with Crystal
Hi friends ! I’m so excited to share with you a new offering.
****JANUARY 25TH, 2021 @ 8PM Central time****
Do you want to feel more connected to yourself and your Spirit?
Do you need time for yourself to breathe and reflect?
Do you want to feel more connected, more alive, more at peace and joyful?
Do you crave depth and deep contemplation?
Do you want to build a spiritual practise and connection in your everyday life?
If you’d said yes to any of the above, join me on the last Monday of each month (January 25th this month). Connect with me via zoom as we will explore a teaching/topic, journal, create, explore, meditate, share and connect deeply to your inner most Self. email jgccdt@hotmail.com to sign-up, message me or comment and I’ll be happy to share the zoom link with you. Donations appreciated. Blessings my friends.
If you are interested email me at jgccdt@hotmail.com and I’ll add you to my email list for the link and the monthly guide 🙏🏼😊
Join my email list to stay updated on the upcoming Monthly Women’s Healing and Spirituality group .
🙏🏼🙏🏼💕💕💕❄️❄️❄️
Eeeeeeeeeeekkkk! I’m so excited for this 🎉🙋🏻♀️
Xo
Crystal
2020…what a year!! Phewf!! I’m ready to start shifting the energy. I’ve been feeling stuck and a little down. I miss people !! I miss going out to dinner! I miss sports and playing at the park and having friends over. I need this energy to move… change…dissipate so new energy and health and abundance can come in.
And the end of each year I feel the need to clean and purge… and this year the need is even stronger. It’s time to let go of the past year, a wiping away of stagnant, old energy and a sacred gesture to the Universe acknowledging and welcoming in the energy of the New Year and new experiences ahead. So I invite you to join me in welcoming in a swishing, cleansing, wave energy into your home that releases the old and opens up portals for the new. We need this in 2021!
Here are some ways to prepare the energy in your home and close the energy of this year.
Clearing out the old is so refreshing may you enjoy the new space and energy that comes in this New Year.
If you feel called I’d love if you FOLLOWED THE BLOG as new things will be coming out this year. Watch for new launches and coaching programs coming 🙂
and Follow The Women’s Tribe Facebook Page. Also I’d love it if you shared the post…they say sharing is caring 🙂
Blessings, joy and health to you and your family in the New Year !!
“Whatever you do, don’t try and escape from your pain, but be with it. Because the attempt to escape from pain creates more pain.” – The Tibetan book of Living and Dying.
I’ve been thinking a lot about of suffering lately. What a year we have endured of suffering, of loss, of fear or radical life changes. It’s been painful and hard…and yet because of those losses and freedoms we have discovered and remembered the many gifts and beautiful pieces of life we already have. This year has gifted us with the unbelievable opportunity to blow the dust off of the gems and riches of life we already have around us. In many ways, this past year has been leading up to this solstice. This is a gigantic astrological time where Jupiter and Saturn will meet in Aquarius, starting a beginning of Aquarian conjunctions. This is a new time, a new era, a new consciousness birthing into life…on the solstice! Powerful, powerful stuff. So I want to invite you to celebrate, honour and ritual with this powerful time of healing and transformation.
This past year has been a year of shedding, of karmic and ego releasing….of deep, deep healing. It has brought about a lot of pain for many of us…the sacrifices, the losses, the changes…have been immense. And let’s face it, many of us are uncomfortable with pain and often just want a quick solution or idea so we can move us out of pain and suffering. People want to offer us that quick solution too. The intention is absolutely loving but sometimes we just need to be held, to be offered space to feel darkness, sorrow and pain and that’s tough for many to offer because they don’t know how to do so for themselves.
What I’ve been learning from Buddhist texts is that “life is suffering.” There will always be suffering, we all will suffer at various points in our life whether physically, emotionally, mentally or spiritually and really all that we ought to do is accept this notion. There is suffering in life. Say it with me, “there is suffering in life.” There is also light and beauty and radiant joy….both are beautiful.
This is an easy and yet complex tough concept that I’ve been playing with in my heart and in my mind. I’ve been trying to sit in my suffering, like really move into it. I close my eyes and settle into the suffering in my body and you know what happens when I simply allow what is there?? It dissipates…it softens…the edges sting a little less. It becomes ok and somehow like a sacred act and holy union between my spirit and my physical self.
Perhaps it’s from not battling what is, there is a gentle release in my body. The defenses soften.
So, often when I’m “suffering” with physical discomfort or even emotional discomfort I try and battle my way out of it with a “positive thought” or action or even will power. I positive affirmation out my yin-yang to try and pretend I am not suffering or to adjust out of it. I fight what is. I fight the truth of discomfort and pain while I try to cover the Truth with a lovely balmy protective salve, rather than accept and allow it. My mind and body separate, battle for control, argue and I end up exhausted, depleted and still feeling heavy.
So the last few nights I’ve allowed my “suffering” to be my meditation. To soften and melt into it and allow the moments to be there. It is freeing! Like radically freeing. I even get a slight buzz on the inside, an elation, a joy, a meeting of sparkly truth that I can feel in the cells of my body. I embrace the darkness and healing gates that the Universe has summoned and called upon of us. It’s beautiful in its rawness.
“Suffering is a fact of life. There are four unavoidable physical sufferings; birth, old age, sickness and death. There are also three forms of mental suffering; separation from the people we love; contact with people we dislike and frustration of desires. Happiness is real and comes in many ways, but happiness does not last forever and does not stop suffering. Buddhists believe that the way to end suffering is to first accept the fact that suffering is actually a fact of life.” (Buddhist teachings (very brief) from http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/buddhism/bs-s03.html)
So on this Winter Solstice (in the Northern Hemisphere), and the darkest day of the year, I invite you into your own darkness, your own pains and wounds and simply let them be there. Melt into them for a few moments as a Sacred Witness to what is at this moment.
Where do you feel struggle in your body?
List your pains and struggles, challenges, losses of this past year of the pandemic.
Can you close your eyes, take some breaths… and just move into it, gently, softly, lovingly? See what happens.
And like wise, move into your joy and happiness as it sways in your life as well. We will all move through the tides, the highs and lows of life. May we do so consciously, lovingly and with awareness and acceptance.
Simple Solstice Ritual:
On this lovely Solstice, get out your paper and pens. Light a lovely candle or two, perhaps some incense, get yourself a cup of tea and have a divine union with yourself and Creation on paper.
Enjoy this lovely day of darkness, retreat, rest, and reflection. I honour you and your path. I honour you and your joy as well as your suffering. And I honour the light that is about to return in a new age, a new era, a new consciousness on this planet!
And so it is. Happy Winter Solstice and beginning of a new age!
If you feel called and would like to get more soul nourishing goodies, I invite you to FOLLOW THE BLOG. I’d be tinkled pink .
This New Moon and Solar Eclipse is a powerful point to declare your intentions, your dreams, your goals and deep desires. It’s a time of deep visioning and dream building as we will soon approach the powerful Solstice with its amazing astrological aspects welcoming us into a new age, new existence, new form. We have been going through a cleansing, a shedding, a detoxing and transmuting of our ego blocks and old forms this past year. There were many frictions and challenges to climb over so you would move and let go of the baggage and the addiction to the old ways of being that no longer served you. This has been a hard but powerful and deep learning of us all. Go to spark, go to the light, go to the places and people that light you up and crack you open and illuminate there. It is a time of releasing what stands of the way of your illumination. Release what no longer serves and aligns with you… you know that tug in your heart or gut. Move it out of the way so the new can dance it’s way in. In many ways who we were and how we lived has died and now we are preparing to resurrect into the new. This powerful new moon is a time to declare your new vision for your heart and soul to express and share its lovely gifts into the world . This is a time for you to gather with your family and create a new team vision for your little tribe and for the larger tribe of your community and the world as a whole as well. Gather together around a fire or candle and list what you want. Call it in like a wolf howling to the moon…Individually and then as a family. Oooooooooooooooooouuuuuuuuuu
What an exciting time !
Here’s a little ritual you can do on your own or with your family. Gather everyone around the table or even better outside at a little fire if you can swing it. Light candles, incense, diffuse oils, play music…set the mood. Create a special space. Get one of your kids to ring some bells to start the ceremony. Discuss the energy of this New Moon or explain its a great time to make some intentions and goals for ourselves and as a family.
Here is some visioning prompts for yourself and your fam. Use the ones that call to you.
What words best describe what you want? Name 5-10.
List your intentions for this next year.
What actions will you take to invite these words/intentions into your life? Individually and as a Family.
What routines or schedules do you need to create so your actions will take place with gentleness and ease?
How can you/we be of service?
What do you need so you will follow through on your intentions/declarations/desires will manifest into form?
What is a mantra, word or sentence you/your family can say to anchor you into your visions and intentions?
Close your eyes and see the dark/new moon in your minds eye. Grandmother moon is about to start a New Cycle….what message does she have for you? Write it out.
Get everyone to share and when done Ring the bells to end the ceremony.
Enjoy some hot chocolate and goodies to celebrate.
Wishing you and your family a powerful and magic night. :). If you resonated with tonights ritual, and would like more soul and family connecting gifts, please follow my blog. I’d love that 🙂
xo
Crystal
🤶🏼🎄Today’s Family Team Huddle Day. (Wednesday nights in our house )🎄🤶🏼
I’m one for conscious parenting. We are in a global pandemic and let’s be real… shit is hard!! I cry out of nowhere sometimes because I’m grieving the old way of life, the old freedoms or even the help I had with babysitters. I miss time alone, or family dinners, or date nights, or family outings. I miss being mask free or walking in the grocery store without anxiety.
It’s a scary time and it’s ok to grieve that. It’s really great to name that. And feel that. And it’s even more ok to show our kids our tears because it gives them permission to release their own!! They are feeling this maybe even more than us because their worlds are smaller and it’s been completely impacted. Let’s name it, cry, scream, shout and release it out. This is consciousness… this is role modelling… this is parenting 💕. Sometimes in my house when I’m feeling frustrated I get the kids in the room with me and I count to three and we scream as loud as we can- a couple of times..it’s releasing.. and a hoot… and hilarious . We all love it 🥰
On Wednesday night we team huddle together . We don’t let my oldest son (who is almost 11) play video games twice a week.. Wednesday’s and Sunday’s he got to be offline. He asked if he could play today (apparently there’s a cool new update) and not play tomorrow instead. We discussed and said ok but then we are changing team huddle night to tomorrow. He said ..oh no never mind I want the team huddle let’s just keep it normal 😮🙀. ☺️🥰🤶🏼. I was so surprised and tickled pink because I know even in his preteen stage… he craves the connection and play these huddle nights bring. It’s great for connecting and I always feel like high five-ing myself after these little meetings because I feel like a good parent simply by creating space to consciously connect with the fam jam.
Here’s what we do…. This week entails some Christmas Dice games.
1) check in – how is everyone doing
2) what’s going well, what needs improvement, what are we needing??
3) upcoming events, schedules etc (this is quick these days lol)
4) how can our family be of service to each other and to community/family/friends this week (we pick something we will do… cookies for a neighbors, cheer up signs for our cousin who broke his arm etc.)
5) games or activities !! 🎄🎉
This week we are doing these http://grandmaideas.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Christms-Dice-Game.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0rlswKM7sLQ9nyuOv2wGlEZ–CtrQUFkpldbCrvf0t4ptJ49NMEBgf88o
Happy team huddling 😊💕🎅🏼🎄🤶🏼🎄🎄
Xo
Crystal
I’ve really been brought face to face with my relationship to myself during this moon cycle. I realized this past week as I did yoga and wept that sometimes people don’t show up for me… but it’s reflected in some relationships because truthfully I don’t show up for myself. I don’t prioritize myself enough CONSISTENTLY. I don’t speak up for myself when I really wanted to do something for me but my kid needs me or my husband and needs a hand. I slither away into self abandonment and do what others need of me and feel pissy on the inside. There’s got to be a better balance, a way I can show up for me and them. I don’t stand up for my soul and create the space and Aliveness she needs in my Life. I’m done sacrificing myself and my own happiness for the happiness of others. That is not love… it’s an old definition of love… but truly it’s martyrdom packaged in selfless sacrifice. I don’t ever want my obituary to read that I was selfless !! That feels like someone who doesn’t take up space, someone who has no Self. No thanks. Being kind and generous are glorious while maintaining one’s sense of self.
Think of the confidence and worth showing up for yourself creates and oozes in every single part of your life. It feels so powerful to show up for me. And yet I lose its focus and fall into unconscious patterns and lose the priority of me. I become a bobbing buoy… floating.. lost at sea.
I feel like I need to create a devotional practise to myself, which essentially is with the Divine. It’s creating the sacred space and time to reflect, to contemplate, to feel… to allow the Divine to flow thru me in whispers or in the joy of creativity or in writing. It’s creating time to wonder and absorb the spiritual nudges that life all too often gifts us if we allow and call Her to guide us.
On this full moon my husband and I are doing a releasing fire ceremony. Like many people during this time of pause and reflection, many of our unhealed parts have been shaken loose for us to look at and our relationship has been tested. It was a tense time there for awhile but I really feel like we are going through a death and rebirth cycle in our marriage. The old bond, the old way of unifying has died and made way for a new love, a new unity, a new partnership and essentially a new marriage between us to grow out of the ashes. Like a Phoenix rising from the ash, a new soul contract of togetherness is being etched and celebrated on this full moon. Now is a time of healing.. of naming the old patterns, the old wounds and the sore spots so we can release them and heal them. Now is the time of dissolving the old and transcending, creating new forms…, ultimately a new expression of ourselves in our relationships and our lives.
On this beautiful and bright full moon and eclipse I invite you to shred, dissolve, disintegrate the muck that blocks our hearts from allowing love in and from moving the love out. Burn the old into ashes and dust and let love resurrect into a brand new form !
And so it is ! 💕💕💕
Crystal
Image above by gabby Bernstein
Hi Friends! I’m been awhile since I’ve wrote to you all. I wanted to share with you how I’m feeling cause truthfully I’m struggling…and I figure y’all might be too. I’m tired, I’m depleted, I need a break but have nowhere to go to get one (cause everything is shut down again). I wanted to give some voice to this reality because its truthful…we are stressed…we are out our max, we are exhausted and even getting cranky (at least I am and I’m not usually). We are tired of functioning on high alert, in this abnormal new norm. The effects of swirling fearful reality that this virus could be around is taxing on our bodies and thus on our energies.
What I wanted to share too was some ideas to off load the stress in our bodies…if we don’t discharge it, meaning complete the cycle of release…it stays stuck in the body and this is how we get illness, infection or disease. We must, must, must tend to our emotional and physical bodies during these times. I know for me, my body has this reverberation that feels eerily familiar…I have felt it before I ended up in the hospital for almost a year. I MUST make some changes and prioritize my well-being. My commitment is to do doing small practises, 10 mins a day to turn down my sympathetic nervous system and turn on my parasympathetic system so the stress hormone stops pumping through my body and instead the relaxation response is turned on. Muscles literally relax when this happens. This is sooooo important during these times, we can not sustain the “fight and keep going” response.
Did you know that stress and the hormone soup it creates in the body, literally stresses the blood vessels…weakens and stretches them and that’s how plague gets into our blood and heart…. and this is how stress can lead to heart disease (not to mention many other physiological effects)!! When our bodies get tight, stressed, rigid, wound up, bound tightly….our breath becomes shallow and rapid thus reducing blood flow. We often stop moving and this reduces the flow of our lymphatic systems…cortisol and epinephrine pump through the body….tightening and stressing the body even more. Our appetites are affected, our sleep disrupted…our brains chemically overwhelmed. We need to interrupt this cycle and turn off our survival responses and turn on our healing…rest, digest and relaxation response instead.
So please, join me in tending to the relaxation, the rest and digest response in your body. Commit to soothing your mind, body, heart and soul so you can get through this unimaginable time. Here are some ideas I have used (still using)to help my body discharge the stressful energy out of my body and to turn on the relaxation response.
Take care of yourself my friends, we need you. Prioritize you! Your body, your mind, your heart and your soul need you to show up for you.
xo Crystal
If you feel called I’d love for you to join my mailing list and get emailed weekly goodies to help you tend to your heart and soul. Blessings, prayers, love and light sent to you and the globe!
This full moon is full of emotions. Things have been chaotic, uncertain, overwhelming….anxiety provoking. We are “in the muck” as my friend Bekah said…but it’s necessary for deep healing. We are in a deep healing portal, a time of shucking…releasing…spinning off what no longer fits. We are being brought to our knees and in that surrender, in that silence we are remembering and awakening our souls. We are remembering why we are here….and the emotions, the strong inner gut punches of emotions speaking out our soul’s desires are shrieking in our cores. Our bodies are reverberating the messages that our souls are speaking to us. It can be uncomfortable….but holy crap, it can be so powerful. I’m currently following a spiritual nudge…I’ve been called somewhere different for work…spirit called me there and I don’t quite know why yet. I’m just surrendering and trusting and allowing this call to guide me….I’m following my intuition, my inner knowing….no questions asked. I don’t know where it’s leading but it feels like things are starting to open up.
I share with you this video to support you and your heart, your soul and your wise body as we sit and let our emotions speak their desires to us. They are our soul desires….can you walk inward toward your heart and see what your deepest Self is asking of you? I honour you and your path my friends!!
Happy Full Moon!!!
And so it is.
Of course I”d love it if you Followed My Blog so I can share with you some spiritual goodies. 🙂
xo. Crystal
What is your relationship to self-care? Do you do it? What if your commitment to it were the reflection of your relationship to your very Self? I’ll be the first to admit, it’s the first thing to go when life gets busy and yet I know it should be the thing on top of my to do list instead.
What if we removed the words, “self-care” and focused on re-calibrating our energy and souls instead? Hear me out for a second….Think about how many ways you are in service to the world. You are in service and dedication to your children, your marriage, your friends, your fam, your community at large.
If you do not re-calibrate your energy tanks, you will no longer be able to in service to others and the world. Your energy stores need you to restore the tanks to keep your dedication and abilities to serve love in the world going.
When we aren’t committing to the re-calibration of our energy, several things happen…
We may notice we get more cold, sickness, freak accidents, life annoyances (trains, car trouble) or injuries. Or we may be less patient, more short tempered, exhausted, overwhelmed, sad, depressed, even anxious. These are all symbolic to the imbalance between the energy we offer out and the energy we take in or have within. We must recalibrate our energy, our souls, our bodies, and our hearts.
I’m finishing up my Masters in Mind-Body therapy and have found over and over again that illness is often a result of exactly these imbalances. We get small warnings, wake-up calls, a cold, a sprained ankle, a broken down car….as warnings and attempts from Spirit/ The Universe to slow you down and restore your balance between doing and being once again. Eventually, the body cannot hold the energetic blockages of imbalance and it shows up somewhere as dis-ease or infection as an attempt to release and break free from blocked, stuck energy.
So I invite you, to see how important it is to recalibrate your energy stores through taking time fore you. Your needs each week might change…one week it may be a run, the next a nap, the week after you might need to paint. Whatever it is, I invite you to adopt Kate Northrup’s mantra of “Body first, Business second” and see just how much life changes for the better. See how much energy you will suddenly have with this adjustment.
If you want to keep being of service to the Divine by sharing your love and energy with the people and world around you, embrace that you must be on that list to sustain your purpose…to give and share love. It starts first with yourself. Love is energy, and the tank has got to be full for the large offerings you give to the people around you. Let that energy well stay full so the offerings are that much fuller.
Soul food for thought 🙂
And it is so! If you’d like to receive soul expanding, soul filling, heart warming goodies, I’d love for you to FOLLOW MY BLOG.
xo Crystal
xo
Crystal