All About Flower Essences: Good Grief

An opportunity to shed what's dead during the "Janus Door" of the year

"Grief is itself a medicine." - William Cowper

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If you’ve been feeling a little extra sad and bereft and weird this holiday season, you’re not alone. The vibe has been heavy, and our energetic and emotional bodies are really feeling it. The silver lining in all of this yuck? We have a bundle of energies, archetypes, and astral bodies here to support us expertly navigate this season of grief in productive, enriching ways:

• In traditional Chinese medicine, winter is the season of fear and grief — emotions that correlate to the kidneys, ancestry, as well as inherited and lived trauma.

• On November 19th, Pluto moved into the sign of Aquarius, shifting the attributes of the God of Death— intensity, destruction, transformation and rebirth— into our collective social structures. This shift only happens every 248 years.

• The influence of the coming Wood Snake Year— which starts on January 30th, 2025— brings with it a season of shedding, release, grief, death, hauntings, and ghosts.

• Mercury went retrograde on November 25th, moving direct exactly on the December 15th Gemini Full Moon, offering an overt invitation to contemplate and process emotions and energies we may have been hitting the “snooze” button on.

• We are approaching the Janus Door of the year— with the culmination of this ancient, pagan holiday landing on January 9th, 2025. In fact, the month of January is actually named after this ancient god of duality, doorways, choices and crossroads, reinforcing the importance of releasing that which no longer serves— and making room for the new.

I know this is a lot of Woo terminology, so here’s the executive summary: if January 9th is the closing of a life-altering door, the coming December 15th Gemini Full Moon is its opening.

The spiritual work that we do in between these two bookends will have major impacts on our life and outlook for many years to come, making it a rare opportunity to do what I’m calling “shed the dead”: purge stagnant energies, emotions, and latent traumas, all with a focus on grief as “medicine”.

And while the archetypal deities of Janus and Mercury may not, at first glance, seem like a natural fit for the role of emotional sherpa as we summit the mountain of grief, trust me when I tell you: they’re actually pretty perfect for the gig.

Both of these guys have intimate knowledge of our contradictions, hypocrisies, shadow selves and disintegrations, and are uniquely positioned to help us decide what to take with us moving forward— and what to leave behind.

Besides: the only real way out of this season of grief is through this season of grief.

The only way out is through

Spiritual bypassing, toxic positivity, and compulsive workaholism are not going to help us process grief. To ultimately release our grief, we’re going to need to feel our grief— and that only happens if give ourselves the time and space for it to bubble up to the surface from the depths of our energetic fascia.

To enable this, we need to embrace long chunks of silent nothingness, avoiding the impulse to stimulate our system or occupy our senses with the typical go-to’s: scrolling on social media, listening to a podcast, calling a friend, or watching TV. And trust me, I get it! Sitting in silence, doing nothing, is super duper uncomfortable!

And it’s uncomfortable for a reason.

Our society is not built to accommodate our being without our doing. We are financially, socially and practically compelled to be doing, consuming, producing, talking, engaging, creating and filling all of the temporal and literal space in our lives with stuff and noise— making the space needed to process grief a very hard-to-come-by commodity.

To assist with this unique challenge, I leverage a handful of tools to help me get into the grief groove and recalibrate after a year of pushing at full pace:

Yin yoga

Yin yoga is ideal for facilitating the kind of gentle, quiet environment needed to feel, process, and release emotions like grief. It also happens to be the ideal type of yoga for winter, focusing on stimulating and supporting the kidneys— the organ that corresponds to fear and grief, ancestry, and inherited and experienced trauma.

If you’re interested in getting into your energetic, emotional and physical fascia, I recommend establishing a weekly yin yoga practice of your own this winter. I personally like to do yin yoga alone, leveraging saved favorite classes on YouTube instead of heading to a group class at a studio.

I close the curtains, opting for gentle candlelight instead of the unnatural, overhead blue lights that are bombarding our nervous and adrenal systems. I also use bolsters, blankets and blocks to do modified, supported versions of the various postures, ensuring minimal effort.

When doing yin yoga, take your time. Spend at least ten minutes on each pose, allowing gravity to do the work for you— and releasing your impulse to constantly be the “doer”. If you want to focus on grief and kidneys in particular, dig into some extended Happy Baby or legs-up-wall poses, making sure to slowly rock back and forth on your lower back, giving those kidneys some love.

When I taught candlelit yin yoga in Chicago, every class had at least one attendee experiencing a major emotional or energetic release, often resulting in the shedding of some serious tears. There’s just something about yin yoga that gives our systems permission to stop performing and to start feeling, enabling us to release the energetic and emotional toxins that have built up in our systems over the last several years.

Shamanic Journeying Meditation

Shamanic Journeying is ideal for this time of the year— and for hard core grief work.

Shamanic Journeying is an ancient meditative technique designed to empower individuals to travel inward, ideally identifying and working with power animals, helping spirits, archetypes, ancestors, angels, fairies and more.

The drumming music we listen to during a Shamanic Journeying Meditation stimulates a theta wave state in the brain— similar to that of a lucid dream. This theta wave state, in turn, will facilitate what Michael Harner named the Shamanic State of Consciousness (SSC) unique to this form of meditation.

When I journey, I lay down on a supportive, blanket-covered yoga mat. As with yin yoga, I’ll close the curtains and light some candles and incense, often strategically using aromatherapy (in the form of essential oils) to induce a shift in energy, mood, and thinking patterns.

Setting the intention to travel to the Lower World (aka Underworld) or to recollect lost soul parts as a part of energetic trauma recovery are ideal during this time of the year. Even if you don’t have a whiz bang experience during the meditation itself, I’ve found this weekly (if not daily) meditation practice seems to stimulate healing soul part recollection and grief recovery experiences during dreamtime, too.

TOTEM Flower Essence Blend: Good Grief

Flower essences might be the most optimal tool to support our systems in this season of grief. Not only are flower essences more gentle than other kinds of tinctures or herbal remedies, the flowers seem particularly eager to gently support us in feeling, processing and grieving past pains and traumas.

To support all of us in this season of grief, I’ve created a rather goth-looking new TOTEM Flower Essence Blend: Good Grief.

Made of a premium blend of our Dead Grandma (Marigold), Thug Rose (Rose) and Peace (Olive Tree) Flower Essences, Good Grief is designed specifically to gently support the grieving process on an energetic level:

• Marigold Flower Essence offers a connection to our ancestors and dearly departed, as well as a deep and calming wave of warm, nostalgic sense memories

• Rose Flower Essence supports the release of emotional trauma and betrayal, particularly in the heart chakra

• Olive Tree Flower Essence infuses this blend with the calming, restorative energy of the tree of peace

This Flower Essence Blend is optimally configured to energetically smooth out rough edges, challenging energies, and the fits and starts that come with processing past traumas and pain.

Learn more or take advantage of our 60% off holiday sale on Etsy HERE.

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Grief doesn’t have to be a bad thing. In fact, it really only becomes a problem when we deny its looming presence in our lives— and our energy bodies. By taking advantage of the holiday season and winter’s inclement weather— as well as some of the tools outlined above— we can create the right environment to feel, process and release.

It’s in the space between where all the magic happens. Yes, it’s uncomfortable. Yes, it’s unpleasant. But if we can hang out in the proverbial void, creating some negative space and cultivating some silence, we just might be able to unburden ourselves from the weight of the collective sadness we’ve all been shouldering.

And, as a cranky old shaman that’s feeling particularly burned out by all of the change and death and grief of the last four years, I’m all for anything that gets me out of heaviness and into the so-called unbearable lightness of being. Who knows— I might even become pleasant and energetic in the New Year!

And while I’m a bit reluctant to dive into the emotional deep end this winter, I know it’s what the doctor ordered: a veritable colonic for the soul!

Good grief to you all this holiday season— this will be our last post until the New Year, as we’re scheduling in unstructured time to ugly cry, eat, visit with loved ones, and recalibrate before we officially head into Wood Snake territory in 2025.

-Rachel