Unearthing Inner Witchy Wisdom: Reconnecting with Nature and Spirit

Hi everyone and welcome back to how the Wise One Grows. Over the weekend I got a message from someone on the Dream Team about how they have been loving the witchy topics we've been exploring on the podcast and I got super excited about this because it's been something I've really enjoyed diving into and I think, since we're in the middle of spooky season, as they say, I wanted to talk a bit about this term witchy and to celebrate what it means to tap into your inner witchy wisdom. So this episode is going to be a little different because we're going to highlight some of the powerful conversations we've had during this podcast that have helped me connect with my witchy wisdom and hopefully it's done the same for you. But before we get started, let's do what we do and take three deep breaths together. Just take a moment to notice where your body makes its connection to the earth. Let your shoulders soft and down the back. Take a big breath in and a big breath out Again. Inhale, fill your chest, fill your belly with air and exhale. Open your mouth, let it all out Again. Inhale, chest and belly expand, exhale. Let it all go. One more inhale and exhale. So I want to take a moment to celebrate what I think it is and what it means to be a wise and witchy soul. I think the term witch has been. I mean, there's a long history there, right? I'm not going to go into that, I'm not the historian. I'll touch on my interpretations of it, but it's up to you to be your historian on witches, because there's a lot. But I think a witch or being witchy has been someone who is attuned to inner wisdom and the natural world, and to me I'm like yes, sign me up. That's what we're doing here and that's why I love the witchy wisdom conversations we've been having. Again, I'm not the historian, but just like rewinding back. Historically, female bodies have been persecuted for being in tune with nature, for being in tune with spirit, for being in tune with their inner wisdom, and I think that this has, out of survival, has led us to disconnect from this part of ourselves, to suppress it, to hide it, to not let it be seen, to not let it get tuned loud. But I think that the disconnection that has happened is a part of some of the suffering we face in the world today. I think the world needs this quote-on-quote witchy wisdom, this divine feminine wisdom, and I think the world needs us to remember these mystical, magical, witchy, wonderful parts of ourselves, to come back into healing and to wholeness. And when I think about this energy, this divine feminine that we have been forced to suppress, that society has deemed harmful. They try to make it seem powerless because it's powerful, it reminds me a lot of one of the first conversations we had in episode three with Lindsay McCowan on the divine feminine.

The divine feminine, over millennia, has been viewed as not as powerful or as important as the divine masculine, which is totally false because one cannot exist without the other, and the Tantra Yoga tradition and many other yoga traditions see the divine feminine as the Shakti, as the energy of everything. Everything that you see, taste, touch, smell, feel is an expression of the divine feminine, because she is the power of creation and creativity. She is what manifests this world that we are able to live in. And the divine masculine is consciousness, is the stillness, is the awareness that we need an order for the divine feminine to create.

This conversation, episode three, with Lindsay, was so powerful because it was, for me, one of the first times I really connected with the fact that I have this divine feminine energy and divine masculine in me. It's in me, it's in you, it's in all of us, no matter how you identify. It's a part of all living beings, it's a part of life and we need both, and one isn't better than the other. We need them to coexist, to co-create. But I think that so often there has been fear of the power of creation that the divine feminine holds, that society has tried to destroy it, to suppress it, to make it seem weak, to make it seem unworthy, and hearing that that reminder that, no, that divine feminine is everything and we can't live in that like go, go, go all the time. We also need the stillness, the steadiness, the masculine to step into our creative ability, has been really powerful for me in finding balance, in harnessing both within myself. And this is a little teaser, but it has me excited about a conversation that I'm actually going to be recording this week on Chinese medicine and Yin and Yang energy, which has a very similar tone to it. So stay tuned for that one to come Another conversation that has really helped me connect with my inner wisdom and my body's wisdom, particularly as someone who experiences a menstrual cycle, was episode six with Kate Bonet, and we talked all about hormone balancing and cycle thinking in this episode.

So we're conditioned to see our period as something we just have to deal with, a curse, and we kind of just ignore it or we suppress it with birth control until something really goes wrong with us, maybe with our health. I think in doing that we live out of sync with our female brain, our female body chemistry, and we don't do things to support our hormones or to give our endocrine system what it needs to kind of keep our hormones balanced.

That blew my mind. That episode with Kate truly transformed the way I am relating to my body and my cycle. And I tell you what, like I am truly noticing a difference. It blew my mind, my whole life. Until that point I did think of my cycle as a curse. There was a point where I had some health stuff going on and then I did realize like, oh, I do like getting a period because it means that I am healthy when I do, it means that my body is functioning as it needs to. But I never knew I think I was like 28 before I learned that there are four phases of a menstrual cycle. And this information rocked my world. And it's another thing I think, in which women has, and society has, disconnected us from our bodies and the power of our bodies. And because of the way society operates, we want our bodies to operate the way that a man operates, right. That's like what is socially the norm, that's what's expected, but that's not, in fact, what you might truly need and what might actually help you create the most potent life, because we have these four cycles. And so this is like a really brief thing. But go back, listen to that episode with Kate. You're going to get way more information there. But men and women, we each have a 24-hour cycle that we move through. Men go through the same 24 hours every day. Women have something similar. However, women also have typically a 28-day cycle that they go through as well, where our hormones are changing continually through that 28 days. So every day is a little bit different for us. Where men it's that same 24 hours over and over. They don't have this extra layer and it's wild. We expect ourselves to show up the same way every day, to exercise the same way every day, to eat the same things every day, to perform the same ways every day, but that's actually not what's going to work best for you, because your hormones are at different levels, so you need different things to find equilibrium, and I've really found that by just adjusting my exercise based off of where I am in my cycle has been tremendously helpful. Like I can tell based on where I am in my cycle now, okay, it's not best for my body to push it on a run. I actually need to just have some rest days right now or go on slow walks, and if I meet myself with the energy and adjust my actions appropriately, I feel so much more balanced. I could go on and on about this, but again, 10 out of 10 recommend go back. Listen to episode six with Kate. So, on top of exploring how our bodies, natural cycles, have power, how we can reconnect to it, how we can exercise, eat and rest based upon those fluctuations, we've also had conversations that have helped us relate to the natural world and the cycles that are happening in nature. So in episode 61, we talked to Eleanor Medina about lunar cycles and lunar meditation and to me it's been wild noticing how my cycle syncs with the moon and how that impacts my mood and the ways that I honestly honor my energy and plan activities. And again, this might sound like witchy or weird or wild, but I don't think it is. I think those words almost stigmatize the relationship, the honoring that we have and can have when we reconnect to our body and the natural world. Having my own cycle has allowed for me to also pay more attention to the cycles of nature, to the cycles of the moon, et cetera. I've just found this parallel between the moon and my own cycle to be such a reminder of how humans are connected to nature and that oneness that we hold with each other. So if you haven't checked that one out either, I definitely recommend and you'll probably notice we've been having more and more moon meditations coming up on our mindful moments, because it's really potent to pay attention to the energy that's happening in the world around us. I think the more we can bridge this connection and start connecting with what's happening in the natural world and build a relationship with it, the more we will start to honor nature and honor the natural world, which is so deeply necessary to take care of our planet, to take care of the earth, to take care of the life that allows us to exist and supports our life. And as I reflect on the importance of creating this relationship with nature, it brings me back to episode 25 that we had with Leah Laird Bell from Highgarden Tea Holy Moly, best Tea in the World. I am like stocked on it all the time ever since our conversation. But this conversation with Leah was all about herbalism and the heart of it, of cultivating a relationship with plants in the natural world.

So herbalism as a whole is being in companionship with the plant. It's working with plants as the companions that they are asking them for healing, giving thanks. Herbalism can be as simple as you need it to be like grabbing a little bit of sage out of the cabinet and for a sore throat, or going out and gathering a little bit of plantain and chew it up and putting it on a bee sting, but with every moment of that, recognizing that it's the plant doing the healing and giving thanks for it, and then connecting yourself back to nature to offer as much as you can back to those plants.

So episode 25 this episode has really helped me in the way that I Connect and treat nature when I'm outside. There was one point during this conversation where Leah talks about like just becoming friends with nature, kind of imagining, when you step outside, that like you're at a party with a bunch of people you don't know and just get to know one name at a time, one person, one plant at a time, and to not let our relationship with Plants, with herbs, to be about using them, but instead about working with them to honor the energy they're sharing with us and to to give it something back. Right, so it's a reciprocal relationship and if we talk about interbeing, which is a web that I weave throughout a lot of these conversations, it's honoring that, like this plant is a part of you too and you're a part of the plant, and Finding this deep connection within it. And it really just changes the flavor of the way that you interact with everyone in everything, when you start to honor All of the life around you, not just the humans, but the plants, the trees, the bees. There's so much life around us and within us that we so often neglect and and this connection to the spirit of Plants and the earth reminded me of the deep connection that Ashley spoke about in Episode 74, as she talked about Shamanism and one of the foundational beliefs of animism this path believes in animism, which is everything, is of great spirit.

Everything is alive, the river has a spirit, the trees have a spirit. Not only that, but we can communicate.

I Just couldn't stop thinking about if we truly honored the spirit that is in everyone, in everything. How might we engage with our daily life differently, like how would you act differently when you step outside and walk down the street? How would you act differently about cutting your grass, or as you tend to the land that you inhabit? Like? How might you engage differently with the world in all of these small ways? So these are just a few highlights of the many potent conversations that have helped me Reconnect to my body, reconnect to the natural world, reconnect to my inner wisdom and to reconnect to the spirit that's around us, and For many years, people were persecuted for Reconnecting in this way or so. As we reconnect to these parts of ourselves, to our divine feminine, now, what healing can happen? How might the world change if we start to tap into our wise, in which he weighs? I really think that the world needs it. So to me, there's something really beautiful about spooky season, because it's about Harnessing this deep wisdom, this deep connection that all human beings have to the divine feminine, to the natural world, to Spirit and to our inner wisdom. So I hope that you feel powerful as you leave this conversation and I Encourage you to go back and listen to some of these episodes. There's even more that I would encourage you to listen to. Those are just the highlights that are speaking to me in this moment, but may we all continue to step into our wisdom and use this strength to Reconnect with and heal ourselves, one another and the natural world. You also heard me mention the dream team earlier in this episode. If you don't know, the dream team is a group of people who make this podcast possible and Support community causes by making a financial contribution to this podcast every month, and you can join for as little as $3 a month. There is a link in the show notes to join For October. I'm definitely looking at the show notes To support, so if you have any suggestions of where, drop it in the comments. So if this podcast has been meaningful for you in any way, if it has helped you tap into your witchy wisdom, consider joining the dream team. And if you're not able to financially contribute at this time, you can absolutely still support this podcast by Subscribing and following this podcast on your favorite streaming platform, leaving a review and Sharing it on social media sharing an episode you love with a friend, maybe sharing this one or one that we mentioned. Again, thanks for taking the time to listen, thank you for making this possible and thank you for growing With every episode, with every breath with me and with everyone listening.