Simple practices will save your butt when you need them most.
I am finally emerging from two solid weeks of a very severe respiratory infection. It has been brutal. I haven’t been that sick in over a decade.
During that time, the things I was doing to take care of myself got pared down to the simplest, most effective and most necessary. I didn’t have energy for anything else.
But here’s the important part: My version of “simple practices” is actually a pretty solid baseline of physical and energetic health tools, because I have spent years making them second nature.
Here’s some of what that included:
All the immune supplements and potions (mineral detox, 12+ different kinds of mushrooms, nano silver, superfood hot chocolate, electrolytes, vitamin C drink I made from Douglas fir twigs from my land, plus six types of tea and all the nourishing soups and broths).
Medicinal aromatherapy (immune booster capsules I made from six types of essential oils, Raindrop protocol blend made from seven essential oils applied twice a day, diffuser and steam inhalation of respiratory and immune support oils).
Qigong and movement practice as I was able (dredging the lung channels, Ringing the Heavenly Bell and other lung channel practices, shaking and clearing, short walks outside every day).
Energy healing (clearing and purging, microcosmic orbit meditation, I even tried a Shamanic journey during one of my feverish episodes but I wouldn’t say that one was terribly effective).
Of course, lots of rest and snuggling with my dog and cat.
For someone else who doesn’t have the tool kit that I do, my care routine may seem overwhelming or out of reach, especially during a time of crisis.
At some point between states of feverish listlessness, I thought about this in terms of the challenges people are facing all the time: grief and loss, depression/anxiety/mental health, physical illness, spiritual psychosis, mediumship awakening and more.
When you are in challenge or crisis, it will not be the fancy or complicated practices that save your butt. It will be the simple, effective practices you can do without thinking.
When we’re in crisis (whether it’s an activated nervous system state, a trauma response, or a depressive or dissociative state), higher cognitive function shuts down.
In those moments where you are in the thick of challenge and you need your practices to help you stabilize and regulate, you will not remember the complicated meditations or invocations, or the order of the steps of a long practice.
In the moments where you are sick, afraid, tired, in pain, dissociating or all of the above, the simple practices that you have done thousands of times will help you discharge and clear energy, stabilize enough to bring some cognitive function back online, and resource yourself sufficiently to take steps towards care and relief.
Here’s the other very important part:
Doing the simple practices over and over when you have capacity to learn them will ensure that they’re second nature to you when your cognitive function is impaired.
I guarantee you the only reason I remembered the ingredients to all those complicated recipes when I was sick and feverish is because I made them hundreds of times when I felt well and healthy.
The only reason I was able to dredge the lung channels and do other qigong practices was because I’ve done them over and over for years and I didn’t have to think about it.
The fundamentals of energetic fluency are very simple practices. And they are often overlooked or glossed over in favor of shinier, more exciting practices.
But the shiny practices will not help you when you need it most. In fact, the more complicated they are, the less likely you are to remember how to do them when you’re in crisis.
It will be the simple, fundamental practices that save your butt when you need it most.
Do you want to develop your energetic fundamentals to make sure you have effective tools when you really need them?
I hate to bring up the scary state of the world/country/politics, but it is indeed scary and probably only going to get worse.
If you’re reading the news right now and dissociating —
If you feel powerless, afraid and like you’re struggling to put one foot in front of the other —
If you are called to spiritual practice as an effective tool to support your personal empowerment, well-being and fortitude (viva la resistance!) —
