Category: Illuminations
Setting Boundaries to Change Your Reality
Recently I’ve started doing something highly unusual for me, something that is so alien it’s almost like speaking a foreign tongue. Lately, I’ve been saying no— to just about everything. No to teaching gigs and travel opportunities, no to friend dates and budding relationships, no even to a possible book deal (it simply wasn’t the…
How to Make a Flower Essence
The first time I ever opened a book about flower essences I cried. Tears just sprang out of my eyes— not out of sadness per say, but out of a deep well of recognition. I remember I was sitting in the near darkness in my room in Brooklyn, a long boxcar of a space…
You are Seen
Learning how to see the world is a precious experience indeed. To be able to pick out the plants by name, to notice the dandelions and the chickweed, to delight in the specific history of things. For so long in the western world our human narrative has been distanced from that of the landscape’s. Like…
Tending the Heartgate
The heart is not just a mindless muscle. Nor is it the simple stuff of greeting cards or blockbuster movies or even cardiology exams. In truth, the heart is a gate. And what lies beyond, and within, is the ability to access real magic. Many different medicine systems around the world have long recognized what…
Embracing Northlight
As a culture we prize all things brightly illuminated. We cherish the summer and grow bitter in the cold. We electrify our homes to be white as daylight and build with the biggest windows pointing south. But here in the mountains, where old homesteads are short and dark as shiitakes and often set into the…
Becoming Sovereign
A quiet has settled over these hills in the past few weeks. A hush that rises from the fading amber of the landscape and its open-limbed winds. The ebb of everything speaking to a deep need to withdraw and rest; an ache to refind one’s inner space. For the Celts, the time following Samhain…
My Top Three Herbal Books
There are a handful of things that I can say I’m honestly addicted to. Potato chips are, admittedly, one of them. Buying crystals is another (guilty). Oh, and raw vegan cheesecakes (ugh, don’t even get me started). But if anyone got a peek at my amazon account they’d see where the real problem lies—…
Opening Earth Intuition
At some point growing up I adopted the belief that to be spiritual was to be un-intellectual. That intuition, even though it sounded lovely, wasn’t grounded or practical. And even though I was always a sensitive and dreamy kid, at a young age I was set to prove that I too could be smart,…
