Let’s explore climate change grief through the lens of intuition to help you transform it into healthy change

Plus: we’ll chat how to talk with your animals about the effects of climate change.

If you’d rather listen…

Hello Dear Intuitive One,

We have entered smoke season where I live in Washington State. This morning as I write this, the air, coupled with the heat the is thick, heavy and oppressive. The air quality is not safe to open the window for Miss Kitty to bird watch, and it’s not safe to take Raspberry and Whiskey out for a walk. The effects of climate change are here and effecting everyday life. I know I am not alone feeling the grief of climate change, which is real and unavoidable as the heavy smoke in the air.

Yet feeling and tending grief is something many of of us just don’t know how to do. We stuff it. We hide it and we try to sugar coat it all. Yet here we are, our forests are burning, our world is heating up and our complicated, individual and collective feelings of grief, coupled with guilt and worry can feel emotionally crippling.

Grief, when stuffed, stuck and left untended, is an emotion that get’s trapped in our lungs, where it makes our breath shallow and holds our heart hostage with the unnamable heaviness we carry hidden.

Perhaps you’ve heard me share before, I lived with extreme asthma for years. From early childhood until about 10 years ago, I had that kind of asthma where one solid whiff of clothing washed with chemical fragrances, or a face full of smoke from a a camp fire, would leave me struggling to breathe from the asthma gripping my lungs tightly closed. However, all those years of struggling to breathe taught me so much about breath… and the power and necessity of tending burred grief.

Something I learned in my process of healing myself from asthma, is when we are grieving, the very thing we struggle to do, to breathe, is exactly the catalyst for healing we need.

When our grief is stuck we tend to hold in our breath, or pause our breath for too long after we inhale. This traps the air in our lungs in a kind of stasis between inhale and exhale. Understandably so, as when our grief feels too big, it’s too hard to take it all in and feel it all, and when we are not breathing, we feel less. However, when we explore breath with our intuitive and shamanic goggles, we can see just how much of a catalyst and change agent breath really is.

Breath is the unifier of our spirit and body, it connects and binds them which gives us life. It also connects us intimately with our environment with each breath we breathe.

I am reflecting too, about when I offer soul retrieval for clients, it’s my breath that carries the fragmented lost or forgotten soul parts of my clients from the spirit realms, and returns them to their body and life. When given center stage in a ceremony, like with a soul retrieval healing, breath has big transformational power. And because breathing is something so many of us just forget to do, it’s why I talk so much about it, and why it’s woven into each and every shamanic ceremony I create.

A healing ceremony to tend to climate change grief

Healing ceremony has the power to bring what is hidden in the darkness, to light. It also has the power to transform and heal. Not in a spiritual bypassy way, that just makes it go away, but in ways that it can help us remember and reclaim our power from what is holding us stuck, so we are freed to create real lasting change for ourselves and our world.

When we (and our breath) are polarized and frozen, we are unable to think clearly. We are also unable to create effective and lasting change in our habits, our life or our world. The ceremony I would like to share with you today, is focused on helping you tap into your resilience in the hopes that you are able to feel present with what is, including grief. The goal is to help you feel as present and clear as possible, so you are able to create healthy change inside and for our environment.

The Ceremony

Let’s tune-in together, in this moment and create a moment of pause, and sacred space to honor the elements and the giant energy of grief. Place a hand on your heart and another on your belly as we mark this moment as sacred time to tune inward and listen.

Feel this moment.

Sense the Earth holding you below and the sky supporting you from above.

While you stay in your body, give thanks to the elements of Water, Fire, Air, Metal, Wood, Either, and Earth. Give thanks to the weather beings of Wind, Rain, Snow, Sleet, Sun, Clouds and Fog. And from this centered place, give thanks to your own body, spirit and breath.

Give yourself a moment or two to feel the movement of your breath in your chest, your belly, your back and shoulders. Breathe to be IN your body: if you feel floaty or out of your body, just come back and perhaps slow your breath and take smaller breaths. The goal is to stay in your body and present with what is.

Give yourself a moment to sense into the resilience and strength of your lungs. Notice in to how your whole body supports your breathing, your ribs, your spine, your hips and pelvic floor muscles.

While breathing to be IN your body, allow your breath to fill your lungs as completely as you can, and let your Breath surround any stuck grief in your lungs with LOVE and compassion. As you release, allow contraction of your exhale to give this grief you sense a supportive and loving hug. Envision saying to the following mantra to the grief you can sense in your lungs, “I see you, you are helping me understand and learn, thank you for your presence, I am listening.” Repeat as needed.

To finish our ceremony, let’s again thank the elements of Water, Fire, Air, Metal, Wood, Either and Earth, and the weather beings of Wind, Rain, Snow, Sleet, Sun, Clouds and Fog. Do this by breathing again to be into your body, gathering up your gratitude that is held in your heart and simply exhale that gratitude. No need to send or direct this energy of gratitude. Just intend and know it will be received.

AS we close this time of ceremony together, rest your hands that have been holding your belly and heart with kindness, and shift your senses so you can be fully present in the here and now.

The beauty of this ceremony is that it helps us sense our grief with presence through the lens of our resilience and with love. Which can help us choose with clear, embodied intention the best path forward and achievable actions to turn this climate change ship around.

The past few weeks, I’ve been having big, deep conversations with my animal friends about things like why it’s not safe for them to sit out side for hours in the smoke. It’s hasn’t been easy, because they I know they feel my grief and worry as we connect and communicate. However, it’s been helpful for me to do the ceremony we just did, and remember an element of animal communication that I put into practice with animal clients, self-compassion supports telepathy.

The more compassion we can give ourselves about everything that we are feeling, the clearer the connection and conversation will be with the animals we are talking with.

When we are feeling heavy with grief and need to share with our dogs why we need to wait until it is cooler to go for a walk, or to our cat friends, why the blinds are closed to keep the hot sun and smoke out, try breathing in the same ways we just did in our shamanic ceremony. Support your feelings of grief with an inner loving hug. Your words will be shared with clear, loving, compassion, which assures they don’t just pick up your frustration, worry and grief.

Tip: Try this same idea, when you are tuning-in and communicating with the wildlife and nature you come into contact with too, including birds, bees, trees and even the Earth herself.

Schedule an animal communication session with me