Week Eleven
Spend Time in Nature

What better way to ground oneself than to spend conscious time out in the natural world, free from the impact of human insensitivity and short-sightedness. The dimension of the Earth was created as a paradise playground for humans to journey upon. For far too long that understanding has been manipulated and lost to most humans. The long ago choice to use and abuse the Earth by man has left so many feeling separate from the gifts she has to offer, refusing to open to the profound relationship that is but a choice away.

All of the Earthly kingdoms are there to support humans in remembering who they are by design. To ignore them is to not use a powerful resource. The animals, the  plants, the elementals, the minerals…all serve humans in expanded ways. Unfortunately, humanity has chosen for too long to exploit the kingdoms for gain. As I write there is a man outside with a weed whacker killing the plants, likely without an awareness that these are living things to honor and respect. A simple awareness of this and an offering of corn meal or tobacco will bless the action and contribute to the cooperation of the plants themselves.

To spend time in nature consciously requires an awareness of the greater relationship. There is much that is not shared because humans have not been taught to see the way life supports. Becoming open invites deeper relationship and allows you to use the kingdoms and the elements in ways that benefit you far more than ever dreamed. But first, you must create relationship and go exploring. Learn how the expanse and diversity of the Earth serves you. Find gratitude and invite sharing. Show up with an open heart and bless your environment to begin to integrate the deep love the Earth feels for you.

Even if you are in the city, you can find a park or a lawn or a tree or a flower or a body of water to spend some conscious moments with. Doing so will reconnect your being with the grounding capacity the Earth provides. You are connected to the core, fed continuously by that vibration, cleansing and clearing you, filling you with foundation and power…if you let it. Daily contact and acknowledgment are a minimum requirement to massage and benefit from that connection. Once a week choose to take a journey out to a place separate from humans to develop a sensitivity to the Earth’s offerings. Get to a forest. Travel to an ocean, a lake, a river, a stream. Get into the mountains, climb some rocks, Lay on the grass and look up at the sky and drink in that expanse. Get out into the sun and feel its healing rays on you, before 10AM or after 3PM if you are afraid of that Light. Listen for bird calls. Notice the animals you cross paths with. Say hello and send loving appreciation for their visit.

Fill your home with rocks, plants, water, and fresh air. Hold the stones in your palm and let them guide you with messages. Even put a panoramic poster or picture of the Earth in your house. Watch Nature shows on TV. Secure recordings of running water, or natural soundscapes and use them as background. All of these serve to connect you energetically with the beloved planet.

The more you choose to interface the greater will be the Earth connection. We are not alone on this planet. The very Earth Mother is interfaced with us to be a reflector of our inner vibration. The health of the Earth depends on your own balance and your willingness to choose to be living in higher vibration. The Earth loves you…no matter what. It is time for you to reciprocate and then receive the gift of groundedness back from her.

Week Twelve
Dance and Move

All is vibration. Life is in motion. Are you?

If not, then get moving. Without movement you stagnate. Your systems get compromised. Your cells get sluggish and the flow of you diminishes. Movement is a celebration of life. Movement brings you back to your physical body…it is grounding.

Movement can be exercise, a formal or an informal program of simply moving your muscles, getting your heart rate up, building your chi and oxygen reserves. You can become a gym rat. You can get a device for the home to facilitate the moving, a stair climber, a treadmill, a stationary bike, a trampoline…. You can join a sports team. You can get a basketball and go to the park and shoot some hoops. You can ride a bicycle, play catch with a friend, throw rocks at the seashore or in an open field, go swimming, start doing yoga or tai chi or martial arts…

Get moving. Start walking daily. Run some laps. Run in place, Get a jump rope and use it. Buy an exercise video and use it. Play the active games in your Wii. A brisk walk is just as good as an extended run. Go for at least 20 minutes. The body benefits are worth it…endorphins to boost your mood and spirit, weight loss or maintenance, promoting a cleansing sweat, getting outside in the fresh air and sunshine,  

Dancing is another thing. It can be wonderful to combine your moving with music. Sure there are specific dance moves that can be engaged, but for the time spent, improvisational dance can be so much more expansive. Allowing your self to align with music, working to find the groove and your place in it is a very grounding thing. In addition, allowing the body to move spontaneously can serve to clear old energetic debris, facilitate the release of trauma, and serve to clear you on multiple energetic levels. You can explore Gabrielle Roth’s Ecstatic Dancing and her Five Rhythms to consciously use music as a clearing and balancing tool. African Dance is capable of eliciting ecstatic release as it is so alive and earth bound. Latin dancing can activate movement in all of the chakras, especially doing salsa. Even formal dance can be a vehicle to create enjoyment and expanded relationship.

Engage in Dances of Universal Peace to feel what it is like to use dance as a spiritual community building tool. When everyone does the same movements together there is a particular energy that rises. In this vibration you can easily surrender. The repetition of the song. Lyrics, and dance will easily put you in an altered state while it opens your heart. You can leave a lot of energetic baggage behind when you engage this kind of spiritual dancing.

Start to listen for the music and the rhythm in all of life. Notice how city noises have a rhythm or two. Walk to the pulse of that beat and see how you can step out of irritation. Take your pulse and walk to that beat for while. Notice your breathing rhythm and find a way to dance within it.

Bottom line is that you have to move. Stagnation is mostly a choice. When the body moves you feel alive and you want to create and experience. Because the movement is so physical, you come home to a solid foundation that can be a catapult to action and adventure. Boredom is a choice. You just might be able to dance your way out of a condition or a disease. Love the body and invite it to reclaim its fundamental rhythms. You owe that to your self…cha, cha, cha…

Week Thirteen
Sing
The voice gives the body a unique frequency of expression. The voice sounds the body through intentional pitch. It can sound to the body and allow the body to express through it. That voicing is healing as it genuinely witnesses the inner and creates a mutual relationship with the source and the expression. That sound is song. It can be a phoneme, a vowel, a word, a tone…

The sounding sends intention into the body below, calling upon the chakras to clear their unexpressed, to direct their energetic debris to the release point of the throat chakra and the mouth, to give voice to the song that is born from the depths of being. The voice sends the call and the body responds with its flowing song. This exchange brings one home, pulling one into the depths of the body itself, reaching beyond into the Earth to solidify the connection. The Earth contributes her song to merge with yours when you allow the re-union of the two. The song is sent upward to be sent out via the mouth while, at the same time, moving farther upward to the crown where it makes celestial contact. This unification re-establishes the activity of the original design…

Yes, singing does that…especially singing consciously. Everyone carries a song within them, a song that is a frequency based testament to their own I Am That I Am Expressing As Me. It is unique…and it must be sung. Call it forth. Invite the sound from the depths. Give it melody and give it rhythm. Give it lyrics and sing it to the Heavens and to the Earth and to all that lies between.

One learns to sing by singing. The infant sings the primal tones in each utterance. The soundtrack to their moments is beautiful and powerful. It calls forth the Divine design within. It makes contact with the Earth and all the kingdoms. It sends beacons to the ethers and summons the angelic guides. It establishes its presence in the now moment, blessing all within its vibration.

A voice that has been silenced is a temporarily lost soul, circling the point of release, waiting for permission from those who will not come. For this is an inside job that is triggered by the whole being that lives within at all times…the one who has not been shushed from the symphony of life. The song is sent forth to the cells within…and it is they who must respond to initiate the waking up. Wake up…the call has come. Start with a sigh…a release of breath. Sigh again but allow a sound to fall out this time. Again the sigh and the sound but this time from a higher pitch, letting it fall out like a waterfall. Then the vowels, one at a time spoken/sounded, exploring their creation within the mouth, adjusting the shape of the mouth, the position of the tongue, shape of the lips…each time creating something new…the song has begun. Next comes the birth name. Speak it aloud as if for the first time. Speak it slowly so each consonant and vowel have their time. Do it again and again until it becomes a rhythm…or until it starts to suggest pitch…the birth of your melody.

Go to nursery rhymes, songs learned as a child and let them rise forth, swelling with the memories of the times when they were sung without hesitation. Sing their familiar melodies and ride that wave of exhilaration. Sing them over and over.

Singing opens the heart, stirs the soul, reconnects the Cosmic and the Earthly. You are the conduit for the wonder that flows forth. Let the sounds pour from you. Seed your moments with a phonetic, a vowel, a nonsense word. Make sound and let it move in pitch. Make up melodies and sing them to your cells. Call your self home to the Earth in a song. Reclaim the pure joy of song rising from and out of you. Bless the world…start here my friend…build your personal repertoire.

Week Fourteen
Drum
No instrument is more connected with the Earth than the drum. They come in all shapes and sizes and tones and are reflective of the specific music of the culture from which they are born. The drum is made of the earth elements: wood, animal hide, and sinew. It is blessed by the intentional connection with the Earth and will re-establish that strong grounding every time it is played.

The drum first calls to the feet. It activates the Earth vibration and sends it upward to consume the whole body in vibrations that are felt as well as heard. The drum calls for one to move. It is like the very thunder calling to return to the Source below and above. The movement cleanses, jarring loose the resistance and the toxic debris and the thinking patterns worn out by overuse.

A drum beat cleanses the auric field. It supports the oscillations of the cells and sends pulses through the systems to bring one back to a higher vibrational balanced state.  Through drumming one reconnects to foundation and moves to reclaim a personal rhythm. Too many have stumbled through life and find themselves hesitant to move forth, to take action, to dance through their moments. So they stand still while life whirls and pulses around them, beckoning and begging for engagement. The stumbling through life contributes to fear based thinking and mistrust. There is hesitancy to move to the beat for they really cannot find it…or align with it…temporarily.

What is needed is an act of will, a solar plexus charged decision to take action, take the first step into the dance. That is all that is needed, for then the rhythm of the I Am inside takes over and moves you into remembering your deep connections to life. You reclaim your rhythm by moving and moving. At some point you reaccess the flow and the rhythm drops in and consumes you, never to leave again.

Drumming is the vehicle for remembering your dance. Start there. Pulse after pulse. Let them sweep away the resistance and reawaken the whole body, jarring loose the memories and wounds that immobilized you. Beat the drum. Play with the different beats. Adjust the tempo. You will find a place that calls you.

Befriend your drum. It has come to you by higher arrangement. Talk to it. Bless it. Make offerings of herbs and smoke. Invite it to speak. Then explore the entirety of its surface the the varied voices. Notice the tone at the center, at the edge, at the in-between. Tap with your fingers, an open hand, a cupped hand, the side of the hand…snap your fingers into it. Vary your level of attack going from soft to hard. Use a beater or another object and see how your drum responds. Play with it until you know it well.

Then start with specific rhythms. Start with the heart beat. The the steady pulse of 1 2 3 4. Go online to find new rhythms and then play with them. Vary the rhythms and see how each feels. Use the drum to energize you, ground you, cleanse you. Call upon it to set the tone of your day. Use it before you are going forth to do something important. Use it to solve your problems. Beat them away. Cleanse your field at the end of the day with your drum.

Gradually you will seek additional drums. Get a frame drum, a Djembe, a Taiko, a Dumbek, a Native double sided drum, a Mother Drum…on and on…voices and rhythms and clearings…

Week Fifteen
Rattle Cleanse

Sound impacts the physical and the energy bodies. It has to do with frequency or pitch. You have a signature frequency of wholeness. Your chakras have energetic frequencies of balance for each. Each of your organs has a balance frequency. Even your cells can be nourished and cleansed by specific frequencies. It would follow to have a variety of pitch based tools to intentionally address the health and balance of the body.

A rattle is a frequency tool. The materials with which the rattle is fabricated as well as the material on the inside that makes the sound are choices that will determine the effectiveness and power of your rattle. When you have something that makes sound and shake/play it, you can tune into your body to see if you can determine where that frequency is felt. A rattle is a harmonic instrument with a fundamental of sorts. This means it can make an array of simultaneous pitches that can impact your body on multiple levels. This wash will quickly clear any debris on the auric body by breaking it up and binding it in the Earth.

It would follow that you would want to have a variety of pitches available to you. This can be addressed two ways: have a rattle that allows for the changing of the material inside so that the pitch can be regulated to some degree; and have a variety of rattles with very different signatures of sound. The more choices you have the more likely you can influence your state of balance.

Rattles can be purchased or made. Truthfully, anything that makes a sound can be considered a sound tool. You, as the user, simply have to choose to use it and then fine tune your awareness to discern where it is best felt in your body. For most in North America, rattles crafted by Native American artisans can be very effective for your cleansing and grounding (yes, the grounding comes from the whole body energy being cleared to activate your being fully in body). Rattles from South America, Africa, Asia, and even Toys are Us, can be called into action.

The easiest way to make a rattle is to get a container (Quaker Oats container, plastic bottle, glass bottle, etc.) and empty the contents. Using sand, popcorn, seeds, BB’s, animal hoof nails, etc. you can influence the sound…even a combination of materials can be used to make a rattle with obvious multiple pitches. Quality rattles can be made of gourds, dried seaweed, cured animal hide, animal horns, animal bones, etc…limited only by your imagination…for each will color the sound and thus direct the healing capacity to certain areas within the body.

You can even decorate your rattle with paint, animal hair, bones, feathers, hides, herbs, etc. Making it yours by inserting a focused intent can amplify the animal influence to make it a very effective rattle.

Use one or more rattles in the morning when you wake up and prepare for the day. Ideally start high and move down the body to the grounding Earth. Work to go all the way around your physical self. Also, you may get a hit to stay in a specific area…do so…as the body wisdom is calling you to provide extended care to that spot to likely loose old or stubborn debris. Use them also when you come home after being in the world. Rattle before you go to sleep as well to get really clear. Carry an assortment of rattles with you to clear your field when you feel you need it. The more you rattle the more attentive you will be to your body’s callings.

Ah ho! Shake it up baby….