if I went to a “healing” session I would be present with an open heart and mind, ready for the work to be effective. Sometimes it was effective and sometimes it wasn’t, but by giving myself permission to be in a neutral receiving space I had the most true experiences.
Also, when you go to a science based massage school and start hearing truths about people’s life experiences when you touch them, it pretty much forces you to look around for explanation or at least tools of protection and understanding. Luckily some intuition had nudged me to get a job as a receptionist at a massage facility while I was training in massage, and it turned out that although my school was ALL science (I love that) the practitioners at the massage place were nearly all shaman (I also love that) and they were insanely beneficial to my knowledge and growth.
During this window of a few years I evolved. I evolved a lot. I became very good at manifesting. I found strength and self-love like I’d never before accessed. I restructured my thinking patterns from negative thought to positive thought. That took a lot of work (cannot be overstated), constant devotion, and has changed my life since. Although in time I let life’s challenges and decrease my self-work, self-care, and ritual, so now more than ten years later I am left with much to do in these same areas… I have a core of tools that can get me back on track and am grateful to launching this blog for upping accountability, and kicking me back to my authentic feel good, be good, do good ways.
One of the best pieces of advice I received while in process of ninja training was to RITUAL. That could be anything I wanted it to be, it is the act of ritual itself that is extremely helpful and formative. So I needed to get in the practice of, well… practice.
I decided on a practice of appreciation, gratitude candle. It worked well with my goal of shifting from negative thought and words to positive thought and words. I was built as a very sensitive person who was often crumbled in defeat to the truth of pain and human shortcomings that exist, it took really work to make myself as affected by the beauty and good as all the rest. This ritual helped me massively. I could obtain a white prayer candle for $1 and lighting a candle and saying out loud the things I was grateful for every day when I returned home in the evening was an achievable ritual. Gotta make it something easy to do so you’ll do it!
It is important to find a ritual that serves you, speaks to what you need to tend in yourself, and for me gratitude has not been challenging… except for on my bad days, and then it is the answer. It is only through finding gratitude on days where I feel I’ve none to give that I am able to renew my strength. My challenge of patterned negative thinking needs tangible practice to shift and the gratitude candle does just that. It did it then and it does it now.
Ultimately, my experiences with healers changed me so much for the better. When I received crystal work I found effective I decided to study it. When I received chord-cutting from a shaman and felt free of a toxic and draining relationship, I was inspired to grow my skills to be able to do the same for others. When I received esoteric acupuncture, meant to address issues beyond the physical, and the practitioner played didgeridoo over the needles so their vibration would speak to my needs it was fascinating, an experience I’m grateful to have had, and not something I found effective or decided to study.
During these years I also did body/energy work on about 40 bodies a week. I will not touch a client unless my energy is clean and so I had to learn how to clear my chakras rapidly. It was an amazing skill to learn how to clear myself even when life was rocking me; find center, clear negative energy, bring in unending energy from earth core and divine crown and push it through my heart for some good pure reiki.
Here’s a terrific exercise for when you feel unsettled and need to clear:
Stand barefoot on the ground. Grow pipes out of your feet, through the crust of the earth, deep in the soil to mama earth’s magma core. Start at the top of your head and feel what it is you need to release, push that down your body to the pipes. Push down anger and selfishness and frustration and distraction and whatever else will not serve your calm, centered self with space for giving. Push it all down into that magma core and let that energy be converted into something productive. We all know how fire can ignite passion and inspire!
NOW cut those pipes off your feet. MOVE YOUR FEET TO A NEW SPOT (you may feel wobbly). Feel free to sage or burn some cedar wood and clear out what you released. It is time to regrow good healthy roots.
Grow new pipes into that magma core. Draw up mama earth’s bright gold fire energy, let it fill you from feet to head. For the most brilliant chakra clearing, wait until you are all full of that magma light and then shoot the light out each of your chakras. Like a powerful beam of brilliance from pelvic floor to tip of crown.
I hope you enjoy these tools and find them useful. Investigate your own needs and elect to use a ritual that will serve your current evolution. And remember that visualization strength is also empowered by ritual. If you have trouble visualizing the chakra exercise, do it with regularity and it will be strengthened. Soon enough you’ll be able to do it anywhere!
So that’s a glimpse of my training days, we’ll dive deeper as we are able. Blessed be.
The Moon Maven 