1. Take a soak with Epsom Salts & Essential Oils
Have you ever gone for a swim in the ocean? Bathing in an Epsom salt bath for 20 minutes can lead to a similar natural catharsis. Light candles, play soft music, and use essential oils or a tea bath (relaxing oils of dry flowers like Lavender and Chamomile flowers in a lose leaf tea bag with oats to soak in the tub with you instead of oils) to create a multi-sensory experience. If you don't have a bathtub, soak your feet instead. Watch your stress, worries, and tension wash down the drain.
2. Breathe Mindfully
Taking five conscious, deep inhales through the nose and five deep exhales through the nose or mouth can help calm your nervous system and release feel-good chemicals like dopamine and serotonin, which tell your body to go into rest-and-repair mode. Feel free to do this practice several times a day, especially when you feel anxious, or overwhelmed. \
3. Align with Yoga
There's a reason yoga has been practiced for thousands of years. It's a total mind, body, and spirit energy healing practice. When you consciously connect to your body and breath in a deliberate way, you are able to release emotion and tension stored in the body. You can find 10 mins or longer flows online or come to one of my classes at Heron Creek Fitness and Yoga in Ancaster. Mondays Yoga for All Bodies at 5:20 p.m., Wednesdays Gentle Yin yoga at 12:15 p.m. and Thurs Sunrise All Levels class at 7 a.m.
4. Smudge/ Clear your Energy field
Either burn dry white Sage of a piece of Palo Santo wood or incense including those scents, or pine, cedar and/or sweetgrass. Do this in the area you would like to clear or just on your person, brushing the smoke into your hair, ears, nose, mouth and auric field including under the soles of your feet to clear away stuck, irritated or yucky energy, or simply because you want to refresh. Another cool practice I recently learned in India is to take a small bowl or container with water from the tap, holding it up to the sun (or moon) to be filled with the purifying rays then slowly tip the receptacle away from you above your head to pour into the ground. The stream of clear water clears your energy field and grounding you in the earth.
5. Connect to Crystals
I'm a tangible kinda gal. I like to touch things and I have collected rocks since I was little. Crystals and rocks of all kind are consider the keepers of memories. They can hold and support healing and clearing. You can put some in your bath to soak with, in your water to drink, or simply play with and make a crystal grid or use specific crystals to align with a particular energy and carry on your person or in your jewelry. Feel free to google what stones are good for what should you need a quick reference. I can suggest a few stores that are great to check out should you need recommendations. Make sure to smudge or wash in salted water and leave on the window sill to be charged by sun-rays or moonbeams your crystals from time to time to clear any heavy energy that has built up on them.
6. Use Reiki or Get a Treatment
Reiki is an Energy treatment you receive from a certified practitioner that clears away negative energy from the root issue you may be dealing with and supports overall well-being by then filling you with powerful positive energy. This is an amazing gift to give yourself for the holidays as a way of clearing residual energy from 2019 and to open up to the New Year. PM me to book a session or learn more about my classes. If you mention this article, you will receive a 25% discount on your next session. For those of you who are already attuned to Reiki no matter what level, this is a perfect time for self-healing. Remember you can use Reiki to clear and charge your bed before sleep, your bath before soaking or whatever it is you are doing with your hands. This connects you intentionally with what you are doing.
7. Sit in Stillness
Light a candle in the evening or a fire in the fireplace and spend as long as you want (minimum 5 mins, you can even put a timer on, especially if you are not used to doing this), get comfortable and be still. Beginning to breathe deeply into yourself, feeling your body and its connection to the earth or what holds you and to your breath moving slowly in and out of you. One of the most wonderful gifts we can give ourselves id the gift of Nothing. Of Being in Stillness with ourselves. No were to go, nothing to do, just be. Your presence in the world is a gift you give others. Make sure you also give You to you.
8. Connect to the Divine - Pray
Some people call the Divine Love, Peace, God, Jehovah, Wisdom, The Goddess or Shiva or Allah. We all have different names and beliefs that connect our separate self with the Source of All That Is, sometimes called The Universe or The Creator. We are a piece of the whole and are made whole when we spend time in communion with the energy within us that draws us closer to the Mystery from where we originate.
One of my favorite forms of prayer is poetry, wisdom reading and reflection and the simple words of my heart poured out.
"Create in me a clean heart, Oh God.
And renew a right spirit within me" -Psalms or
"I want to give myself
utterly
as this maple
that burned and burned
for three days without stinting
and then in two more
dropped off every leaf;
as this lake that,
no matter what comes
to its green-blue depths,
both takes and returns it.
In the still heart that refuses nothing..." -Jane Hirshfield
Seasons Blessings