The Energetic Audit
TOTEM Flower Essences for a season of self-reflection
November is here, and with it comes the season of busy airports, lengthy travel days, holidays with family, and the professional pressures of “year end”- including the much dreaded “performance review”. November is colder, darker, and with the economic and social landscapes showing no signs of chilling the f*ck out, it’s likely to be a particularly challenging vignette in the movie of our lives.
But just because it’s challenging, doesn’t mean it has to suck.
In fact, if leveraged properly, this season can generate the fuel required to undertake an energetic audit: an objective assessment of where we’re at, how we’re feeling, and whether or not anything needs to be addressed or reconfigured moving forward. It’s a golden opportunity to make little shifts that have big- and measurable- impact.
Looking into the mirror
But this work requires that we stop screaming about everyone else’s behavior so that we can look inward. Does our online virtue signaling mirror our private thoughts and real world behaviors? What happens if we shift our angst and dread into constructive personal development efforts, bettering ourselves instead of wanting to change everyone and everything around us? Are we essentially a ticking time bomb, lecturing others while our own, human-scaled life is rapidly drifting off course?
This is the season of looking in the mirror. Of checking in. Of being as objective as we can about our progress, our goals, our mental and physical health, and the overall health of our personal ecosystems: work, family, and spiritual development. What role do we play in our native habitats? Are our contributions positive? Measurable? Or are we conflating screaming into the void with being a good person?
I love/ hate this kind of work. An energetic audit absolutely kicks up sediment we’d rather ignore. It can be hard, temporarily disorienting, and sometimes even painful. But, if we can buckle down a bit and be brave, we can actually free ourselves of unhealthy paradigms, shift our negative behaviors into constructive outcomes, and take back a bit of our true selves- always for the betterment of all stakeholders.
Getting our own house in order
Have you noticed how the people seeking to transform our society are kind of busted up? Like, they spout off about a variety of subjects and virtue signal but, in practice, they don’t embody any of their soundbites in their own lives?
Take, for instance, the cautionary tale of Dan Price, the CEO of Gravity Payments. He gained mainstream notoriety for lowering his CEO pay and setting a $70K minimum wage for all of his employees. He positioned himself as the most open-minded, progressive and generous business person to have ever walked the earth. Mainstream media celebrated him like the second coming. He was, for all intents and purposes, sainted in the proverbial public square.
And now he’s fighting off multiple criminal and civil charges across sexual harassment…and violent rape. Including the rape of his own (now ex-) wife.
Now, if this dork with bad hair had gone to therapy, untangled his own trauma, held himself to the same standards he held others to, none of this mess would have unfolded. But, instead of getting his own house in order psychologically and energetically, he focused on everyone and everything else. That, to him, was easier than doing the real work we do in shamanism.
It’s not pretty or easy or fun, but undertaking a personal audit can be a game-changer in exponential ways. In shamanism, we view the ego death as a gift and not as a punishment. Is it unpleasant? Yes. Is it upsetting? Yes. But is it paradigm-shifting and ultimately beneficial for us? Of course.
And this is the ideal season to get going.
Flower Essences can help
And there’s good news: we have help in these efforts. There are flower essences that can energetically support this energetic audit, acting as a kind of invisible, inner team dedicated to helping us foster self-awareness, take energetic inventory, re-establish boundaries, and regenerate the bits and bobs of ourselves that took a hit during this very aggressive, challenging year. Or couple of years. Or decade;)
Here are just a few flower essences I have started to take in support of this critical level-setting initiative:
Better Help- made of stinging nettle
Stinging nettle is a strange plant. While it has many health benefits- including anti-inflammatory, digestive and nutritional properties- it also literally stings like hell when you touch it. A few weeks ago, an acquaintance of mine took to Instagram asking for advice after eating what they thought was an arugula salad…that apparently contained stinging nettle. What’s going on with salads in Portugal?
As someone that has regularly handled this plant to make flower essences, I can tell you: it burns like hell. It feels like you’ve been electrocuted by an open, live wire, and it lasts for hours. I can’t begin to imagine the unpleasant effects of eating it. So, keep an eye on those “arugala salads” out there- especially in Europe!
Now, from an energetic perspective, stinging nettle is an invaluable tool in the pursuit of self-awareness and personal objectivity. Which is why I risk “life and limb” (i.e. just a bit of discomfort) to harvest and work with this plant in our TOTEM Flower Essence program.
I’ve named our stinging nettle flower essence after an online therapy service called Better Help. TOTEM’s Better Help Flower Essence acts as an internal, energetic therapist, empowering you to review yourself, your choices, and your life more objectively. In fact, it’s a great companion to actual therapy, supporting your self-improvement intentions with some serious energetic muscle.
From an energetic perspective, Better Help Flower Essence supports your ability to:
Recognize an unhealthy, toxic, or abusive situations in your life
Journal on a daily basis, facilitating a cycle of intensive self-reflection
Bring your full cognitive power online, increasing memory recall and supporting analysis
Cultivate self-awareness and close the loop on negative life patterns, even those patterns that we inherit from family
In other words, Better Help is an ideal flower essence for this season of self-reflection and realignment with goals. It can be hard to be objective about ourselves and our life choices, but with Better Help, you have an invisible, energetic friend ready to reveal the revelatory insights required to make necessary changes. And, what’s more, Better Help is formulated to make these insights objective- meaning you get the picture without having to crawl into an emotional void.
This TOTEM Flower Essence is particularly ideal for anyone dreading the triggering dynamics of family holidays. Do you think you have a propensity to internalize and “own” issues that are not yours? Do you struggle with diagnosing the cause of your unease while traveling or around the holidays? Better Help is here to, well, help;)
Check out our Better Help Flower Essence on our new Etsy shop here for more details: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1305408158/totem-flower-essence-better-help
Reclaim Yourself- made of desert rose
Desert rose is not just a beautiful plant- it has a myriad of health benefits, such as being an anti-nausea and anti-viral supplement. Believe it or not, I came across desert rose for the first time while undertaking our TOTEM Personal Garden Meditation- an exercise we use in the TOTEM Spiritual Transformation Coaching program.
This meditation is a shamanic journey designed specifically to help us visualize our energy body or spiritual needs through the symbolic, visual language of a garden. I noticed a major shift from my previous “garden” just before moving to Texas. Instead of the previous English garden with crawling ivy and trees I had seen for years, I was confronted with a kind of warm, fragrant Moroccan garden- filled to the brim with gorgeous desert roses in an enclosed courtyard.
When I came out of the meditation, I immediately googled desert rose. I had no idea what it did or why it was popping up in my mind’s eye, but quickly put two and two together. It turns out that desert rose flower essence can help us take back our energy from others, a near constant focus for anyone that does psychic client work, coaching, or has a career in caregiving.
Even with all of my standard grounding and clearing rituals around energetic hygiene and client work, I can absolutely feel myself getting stretched thin, my energy being dispersed, and my personal energy levels dropping after a long week of tarot readings, channeling and mediumship. My Personal Garden Meditation was showing me that I needed this little flower essence helper to reclaim my energy and take back my spiritual real estate so that I could keep pushing in balance with my own needs.
Which is why I now make TOTEM’s Reclaim Yourself Flower Essence out of our desert rose blooms. I really didn’t think this flower essence was going to manifest this year, as the desert rose plants did not flower until late into September. But then they exploded and, in fact, are still flowering here late into November. Crazy.
In using our Reclaim Yourself Flower Essence for a few weeks, I’ve found myself spontaneously recollecting “lost soul parts”. In shamanism, we view the energy body like the physical body: full of various organs, organ systems and tissues. When we go through life, we get kind of dinged up- like a car that you park on the street of a large city. Some of our soul parts get damaged, break off, or go dormant. To recollect these soul parts is to get our whole selves online, integrated, and working with a single, intentional focus.
If you have a job or lifestyle in which you “care” for a large amount of people, perhaps dispersing your energy across a wide swath of clients or patients, this flower essence is for you. Reclaim Yourself offers the following benefits:
Facilitates a natural reconnection to your core essence
Releases the expectations of others or rules of society
Enables you to release the past and step into your joy and abundance without shame
Overcoming any misdirected guilt, shame, or other lower vibrational energies
Reclaim Yourself is the energetic reminder that you don’t owe anyone an apology just for existing. If you’re a female business owner, therapist, hairstylist (one of the toughest energetic gigs out there), acupuncturist, physical therapist, massage therapist, or coach, please consider adding this to your repertoire. You can learn more or purchase Reclaim Yourself on our Etsy shop here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1323291405/totem-flower-essence-reclaim-yourself
Fountain of Youth- made of tomorrow leaf
Tomorrow leaf was another long shot in the TOTEM Flower Essence garden. Originally from Japan- and a close relative of the sushi mainstay shiso leaf- tomorrow leaf is venerated for its unique anti-aging attributes. And, being totally frank, I’m not sure how much central Texas has in common with Japan in terms of climate or soil types;)
But, despite this anomaly, tomorrow leaf boomed in our garden, and I started to notice a strange phenomenon: when I would clip a leaf to place into a jar for making our Fountain of Youth TOTEM Flower Essence, it would grow back within 1-2 days. Now, I’m not talking a little sprout poking out of the region of the clipping. Rather, it would be a fully grown 2-3 inch leaf that looked almost identical to the one that I just removed.
It was trippy, and it was an absolute manifestation of the energy it’s supposed to impart via our Fountain of Youth Flower Essence:
Promotes regeneration in neurology, body and energy
Supports recovery after trauma, injury or exhaustion
Promotes neuroplasticity and increased cognitive function, including memory
Initiates epigenetic healing- i.e. healing from inherited, multigenerational trauma
Expands neural pathways to enhance one’s personal meditative practice
Now, at first blush, Fountain of Youth may not seem like a straightforward personal audit kind of flower essence. But, in my experience, we tend to get off track and give away our power when we’re burned out, run down, and in sustained adrenal fatigue from constant fight or flight responses.
In other words: how are we supposed to mind the shop, so to speak, if we’re exhausted beyond repair? The metaphorical (and literal) barbarians get through the gates so much more easily when we’re tired and stretched thin across a multitude of tasks. How can we even know how we feel about something if we don’t set aside the time and energy to level-set?
As I’ve been taking Fountain of Youth Flower Essence, I’ve noticed my system slowing down. I’m sleeping more. I’m approaching tasks in a more intentional, conscious way. And I'm feeling more present and even childlike when not working. In a not-so-strange plot twist, this “anti-aging” flower essence has actually helped me put things into perspective, enabling me to contribute more time and energy to my personal life, my mental and physical health, and other personal projects instead of always sacrificing my energy at the altar of the small business.
Check out Fountain of Youth and/or purchase a bottle on our Etsy shop here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1304490228/totem-flower-essence-fountain-of-youth
The upshot
Listen, I’m always resistant to slowing down or shifting into a lower gear while my business is cranking and there is so much to do. But what I’m discovering is that self-awareness not does emerge during times of intensive doing. Rather, we need to make space for repressed or unresolved issues to bubble up to the surface. While it can seem scary to take off the rose-colored glasses for a personal “come to Jesus” moment, it always generates real benefits in both the short and long-term.
No one is perfect, and I’m not even sure being perfect would be that much fun. But personal growth, self-awareness, and intentional action are always good things. These issues are here whether we want to look at them or not, and the longer we wait to clear out our energetic inbox…the trickier and more challenging life can get.
Enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday, and try to set aside a bit of time for yourself in the midst of travel, work and family get togethers. The more we can strategically retreat, the better we can move forward- and contribute in positive ways to the collective!