Shamanic Articles

The Practice of Sensing Our Energy

11/28/2023

As we learn to tend to our own energy, we get clearer about what our own energy feels like. Practices like yoga, chi gong, and tai chi help us feel how the chi or life force energy moves within us, and how it affects our energy levels. Practices like meditation, mindfulness and contemplation help us get used to our own energetic signature, which is like our unique background frequency. It is that sense of ourselves that is always there that we hardly pay attention to while we are busy living our lives.

Once we know our own energy pretty well, we have a clearer read on how other energies we come into contact and interact with affect us. If we pay attention with our felt sense, we can get a lot of information that helps us avoid trouble, deepen relationships and add depth and richness to our lives.

We might start by noticing how our energy feels in different places and with different people. We have all had the experiences of walking into a building, shop or forest and feeling very uncomfortable like we want to get out as soon as we can. It can feel like a heaviness, a skin crawly type of feeling, or maybe just a feeling that we are not welcome. We usually leave as soon as we can. We may also experience the same thing with certain people, like a heaviness or uncomfortable feeling while we are around them, sometimes lingering after our interaction is over.

On the flip side of that, we have all probably been places that feel good. We like to spend time there. These might be places like grandma's porch, or a room where spiritual circles meet, or our own backyard, and of course our favorite places in nature. And we also may notice that it feels good to be around certain people. We not only enjoy their company, but we feel uplifted and light after we part.

As we pay attention to the energy we are sensing, it informs us, helping us make decisions about where we want to live, who we want to spend our time with, and what we bring into our own energies.

If we walk into an antique store where the energy is heavy and unpleasant, do we really want to buy something there that could bring some of that heaviness into our homes and energy? And if we don’t buy anything and leave pretty quickly, can we notice if we unintentionally brought some of that energy home with us anyway?

Situations like that are when it is so beneficial to know your energy because then you know when you are carrying something that is not yours, or as the mystic seer and teacher Orion Foxwood describes it, “ Honey, you stepped in something.” Then we can smudge with a cleansing herb like sage, use our pendulum, our intention and free will to clear it from ourselves.

But we have to know our own energy to know when we need to tend to it. And we need practices to screen out and release energies that are not beneficial to us. If we feel off in any way, that is a signal to check in with our intuitive self and our spirit helpers to see what needs to be tended to bring us back into balance.

As a practice, start the day with your breathing, sitting, felt sensing yourself. Note your energy. Before going to bed, sit and check in. Do you notice a difference after all your interactions and travels of the day?

All my teachers I’ve had over the past 20 years have had a method for releasing what is not ours at the end of the day. Most of them are fairly universal, easy, and usually involve breath and visualization, and like most energetic practices, intention is key. Knowing our own energy well is invaluable to navigating relationships with beings we meet in non-ordinary reality and in the spirit realms. And knowing it and tending it well is crucial to keeping ourselves healthy and moving forward along our path of spiritual evolution.

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Magic in the Dandelions

10/30/2023

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I’m so grateful to have a yard now and I’m spending a lot of time getting to know it. As I write this, it is after the fall rains have started but before the first frost has come. The texture of the yard went from summer crunchy brown survival to lush green thriving just two weeks after the rains came back. The deep green is dotted with bright yellow splashes of dandelions and cat’s ears, commonly called false dandelions. On an exquisite clear sunny autumn afternoon, I sit among the buzzing of bees.

I am contemplating how many different plants there are in the yard, and I realize that it has relatively little actual grass. I’m fine with that, as monoculture makes me nervous. I find comfort in the diversity and natural wisdom of the resilient landscape and its plants, insects, birds.

Instead of grass forming the green carpet in my yard, there is ground clover, a variety of geranium, Queen Anne’s lace and the dandelions. I’m happy that the people who lived here before I did let the yard grow wild, and did not cultivate a monoculture of grass.

I know wild yards aren’t for everyone, no judgment from me on that. Some people are comforted by soft carpets of grass especially if they have small children or animals who play in it. I once cultivated a grass area in my yard when my daughter was small and I wanted her to be able to crawl on the ground in a space without thorny things. But we can differ in our opinions of what we like, and that is also diversity and not monoculture.

Some people would say I have a yard full of weeds. But what makes us classify plants as weeds? When they don’t fit into the idea of what humans want? Many plants that people regard as weeds are nutritious, medicinal and wise.

Today it is the dandelions that are calling my attention. The yellow furred blossoms broadcast mighty energy, and generously create so much pollen that the bees quickly become laden with it. As soon as one flies off, another one takes its place.

I watch their flowers open and close for relatively short periods of time during the day. I wonder what guides that cycle within them, as I can’t see a pattern in the amount or direction of sun on them. Maybe they know when they’ve given the bees enough pollen for the day. I feel that dandelion has an innate individual sense of timing that is woven into the perfection of the interdependence in their environment. Plant whisperer and shaman Davyd Farrell calls dandelions “time lords” as he feels them helping us navigate that dimension.

I am invited to make a flower essence from dandelion today, something I have been wanting to do all year but did not have the opportunity to do until now. As dandelion energy and essence instills into the water, messages begin to come through. They say…

Because we are adaptable to all environments, we assist with change. We are transducers. We take solar light codes and assimilate them into the earth and her beings. We are a balance of sun and earth. We ground ether. We help assimilate the great changes going on now.

Later I get more as I sit and drum with the finished essence.

There is power in our presence, and we are many. We help you show up again and again. Each cycle blossoming, seeding, letting go, growing, blossoming, letting go again. We are always there. We are always serving our communities. We are strong, we lend you our strength, perseverance, our NOW presence. But also our sweetness and optimism. Nothing can get us down for long.

How can you work with us? We keep you going. That optimism for what is coming, stamina. The urge to keep sharing your innate beauty of your blossoms, keep releasing the seeds as you transform, keep blossoming anew. There is strength and beauty, harmony and service in that, and in showing up, being here now, aware and conscious in the midst of your transformation.

Perhaps some of us have felt like weeds in certain circumstances at times in our lives. We felt we did not fit in with the monoculture of the group or social landscape around us. And chances are good we may feel like that again. We can take the wisdom of dandelion with us for those times, the wisdom of being present to share our blossoms, our sweetness and tenacity of optimism in any environment. And we will notice the other weeds blossoming in the network of transformation at these times of shifting consciousness.

May we find the magic in what others call weeds.

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Creating New Relationships With Nature Spirits (After Stepping on Some Faerie Toes)

9/27/2023

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The urge for change this year was strong. After living in an apartment complex for eight and half years, I was ready to move. I missed having a yard, and I felt that was something I needed to have in my life again. It didn’t matter what size as long as I could put my bare feet on the earth and give my plants more room to open to the sunshine. Decent rentals are hard to come by in Corvallis, due in part to the University student market and demand for them, and the overall affordable housing issues in Oregon.

I had a conversation with the faeries and nature spirits in and around my apartment. I let them know how much I appreciated the care they gave to the place and to me, but I needed to move on and I would appreciate any help they could give. For three months I looked at many rentals, none of them felt right, but I kept getting the feeling that something was about to happen.

I looked at a duplex in the next little town over in Philomath, and as soon as I pulled up next to it, I felt faeries. It was big wild faerie energy. The duplex was on a corner lot and in the corner was a wild place that had been fenced off by the public works. The fence is fairly low key black chain link. I don’t really know why it is fenced off, but there is some kind of water drainage there, a little gully sunken below the level of the surrounding land. It is full of wild green life, shrubs, small ash trees, cedar, blackberries and wildflowers. And faeries. I could feel them, that electric sensing in my energy field that they were there and they ruled the area.

Because of that, I wanted to live there. I didn’t even know what kind of yard or anything else the place had. I just knew that my apartment fae friends put the call out to their friends and they called me in to this place. I applied and got the place and found it had everything I wanted, including a yard.

I knew the first thing I had to do when I got there was to make an offering space for the faeries in the lovely spacious back yard near their wild area.

Then moving weekend came and I was overwhelmed. I ran up and down my second floor split level apartment stairs so many times my hamstrings burned. Luckily I had a lot of help, but had to manage so many details and I was exhausted by the end of day. We moved all my twenty-ish pots of plants over, and the little side porch became full of herbs, ferns and flowers. I had a planter box with rosemary and geraniums that had a cut out bottom so it would sit on a railing or fence. I was out of room on the porch so set it on the wooden fence that ran along the yard.

The next morning I got up and went out in the yard to greet the plants and faeries. I saw that my big heavy potted lemon tree had been knocked off the little back deck and lay on it side. I picked it up, it was okay. I wondered briefly about that, it was breezy the night before but not real gusty. It’s always chaotic unpacking and finding things but I also felt an odd pressure as the day went on. It was unsettled, ruffled energy that was beginning to feel uncomfortable in my body.

When I went out to water the plants I realized my planter box on the fence was missing. I looked over the fence and saw it sitting right side up at the bottom of a deep wild area between our back yard fence and the neighbors fence. This narrow strip about three feet wide ran the length of our fences and connected to the wild faerie corner fenced area.

I immediately got the message that I had overstepped a boundary. The faeries let me know that this wild strip between the fences was theirs as well. But that I could have my planter back. My brother kindly got the step stool and climbed over the fence and down into the blackberries to retrieve it for me.

I then realized with chagrin that in the flurry and exhaustion of moving the day before, I had forgotten my promise to set up a space and make an offering to my new faerie neighbors. That was the ruffled uncomfortable energy I was feeling now. They were letting me know that they were annoyed that I hadn’t followed through on my promise.

I remedied that right away. In the back corner of the yard is a big rock and some ivy and sweetness that felt right, so I offered dried herbs and flowers and honey water there. I formally introduced myself and promised to honor their wild spaces and to be a good neighbor. They let me know they liked crystals and I promised to set some there as soon as I unpacked them. After that, the energy lightened in the house and yard and flowed smoothly.

There are many reasons to set up an area for acknowledgment and offerings for the local nature spirits, faeries, spirits of the place. It makes a space where we can meet that feels like a threshold, common ground. In this liminal area we consciously recognize unseen dimensions of the nature spirit world and how they overlap with our perception of the physical world as we usually see it. And it also helps keep us mindful to tend our relationship with consistency and respect. But more importantly, it seems to delight them. That is the best reason of all!

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Sky Yeager

The Practice of Sensing Our Energy

Magic in the Dandelions

Creating New Relationships With Nature Spirits (After Stepping on Some Faerie Toes)

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