Rooted & Radiant

01/13/2024

May we all feel the welcoming potential of a new year, and of this nourishing New Moon in Capricorn! Happy New Year, and New Moon Love, to you and yours.

To honor this first New Moon of the year, I am excited to share a seed I am planting.

For the next few months, I will be offering two free recorded meditation practices each week. These are guided meditations that I teach in my “Why Stress” classes—stress management classes dedicated to transmuting stress and suffering into self-awareness and Strength. Many students find that the effort they put into their practices is deeply empowering and transformative.

This is the essence of this Capricorn New Moon—putting in the effort needed for individual and collective transformation and empowerment! This effort is grounded in simple practices, consistently applied.

I am incredibly grateful to both witness and experience the ways in which simple practices can create the space for us to experience the presence of magic in our lives. Synchronicity, grace, lifeforce energy become more tangible. Practices that are deeply grounding and embodied can catalyze spiritual and energetic shifts; we begin to perceive the Mystery and magic in all things.

This too is the essence of Capricorn—the recognition that life is both material and magical. The two aren’t separate, and any practice we undertake contributes to the whole. There is no difference between “stress management” and “spiritual” practices—they are two sides of the same coin.

This New Moon week I offer two meditation practices. My intention is that these might create the conditions for contemplation and rest. Also, that they might create a foundation for your own stress management or even personal transformation—a foundation that involves gently expanding your capacity for self-awareness and self-acceptance (and magic!).

Week-by-week, these audios will build a set of practices that may be useful in your own explorations and transformations. I think they’re accessible to a wide range of ages and needs. I know I certainly benefit from creating them, and am excited to share them more widely.

While it is my intention to share these for free, I do have one request. If you try them, please consider the energy of reciprocity. Just as the practical and the spiritual are not separate, nor are giving and receiving. Consider how you might give back out from what you receive. One simple idea: let me know what you think! I always appreciate feedback and questions (and, I also love to create personalized audios). Or share these with someone who might benefit! Thank you.

Here’s the link: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/q92t3jnm4q9o9711423xy/h?rlkey=8o61vgdigtlqjl0mrhuwdtg2e&dl=0

May you enjoy and benefit. May our practices together weave a just and peaceful world.

Love,
Gaby

Shared with Dropbox

01/19/2022

Today my heart is broken.

Today my heart is broken, for the needless loss of precious lives and for the fear and wounding that armor our hearts.

My heart is broken for those who cannot breathe freely. For anyone and everyone who feels they are not enough.

My heart breaks, and I allow it to do so. It is the only right response.

I allow my heart to break, knowing I am not alone, that countless others are mourning. May our collective tears be a cleansing and a balm for us all.



And, when we come up for air, may we allow breath to move deeply into those broken-open heart spaces. May we remember the cleansing power of wind, of the breath, to clear new vistas.

Nature mirrors all the change and the steadiness we can feel within. We can turn to that mirror, and be reminded. The heart is resilient.



The Moon, so full and brilliant this week, is quite literally the force that makes all the rhythms of nature possible. Let’s remember to allow wonder to also shine through our broken-open hearts, when the time is right. Nature invites us, constantly, to do so.

The Moon is patient, and reliable. The Moon’s light will wane, and then disappear, but is never gone.



From my heart to yours,

Gaby



PS I credit the brilliant and beautiful novel Bewilderment, by Richard Powers, for the wonder-full scientific fact about the Moon's stabilizing power on Earth's climate.

12/09/2021

Welcome to the final lunar cycle of the year! Another round of beginnings/endings, amplified by the recent lunar and solar eclipses. The solar eclipse last Friday, and with it this whole lunar cycle (until the next New Moon in early January) feels like a time to release old stories.

This is a practice I’ve worked with, and taught, for many years—when I’m feeling contracted, frustrated, or on edge, simply pausing and asking “what is the story I’m telling myself right now?” This is advanced mindfulness practice. Its foundation is awareness of breath and body, of sensation and the ways in which we label, categorize and judge our experience, moment by moment.

Rare is the moment when we’re experiencing anything unfettered by the experiences of our past. This is the way the brain works. AND, we can learn to work with the brain and its evolutionarily-selected, self-protective but soul-stymying habits. We witness our habits and we awaken to all our stories.

This happens in the cauldron of real life—kids, work, health, parents, partners—because real life is our greatest teacher, inviting us into greater awareness, compassion and growth one triggering moment at a time! Hooray!

So this lunar cycle, take some time to simply notice, in the moment, the stories you’re telling yourself.

This morning I got to drop all the stories my impatient mind was telling me about why my son struggles to get ready on time for school. Instead of getting entangled in those stories of what “should” be happening, I simply supported him in getting out the door on time. By dropping my stories, there was more space for each of us to be real, and to work together more harmoniously.

Three weeks ago, I found myself caught in a story that frequently entangles me. I was describing a recent series of synchronicities to a friend. As I did so, I commented that while I had felt the magic of these events, describing them out loud made me somehow doubt their significance. My wise friend challenged my story of “doubt.” Was I truly doubting the presence of the miraculous in my life? She reminded me that the passage of time tends to fade the intensity of experiences, so perhaps what I was naming “doubt” was simply the natural effect of the passage of time. In that moment, a wall of ice off the glacier of my own self-doubt cleaved back into the ocean of simple truth—things happen, and then fade. Everything else is a story.

Of course, stringing events into a set of “synchronicities” is a story too. This practice isn’t about dropping all interpretation! Rather, it’s about holding all our stories and interpretations with lightness, spaciousness, and humor. It’s about knowing that we NEVER have the whole story, however certain our brains may try to make us feel. (Life is uncertain—creating certainty is one of the brain’s jobs. Thank you, brain!)

This practice is about CHOOSING the story we get to tell. Is my son willfully irresponsible? Or simply caught up in the busyness of being an imaginative child? Do I doubt the magic that I experience? Or do I simply acknowledge that all things arise with a certain intensity and then naturally fade into the backdrop of a deeper sense of trust? If I can drop the doubt (or any other) story, perhaps I can allow ALL my experiences to take their rightful place.

This lunar cycle, allow your old stories to bubble to the surface. Conversations, dreams, mindfulness practice, triggering moments—these are all opportunities to allow your unconscious stories to surface, see them clearly and then choose whether to hold them or to compassionately let them go. What are the stories you WANT to be telling yourself? Allow those deeply chosen, soulfully authentic stories to surface too, in your dreams and longings, and may they take their rightful place in your unfolding!

Love,
Gaby

PS
This practice of noticing stories sounds simple, and of course we all know it’s not! Noticing is just the beginning, AND it’s the seed of powerful intentionality and conscious choice and action.

Next year I’m excited to be offering a NEW version of Rooted & Radiant—a 15-week spiraling journey into your life, as it is, to reframe and rewrite your stories, and to draw deeply-rooted wisdom, strength and yes, RADIANCE, from ALL your experiences. If this sounds intriguing, drop me a note! And, stay tuned.

08/31/2021

If the Full Moon is a peak—completion, wholeness, harvest—then the Quarter Moon, which fell yesterday on the waning side of the cycle, is a letting go.

Maybe this waning Moon, rising in the darkness before dawn, is whispering invitations. Perhaps you’ve heard her in your dreams, or in your 4 a.m. ruminations….

“Let go,” she whispers, “of your achievements and your striving.”

“Surrender,” she implores, darker with every passing night, “where you’ve been and wherever it is you think you’re going.”

“Empty yourself like me, hide in the rising Sun, be humble yet whole, invisible yet indestructible, and trust the new beginnings to come, that cannot not be.”

The Moon invites us into the Mystery—into new beginnings that cannot not be, into endings that are essential to the balance of the whole. Chaos not to be feared, but necessary to an essential re-ordering. We take our place, as our dreams and deeper rhythms guide us. It’s all written in the stars, and the Moon is our closest ally in that vast Cosmos.

Let the Moon remind you that there is nothing superfluous. There is neither ending, nor beginning, only cycling and perhaps, in its midst, the growing wisdom that the best we can do is trust the ride we’re on.

And hasn’t this year, now heading into its own waning cycle, been quite a ride? What is the place for surrender, for letting go, in your own cycle? Perhaps you feel that pull—or perhaps your cycle is something else entirely. Trust your rhythms, the Moon whispers. Trust where they take you.

The Moon is New—dark and hiding that invisible seed of potential, on Monday September 6. I will be holding a local in-person New Moon Circle on Thursday, September 9.

NEW MOON CIRCLE 9/9/21 7-9pm
To celebrate the reappearance of the Moon’s light and to nourish the beginning of a new cycle, please join me for gentle movement, shamanic ritual, and conversation—on Thursday, September 9 from 7-9 pm at the Triyoga studio in Boalsburg. This event is free. RSVP here, through the event, or message me!

If you wish to offer a monetary exchange for this event, I will be donating all proceeds first to Triyoga for the use of their beautiful space, and then equally to Olympic Mountain EarthWisdom Circle for their support of Mayan and other ancient wisdom traditions, and to Women for Women International for their work supporting women survivors of war in Afghanistan and other countries. Please contact me for a paypal link, or bring your donation to the gathering.

Love and gratitude to you!

06/03/2021

Welcome to the final quarter of this powerful lunar cycle!

In Shamanic Reiki, intention directs energy. In yoga, I’ve always experienced (and taught) that energy flows where attention goes. At the start of every practice, we set an intention. This cultivates a certain quality of attention, which shifts how energy flows. We can feel this.

In Huna (Hawaiian shamanism) the principle of Makia states the same—energy flows where attention goes. In shamanic healing, the shaman works with their attention, creates a focused intention, and allows energy to do the healing. Not personal energy, but universal lifeforce energy.

This energy is accessible to all of us. Every one of us has the capacity to focus our attention, clarify our intention and channel healing energy. Maybe we feel this from time to time at a yoga class or in meditation. For the most part, though, we’ve simply forgotten. We’re distracted, too busy, too tired. Most of the time our attention is so splintered, and our intentions so blurry or even contradictory, that it’s no wonder we’ve forgotten our innate healing capacities!

The truth is, we are all healers. Whether you engage in self-healing or work with a healer, YOUR intention creates the space for healing to occur.

But with our busy minds—clouded by self-doubt, immersed in a soup of collective stress, and without definitive “proof” in this lifeforce energy stuff to bolster our trust—accessing and holding this kind of powerful core healing intention can be challenging, to say the least.

So what are we to do?

Well, we can start by remembering that energy flows where attention goes. Where are you directing your attention on a habitual basis? Sit in meditation and simply notice where your thoughts go. Or, if you’re not a meditator, take one day to notice from time to time where you’re directing your attention (or, what’s capturing your attention). Let this exercise help you reclaim your attention! Consciously place it, with care, where you want energy to flow.

This is mental strength training! These habits of attention and intention are essential for deep healing, authentic self-love, and (in my humble opinion) creating a world that works for ALL beings.

This is what Rooted & Radiant is all about—cultivating your healing capacities, loving yourself deeply and authentically, and contributing your unique, vital essence to a world that needs us all to step bravely into our places in creating a more just, sustainable and loving world in which ALL BEINGS can thrive.

In the second spiral of Rooted & Radiant—the spiral of Expanding Mind—this is the adventure we will embark upon! A journey into our own minds—through the clutter of surface concerns into the depths of our old, stale stories about what we “should” be doing, how we’re not enough, what “reality” is, etc. etc. Using daily practices from the yogic and shamanic traditions, we will alchemize these stories. We will transmute and transform them with our loving attention!

Over the course of four weeks, we’ll invite in a process of expanding our minds such that we begin to more fully trust ourselves, develop clear intentions that feel aligned with our highest aspirations, and shed some of the “veils”—the stories, beliefs and conditioning—that obscure our own perfection. We will learn to perceive more clearly, through the eyes of love—the eyes of the heart.

Love, acceptance and appreciation are the balm that brings our core soul intentions into crystal clear presence and that allows us to truly heal, from the deepest and most subtle aspects of ourselves, into every fiber of our being, and out into our relationships, our communities, and our world.

This Rooted & Radiant adventure begins on June 10!

Registration closes on June 7—please message me to claim your spot. More details and the sliding scale pricing can be found at https://www.shaktijourney.com/rooted-radiant-spirals. If you would like to register, you can pay me by check or paypal: paypal.me/shaktijourney.

Enjoy playing with your attention this last week of a powerful lunar cycle! Tuning in this way can help you hone your intentions as we approach next week’s New Moon Solar Eclipse—an extra-powerful time of new beginnings.

Love,
Gaby

06/01/2021

The second spiral of Rooted & Radiant begins next week, with the New Moon Solar Eclipse on June 10!

There’s no need to do these spirals consecutively—that’s the beauty of a spiral. Wherever you enter is where you need to be.

From the first spiral of Earth and “Opening Awareness” concluding this week, we enter into the second spiral of Air and “Expanding Mind” on June 10. Our muses for this spiral are the astrological sign Gemini and the Knights in the tarot—they’ll be supporting our explorations. Choosing new stories while laying to rest old, stale beliefs and thought patterns—we’ll be engaging with tools from yogic and shamanic traditions for changing your mind—cultivating new outlooks and mindsets of abundant self-love.

Each week, we focus on a different element, a different suit of the tarot and the current astrological and energetic influences as we “spiral” through practices of body, Earth, heart, imagination and stories.

These practices are disciplines—a daily devotion to your own unfolding self-love, presence and purpose.

Each week you’ll receive a PDF workbook, an audio podcast and an audio meditation. Weekly group Zoom calls and one-on-one Shamanic Reiki sessions are optional. Please see my website for all the details: https://www.shaktijourney.com/rooted-radiant-spirals.

With Mercury retrograde and a powerful Solar Eclipse to support new endeavors—the timing is perfect for this deep dive into your beliefs, thought patterns, and stories. So many of these thought forms simply aren’t expansive enough for what wants and needs to come through each of us in this transformative time!

Every offering during these four weeks is dedicated to YOU, as you are, being fully Rooted & Radiant in your life, as it is.

Visit my website or message me directly if you’d like to know more!

... is a spiraling journey to your soul, that place of your unique essence, your innate loveliness.  This journey begins where you are, in this life, this moment, this body, and invites you to explore and deepen into your innate gifts and your soul’s purpose in this life.  It is a journey in lea...

05/05/2021

Rooted & Radiant: Awakening Unconditional Love... starts next week! Tools and practices for loving your self, your life, your world, from the inside out. Let me know if you'd like to join me!

05/02/2021

On Wednesday, May 5, I’m hosting a meditation and Q&A in Zoom to share my upcoming Rooted & Radiant series! Check out the event I’ve created on this page!

We are now in the fifth month of a five year (2+0+2+1=5), which according to the Tarot means the Hierophant—the archetype of finding, honoring and trusting our inner teacher, our inner wisdom. This is really what being Rooted & Radiant is all about—tuning into our inner guidance and making choices from a place of trust in the abundance and rightness of our life, as it is.

If this were easy, I wouldn’t need to teach it. I need to learn this stuff as much as anyone (really). It’s been my honor to share these tools and approaches with college students for six years. Now I find myself in the exhilarating place of midwifing the caterpillar of that academic version as it is becoming the butterfly of Rooted & Radiant.

Notice that I say becoming! Yes, Rooted & Radiant is becoming, and is quite honestly in the mushy tender phase of being neither caterpillar nor butterfly! This means that YOU and I, if you choose to join me on this adventure, will be co-creating Rooted & Radiant together—trusting the butterfly it is becoming through each of us and through our collective.

This kind of work, this authentic collaboration and intuitive, improvisational flow is actually my FAVORITE place to be—in the liminal zone, right on that razor’s edge between full-body/heart/brain knowing and complete, utter unknowing. This first “spiral” of the series invites us all into beginner’s mind, so we’ll play in these realms of deep creativity and seed-planting.

Check out my website https://www.shaktijourney.com/rooted-radiant-series and the Event on May 5 for more information!

Join me on an unfolding adventure through the elements, the phases of the Moon, and into your own rhythms and depths.  Find yourself rooted, radiant, and living with clarity and courage at each new step of your life’s journey.

04/13/2021

This past Sunday, the New Moon was in Aries—time of new beginnings, a new astrological cycle—so we find ourselves now in a powerful time for an intention-setting practice!

Setting intentions with the New Moon is like setting seeds into fertile spring soil. There’s an element of preparation, a clarity of intention, and a good dose of trust. The seed we hold in our hand essentially disappears into the Earth. We remain attentive, but we know that whatever’s going on beneath the surface isn’t ours to manage beyond the necessary tending to weeds and water. We trust that what we intended to plant will grow. Roots first, in the darkness, and eventually some tender shoots.

We’re still in the dark phase right now. A good time to ask yourself what you want to grow. Shamanic practitioner Jonathan Hammond teaches a tenet of Hawaiian philosophy known as Makia—the principle that “energy flows where attention goes.” Or, as mindfulness teacher and researcher Shauna Shapiro says, “what you practice grows stronger.”

This present phase of the Moon is a great time to bring your attention to the seeds you are planting—both consciously and unconsciously. Where does your attention habitually go? What are you “practicing” in your life? We’re always practicing something—so this is a powerful time of the month to be sure we’re practicing what we want to grow. This is also a good time to be sure we’re tending to our soils—the conditions that allow these intentions to grow. You can water your intention with a daily journaling practice. You can prepare your inner soils with meditation or any activity that allows you to feel grounded in the present moment.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be taking you on a tour of the phases of the Moon, to give you a taste for my upcoming offering, a 4-week journey through next month’s lunar cycle. May’s “Spring Awakening” is the first adventure on this year’s deep dive into embodying your own most Rooted & Radiant ways of being!

Each week I’ll offer you tips for practice, concepts to explore, and invitations into your own inner wisdom. If you resonate with what I’m offering, please let me know! I’d love to have you join me in May, and I’d love to offer you a free ½-hour mini Shamanic Reiki session to give you a taste for the ways in which I facilitate inner exploration and intentional growth!

04/02/2021

Rooted & Radiant begins on May 11, with the Ta**us New Moon. For four weeks, I will be guiding an adventure into your own heart, your own life, wisdom and strength! Together, we'll be cultivating a practice of presence and sacredness.

If you're curious about this offering, please listen to my audio-- it includes a meditation and some more information about me (Gaby) and this offering! Email me to set up a free mini-session to explore more if you're interested: gabytarot2@gmail.com.

Please enjoy my audio intro:

03/26/2021

Happy Full Moon in Libra this weekend!

One reason why I enjoy tuning into the phases of the Moon is because doing so reminds me of the passage of time, and of the importance of pausing to note and honor that passage. At the Full Moon, we can check in with what’s been happening for us in this cycle—in the two weeks of the Moon’s re-emergence from shadow and into full light. We can ask ourselves what we are bringing out of the shadows and into the light?

With the Moon in Libra—sign of relationship—and the Sun in Aries—all about ME… we have an opportunity to see where our love is (or is not) flowing, and to see into the shadows of what impedes love’s flow.

Last weekend—on the quarter Moon—I was at a retreat (via Zoom, of course) with my meditation teacher, Sally Kempton, and yoga teacher Todd Norian. The theme was love. It was an expansive and magical weekend of practices, synchronicities and insights. During our sessions, I felt myself guided deeply into experiences of the love that infuses everything (in the yoga tradition, we call this Shakti). In between sessions, as I would re-enter my “real life” I could literally feel love spreading to all the unloved parts of myself and overflowing into my relationships. I deeply felt the lubricating effect of that love. Flow was effortless, loving myself, my family, my life felt utterly natural and joyful, and I felt a deep sense of alignment with my place in the world and in this life.

Then came Monday.

While I could still feel the presence of this love, I could also feel all my old stories and habits powerfully reclaiming their place in my body and mind. All the stories of not-enough, too-much, what’s the point, who do you think you are. I see those stories, I know them well, and I know they are neither the truth of who I am nor in service to any of the ideals and visions I wish to bring into the world. And yet. They are strong. Over the next few days, I could feel the tide of that powerful, all-embracing love receding. I felt dry, all my edges brittle again, my nerves too sensitive, my mood, my self-esteem, my libido, my desire for ANYTHING… disintegrating into old patterns.

I’ve ridden Shakti’s waves for long enough to know that contraction inevitably follows any expansion (and vice versa, thank goddess). But that doesn’t make it any less painful. To experience so viscerally how self-created the whole machinery of suffering can be, how a mood can take not only oneself down but also everyone around, and how the cycle of self-blame and hopelessness can ride the tail of that plummeting mood, perpetuating the steep dive—That is suffering. This is what we do to ourselves, these brains, these bodies, these lives! It makes my heart break to see it in others; I’m learning to let my heart be tender when I meet it in myself.

Now it’s Friday, and I am feeling a measure of presence, a capacity to hold the polarities of life WITH the love that sustains it all. A few things helped to pull me out. Paramount, the love of people who really love me. Not for what I do or make but for who I am. May we all feel the presence of those people at our back! And when those people aren’t physically present, may we engage in practices to call them in, to feel the support that is there in the subtler realms. Unquestionably, my meditation practice helped.

Meditation for me is a daily practice of trusting the bigger something that animates me and everything else. It grounds me. It supports a discipline of loving self-inquiry. Meditation cleans the lens of my perception. Then, when all my patterns of unlove clamor for attention, I know there are other truths present, too.

This week I’ve been teaching the Buddhist practice of sympathetic joy. Mudita is the practice of sharing in one another’s joy, in order to expand and spread our own joy. It’s a beautiful practice of recognizing the abundance of joy that is available to us, in any moment. And it’s a painful practice for seeing just how stubbornly our human brain restricts and limits our experience of this joy.

Mid-week, I was totally in that restriction and limitation. I knew it, but I was stuck, with parts of me seemingly addicted to the stuckness, to the yuck. This was the peak of my cranky contraction of unlove. I was thinking about these teachings on Joy and, truthfully, feeling like they were a big pile of BS and no way, no how was I going to practice. So I paused and just asked myself, silently… “who doesn’t want to?” and as that question sank like a stone into my depths, I felt an unmistakable softening in my body. I felt the edges of tears in my eyes, and I felt the relief that comes when we turn towards our own pain. I simply honored the part of me that was fed up—didn’t want to teach, serve, help, love—none of it. Just done. And of course that part was protecting a more tender, wounded part… and the truth was, the unlove I was feeling was protection. It always is, isn’t it? Oh, it’s heartbreaking the ways in which we mount protection by breaking off the very flow of life—connection.

So in that moment, I re-established connection to my complex array of inner attitudes and preferences. That connection was—IS—love. Love is when we reach out across discomfort and connect, instead of retreating in order to protect.

Ah, all of which brings me back to the Full Moon!

May the light of this Moon illuminate and facilitate connection for us all. May life break us free of the limitations of me and mine and into the expansive relationships of US. We ALL deserve life, and love, and safety. We all deserve joy, and we all deserve to feel a tender touch—whether our own or someone else’s—on our wounds.

May you love yourself this Full Moon, and know that by loving yourself, this love overflows into everyone whose life you touch. Love is more powerful than anything else. And, sometimes, we have to choose it, in spite of everything in our wounding that says no.

May we choose love.

Love,
Gaby

PS If you enjoyed this post, please know that I will be teaching this path of love through my offering this year, Rooted & Radiant. The first spiral of this offering will take us through the Ta**us Moon cycle (which includes an Eclipse portal—powerful support for transformation!). It begins on May 11, and I will be posting more here soon, once I figure out some of the tech stuff about how to do so! : )