Sacred Medicine Cupboard: Winter Solstice
Categories: Health & Healing Psychology & Personal Growth
Anni Daulter, Jessica Booth, and Jessica Smithson, authors of The Sacred Medicine Cupboard, invite you to pause and celebrate this rebirth of sun. Read below for an excerpt on the importance of the Winter Solstice.
Winter Solstice
Spiritual Application: Completing Cycles
Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year, is a celebration of the rebirth of sun. Once this night is over, the daylight lingers a little longer with each passing day. It marks the coming end of the winter, although the effects of the light won’t be felt for some time yet. Now is the time to honor the completion of your own cycles. Say goodbye to old projects, tasks, and feelings, and welcome in the light of the new year.
Soul Challenge: Completion
Begin to prepare the fertile ground of your soul for new plantings by honoring and clearing away the old that remains from last year’s cycle. This could be as simple as writing your accomplishments down and burning them, symbolizing their completion. Or it could be a focused assessment of tasks not yet completed, to decide whether they are worth taking forward into next spring’s plantings.
Global Apothecary: Hand Chakras
Hand chakras are a part of the minor chakra system. These swirling vortices of energy reside in the center of your palms. The hand chakras open to healing energy, allowing it to pass through your hands and flow out into the world. It is thought that the left palm is primarily for receiving, and the right palm for giving, although each have some capacity for both.
When your palm chakras are open and in balance, you can feel the energy just by raising your hands and bringing them close together. As they get closer, before the palms touch, see if you can sense any pulsating vibrations. This force can feel warm or cool, or like magnets pulsing against each other. This subtle resistance is the pooling of energy between your palms. “Barefoot breathing” with your hands in prayer position, or placing your hands directly on the Earth, are wonderful ways to cleanse and balance your hand chakras.
Tags: Anni Daulter Jessica Smithson Jessica Booth
About the Author
North Atlantic Books
North Atlantic Books (NAB) is an independent nonprofit publisher committed to a bold exploration of the relationships between mind, body, spirit, culture, and nature. Founded in Vermont in 1974 and operating in Berkeley since 1977, NAB has been at the forefront of publishing a diverse range of original books in bodywork and somatics, ecology and sustainability, health and healing, Indigenous cultures and anthropology, psychology and personal growth, social justice and engaged activism, and spirituality and liminality. NAB’s Blue Snake Books imprint is one of the largest sources of internal and historical martial-arts books in the world.
