Maria came to her first Fertile Soul retreat after years of being unhappy with her life. She was at the point of giving up and had let her house go, as well as her health, her appearance, and her passion. At the retreat, I encouraged her to shift from despair to focus on the wild excitement of the unknown. I also talked to her about creating a sacred space in her home, full of abundance, joy, and light, where she could sit peacefully and happily and find and strengthen her center.
Maria didn't consider herself artful or creative, though, and felt intimidated by the process, so I recommended that she start out small by decorating a window or a corner of a room. She did just that, purchasing several candles and placing them on the ledge above her bathtub - she had often envisioned pretty women bathing in candlelight, but she had never allowed herself to bask in the glow herself. After she arranged the candles, she decided a hanging fern would feel right in her bathroom, too.
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| Getting Pregnant On Ovulation Day |
And not long after, her creative flow extended into her bedroom, where she redecorated with new, brighter draperies and a comforter to match. Then she enrolled in a home-decorating course at her local community college and, after enlivening the rest of her home, apprenticed with a local decorator. The last I heard, Maria had opened a design studio and was joyfully leading a new life. Getting Pregnant On Ovulation Day
Connecting with your true self
When you look in the mirror, who is looking back at you? Do you like whom you see? To unblock your earth energies, don't look at what you perceive as flaws. Instead, look deeply into your eyes and try to connect with a sense of compassion and love. Look at yourself and notice everything that you like. Look for the real you under your exterior and keep looking until you see yourself for who you truly are.
Doing things just for you
In addition to eating mindfully, creating a sacred space, and connecting with your true self, you can also rebalance your earth energies by caring for yourself in other ways:
- Exercise by doing something you enjoy that combines movement with muscular effort.
- Change your environment, for example, by rearranging your furniture in a more pleasing way.
- Take up a hobby or a creative project that provides pleasure for you (not with the goal of impressing anyone else).
- Learn to say no without giving a reason or making an excuse.
- Use self-affirmations when you speak and in your thoughts: "I feel ...," "I feel like... ," "I like my ..." even if you don't mean what you say at first, you will eventually.
- If you are trying to build a family or having issues with your role as mother, step back and evaluate which roles that have to do with parenting are most important to you (for example, being part of a larger family, giving a child opportunities you never had, assuring you will never be alone).
- Go for a hike in nature. Look at the flowers and trees and magnificent life in the soil. Gaze at the stars at night. Connect with how you feel during different phases of the moon. Smell the changes in the air when the weather shifts.
Worry, obsession, anxiety, and regret obstruct earth energy, squelching vitality. But when we are calm, aware, and open to all we can be, more energy flows through us. Getting Pregnant On Ovulation Day
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| Getting Pregnant On Ovulation Day |
The Chinese character for yi, the soul of earth, or intention, represents the celestial vibration produced when the spirit is aligned with our actions. Having intention, or being directed and purposeful brings us into alignment with our source and our spirit and lets our earth energies move freely. Having intention also allows thought to become belief, which can actually determine which of our inherited genes we activate and enables us to integrate past and future, hopes and dreams, and fears and passion within our center. Through you, the vessel, intention is made manifest, helping you to move forward with purpose, continue to transform yourself, and connect with your highest guidance to create the life you were meant to live.
As you learned earlier, though, it's important to first deal with the sludge within you in order to free up your internal space. Regret about the past and anxiety about the future disturb the spleen's function and prevent it from being balanced and stable, open to the present moment. So look without fear at those things in your life that are no longer working and use them to spur new growth and reach higher levels of being. Free yourself to let your earth energies release your full creative powers.
As the prout is nourished by the earth, our wood's power to dream and create is acted upon through the spleen's energies of intention. Like our own Mother Earth, stable spleen energies enable us to harvest what we have planted. If you have planted negativity and fear, you will live in a fearful, negative world. If your beliefs reflect love and gratitude, you will live in a state of abundance. To learn more, you can check out Getting Pregnant On Ovulation Day.
