3 Traditional Remedies to Calm Your Mind and Awaken Your Heart
On Valentine’s Day, a time set aside for love, romance and reckless abandon in the arms of your beloved, how is your heart? To me, it seems the ancients knew the essence of Heart not as a moment of passion, but instead as a lifetime of courage, unity, and deep connection.
So…how is your courage, and how is your fear? Are you spending time glued to your screen, anxiously wondering what upheavals today might bring?
2020 and the years leading up to it have shown us that too much change is just that: too much. The fight-or-flight attentiveness that has become the status quo for our nervous systems takes its toll. Whether you’ve been gardening, hiking, and taking life back to the basics, or out there striving in the middle of our transformed and transforming society, the shake-up is very real.
For healing, recovery and long-term resilience in these times, our tendency is to look for something innovative and new. The secret I’m reminded of again and again is this: human beings have always had it hard, and our ancestors have pointed to simple Heart-remedies. These basic tips are not only effective, but they fuel our growth and personal fortitude, in the bargain.
My Valentine’s gift to you: 3 Heart Remedies to Heal the Fear
When I can be like the oak tree, my senses open and I’m touched and transformed by the Heart of things.
Let tomorrow’s problems take care of themselves. Living in the present isn’t easy for us human beings with our busy minds. If only we could be like the mountain, the snail or the oak tree. They live the essence of who they are. They are Heart-filled, present in each moment, all the time. To find my way to this essential unified field of experience and presence, I get up and go out, away from all screens, walking in nature. My anxious thoughts play out. Then, finally feeling the well of emotions behind that monkey-mind, my senses open and I’m touched and transformed by the Heart of things.
Make time to laugh! Things can get serious some other time,..
Be in the presence of other people…and laugh! Call a friend, invite them over, figure it out. Maybe you’ll bundle up and sit at an outdoor fire together. (Live in the city? Get a fire-bowl and some hot dogs to roast, and you’re in the clear.) Or maybe combine this remedy with Remedy Number One, and go for a walk in the woods together. What a balm it is to experience another person in the flesh, someone who also has problems, obstacles, feelings, dreams, victories. If they have some good jokes, both of you can laugh off the heaviness of life together. Things can get serious some other time, but in this moment, you have the gift of companionship, which has never before been so rare and precious.
It’s time to face the monster in order to build a good future for yourself and your family.
The path of the Spiritual Warrior: Perhaps you’re noticing that some things that you used to do without a second thought are becoming insurmountable obstacles in these times of shake-up. Or maybe you have something new you know you need to accomplish: it’s time to leap in order for the net to appear, to face the monster in order to build a good future for yourself and your family. Find that one thing, small or large, that seems scary and unachievable…and do it. Or make a plan, with incremental steps you’ll actually take on, then commence with step one.
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Initiated as a tradition-holder in the Nahua/Mexican weather worker lineage in May 2003 by don Lucio Campos de Elizalde of Nepopualco, Morelos, Mexico, Erin Everett is a weather worker, ceremonial leader, and traditional healer. She is known in Nahuatl as a quiatlzques and in Spanish as a tiempera. As are many in this tradition, she was struck by lightning in her youth, which is a known calling to this path. A native of western North Carolina, she and her colleagues work with weather in the Asheville, NC geographical region. More information about their work, tradition, and teachers can be found at seedsoftradition.org.