Basic Skills and Tools

(The Gear)

Play around with the exercises here. Pick one to practice for a week. Use them as needed. Explore.

Heart Frequency/ Divine Love attunement

for when you’re feeling hurt, angry, ashamed, disgusted, like you’re broken or a monster or will never be good enough. a way to bring more Beauty, Connection/ Intimacy, or more Spiritual practice into your life. this one is one of the most foundational practices you can do.

Awakening you to your birthright - the frequency of the Heart. Because Love is the medicine. And when and where you’re feeling stuck, it’s probably because Love isn’t present.

If you’re newer to this practice, it may feel subtle or unsure initially. It might feel strange. There might be grief or frustration or resistance. That’s OK. Welcome whatever your experience is and maybe try it a few more times before dismissing or giving up on it.

“Changing channels”/ Kenosis

for when you’re spinning out and struggling to find center; when you feel pulled in a million directions and need a reset; when you’re wanting more inner spaciousness; when you’re in your head and want to come back to your body; when you’ve been so focused on everyone else you’ve lost sight of yourself. another really foundational practice

The way we tend to process stimulus is: something happens and we receive the stimulus through our senses, which often triggers an emotion, which usually triggers a thought, which we give meaning to based on our personality and past experiences; which then prompts a cascade of patterned behaviors. Because society encourages us to be in our heads and disconnected from our bodies and emotions, if someone asks us what we’re experiencing, we usually answer with thoughts and interpretations. Sometimes we’ll share emotions. Rarely will we describe sensations.

Yet sensations are closest to the present moment experience. Everything else is in many ways linked to past experiences. If we’re trying to behave in new ways, we can’t respond based entirely on experiences which are similar, but may not be truly relevant here and now. We have to be present enough that there’s room for other possibilities.

So developing our awareness and literacy around sensation can be an important practice.

In the audio below, I talk briefly about this and introduce the practice of kenosis. Kenosis means “self-emptying” and is an ancient Gnostic or mystic Christian practice of compassionately witnessing our sensations and emotions until our body has told it what it needs to and we find silence.

Create Space

for when you’re feeling overwhelmed or weighed down by demands, obligations, and to-dos; or for when your body feels tight and heavy

You’d probably find it helpful to do some very practical “space-creating” things like:

Create some physical space by doing something like setting a timer for 10min and picking one area of your physical space to go on a cleaning and organizing blitz. Or, create some scheduling space by picking one or more events or classes you said you’d attend that you don’t actually want to and clearing them from you calendar. Or maybe it’s asking for a babysitter for a night. Or taking that pile of “stuff to get rid of” and actually doing it.

But it will also help to create some internal space. And to do that, I’ll offer a few practices:

• Breathing visualization to clear stuck energy

  • Version One clears stuck energy in a gently activating way - good if you tend towards collapse, depression, lethargy

• Version Two clears stuck energy in a calming way - good if you tend towards anxiety, tension, frustration, aggression

• Humming and Toning practice

• Kenosis (a mystic or Gnostic Christian practice of “self-emptying”) - see above

• Nervous system reset and energetic hygiene practice - see below

Energetic Hygiene

a really good practice for empaths and highly sensitive humans; for those who over-give or tend towards codependency; for those who lean towards more intimacy than discernment and want to work on boundaries. also important if you spend time with other people who don’t have very good boundaries or in places where people who are hurting (physically or otherwise) go.

additionally, this could be a great way to end your day before bed or to transition to “home mode” after work.

**note: if you’re someone who tend more towards being armored than being wide open and you still want to practice this, instead of “zipping up”, you can try “zipping down” and see how that feels…

Rest

for when you’re totally exhausted, you’re been hustling and you need to reset your rhythm so you can stop; you can’t see other solutions or possibilities and you want more access to your creativity

There are lot of ways we can practice rest and in a society where rest is actively discouraged and is a revolutionary act, it’s necessary and good to get creative with it.

Some possibilities:

• lay down and close your eyes or even nap;

• commute in silence to give your ears a break;

• put the phone away and just stare out the window either during a commute or on lunch break or several times throughout the day for 5min;

• focus on your breath while driving, while standing in line, etc;

• go outside to sit or walk and engage your senses - listen to the birds, feel the air on your skin, smell the smells, etc;

• practice restorative yoga or yoga nidra;

• say ‘no’ to something;

• mark a day on your calendar as an “unstructured day” and make no plans ahead of time so you can follow our impulses in the moment;

• knit, weave, sew, color, make things with clay, write, sing, play an instrument, put on music and dance, etc;

What would feel the most like it would interrupt how “grind culture” and “doing” are showing up in your life right now? Where can you make time for that in either big chunks or multiple small ones.

If you want to lay down and be guided into more rest, here’s a podcast episode I did - the guidance starts at 4:20:

Nature Connection/ Co-regulation/ Practicing Animist Kinship

a good way to start to feel connection again if you’ve been withdrawn, are struggling to trust other humans, or have become disconnected from spiritual practices. also a great way to practice animist kinship.

You can practice with trees, stones, bodies of water, etc. It’s best to start off practicing with something with a large enough, obvious enough presence you can feel it. Please don’t skip the ‘asking permission’ and ‘making offerings’ parts of this ritual.

Know Enoughness - Satiation

for when you’re feeling grabby, desperately hungry for something or caught up in stories of lack and not enough; for when you’re overwhelmed and over-stimulated

(coming soon)

Beginning to speak the language of energy/ tuning into your subtle body

for those newer to intuitive development and ways of knowing that aren’t all mind/ logic-based; helpful if you want to be able to be more aware and actively engaged when receiving energy work

(coming soon)

“And” space

for those who tend to think in binaries or feel trapped or frozen between two opposing options. for those who feel caught swinging back and forth between extremes and may have trouble finding center.

(coming soon)