Louisville Salt Cave

We Must Get Really Quiet to Hear the Whispers of Creation

10/5/2020

We’re finally in the season of letting go and by now we have a lot of practice. Maybe this is why the change to Fall seems so welcome this year. It is absolutely a dying off. For so many of us, this hasn't been a metaphor as much as direct circumstance in losing those we love.

And grief is blinding. I had a teacher once tell me it's the most illogical emotion that we experience. Being in this illogical place is natural for me, but I’ve spent my entire life trying to tame the wild child that felt more than she ever understood. This life experience of feeling illogical and embracing that feeling instead of following the directives of the mind, is why I came.

Shedding the layers or peeling an onion are lovely images of slow and paced growth - but that's not what we're experiencing these days. This is massive and each day we have to choose how we're going to enter it. Like a chance to start again, every 24 hours. We must be deliberate about this.

I've heard many mystics say our current living situation is our creation, and I believe this. The Toltec believe our dreams create our reality and if we look to where we’ve focused our creativity in ways of entertainment, from movies to our social feeds, we’re addicted to drama. Where we place our attention and energy matters.

The beautiful thing about letting go, about death, is the closeness it brings you to spirit. I heard another mystic say that our prayers are never more powerful than in times of grief. How true this must be in order to be reborn. We must get really quiet to hear the whispers of creation.

So as we grieve collectively, as a human race on this planet earth, what are you praying for? I’d love to know. You have no idea the impact you have on other people and your shared prayer may just be affirmation for someone in need today. A thought creates a ripple in the universe and can transmit time.

There is relief here. Maybe it's relief from the heat with a cooling off of the earth. Maybe its relief from suffering that accompanies this earthly plane. Maybe it’s relief from the neighbor with the yard signs.

As we grip tightly and hold on to the life we once knew, I pray that we're able to soften a bit and slip into the relief available to us.

I pray we move together with open hearts and open minds to truly learn and listen and love. I pray for you, and for me, to find grace in the moments it feels lost. And I'm grateful for the opportunity. After all, it’s why I came, and I think it’s why you’re here too.

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Finding True Freedom

9/3/2020

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I’m writing to you on a full moon, the energy is high and it’s taken more work than usual to find centeredness. I’m always searching and enjoy the journey.

I want to discuss the fear pandemic. These times aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. I pray for the pandemic to wane, the civil rights movement is creating deep progressive change and our wounds continue to cry out for healing. It’s as if the work just gets more and more intimate.

We wake up every day with a choice. We can choose to be fueled in anger and frustration and resentment, or we can choose to see what the mirror is reflecting back to us and turn inward for salvation. As we move into this great awakening, there is only one resource to turn to for guidance, and that’s you.

Listening to an excerpt about the Law of One, the discussion was around True Freedom. This is the freedom found when you find your own way of being instead of following they. This is speaking (lovingly and constructively) how you truly feel without shame and fear.

We’re heading into a political season, God help us. If there is ever a time to turn inward and stop listening to the noise outside, it is now. The world around us is crazy right now, there’s no need to welcome negative external influences. Shut that shit down. You are the only person in control of what you allow in.

I’m turning inward for feedback these days and it feels like learning to walk again. I stumble and fall and have to find the courage and strength to get back up and try again.

There’s a lot of prayer, a lot of grace, and a lot of tuning in to listen. This is often challenged by a busy mind, so part of that listening for me is finding the gift in the moment of beautiful distractions. This morning’s meditation was interrupted by the cat and my nearly 10 year old playing in front of me. I came out, played, and spent the morning I’d dedicated to my practice gently waking my kids and shuffling them out the door to stumble on their own.

Staying in the flow of life means letting go of the daily to-do lists. This seems impossible with work from home and home schooling and all the things we built our lives around up to this point. But what would happen if we unplugged; turned off the news, shut down social media, and said no to the 2-3 extra zoom calls we likely don’t need to be a part of?

The Cave was built with the intention of unplugging for 45 minutes. We now offer longer sessions because that simply isn’t enough time if you aren’t doing it daily. How can we rebuild our society where the need to unplug is lessened?

While our business is struggling during this pandemic, it still warms my heart to see Shelbyville Road slow at 7pm. It fills me with hope when I see a store owner whose business was vandalized talk about their broken window and lost merchandise not comparing to 400 years of oppression.

I’m here for it. I don’t know what that means, other than I’m going to do my best every day to tune in and ask what is mine to do and follow that over my to-do list. Let’s change the world together. Let’s take responsibility for what is showing up in our mirror, our shadow sides. Let’s stop blaming and start loving.

“I’ll just listen and wait for you” - Caroline Myss

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Moral Judgements are Never About the Obvious - Dr. Gabor Mate'

8/18/2020

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Anyone else continuing to face challenges?

This is normally a place of comfort for me. In part due to my insatiable taste for not feeling enough, but also because I know this is an area for growth, and oh that lustful feeling of being better than I once was. Wait a minute…

The opportunities for growth have continued to present themselves over the past few weeks, and to spare you the details, I’m going to do my best to summarize what I'm learning.

One of my glaring messages this timeframe has been that I make mistakes. This is pretty acceptable for most people, but I’m usually right. The work I’ve been doing the last 5 years has led me to working on nothing but grace for myself and others; putting the judge to rest.

I did something to loosely appease what I needed in the moment, because Blondie (the name for my ego) knows best, instead of truly turning in and asking what I needed to do. I’d been under an immense amount of stress, the most recent of which had caused me to throw my back, so it was beginning to manifest itself physically. I didn’t think I could handle anything else.

Instead of a situation being the thing I couldn’t handle (external circumstance) it was the mind out of control to the point of latching on to the unforgiving patterns I’m continuing to course correct (internal process). How could I practice 8 years of mindfulness and be back in this place?

It’s all about awareness. So I took my disturbing thoughts, the kind where I can witness myself starting to run down the crazy railroad, and meditated on them. John and I got busy painting our son’s room, which allowed us to be distracted and creative; a gift in the middle of our chaos.

By process of slowing down, I got more and more clear on what I needed to do to redirect. I’m reading ‘In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts’ by Dr. Gabor Mate’ on addiction, and it’s providing so much detail around how our brain processes addictive patterns.

One thing he notes on meditation and mindfulness, “To pursue such practices, one requires mental resources, a commitment to emotional clarity, an access to teaching, and some mental space in one’s life. They are also difficult, especially at the beginning. But for people whose lives are blighted by addictions without being totally gripped by them, these practices can help light the way to wholeness.”

I read mental space in one’s life and laughed. I’m definitely doing this work without that, or carving it out somehow in this blessed life of 3 kids, a husband and a small business in the middle of a pandemic. Not the point, but I do think it’s important to recognize the benefits of a mindfulness practice to course correct, and that it requires support from a number of areas.

Mate’s quote below inspired me to write about coming together as community to work as a unified human race in the pursuit of evolution. Recent events started my journey with this by turning inward. A little bit of humility offers a place to reflect, and a whole lot of grace eases that path.

When we start to look outward in judgement, we have an opportunity to see how that’s a mirror reflecting back to us. The more love we can bring to this process, the more loving our world will become.

Gabor Mate’ on reading opposing political articles for purpose:
“I can tell myself that we’re different. Moral judgments, however, are never about the obvious: they always speak to the underlying similarities between the judge and the condemned. My judgments of others are an accurate gauge of how, beneath the surface, I feel about myself. It’s the only willful blindness in me that condemns others for deluding themselves; my own selfishness that excoriates others for being self-serving; my lack of authenticity that judges falsehood in others. It is the same, I believe, for all moral judgments people cast on each other and for all vehemently held communal judgments a society visits upon its members.”

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In Dark Places

7/12/2020

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Greetings all,

I hope you are healthy and safe. We are in the midst of dark days. There are likely darker ones ahead. So of course I am working with light in the studio.

I've been fascinated with playing with light for a long time. I did a self initiation ceremony fifteen years ago for which I ordered fifty glow sticks of various colors. I hung them in a circle in a small forested area near my home. Part of the ceremony was to light them up as I entered right after the sun went down. It was one of the most magical nights of my life. The beauty of that multicolored phosphor light has stayed with me. Years ago I bought a ceramics book at a convention. In one of the chapters there was a photo of a clay lantern. It had a lovely ovoid shape and very fine curvilinear cut outs to allow the light through. I immediately wanted to make one. I had tried on numerous occasions to make something that vaguely embodied what I had envisioned. I have repeatedly failed in that attempt, until now.

I haven't yet fired this piece or the others in the series, but I am finally hitting the aesthetic I pictured. I started having more success when I changed a few things: the tool I was using to carve them, when in their drying cycle I carved them, and bringing them outside on my deck to carve in natural light. (Made the process more enjoyable than doing it in the dark basement studio). As I bring these ideas into physical being I find moments of joy and peace even in the pandemonium that we have shaking our world. I don't think it is an accident that right now I am working on creating forms that only show their true beauty in the darkness.

I try not to look ahead too much because the future is smoke and while things could change to bring about a more just and healthy world they could also go the opposite way at this juncture. I say that not to frighten you, but to emphasize just how important this moment in time is. Many people are re-examining their relationships in their life, not just to other people, but to their work, their time, and their values. We have people in the streets demanding concrete changes to how our society runs. We have people re-imagining the world. At the same time, we have systems of power structures working overtime to maintain control of the narrative, and to offer us false choices. We can refuse those choices and demand our own. I am for the most part sheltering in place, sharing what I can, and creating. I want to bring more beauty and wonder into the world. So I create with my hands and heart.

Why am I telling you this? Right now it seems that my ability to create in the visual arts is finally coming to maturity. I don't think it is an accident that it is happening now. What ability or talent is bursting forth from you in this moment of crisis? As the structures of our narrative have fallen away what deep need in you is finally being expressed? I know many people are cooking for the very first time, or baking, or sewing, or getting outside daily, or really giving their loved ones time. There is something special inside of you that yearns to be birthed into the world, and oddly enough it may be exactly what the world needs. If not the actual product itself, the energy that is generated from your act of creation. Maybe it is joy that comes from it. Maybe it is peace. Maybe it is stillness or even love.

Not all of you have had the time, but many of you have. Are you courting the aliveness within you? Are you reconnecting with the essentials of your own nature? Are you recreating your personal world, or are you just waiting for a return to normal? The world needs all of you right now. The parts of you that have been pushed into the closet of abandoned dreams and wishes need to be brought out. So go, venture into the darkness, and if you need a bit of light, take a lantern with you.

Peace and Blessings,
Thomas Mooneagle

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Taking Responsibility

6/3/2020

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The fight to end the persecution of black people must bring change. I’m hopeful for that.

I believe that we (white America) are generationally responsible for this. We wouldn’t be here if we hadn’t enforced slavery to begin with. Personally, I should have taken more time to listen, changed my priorities, and not looked away when things were said in my proximity. It starts with me.

In order to do this effectively and create positive change, we must try to come from a place of centeredness.

According to the Tao, the middle is the way toward universal harmony. There are extremes in all circumstance and it is our purpose to constantly strive toward the center of our being to connect with this harmony. This doesn't mean sit on the fence, this means go inward to seek truth; let yourself be disrupted and seek the space between. This is where the truth of our being lives.

We must choose to be on the side of mercy, love, and grace, but in order to do this honestly we have to have a difficult confrontation to our contribution.

I have so much to learn and am committing myself to doing that. I’d like to share what one of my coaches, Jacque Saltsman, has gathered as resources to better understand.

She also suggests signing up for the Whiteness at Work class taking place next week. I’m registered.

I believe that love will prevail through courageous acts of turning within and moving that understanding to action. I hope you join me.

Jacque Saltsman Post from May 29

EDITED 6/2/20 * After several people asked to share this post publicly outside of Facebook, I wanted to make sure it is centered around and gives credit to the Black Women from which I have learned. Many are listed below, but especially Demetria Miles McDonald at Decide Diversity, Lettie Johnson at Gifted By Design Leadership & Consulting Firm, Desiree Adaway, Austin Channing Brown, and Roxane Gay.
-------------------------------------------
"But what can I do?" I can't tell you how many times I've asked myself that question or heard other people ask it. Well, the answer is: A LOT. There is a lot we can do. And WE (white America) are responsible for changing this. So, to my white friends, here are some ideas of what we can do. These are things I've learned from teachers and activists of color I've been following and learning from over the past few years. It's not comprehensive. It's a start. Please add more resources in the comments and I'll update the list.

TAKE ACTION.
Make the calls. Send the emails. Write the letters. Sign the petitions. March at the protests. It helps. Follow trustworthy sources who tend to have calls-to-actions in their posts (Shaun King, Black Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter Louisville, Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), Louisville SURJ - (Showing Up for Racial Justice), Grassroots Law Project.

EDUCATE YOURSELF on systemic racism.
Read books like WHITE FRAGILITY (I can't recommend this one enough) by Robin DiAngelo, BIASED by Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt, ME & WHITE SUPREMACY by Layla F. Saad, I'M STILL HERE by Austin Channing Brown, STAMPED and HOW TO BE ANTIRACIST by Ibram X. Kendi.

HIRE PEOPLE OF COLOR to help you and your organization change.
My local favorites are Decide Diversity and Lettie Johnson & SteVon Edwards-Mph with Gifted By Design Leadership & Consulting Firm.

LEARN ON SOCIAL MEDIA (AND PAY THEM FOR THEIR PROGRAMS).
Fill your feeds (FB, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn) with activists and teachers who are doing this work. Some of my favorites are Layla F. Saad (IG @laylafsaad), Hannah Drake (IG @hannahdrake628), Desiree Adaway (IG @desireeadaway), Jessica Fish (IG @j.essicafish), Ericka Hart (IG @ihartericka), Roxane Gay (IG @roxanegay74), Ericka Hines (IG @divahines), Rachel Elizabeth Cargle (IG @rachel.cargel) Shaun King (IG @shaunking), Black Lives Matter (IG @blklivesmatter).
*There will be times when you will not like what they are saying. It will sting but stick with it. This isn't about your feelings. It's about dismantling racism. Sit with the hard questions and ask yourself how it's true for you.

CONSUME MEDIA (movies, tv, books, podcasts, music, art) written, directed, starring and featuring people who don't look like you. And not just about racial issues. And NOT movies made by white people about black people. If you like comedies, watch funny movies created by people of color. Same with books, podcasts and shows.

SAME WITH SOCIAL MEDIA
Make sure at least 1/4 of your feeds are from people who don't look like you. If you're into design, follow black designers. Same with cars, food, literally anything you are interested in.

SUPPORT BUSINESSES OWNED BY PEOPLE OF COLOR.
Be intentional about where you spend your money. Think about where you eat, shop and who you do business with. If there aren't black people on that list, change it. (btw, If you haven't eaten at Lucretia's Kitchen, you are seriously missing out.)

GET SUPPORT
Reach out. Lean on each other. Engage your white friends who are also learning. (Check on your Black friends, but DO NOT go to them with your feelings of guilt, shame, fear or uncertainty).
This is hard work, but not nearly as hard as fearing for your life just because of the color of your skin.
#neverbesilent #dothework
Lives depend on it.
If we don't have an intentional anti-racist plan for ourselves, our families and our businesses, then we are unintentionally perpetuating racism.
And THAT MUST STOP. NOW.
(I am still a toddler on this journey, but if I can help you in any way, please let me know.)

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Courage

4/14/2020

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I want to bring light to the front-men and women of our community. Those that are still working to keep us fed and saving lives need our prayers and positive energy more than ever. My father was a Louisville Firefighter and my sister-in-law is a charge nurse at Jewish Hospital’s ICU unit. All my life I’ve been surrounded by heroes and it is their courage that helps me to find mine. Please take a breath and say a prayer for everyone in service to our community.

Like everyone, the past month has been a rollercoaster of emotions ranging from faith of a higher power to come out stronger on the other side of this, to complete despair about what it means to those who have grieved the loss of family and death of the world as we knew it. Showing up as my kid’s teacher and mother every day takes courage.

We have the opportunity to create the world we want to live in for the first time in our lives. This means doing the inner work toward a high vibrational state, while allowing suffering and grief around the real and metaphorical deaths surrounding us. Doing inner work takes a ton of courage, and reflects our responsibility to the world we create.

This pandemic has brought everyone’s subconscious to the surface to be worked through. When triggered, we’re like a bunch of kids in a sandbox throwing sand. We can choose to remain in that sandbox taking part in the tantrum, or build magnificent new worlds out of what we have available to us. It takes courage to choose how we’re going to show up.

Have you heard that the planet has finally quit vibrating? Literally. I’d like to figure out a way to live in peace with Mother Earth so that my choices following this pandemic don’t cause her to physically vibrate. Not doing business (and I mean the Salt Cave) as usual takes courage.

Words from Rumi and Hafiz and Wendell Berry have blessed my soul during this time, soothing discomfort and bringing such simplicity to why we’re here. Coaches like Jacque Saltsman, guidance from The Power Path, connection to my Effiji Breath community, and education from the Passionist’s Earth and Spirit Center have kept me connected to my center, focused on meditation, prayer, and contemplation.

Coming from a family of heroes, it is difficult to overcome feeling selfish in my spiritual quest. My goal is always to share my heart with you, and hope that it moves you in some way to share yours. I hope this lands as a gift to our community, and that our connections give you courage.

We have choice in all things. One can choose conspiracy and fear, or one can choose creation and inner awareness by being courageous. In this cycle of death, how will you choose to be reborn?

With one silent laugh
You tilted the night
And the garden ran with stars.
- Rumi

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What are you doing today to create a world you want to live in?

3/19/2020

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The beautiful thing about the world under quarantine is we’re finding new ways to connect and lift one another up. I was actually inspired by the commercials last night after tuning in to Survivor (it felt fitting).

It seems that the Universe has delivered again when my focus for the year was to reign in energetically. This slowing down provides a gift of deliberate allowance for what needs to come up for us to work through. Aren’t we trying not to fall back into old patterns of doing things? Trying to find compassion and the beauty in each moment? We have to believe there is something bigger than any of us can comprehend waiting on the other side.

In this place of uncertainty, one gift we can offer ourselves and community is allowance. There has been a strong desire to connect with you all, but we’re not sure how to do that when the Cave seems to be the place of refuge. We understand everyone is dealing with their own struggles around this displacement but we want your input on how to best serve you when we reopen.

We decided to take preventative measures last week and close before any mandates came out because prevention and community are core values. The only thing known by Friday of last week was that we didn’t know enough, and it was best for us to step back to regroup so that we could serve our community on the back end of this thing.

So that’s what we’re doing. We’re working on ensuring the safest possible environment for your salt therapy experience. This modality is going to be more essential than ever with the need for healthy lung and immune function being a priority for us all.

And we’re being very intentional with this recent gift of time.

Our family has been reading The Giver this week. This futuristic world shelters their community from the pains and pleasures of life, because it makes for good order, but there was so much hidden from the people in the process.

Our daily discussions around the story and what is happening in our world give us talking points about our ability to create freedom through choice and we’re learning so much from our children who provide unique perspectives.

The Four Agreements shares the wisdom of the Toltec who believe our dreams (conscious and unconscious) create our reality. If this is true, what do we have to learn from what we’ve created so far? What are you doing every day to create the future you want to be a part of?

I want to know. And I want to slow down enough to love you through it all.

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Smooth Like Honey

2/28/2020

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Last month I mentioned Meggan Watterson talking about divinity running through her veins like honey, and it felt so real and truthful to me when I heard that. It tied directly into the work I was doing recently around awareness of acceptance and resistance within me.

I came to a point in the breath where I started to experience myself, feeling my intensity, and immediately began to resist it. Sometimes my intensity can feel like a bomb exploding and I’ve naturally built resistance to that. When I was able to catch it in that moment, it’s as if the honey jar broke, and it just started running through my veins. It consumed my being with a suppleness that is also me. That is how I know God within me, and it is available to me any time I can surrender in the moment.

Honey is such a beautiful metaphor for our own divine nature. From a healing perspective, it has antimicrobial elements. It’s sweet, as is innocence, our true essence, and it is made by bees, which work in community for success of their collective.

The honey is in the process. It’s the internal viewing that allows us to get glimpses of this gold, and know its truth or existence, so that we can bring just a piece of that in our day to day.

I heard Jennifer Freed say recently, “When you’re so concerned with taking someone else’s inventory, it’s because you’re terrified to look at your own”. That is one powerful and truthful statement. The bomb I reference feels really out of control, but when I can slow down enough to recognize the implosion, and fall into it, the possibilities feel endless. We so often look outside ourselves for happiness or misery, what could unfold for us if we started looking within?

An idea generated in the Meditation II class at the Passionist Earth and Spirit Center is from Galileo, the father of science. As a former monk, he researched What Does God know? To know what God knows, one can observe her creations. To know the gardener, study what she grows, and to know thyself, look within.

Father Joe suggests in class that a goal of meditation is to be with pleasant without attachment, and to be with unpleasant without aversion. To neither avert the implosion or fall into the honey jar.

Our addiction to stimulation, whether that be happiness or suffering, is real. To simply be is boring, but it is in that boredom that glimpses of enlightenment come. In the nothing, there is everything.

Finding stillness and quiet has been a constant quest for me over the past few weeks, and being a witness to the process allows for grace when honey seems far away. I can always fall into the words of Rumi when that occurs and bring a little sweetness to the present moment.

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Uncomfortable? You're exactly where you need to be.

2/3/2020

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“The ability to stand what one sees enables a woman to return to her deep nature, there to be sustained in all thoughts, feelings and actions.” - Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D.

I needed a break in the woods with the wild woman that is me and was able to take some time early last month to get in touch with her. I had the opportunity to read Women Who Run With the Wolves after carrying it around with me for 7 years. I thought I needed space to have an epiphany, to discover the next big thing, because I’ve been feeling the stirring, the shift taking place in my environment, and the message was strong and simple.

I was woken up in the middle of the night by a lamp turning on in my cabin. It wasn’t until I was journaling about this that I understood the message was that when I deny my intuition, my divinity, I deny God. God was there, in my dreams, in my cells, and a light literally came on to get my attention.

I’ve been told this before, but having the message come direct made it stick. I came home with a focus on my family and my business and the desire to continue to appreciate the gift in each precious moment.

I love how Estes always mentions the need to feel oneself. We are so quick to mask the intensity that is ourselves, but isn't this living? Depressed? Well let’s just fix that so you can get back to work. Overachiever? You are so successful! Nice? We have some work to do.

We are animals. We have instinctual nature that gives us information about how to live in this world, but we cover it up with pharmaceuticals, busyness and false representations of ourselves to make life easier. Is it really easier though? We only create more resistance in our lives when we cover up who we are to justify our place in the world, or overextend our personalities to make a claim for ourselves. You are enough and you are needed.

What would happen if we just all fell into ourselves and lived from a place of being true to self first? Maybe we’d finally move to a 4-day work week. We’d have growing pains. We’d have radical forgiveness and softening of hearts and maybe the beginning of world peace. Is that where we’re headed? I think so.

In a 2018 Speaker Series, Jacque Saltsman shared that we have four equally important tools that aid us in our decision making and living in the world. They are: the mind (thinking), emotions (feeling), body (sensing) and gut (intuiting). We have so much to gain as a culture that prioritizes mind over intuition and stillness.

When we start to utilize all of these tools, there may be discomfort. There is often pain in the body when the body has been neglected or quieted for a prolonged period. I heard Meggan Watterson recently say that the feeling of being connected to her divine self was like honey running through her veins. What a beautiful way to describe the feeling of divinity when we choose to allow it.

There is anxiety and depression when one’s life is out of alignment with one’s purpose. If we try to push these feelings aside as soon as they arise because they’re uncomfortable, we’re blatantly ignoring the message we’re receiving from God. This is the time to pay attention.

Estes said the above quote in reference to when women used to help with child labor. The smell of the blood, the hands on care required for such a divine act; that to be in that experience was a direct connection with their own divine nature, a resource within.

“She must be willing to feel anxious sometimes, otherwise she might as well have stayed in the nest.” - Estes

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Winter Wellness

1/20/2020

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I’ve recently had the honor of giving some talks about the Cave and how to care for the body preventatively during winter. Whether you're using Halotherapy to help the immune system stay strong during seasons of stress or quieting the mind for much of the same reason, we're your go-to spot for allowing the body to self-heal. Here are some considerations for prevention this winter:

Salt
Nutrition: Our bodies prefer salt in it's whole form; sea salt or Himalayan. The minerals in whole salt allows the body to properly absorb this nutrient and combat adverse reactions caused by table salt that is bleached and contains caking agents. As with life, balance is key and proper hydration recommended. Here's more information on consuming salt Sole' for wellness.

Respiratory: Halotherapy utilizes the antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory properties of salt to reduce inflammation, break up mucus and detox the body. Most clients find lasting relief from an halotherapy session after the first 24 hours, but research recommends multiple sessions in a row. When did you last give yourself permission to pause?

Skin: Skin is the largest organ and protects our bodies from toxins. When toxic exposure outside or inside causes unbalance, skin disorders such as acne, eczema and psoriasis occur. Salt helps to balance the pH of our skin allowing it to heal and better protect us from environmental and internal toxins.

Mindfulness
Grounding (walking/standing barefoot on the earth) is a popular way to connect with Mother Earth and settle the mind. The soil has micronutrients that are beneficial to our ecosystems and absorbed through dirt. Here are some additional tools for bringing peace of mind that can be enjoyed indoors:
Listen to music, dance, stretch, Qi Gong, acupuncture, journal, take a bath, watch a fire, chant or sing, pray.
Be sure to take time to really listen as well. Truly quiet. If only for 2 minutes a day, close the eyes and focus on your breath. We have so much knowledge to share with ourselves.

Winter Wellness
Dr. Joie Power, the owner of our essential oil product line, wrote a beautiful blog about winter wellness. Winter is the season of water, which governs the kidneys, adrenal and bladder. Think fluidity and stay in motion. Also, as a season with the highest Yin energy we are gifted the opportunity to go inward, seek within ourselves. In order to do this, we must slow down and quiet. Let's take a lesson from the plants and animals and bring our energy to our roots, get more rest and consume a little less.

The emotion for the season is fear, which I found fascinating, as it translates to our will to survive and ability to surrender. How does this apply to you?

I look forward to sharing the result of my inward journeying this yin winter season in the next blog and hope to see your shining face soon.