Dec 5 24: Rising Sun
into the heart chakra
Hello!
The sun rises this morning wearing rose colored glasses in the very crispy cold air.
The Heart Chakra is next in line following our work into the solar plexus, but how do we get from one to the other?
While looking at our identity of self housed within the Solar Plexus Chakra, there are darker aspects of our power sources, and how we interact with them through our feelings, or Heart Chakra.
What drives your goals and ambitions in life? Are they based on your wants and needs or someone else's? Are you letting others live through you, or following your own dreams and desires? Are your motivations ‘pure’ or based in envy and/or greed? Are you mimicking the life of someone you admire, but not actually living your own?
The Heart and Solar Plexus Chakras work in tandem here, as they steer each other into your current life path of actions, reactions, hopes, dreams, ambitions and motivations.
One influences the other until you are down the road or crossroads you are currently facing. Only an honest examination of these two chakras together will help you decide if you're living the life you really want, or if you need to steer into a different direction.
The Call to Live Deeply
Sweetest Grass Roots Devotionals is about making a promise to devote time and give sacred space to our healing, our internal processes. I share my practice with you in hopes it inspires you to create your own. To show the way with words and images steeped within my subconscious tea brought to life on canvas, in songs, stories and spirit journeys. How to live more deeply within your awareness and connection of the microcosmic world, and in turn our macrocosmic universe.
I wish I could promise you that every letter I write will contain perfectly organized subjects with perfect grammar and punctuation that obviously connect the dots for you. This is a promise that I simply cannot make.
What I can hope for… is to bring you along on my adventure into spirit, to show you how simple it can be, and to share in the beauty of my liminal spaces while you learn how to find your own… to make available sign posts, trail markers, bread crumbs and pin cushions.
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Because I will not pretend to know your journey more than I know my own, I write within my experience as woman. Please change as needed for your experience on this journey… for such teachings apply to us all.
Grab a cup of tea or hot cocoa, plate of scones and sit by the window listening to the wind while you read… for we are going on an adventure!
Love, Light & Shadows…
Isabella, Pups & Family
My Weaving
Oh! It's such a challenge for me to look at and understand my own motivations. It requires me to hold a level of honesty that is so impeccable that I can feel my ‘mind’ cringe at the anticipation of this work.
I also understand that it's completely necessary for me to do in order to move forward with my life, and create the life I want now.
There was a post on Facebook that stated something like, “Changing your mind is a perfectly good reason for not wanting something in your life anymore.”
As a woman who spent her teen years in the 80's and 90's, changing my mind was never a good enough reason for any decision. I was expected to have a list of facts at hand ready to defend why I was abandoning my previously made commitment(s). Many of which were veto-ed by my parents, teachers and friends.
I built an entire life around either letting other people live through me, or changing my mind for me, in a direction my heart knew I never wanted to go. Too late in life I followed my own dreams, plans and shenanigans.
Sometimes my mom was right about a certain pathway, but living it for myself gave me a sense of accomplishment and completion. I no longer pine away for those dreams that only worked out for a little bit or not in the way that I'd hoped. What I learned in the process will stay with me forever, and has helped me to figure out my next steps of who, what and where I want to be.
My devotional practice since the end of September 2024 has been deep and windy. All these months later and I've come to a new layer; spirals within spirals. Clarity is beginning to come into view. I am still sitting with how much of this work I am able to share, supposed to share, allowed to share. I ask permission first of those I am working with and, of course, hope I've interpreted the answer correctly.
I do want to share a part of my personal story here today and not as a footnote. When did we start believing our health and personal experiences are merely footnotes in our lives? This way you can see tangible methods that result in healing.
Part of My Story with Tangible Results…
I have spent my whole life living with various aspects of migraine, which has escalated these last years. I'm told in part, that a lot of it was inevitable due to my age and peri/ menopausal journey. That it would've happened anyway. I don't know if I find comfort in this, yet.
Patient education for migraines has been virtually non-existent in my lifetime, so far, mostly because doctors don't even truly understand what it is, and are just beginning to maybe understand its pathways in the migraine-brain-body. It is finally being taken seriously as a disability for work accommodations, so there is that.
At the age of 47, I'm just now learning migraine pathways in the brain-body, the stages and where my symptoms fit in, how to anticipate and how to treat my self at each stage. This is still a very long work in progress.
Up until now, I have relied solely on Medical Service Dog Alerts so I could start my rescue treatments 45 min prior to disabling symptoms in the hope they would be prevented all together, or at the very least soften the impact. This allowed me to keep my independence for an additional 8 years!
My options for care right now are limited by location vs cost vs effectiveness vs side effects, and doctors keep pushing and pushing without realizing they are part of the problem with my stress levels and anxiety.
For me, many of the medications used to treat migraines are not a good fit due to my personal and family medical history, so I have to put in the extra work to navigate my migraines, which not only became chronic but also vestibular in nature. This publication, Sweetest Grass Roots Devotionals, started as part of my physical and occupational therapies, and look at how much I've grown!
In turn, my work in healing and learning how to live with migraines, in particular, is what has shaped my devotional practices over the years, and is responsible for the new depth and elevations I am currently finding within my new practice.
Allowing for not living in a world of absolutes, I start my mornings before the sun rises circa 5am. A cup of tea and first breakfast for me, snacks for pups, and offerings on my pre-dawn altar.
I sing my songs of anchoring and centering combined with Usui Reiki energy work within my Dreaming Tree and Core of my being. The core of my Dreaming Tree has recently taken on the form of a tower image connecting all my chakras and body systems.
This imagery came from the reading in this season’s Crow Calls; I did not have it prior to this work.
This start to my practice helps clear the energies in the room and altar from the day/night before. A great alternative to burning herbs that is more lung-friendly in this post-not-so-post-COVID-world.
Incense is lit just enough and then extinguished, prayers are said, my Gratitude Candle is blessed, and then I light it.
I don't just recite a list of what I'm grateful for, I feel what I speak from my Heart Chakra. I speak from memory just a few items. Think quality over quantity and feel them.
My short-term memory is still a work in progress when connected to speaking out loud, so it also counts towards my occupational therapy for the day. As well as, a lesson in self compassion on days the words are broken and don't flow easily. This also doubles as a check-in to see what kind of brain day I might have ahead of me.
I'm beginning to work with the Saints, and returning to my folk-medicine roots in a new way. This will probably show up in my future letters here.
More prayers are said, prostrations occur and I finish with a meditation to anchor my center and strengthen my boundaries.
More prostrations, which are simply alternating between Kneeling Pose and Child’s Pose, so now I'm getting some yoga in too.
Then we have a break for toiletries, snacks and hydration before setting up on my lounger with blankets, pillows, Shadow in my lap and an audio book playing on healing the brain-body.
One book of many in the multidisciplinary approach my physical therapist wants me to create putting my joy and happiness in the forefront of my work.
The whole process averages about 1.5 - 2 hours. I could stay here all day, but Pups need to be cared for, I need to be cared for, there are more physical/ occupational therapies, nutrition, hydration and chores to be done.
There is a Life to be Lived.
It's the idea of before enlightenment, carry water and chop wood… after enlightenment, carry more water and chop more wood.
My morning devotional time, the way it is now, started out of necessity. Migraine brain-bodies are “hot-wired” and the amygdala likes to take the wheel, driving around terrifying curves on steep mountain tops with roads that have no guard rails and are filled with potholes making the brain-body-car jump and swerve across lanes that are not even wide enough for two-way traffic let alone erratic driving.
The liminal space between darkness and sunrise comes with changes in barometric pressure, which is akin to the amygdala driving the hot wired brain-body-car above, while intoxicated. The only thing about the symptoms I can predict is that they will feel death-defying and be unpredictable.
So I spend this time facing my fears of these unpredictable symptoms in real time through prayer, yoga, learning and building connections.
Following these scientifically proven neuro pathways, I am gently coming into the brain-body-car with my amygdala so she doesn't feel so alone. I am engaging her in discussion and connection to bring her and the rest of my brain-body back into balance (homeostasis).
At the same time, I'm teaching her how to let the other brain-body-areas (like the logic centers) carry some of the load. To remind her, that she has a village to rely upon and doesn't have to do all the work by herself, which is very overwhelming.
When I do it “right,” the amygdala’s driving naturally smooths out into a beautiful (and fully paved) valley road filled with wildflowers, and our speed drops considerably. Now we are just meandering along like it's a Sunday drive through the countryside.
I found that if I start my day this way about the same time every day, the amygdala is easier to keep calm, so that moving through symptoms while living life feels more fluid.
Now… the rest of my day can begin! Coming back into Life and re-Learning how to be Joy-Filled again.
I have additional devotional practices throughout the day to keep me in a symptom-negotiable state as much as possible… these will be addressed in future letters.
Right now start with the questions above in the Hello section and the activities below! Don't forget to check out Resources and What We’ve Been Up To… for books and more you can include in your practice too! ❤️
Isabella, Figgy and Shadow
Your Weaving
As you read this work, what percolated up from your subconscious? Emotions? Thoughts? Images? Does my work inspire you to create one of your own?
Creating Your Devotional Practice: What type of altar do you want to build? What do you need to work on that is holding you back in life? Are there any particular Saints, Angels or other Divine Energies you want to work with?
Advice:
Take the time to feel through yourself, work with the exercises in this letter and in past Devotional Letters to uncover how you need to set up your practice/ altar right now, in this present moment. Keeping in mind that as you change and grow, so will your practice and that is okay.
Do your Research, take the time to find prayers/poetry from traditional vs non-traditional sources or write your own, learn the history of who/what you will be working with/through and be respectful of cultures that are not your own. Your practice will be more meaningful when you put in the devotional effort to it and your self. ❤️
Perhaps, I will write a devotional letter on setting up and working with altars, maybe.
In the meantime, your library and book shops are already filled with this information.
I know my library has a very LARGE treasure trove of mystical and spiritual books via its online e-books and audio books. Take your self on adventure!
Journal Prompt for Secret Messages: Choose an idea, word line, or entire phrasing from what I’ve written here and write down everything that comes up for you in a free-flow without censorship. Go back through and circle key words and phrases from your own writing. Is there a secret message hidden within your subconscious? Within your Soul?
Take it one step further, and continue to journal about how that secret message makes you feel. Do you agree with it? Disagree? Why? Do you have a friend or therapist who will welcome bouncing the ideas around so you may see a deeper well within your Self?
Accessing Spirit through Creation… Words, Artwork, Jewelry, DIY Rosary or Prayer Beads. Create a more physical practice through Yoga, Qi Gong, Tai Chi, Nature Walks and more! Pick one or two for your practice today and see what happens! Don’t forget to journal about it so your future self will have a road map on challenging days.
Today’s Resources
Line “…to make available sign posts, trail markers, bread crumbs and pin cushions.” : Refers to all the different sign posts and trail markers that you might find in fairy tales and wisdom stories. Bread crumbs famously found in Hansel and Gretel, and following the pin cushion comes from my family’s deep dark forest roots across the ocean.
Poetry/Quotes: Unless otherwise stated, I wrote it :) IEM 2024
My Journal Entries: Dated starting Nov 25, 2024.
My Artwork: Painting IEM copyright 2024.
Books:
The Woman that Glows in the Dark by Elena Avila (audio book).
Eastern Body, Western Mind by Anodea Judith.
Victory Over Vestibular Migraines by Dr. Shin C Beh, Third Edition (science-based migraine facts and neuro pathways).
What We’ve been up to
Reading:
Dangerous Old Woman Series Audio Book 3: The Joyous Body by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola-Estes (read by the author).
The Woman that Glows in the Dark audio book by Elena Avila.
The Smell of Rain on Dust by Martin Prechtel (audio book read by the author).
The Wild Remedy by Emma Mitchell
Watching:
My Mindfulness to watch less television, and to curate my shows carefully when I do watch.
Looking Into:
Books on the subjects of integrative and herbal medicines by Dr. Tieraona Low Dog.
(Google her name and see what comes up that brings you joy to learn about and possibly integrate into your own life.)
General Life:
Keeping our heads and hearts on straight through the cascade of it all. Check out my Notes to see how the puppies are doing and other fun tidbits I managed to post!
Love, Light & Shadows,
Isabella, Pups & Family
Thank YOU again for helping to support my Great Works!
PS… Don’t forget to “❤️” today’s Sweetest Grass Roots Devotionals! These statistics play a mathematical role in search engines, placement, and overall relevance in the ethereal web. Thank you!
Legal Disclaimer
I do not get paid for recommending third-party products or materials. I simply share this information from my own beloved practice, so you have a wider range of options available for building your own.
Please take responsibility for your own devotional practice and health by making sure you do your proper research, which may include speaking with (but not limited to) your doctor, medical provider and/or mental health therapist before integrating new lifestyles, herbs, foods and practices, etc.
While I do have a variety of qualifications and trainings to share this educational material, I am not your medical provider and/or mental health therapist; engaging in any and all activities, products, and/or practices stemming from this publication are utilized at your own risk; any and all sales are “as is” and final.
Thank YOU! ❤️
Love, Light & Shadows,
Isabella, Pups and Family
