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Let’s create the beautiful world our hearts know is possible.
Three mindset tips that will help you reach your goals in 2024!
Making New Years goals and resolutions is something that most of us do every January. And 80% of people will never follow through on them.
Some call it self sabotage- but I think it’s your nervous system operating perfectly.
Once you understand that you’re hard wired to resist change you can stop judging yourself when you quit and start getting curious about why.
Facts:
Your body is always moving towards what feels safe.
Your mind likes to save energy by doing what’s familiar.
It’s survival instinct.
When you decide to grow and set bigger goals for yourself- you’ll feel this protective inertia pulling you back.
So lets dive into three ways that can help you reach your goals by working with your nervous system instead of against it.
#1. Choose a thought that feels good.
A client of mine recently came to me with a goal to 3x her business in 2024. When I asked what she thought about it she said “I have no idea how I’m going to it”.
This thought, while factual sounding, was making her feel nervous about her goal.
The thought wasn’t true. She had lots of ideas, but the emotion of fear was uncomfortable enough that her nervous system was on alert.
The unconscious response to fear in the body is 3000x faster than your brain can register.
So without even realizing it, her thought sent her body into actions that felt more comfortable and familiar. She stopped working on her business and went to fold laundry, walk her dog and clean her house. All things she knew exactly how to do- which felt comforting to her body in the face of a fearful thought like “I don’t know how I’m going to do it”.
Procrastination and overwhelm are simply your body’s way of finding safety when emotions come up that activate your nervous system.
You don’t know why you suddenly got up from your computer and started sweeping the floor- but you did!
This is the time to catch yourself and notice what thoughts are running through your mind.
Write down every thought (good or bad) that you have about your goal.
Read through the negative thoughts and notice how they make your body feel. What emotions are coming up for you? Where do you feel them in your body?
Now read through the good thoughts and feel the impact they have in your body.
In our coaching session my client came up with a new thought that worked much better for her.
“I don’t know how to reach my goal right now but I do know how to get started”
This is called a bridge thought.
It acknowledges that she doesn’t have all the info yet to 3x her business but she’s confident enough to start the process and learn as she goes.
With this new thought, the fear in her body was much less and her brain offered up all kinds of “get started” ideas. She was able to create a list of actions to get going.
#2. Work with your brain, not against it.
Your brain doesn’t like to work hard. It wants to save energy by doing the things already knows and understands. This feels safe. From a survival standpoint- it’s a big win.
So when you set a new goal be prepared for your brain to initially resist the change.
Discipline and routines can work but if they create negative emotions in the body, chances are your hard wiring will win out in the end.
Only 9% of people keep New Years resolutions long term.
One way to help your brain go along with your new plan is to take it in easy, small steps.
The first action steps my client came up with looked like:
Create Client Email List
Send out Marketing Email
Write a weekly blog post
Offer monthly specials
While these are all great steps to take, her brain didn’t have enough information to tackle any one of these tasks.
I asked her how she was going to create a client email list and her face went blank.
She replied-“I’m not really sure how to do it”- and I could see her old thought had returned. She was spinning into overwhelm before she could even start.
That is because “Create an email list” is too big for an action step.
It’s more like a mini goal.
When she and I started to break it down the new list looked like this:
Create a Client Email List:
Call my web designer and find out how to access the emails stored in my website
Go through my phone and find all the contacts of past clients and put in one list
Arrange the dog schedule with my husband so I have two free hours on Saturday to enter all the emails onto a spreadsheet.
Can you see the difference?
Her brain knows how to do these individual tasks. With no resistance her brain will happily do task after task as long as it doesn’t feel confused and have to work too hard.
In fact the brain gets dopamine from checking off a list.
The more you can breakdown your goal into tiny easy tasks the better!
#3 Get Curious and Compassionate
All this may sound ridiculous to you.
You may be thinking; “Why do I have to carefully choose a positive thought and break things into baby steps? I’m an adult. I should just be able to push through, figure it out, work hard and never give up till I reach my goal.”
That voice of the culture is always in your head and it’s repeated that message to you since childhood- “If you fail you just weren’t trying hard enough”.
But actually, it’s not true.
You failed because you tried to ignore your internal needs in favor of an external reward.
Your body is wiser than your brain in many ways.
It isn’t going to let you move forward if it doesn’t feel safe.
You can force your body to perform for a while but eventually stress, exhaustion, depression, health problems etc. will emerge to stop you. (#America)
A much easier way is to work with your body’s needs and to comfort your nervous system as you go.
This is a skill not taught in our culture, in fact it’s often shamed as being too sensitive.
If you find yourself spinning in overwhelm or scrolling on your phone when you know you wanted to be working on your new goal just take a moment to reflect.
Notice what you are doing without trying to change it or judge it.
Simply observe yourself and get curious.
Ask yourself: What happened earlier that may have triggered an emotion that led me to scroll my phone to comfort myself?
Be an investigator and retrace your steps to see if you can find the thought or the emotion that’s in your body when you are frozen in overwhelm or ready to throw in the towel.
When you find the emotion in your body:
Offer it compassion.
Thank it for showing up to protect you.
Ask it what it needs and what positive intention it has for you.
You will be amazed by how powerful this simple 90 second check in can be.
Months of procrastination can be avoided by the simple gesture of a hand over your heart and allowing moments of grief, fear, anger, shame etc to be felt and processed.
Once you get good at noticing and being with your emotions, the energy you will save is enormous.
I’m convinced 90% of the struggles we face in life are due to the fact that we have never been taught how to choose our thoughts, process emotions and soothe our nervous systems.
Hopefully this helps get you started for the New Year with some new tools in your tool kit!
If you are interested in diving in deeper and working with your goals in private coaching sessions I highly encourage you to do so.
This process is much easier with a guide and it’s life changing stuff!
You can book a free consult with me here.
If after the consult you feel like the work is a good fit, I also offer your first full coaching session for free!
I would love to help you meet your goals in 2024!
Leave me a comment below if this piece helped you or if you have any questions!
xoxo
Ginger
Pouring the Ancestral Cup. Three ways that honoring the dead heals the living.
Our culture is one of the few in the world that has little or no relationship to death.
In many cultures around the world rituals for the dead take place year round. Ancestral altars and offerings are deeply woven into everyday life.
Ancestors are honored as a source of wisdom and strength. They are the ones who figured out how to survive. How to live in community. How to feed their families and pass their genetics, wealth and wisdom onward.
There’s also an acknowledgement of soul ancestors. The artists, writers, teachers and figures from history that give us inspiration. They’re the ones who pass on creativity and visions that feed your soul and light up your purpose in life.
But in the modern industrial western world (particularly in the USA) we have a culture that does not like to look backwards. It is a culture of progress, growth, innovation, of the younger, newer and better.
We like to think of ourselves as rugged individuals forging new destinies that have nothing to do with our dusty old relatives.
Ancestors and the elderly are not only dismissed but are considered irrelevant to the modern age. Why would you want to think about the past when AI can make the future so much better?
An extension of this idea is that old things have less value in our culture. Old houses torn down for condos are seen as an economic improvement. Old forests are cut, managed and replanted with young trees. Old people are an inconvenience we tolerate. Death is a unfortunate thing we don’t like to talk about or dwell on.
So when Halloween rolls around in the US- it exists mainly for partying or for kids. For most it’s just another workday with a pumpkin spice latte and maybe some cat ears thrown on for fun.
Christmas decorations often come out before Halloween even arrives- so eager is the push to get past all this silly death and onto the main selling season that will boost economic numbers for the quarter.
All of makes sense in a culture that avoids dealing with death- and the emotions that come with it (grief, shame, and regret).
But what we don’t realize is that by not having a relationship with the dead we are missing out on a huge part of our own healing. There’s a reason that most cultures hold an honored space for this energy.
Here’s three reasons why you may want to create a space in your life for the dead- not only around Halloween and Dia De Los Muertos but also year round.
Connection.
One way that the dead heal the living is to soothe the cultural wound of disconnection and loneliness.
A government report released in this spring titled "Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation," finds that even before the COVID-19 pandemic, about half of U.S. adults reported experiencing measurable levels of loneliness.
It warned that the physical consequences of loneliness can be devastating, including a 29% increased risk of heart disease; a 32% increased risk of stroke; and a 50% increased risk of developing dementia for older adults. Loneliness is also linked with depression and many other forms of mental illness.
Francis Weller in his book The Wild Edge of Sorrow talks about 5 gates of grief. One of them is the grief of what we expected to have but did not receive.
For most of human existence on Earth we lived in communal societies. Hundreds of thousands of years of being tribal peoples with deep connections to the land and to each other for not only survival but to meet our deep human need to feel purpose in relationship to more than just ourselves.
In a communal society you would have had a rich connection to the land you lived on and the plants and animals there. You would have had a mythology that included your direct relationship to your clan, community and cosmos with rituals that reinforced those bonds and how your relationships to them changed over the course of your life.
Your birthright would have included many stories and rituals connecting you to your ancestors. These would include plant and animal ancestors and star ancestors. They would include sacred places you’d visit and weaving patterns that would adorn your clothes. From birth you would feel held by this large web of connection.
This can still be found in many cultures in the world but is starkly lacking in our own.
It’s a deeply healing process to start this journey of re-connection.
What are some of your ancestors names? Where did they come from? What foods did they eat? What colors did they like to wear? What are the stories and rituals of the places they lived?
Find photos, recipes and create an altar for your own ancestors. Light a candle for them. And ask them for guidance. One of the things that utterly confuses tribal peoples about our culture is why we don’t give our ancestors any work to do. They consider them a vibrant force of energy and protection that they call on daily for help.
If you don’t know your ancestors or don’t feel connected to them- then look to the place you live. What is the name and shape of the watershed you live in? What birds migrate there? What are the names of trees and types of rocks found here?
These are ancestors of place and have been here much longer than you have. Find a tree you like to visit to on a walk each day and leave an offering at it’s roots.
These small rituals of connection can heal you in ways you may not expect. They restore a small part of the ancient web of life to your world.
Loneliness isn’t about being alone- it’s about not having the relationships to things or people that bring your life meaning and purpose.
Your ancestors eagerly await you to start the conversation with them.
Purpose.
Close your eyes and consider for just a moment that it’s two hundred years in the future. Your name and job and all things about your life have been utterly forgotten. Society looks wildly different and a group of young people stand in a circle near the place you now live holding a ceremony to honor the ancestors.
What do you wish these brave young people to have? What kind of housing, food, water, healers, childcare, nature, rituals, art, poetry etc do you wish for them?
These are the questions that a future ancestor considers.
In our culture we’re so busy trying to make it through one day we often forget that we are the ones who carry the gifts, seeds and dreams of the future.
One of your roles that you are here to reclaim (especially as you reach middle age and beyond) is to think beyond your immediate circumstances and consider the health and well being for those living seven generations from now.
Part of working with the ancestors is knowing that you are one too- in the making.
It’s not so much about legacy (i.e. my name will be known for generations) but about the gifts you give by being the fullest expressions of yourself. The poems you write. The traditions you begin. The places you protect and honor. The visions you bring into reality.
If you struggle with feeling a lack of purpose (and many of us do) taking up the future ancestor role will start to heal the cultural wounds of apathy and overwhelm.
But the problems of the world seems so huge. How can one person change any of it? Why bother? We’re all doomed.
These are natural responses to the massive problems that face us. But they also stop us from seeing the bigger picture.
What you do now does matter. You’re not just here to pay rent and to try and succeed at modern day life. You’re here for those young people two hundred years in the future. You carry the seeds of what needs to grow for them to thrive.
You may not live to see the results of your work, in fact you’re likely to see it get worse before it gets better. But future ancestors know it will take many generations of healing to repair what took many generations to destroy. It’s the work we are here to do. To take our place in the line of ancestors slowly sowing and tending seeds that will one day feed a young person two hundred years in the future.
Those who have yet to be born eagerly await you to take up your role as future ancestor.
Joy
Death is a reminder to live. To appreciate what you have now.
At a certain age you must turn from what you have been so busy with all these years and face death.
Sometimes this reality is brought to you by an illness or the loss of someone dear. It may come with middle age. Some never face death and “enter the grave walking backwards”- as if staying busy and “productive” will somehow make death go away.
Every day you live you are a day closer to death- that’s just a fact.
If that brings up anxiety or regret in you, it’s worth pausing to ask why.
Spending time considering death (which our culture avoids at all costs) pushes you to examine what you’re doing with your one precious life.
If you died tomorrow what do you wish that you’d finally done? What places did you never see? Who did you want to tell you loved them? What idea or gift are you holding onto because its not “perfect” that the world will never know because you’re gone?
At some point I caught myself using the phrase “getting through” a lot.
I’ll just “get through” this task, “get through” this day, “get through” this event, “get through this trip”, “get through” this year.
Eventually I had to ask myself what am I “getting through” to?
The thing I was rushing towards was a grave. And the thing I was “getting through” was in fact, my life.
So I decided to replace “getting through” with “get to”.
I get to host this event. I get to have this day. I get to go on this trip.
Determination shifted to joy. I get to make choices. I get to be alive. What a gift!
If you ever find yourself falling into the cultural wound of busyness, working with the dead is a great wake up call to reconnect with your joy.
No one on their death bed wishes they had worked harder or were busier. Regrets universally come from not taking time to fully live, to enjoy flower blossoms or the smell of fresh baked cookies. For not slowing down to savor all the joy that life offers.
Your life eagerly awaits you to remember that you won’t be here forever. This day- this hour- this breath is a gift. Savor it.
Thank you for reading! I’m curious to know how any of this lands for you. If you have comments or questions please leave them for me in the comments below and I’ll get back to you!xoxo
Ginger
Thorne & Blossom. Magical gifts from the heart medicine tree.
May is forever associated in my mind with blossoming Hawthorn trees. Right around Mother’s Day (though on this cold wet spring it was 10 days after) the white blossoms burst forth and cover the tree and ground beneath them like snow. I go out and with leather gloves strip the small green leaves packed with antioxidants and vitamin K, along with showers of petals into harvest tubs.
I have a circuit of local farms that have old lovely Haws. I visit them each May and harvest just the lowest branches- leaving towers of flowers waving in the breeze above me.
The leaves and flowers will go into our Heart of Gold herbal blend. I part hawthorn leaf and flower, one part farm tulsi and one part rose petals. In fact Hawthorn is in the rose family so really it’s a double rose and tulsi blend.
Like roses, the Hawthorn has been connected to the medicine of the heart for centuries.
Scientific study has revealed Hawthorn leaf, flower and berries are packed with antioxidants known as flavanoids that signficantly improve circulation to the heart. regulate blood pressure, decrease chest pain and lower risk of heart failure. In fact one of the main
In traditional herbalism, Hawthorn was used to treat a variety of life experiences, supporting individuals dealing with occasional stress and sadness.* It was given to individuals with broken hearts, who had experienced loss, or who were in interesting situations.
Go to sleep with Hawthorn. Through supporting the nervous system hawthorn leaf and flower promotes a sense of calm, a healthy sleep cycle, and sweet dreams. Because of this, it’s a great herb to incorporate into your evening routine.
Hawthorn was prized among Northwest Coastal Native People for many things. In addition to the flowers and berries being used as medicine, the large black thorns were used to make fish hooks, sewing awls, and lances for probing blisters, boils, and for piercing ears. The wood is unusually hard and has been fashioned into tools and weapons. It also makes long-lasting and hot fuel.
Hawthorn stories abound in European folklore. It is called “may flower” and has been an important part of European May Day celebrations, spring ceremonies and weddings since Roman times. The May Day festival is ancient and was named after the Greek goddess Maia. The maypole, which represents renewal and fertility, was decorated with hawthorn. During ancient Greek weddings, guests brought sprigs of hawthorn to bring happiness and prosperity to the new couple.
Hawthorn has been used by European people for spiritual protection in a similar way to Native American people’s use of wild rose. It was attached to babies’ cradleboards, windows and doorways to offer defense against illness and unwanted influences.
Christians adopted hawthorn from pagan traditions and dedicated it to the Virgin Mary. Christ’s crown of thorns was supposedly made from hawthorn. In legend, Joseph of Arimathea, Christ’s teacher and the caretaker of his tomb after the crucifixion, brought the first hawthorn to England in 63 AD. Where he planted his staff in the ground at Glastonbury it rooted and grew into a “holy thorn” that was said to bloom every Christmas.
“Haw” is German for hedge. Hawthorn was valued as a hedge or fence to mark land plots by many American immigrant farmers. This living hedge provided a windbreak and offers a place for pollinators, birds and other animals to thrive. You can still see hawthorn hedgerows on old farms and public spaces throughout the Northwest. I like the idea of bringing biodiversity back to farming and see local farmers re-embracing these old values through planting hedgerows.
Spring's Genius. The Power of Beginning.
“Whatever you can do or dream you can begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it” ”
Spring has arrived on the Oregon Coast, daffodils and nettles are up and furry willow buds are decorating the trees along the river. The beginning of this week marks the Spring Equinox which just happens to coincide this year with a new moon in Aries. Aries is the first sign of the zodiac and reflects the bold and powerful energy of a fresh start.
I was inspired by author and life coach Martha Beck for this post when I recently listened to her podcast on Beginning.
The act of beginning itself has magic in it. It’s like a door you unlock, and beyond it lies all kinds of adventures. However, it’s for this very reason that many of us hesitate to get started. I have found this to be true in my own life, and I’ve also found that no matter how many times you begin, you always have to begin again.
Beginnings are places where confusion and mistakes are part of landscape. Most of like staying with the known and not messing around with something we’re not familiar with.
When you see something unfamiliar or unusual your brain is designed to react with fear to keep you safe. So every time a new start comes up even if it’s something that we’ve done before, we feel the fear of knowing we haven’t done this particular one before.
Every time you start something new, you go through a death and rebirth phase that is very disorienting, and it’s not something in our particular culture trained us to cope with. We’re supposed to just keep things going well, right? We’d rather just hunker in and do what we know, but try as we might to avoid it= the spring energy of beginning always comes.
So how do you begin? Well you start by seeing beginning as your friend and not as a threat.
But how do you make a friend with beginning when it feels so difficult?
5 Ways Your Brain Can Make Friends with Beginning:
Step 1. Breaking up the Soil.
Think of contemplating a beginning like plowing a field or preparing a garden bed in spring. You start by breaking up the soil of your old way of thinking, your old way of being. You have to make room and till up the soil before you can actually plant new seeds. You start by break up thing your wanting to begin in your mind.
So you picture the thing you are starting in little chunks. Don’t think “I have to begin to write this book” or “clean this house”. Instead chunk that project up into smaller bits that might take you more than like five or 10 minutes. When I go to clear up a garden area, I don’t do it as a one gigantic task, or my brain would come up with all kinds of reasons to avoid it. I have a series of smaller things that make up the big task.
First, I go get my gloves and tools out that I need. Then I pick one spot to put all my weeds. Then I work one area of the bed at at time. Clearing it out in chunks of maybe 5-10 minutes. Once all the chunks of the bed are weeded I put the weeds in a wheel barrow. Then I dump the barrow in the compost. Then I work up the bed in the same chunks. And then I begin the next task and on and on.
So I’ve actually created lots of beginnings, but they’re tiny things, and it’s much, much, much more likely that I’ll begin working in the garden if I just start with going to get my gloves and tools. Every big thing is made up of little things. So till it up and work with each chunk.
The reason we have dashes in our phone numbers, because the mind can’t handle a 10 digit code unless it’s broken into three and four and three. The brain can pretty much handle anything in chunks up to five.
Step 2: Work with your FOMO
One of the best ways you can get yourself motivated is to give yourself FOMO (fear of missing out). Watching another person gardening makes me want to get out there. They look like they’re having such a good time, and when I can see the steps they’re taking, and it makes me much more likely to go do it myself. This is why when we watch a person on social media baking bread suddenly we want to start baking too. It’s like a dress rehearsal for your brain.
Step 3. Set the Stage.
Another way to trick your brain into getting started is to set up your physical environment so you’re more likely to do the thing. If you want to start a new exercise routing in the morning then lay out your exercise clothes the night before, set your alarm and have your water bottle and music loaded and ready to go. This prep will get you far enough along in the process the next morning that your brain isn’t faced with all the resistance of starting from zero. Now that all this prep has been done its much easier to follow through. If you need to write a paper, setting up your computer and a cup of tea and getting out your notes beforehand will make it much easier to sit down at that set up area and write. Often times I will tell myself that all I have to do is just get things ready to start- and it ends up being the very thing that gets me going. This is also the magic behind writing it on your calendar. Once you set aside a time to do the starting- you’ve actually already started and momentum can carry you forward.
Step 4. Imagine the Reward!
If you want to give your dog a pill, one way to trick them to eat it is to get a piece of food and mush the pill into it, then get a bigger piece of food, a more delicious piece of food, and you hold both out. The dog will just scarf down the first one because it’s trying to get to the second one. It doesn’t chew the food enough to taste the pill.
You are not that different from a dog in this regard. Don’t think, “I’m going to write this email.” Instead think I think I’m going to write this email and then make myself a nice cup of tea. Hold out the reward right away before you start. It will be the treat that helps you swallow the pill without realizing it.
Step 5. Break the Ice
When your ready to move into action then use what’s known as ice breakers to give you momentum. Icebreakers are the powerful little ships that sail on the Great Lakes and have knife like prows. They cut up ice on the lakes so bigger ships can come in afterwards.
Ice breakers in this context can look like a writer do her morning pages; where she sits down and writes 3 pages in the morning about anything at all just to get going. An artist might start by taping down a piece of paper and layering in a background color. I will often go in and do a quick brain dump for a marketing email onto a piece of paper and then circle the parts I like the best. That’s an icebreaker for me that makes it much easier to actually start write the thing.
So try using these steps the next time you find yourself procrastinating the beginning.
Imagine it doing it in small chunks
Set up your area to work a day or hours before you actually intend to start
Give yourself FOMO by watching other people do it online or in real life.
Intentionally build in a pleasurable reward for getting a chunk of it done and all of it done
Break up the starting process into chunks. Ask yourself what’s the #1 action I can start with? And do it.
The result of all this is that instead of being afraid of beginning, you will actually go out looking for new things to begin so that you can be with your new friend.
Making friends with beginning breaks open and reveals all the magic inside it.
The next time you start it will be with more skill, more wisdom, and maybe even with the pleasure of knowing something new will happen.
If you think of life as impermanence, where everything dies and everything’s slipping away.. then you are also living in a world where everything is arising, awakening, renewing and birthing.
What’s new, what’s coming next?
If you’re friends with beginning, you’re continually surprised by the different kinds of genius, power, and magic that come out of it. You may even fall in love with the beginner’s mind, which is part of lots of Asian philosophy, where you treat every moment as a new beginning and every moment shows itself as your new friend.
So I hope you begin something wonderful today, and I hope you notice that something wonderful is always beginning out there, even as other things fall apart.
In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities. In the expert’s mind, there are few. So go begin and find out what happens next!
xoxo
Ginger
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6 ways the Old rite of Imbolc can help with seasonal depression
Perhaps one of the least known festivals of the year, Imbolc is a celebration of early spring right at the edge of winter. In early February, new life begins to poke through the soil and buds tighten on the trees. Imbolc is a time for bringing new ideas into the light and for growing what we have been reflecting on over the winter months.
This is also a time of year when many people are suffering from seasonal depression. The lack of sunlight and cold weather can be hard to deal with, especially by February. With the promise of spring warmth still a ways off, try these 6 ancient Imbolc traditions to get you through to the Spring Equinox- when daylight will have finally reached 12 hours!
#1. The Goddess/Saint Brigid= Creativity is key!
The Celtic Goddess (now Saint) Brigid is associated deeply with the traditions of Imbolc. She blesses the season with fire (the returning sunlight) and water (through her sacred wells, waters and springs). She is a Goddess of motherhood and fertility. She gives the gifts of poetry, healing, weaving and basically any craft you do with your hands. One way to beat seasonal depression is to be like Brigid! Break out the art supplies, the clay, the keyboard, the kombucha kit and the garden seeds. Tap into nature’s emerging creative pulse and turn all that winter rumination into action. Brigid’s modern name is Etsy! Go check out what others are making and get inspired to join in the fun.
#2. Feasts and Fire
Another Imbolc tradition is the lighting of fires. Fires are not only practical but remind us of the returning power of the sun. In the Christian church, Imbolc is known as Candlemas, when candles are made to honor the Virgin Mary. Lighting an old fashioned camp fire outside on cold February night is a good opportunity to gather with friends and family, and reflect, share and laugh together. Imbolc is also a time of feasting so you might want to make some food you can cook in the fire, popcorn, hot dogs and of course- marshmallows! If you can’t light a fire outside- buy some pretty candles for your house and light them every evening at sunset. Notice that the sun is setting later each day by a few minutes- and let it be a cheerful reminder that spring is coming soon.
#3. Spring clean your home/office/car/body!
Now is the perfect time for a good spring cleanse. The name February comes from the Roman month of cleansing and means “to purify”. Take this moment to get rid of anything that is cluttering up your home and stagnating the energy. You will immediately feel the dopamine reward of walking into a room filled with clean open surfaces. If you can bear the cold, open a window while you clean and let some refreshing air flow through your home. Making cleaning into an Imbolc celebration is also a great way to tempt kids to tackle their rooms and get rid of toys they don’t want any more!
#4. Visit a stream, river or well
Traditionally, Imbolc was a time for visiting holy water; a spring or a well, to both purify us and bring fertility to our dreams. Why not set off on an adventure to find some fresh water near your home (snow counts!) If the water’s clean, splash some on yourself and set an intention to wash off any vibes you don’t want to take into spring with you. One old tradition is to dip a piece of ribbon in the water and then hang it from a nearby tree (trees near water are especially sacred to Brigid) to carry your messages of hope and healing to anyone who passes by. Pick up any rubbish you see near to water as an act of gratitude.
#5. Read Poetry- Write Poetry
Brigid is the patron saint/Goddess of poets and all literature. Poetry allows us to have a fresh perspective on things. It ignites new ideas and sparks a flame in our hearts. If you have a book of poems gathering dust on your bookshelf today is a great day to pull it out and read. It never fails to amaze me how different I feel after reading a poem. If you like to write this is also a wonderful time to try some poetry of your own. One fun way to stimulate your brain is to make a list of all the words you associate with spring and then write a poem about spring using none of those words!
#6 Healing Foods and Teas
Imbolc energy is one of purification and cleansing. So it’s a great time to go on a spring cleanse. Liver detox herbs like dandelion and rejuvenating nettles are great for the spring to wake the body up after eating heavier foods all winter long to stay warm. Naturally this is a time when animals come out of hibernation- and you’re not much different. Your body will be craving the fresh nutrition of spring foods like fresh greens. Because Imbolc is a festival of fire and water- soups, broths, teas and all things warm. light and nourishing will feel wonderful. I personally like to add some matcha green tea to my days this time of year. This Japanese tea leaf powder is perfect for afternoon slumps of energy. You may want to try our Spring Green tea for a nice Imbolc time tonic! Sauna, massage, hot baths with herbs and facial/lung steams are also wonderful for early spring cleansing.
If you are inspired to add Imbolc to your February celebrations let me know in the comment section! Do you already celebrate this spring/winter moment in your own way? Please let me know what your tradition is and why you love it!
xoxo
Ginger