Getting grounded

/ Shamanic Healing of Ames / Leave a comment

Is your brain sometimes like a ping pong ball, bouncing all over the place without focus, shifting from topic to topic at warp speed? Does it leave you without clarity or focus?

This can happen if you are not grounded.

Grandmother Cottonwood

Some of those who walk past me are connected to Earth energy. They feel stable, supported, solid, fully in their bodies and in the present. Others who walk past seem floaty, disconnected, living in their heads, in the past or future.

You are the boss of your own life! You are in command of your energy! You can focus your energy including your thoughts. You too can be grounded and fully present in your body. It’s easy!

Begin by imagining yourself sending down roots deep into the Earth and pulling up Earth energy that will anchor and stabilize your own energy and help you focus with clarity on what you choose. For a child, pretend you are a tree and send down your roots.

Two more easy ways to ground yourself : Use a stainless steel spoon and rub the bottom of your feet; Walk barefoot on the grass, garden soil or a beach. ( If you can’t do this, try just sitting in a chair with your bare feet on the earth.)

Let your grounded self then align with source and this alignment will create clarity and focus and fresh new energy flowing through you, displacing the stale energy of the past.

Message from the stones

/ Shamanic Healing of Ames / Leave a comment

Dear ones, you may think we stones have no hearing, no voice, no awareness, but there, you would be wrong.

Our awareness exists at much lower and heavier vibrations of energy than yours. Our energy is dense and compact. Our energy particles interlock and overlap in ways that create great mass and weight.

Cairn – various stones

Like all things, we have what you call a spirit, an awareness you might say.

Time as you know it is meaningless to us. Our life cycle from creation to the point of breaking up and dissolving and then forming once again into solid stone is measured in hundreds of thousands of your years, perhaps even longer. Millions of years.

We are in this for the long haul! If you want to learn patience, study the stones.

We have seen Earth’s history unfolding, we have felt the vibrations of war, of peace, of major human migration, climate changes, and times of peace and plenty.

We are the ancient ones. If you wish to communicate with us, tune into our frequency. We can offer you our wisdom.

We are eternal, we support your world, your lives, and all life on this planet with our strong foundation. We provide the bedrock on which all life depends.

We are happy to do so. We take our job seriously!

Obligation and duty

/ Shamanic Healing of Ames / Leave a comment

Do you feel obligated to carry out certain actions that others deem important?

Do you feel you must go to events chosen by others, buy and give gifts, act within the human made frameworks of rules, rituals, honor, custom, tradition, and habit?

Vine tendril

Do you follow procedures out of routine and attend ceremonies that no longer make you happy?

Do you feel trapped in endless cycles of duty that bring you no joy and keep you stuck?

It is time to look closely at your automatic responses when duty or obligation come knocking at your door. Do you feel anger, resentment, a lack of freedom, or do you feel uplifted, joyful, connected, and happy?

If you feel resentment, it’s time to gather your courage and create new habits, new thoughts, and new rituals that support and add real meaning and purpose to your life and connect you more deeply to your loved ones. And, they must bring you joy.

It is your life, dear one, and you get to make the rules and set the boundaries that work for you, create the ceremonies, choose the events and activities you enjoy.

You are the creator and designer of your life. Make it beautiful, make it uplifting, make it fun. And make it yours!

Like a tree

/ Shamanic Healing of Ames / Leave a comment

Like a tree you can send down your roots and draw energy and nourishment from the earth, trusting in your ability to feed your body, live in the light, and anchor your spirit.

Like a tree, you can grow toward the light, straight and true, with no deviation to the left or right, trusting in the life-giving light of your true purpose to guide you and inform your growth.

Like a tree, you can reach out toward the heavens, connecting with all that is, trusting that you are one with all things, trusting that your roots will hold you.

Like a tree, you can send out new growth, trusting in the process of life to bring you energy, creativity, and soaking in the sustenance of light that is your birthright.

Like a tree, you can develop your seeds for the future and scatter them when they’re ready. Trust that these seeds of love, kindness, connection, hope, seeds of possibility and creativity and ongoing life will take root and grow where they are most needed.

Maple seeds

Like a tree, you can experience seasons of rest, seasons of regeneration and growth, seasons of letting go, trusting in the great rhythms of nature, trusting you are where you need to be.

You are more like a tree than you can imagine!

Clear the clutter

/ Shamanic Healing of Ames / Leave a comment

Physical clutter can keep you hemmed in with dirty clothes, food and drink containers, plastic bags, old newspapers, endless knick-knacks gathering dust, unused flower pots, old magazines, boxes of old possessions…

…but clutter can be more than various piles of stuff filling your homes…

Clutter can also be random thoughts piling up in your head and swirling around, keeping you stuck, in an energetic haze of stale emotions that can build up in your energy field like clouds before a thunder storm. Emotional clutter can block your joy, keeping you stuck in the past.

Prairie grasses, cloudy sky

Clutter can overtake your calendar with too many unimportant time wasting activities, leaving you no space or time to rest, keeping you rushing around and off balance.

I ask you to clear the clutter in all areas of your life! This is for your health and the health of the planet!

When you clear the physical clutter, you make new space for air and energy to circulate and new spaces to rest your eyes and your brain.

When you clear the time clutter on your calendar, you make time for yourself to rest, relax and breathe.

When you clear the clutter in your mind, you make room for connections with the divine, fresh creativity, for new supportive and uplifting thoughts and feelings to take root.

There is no need to overthink your clearing of the clutter in your life, no need to get it all done immediately. Just begin by clearing what is not needed in one small area of your home, your schedule, or your mind.

Clear what is no longer compatible with who you are, what seems unnecessary, or excess or unessential. Ask for help and support if you need it.

You are the “housekeeper” in all areas of your life- physical, emotional, spiritual and mental. You choose what to keep in your life and what to release.

Trust the threads of love

/ Shamanic Healing of Ames / Leave a comment

Do you allow yourself to make the kind gesture, let yourself reach out to others when that is your first impulse?

Do you stop yourself from creating new friendships, visiting family members, having friends over when deep down you know you would thrive on the connection?

Pair of wild geese in evening light

Some day, dear ones, your friend may move many hundreds of miles away, your family member may fall ill, your loved one may die. Your life in this body is limited and finite so you must make the most of each moment.

(Please remember – the life of your spirit is infinite and unlimited!)

Do you feel you are not worthy of love, connection, or deep abiding friendships with amazing people? This dear one, is a distortion in your thinking. Begin compassionately and lovingly to create new habits of thought that support your highest good!

Trust your spirit to know who to spend time with. Trust the whisperings within you that move you toward connection and wholeness and expansion.

  • Wild geese in springtime

Allow yourself to participate fully in the great web of life that connects all living things with the resilient and powerful threads of love.

Full Moon

/ Shamanic Healing of Ames / Leave a comment

Grandmother Cottonwood’s advice to you during a full moon?

Rest, dream, lay on the earth and soak in the silvery moonlight. Know that you belong, that you are an integral part of this universe. Let the moonlight fill every cell of your body, your breath and your aura with peace. Rest yourself, body mind and spirit.

Let earth energy fill you and anchor you as well. Know the fullness of your life as it is right now. Know the sense of completeness and satisfaction and the sense of being at home in your body just for today. Full moon helps you become aware of these blessings.

Just goof off! The energy of the waning moon will begin soon enough. Then you will feel energized and ready to tackle your projects once again.

The full moon is your opportunity for a mini vacation from constant doing, pushing, striving. Your bodily rhythms tuned over millennia to the rhythms of the moon come to a still point on this day.

Honor yourself and all you’ve accomplished. Honor your need to rest and recharge and be still.

Honor your need to bathe in the magical moonlight for a little while.

Can you locate your spirit?

/ Shamanic Healing of Ames / Leave a comment

Your spirit may seem invisible to you, like the quiet operating system behind the more colorful and dramatic scenes of your physical life.

Seek and find your spirit is under all the clutter of your mind, waiting patiently for your full attention. Know that your spirit is who you really are at your core, who you have always been.

Can you tap into the timeless wisdom at your center that lies beneath all the worry, doubt and fear?

Can you swim in the ocean of light that is your true home? It lies beneath the clouds of heavy energy and stuck feelings that have built up in your energy fields over the years.

You can do this. Even in the eye of the storm in your life you can take time for yourself, breathe deeply and visit that peaceful place at your center that knows no fear, that is wise and loving, that place that is timeless, your true home.

Here you will renew and energize yourself and reweave your scattered energy to bring you back home to yourself once again.

Your surroundings reflect you!

/ Shamanic Healing of Ames / Leave a comment

I would like to thank all those many two legged beings who pick up the trash from our community of trees, grasses wildflowers, bushes, thistles, brambles… We feel your care as you clean up behind those who give no thought to their papers, wrappers, cans, bottles, bags and junk.

Your surroundings reflect you and your inner world. Look around you. Are you pleased by what you see?

Remember this: The woods and beaches and neighborhoods and landscapes and private yards on this earth reflect what you think of yourselves. If you have no self regard you will show that outwardly by dropping trash and fouling your environment.

If you love yourself and care for yourself, your surroundings will reflect that regard.

We keep the earth in balance, all of us, together! Please continue to do your part. Learn to become aware of your piece in this puzzle called life on planet earth. Learn how you fit in with the other living beings that surround you.

Learn how your spirit fits in with the spirits of all things, the living tapestry of energy that surrounds and supports us all.

Know that we are all connected in this magnificent web of life. We depend on each other. We thrive together!

Please be aware!

/ Shamanic Healing of Ames / Leave a comment

Why so many food wrappers plastic bottles, grocery bags, random papers, and unknown pieces of junk in the woods?

Please be aware of your waste and the effect it has on others, including other species. Those that must remain rooted, especially.

As the wrappers and junk degrade, the elements used leach into soil and water, our direct source of sustenance, and indirectly, your source of sustenance. For we are all connected!

Grandmother Cottonwood, morning sunlight

We trees and rooted beings take up our nutrients from the soil, but we can’t sort out the harmful from the healthy.

Plus, think of this! it makes our surroundings and yours ugly, toxic, unpleasant. I did not sign up for this life to act as a dumpster!

Wake up! Trash in the woods is just a tiny part of the disrespect for our home planet and unawareness of the connections between all living things.

When humans pollute and foul their own nest, poison their own air and water, they do the same harm to those life forms that support their very existence on this planet.

From the trees that shade and shelter you, that hold the soil from erosion, the tiny insects that buzz and pollinate your food supply, those that become food for the birds, those creatures of tooth and claw that keep other populations in check, those rooted ones that filter the air, those soaring birds that clean up the dead carcasses of fallen animals, those mammals that graze and ruminate – we all depend on each other.

Kingfisher

Whether you know it or not, we will all survive together, or we will go down together.