magic

  • Meditation, Uncategorized

    Making Meditation a Morning Ritual

    What my morning meditation feels like.

    Hey Dove,

    I started a new morning ritual for 2021: Morning Meditation.

    Even though I often have to tend to my kids and get their homeschool work clarified and turned in, I make at least 10 minutes per day to sit and focus on my breath, root myself into the earth, strengthen my connection with Source and with my own center.

    I have vowed this year to make my mystical practices a bigger part of my day-to-day living, and morning meditation is a part of that. Even though I live and breath symbolism and intuition, I sometimes often get distracted by or overwhelmed by life around me, so I need to bring myself back into my center. Meditation helps with that.

    Meditating first thing in the morning—or as close as possible to first thing—does a few things for me.

    1) Grounding. In this crayyyy—zy world we are a part of right now, it is essential to ground yourself often. News headlines and distractions pull us deeper into the rabbit hole of the media (social media is a part of that, too). It actually feels like it pulls your soul out of your body sometimes. Instead of living outside of myself all of the time, I want to really ground my soul into my mind and body so I can focus on what I want to do with my day, not whichever way the breadcrumb path or ranting mob leads me.

    I also want to ground into the earth to be able to use her energy to fuel my life. Rooting myself in my meditation practice has connected me so much more to the world around me and the magic I find in every nook and cranny of life.

    2) Focusing. I am super easily distracted, hyperactive, and easy to lead off course. For real. Like SQUIRREL! When I start my day with meditation, I get really focused on my breathing. I learn to let all of the distractions go and focus on my breath. Then on my energy centers. On my visualizations. On nothing, really.

    Even though you aren’t really supposed to focus on anything when you are meditating or even to have thoughts, I am just not there yet! If I get a deluge of thought when I am meditating, I simply return my thoughts to breathing, to my mantra for the day, to letting go and settling into the energy.

    When I practice pivoting from distraction back into focus right at the start of the day, it helps me do that throughout the day. It’s like a muscle that gets stronger when you work it.

    3) Connecting with Source/Inspiration. When you meditate, you put yourself in a state to commune with the Divine. You open yourself to inspiration and insight—intentionally, purposefully.

    One of the mantras I often use in my meditations is Inhale inspiration. Exhale creativity. I see what comes up after my meditation. I also note what comes up DURING my meditations as well.

    I’ll have to tell you about Unicorns and DNA healing another day!

    This connection to Source is essential for me as a creative, as a healer, as a writer, and in my business overall. I feel like the work I do is more divinely guided, more connected to my mission, or what the Universe needs me to do.

    4) Centering in my self. After I connect with Earth Energy and the Universe, I bring all that juicy energy right back into my center. I understand I meditate as a part of a practice to be my best self. To start from a centered and peaceful place.

    It makes me much more conscious of NOT being centered, too. Given my tendency to be like, “OOHHHH WHAT IS THAT BIRD! OMG. What was I doing??” — the more centered I am, the better it is for my productivity.

    What meditation do I do?

    At the end of last year, I started a daily meditation practice and I used Dr. Joe Dispenza’s Morning Meditation, which is available on Apple Music or you can get it right from his site.

    Now, however, I am doing a much simpler focus on breathing in, focus on breathing out. Inhale for 4 or 6 or whatever floats my boat for the moment, exhale fully (like til I canNOT exhale any longer). I do that for a while, til I’m calm and mostly clear.

    Then I might do a variety of different exercises, including clearing out my chakras or energy centers, running energy from my root up to my crown and holding it there for 30 or so seconds, opening up for healing, running Reiki to myself… or whatever kind of happens during my meditation.

    I might try some more meditations this year. Are there any you would recommend? If so, please feel free to comment below so I can check them out.

    Adding meditation to my daily practice has been a positive way to start my days in 2021. Lord knows we need more centered, focused, connected people doing all the things at the moment. I highly recommend you add meditation to your morning ritual and see how it changes your life.

    Take care,
    Sue

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  • Blog, Magic, Musing, Neurohacking

    The Ping Pong Match – A Study In Neurohacking

    I’ve been reading a lot of consciousness bending related books lately. It’s a topic that I adore—seeing how malleable the fabric of reality is and seeing how far I might be able to bend my abilities (and improve my life) based on mind-tricks, magic, and believing that I can.

    I’m open to exploring, experimenting, and noting what is miraculous and what is cool and going on from there. I mean, I really don’t have anything better to do with my spare time, right? As long as I’m not hurting or manipulating anyone—perhaps changing what happens for and around the people in my life, in relation to my life—always for the best, or that’s my intention, anyway.

    I’ve been quite successful in the past with manifesting this and that, including a pure-bred beagle puppy (who taught me to watch out what I wished for), 12 hundred bucks, and some other more personal signs from the Universe.

    There are a LOT of good magic and law of attraction books out there that I’ve read. You can find a partial list here: The 5 Best Law Of Attraction Books

    Over the Christmas holiday, I was reading Breaking The Habit Of Being Yourself, written by Joe Dispenza and I was also listening to his audiobook, Becoming Supernatural, in tandem with reading the book. Basically, his books teach about shifting your reality and connecting yourself to Source energy in order to create miracles in your life by connecting with the subconscious and harnessing the power of intention, possibility, and now. It’s all good stuff.

    I had the perfect opportunity to test out some of the theories that I was learning because my in-laws bought a ping pong table and playing ping pong was a central part of what we were focused on during our Christmas holiday. If we weren’t eating, talking, or chilling during the week of Christmas, we were playing ping pong or watching a match.

    I’ve never played ping pong in my life that I can remember; I am a total novice. Recently, I started taking tennis lessons, but tennis is a different sport and, while ping pong and tennis are similar, they just aren’t the same. As I said, I was a noob.

    via GIPHY

    My hubby, my father-in-law, and my brother-in-law had practiced during our summer vacation because the hotels we stayed in had ping pong tables. I hiked and snorkeled. While their games were fiercely competitive and laced with male energy, mine was more exploring, experimenting, and just trying to do my best.

    So coming into these games with various family members, I was looking like a baby—just having fun and returning what balls I could. My volleys weren’t long for sure. For me, it was more about having a good time with my family while we celebrated Christmas together.

    I was all nonchalant about my game until I got paired up with my hubby for a match. Then it was time to up my game and give him a run for his money. I’m proud to say that after the game, you might have thought that I was something of a ping pong shark, feigning lack of skill until the money was down on the table and then pulling out my mad expert skills. (Maybe that’s the ego-inflated version.)

    My skills were temporary and completely mentally driven, though. My thinking brain convinced my body that it could play a mean game of ping pong, and so it did.

    Just like in the books I was reading, just like in others I’ve read before, I played out my game with my hubby in my head. I imagined I knew what I was doing. I let my understanding of hitting the ball soft or hard and holding the paddle at different angles to hit the ball in different directions on the table tell my body what to do. I ended up running my husband ragged on his side of the table while I handled the balls he hit to me more easily than I expected. He beat me, but not by much. Our games were exciting!

    It was fun for me to put what I was learning into practice—maybe more fun than seeing my husband work for his wins!

    So, why the increased ability to play ping pong, or the spike in my skill level? As I said, it was my thinking mind or intentions believing that I could and intellectualizing the game, then trusting my body to be able to do what my mind envisioned. Maybe I should have gone as far as imagining that I won, but I was happy with doing as well as I did.

    In Joe Dispenza’s book, he looks at the study that measured muscle strength increases in people who only imagine doing exercises, or comparisons in improvement and muscle function after a person merely practices a piano exercise in his or her mind. It’s scientifically sound research with a control group, a group that practices the exercises in real life, and then the experimental group. It shows circa 10-15% improvement in those who only think about flexing muscles. The piano playing group also has a high percentage of practice related muscle and skill changes—I forget the actual percentage.

    Ultimately, it made me even more aware of the fact that I could use my mind to surprisingly improve my life (skills, comprehension, ability to do things I normally couldn’t do). I’ll keep experimenting with neurohacking life and pushing the proverbial envelope further and further to see what I am capable of doing.

    I hope you do the same.

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  • Crystals

    Hag Stones

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    LakeMichiganHagStones

     

    When I was frolicking on the shores of Lake Michigan on my recent trip home, I totally had my eye out for any interesting and helpful stones that I could bring home with me! One specific type of stone I was looking for is known as a Hag Stone, or Holey Stone.

    Hag Stones are created when water and other elements work to carve a hole into a stone. The holes must occur naturally: there is no drilling involved, no matter what your husband might recommend!

    Uses for Hag Stones found on shorelines include anything to do with water, like cleansing and healing. Feminine issues, like menstrual cycles and fertility can also be affected by working with Hag Stones. Lore ties Hag Stones to protection from negative energies and entities – so Hag Stones are often seen hanging near doorways and on bedposts. They can be used, along with dream catchers, to help with nightmares.

    Those that are found inland are said to aid in helping people see and interact with the fairy realm.

    To use your Hag Stone, you can either keep it in a pocket as a rubbing stone or you can tie one onto a necklace and wear it as jewelry. People have been known to hang them from ribbons as well. To catch a peek of the fairy realm, a person would actually look through the hole in their Hag Stone!

    Cleanse your stone after using it by bathing it in salt water and then allowing it to dry out overnight (under the light of a full moon would be best). Hag Stones that are hung can be cleansed in the same way, or simply put under a full moon to cleanse and recharge the stones while caring for the cord or ribbon used to hang the stones.

    It is interesting to note that I was actively “looking” for stones and didn’t find any when I was looking! I actually found all of the Hag Stones I came across when I was busy doing other things, like playing with my kids or gathering stones to use to decorate sand castles! According to legend, Hag Stones that are accidentally found are much more powerful stones to work with!

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