With a little help from my friends and spirit, I’ve been shifting a mild not-so-positive headspace in favour of something brighter, lighter and more playful. It’s a great thing when you remember that your moods and attitudes are choices and you then proceed to make better choices!

Deliberately shifting my mindset and mood has made for some delightful days, filled with happiness, bliss, laughter and warmth. Today was a beautiful day.

It started off with a small bowl of last night’s leftovers: pumpkin curry with brown rice. While pumpkin was the star of the show, this scrummy meal included zucchini, carrot, onion and kale as support acts. Yummmmm! Proper meals for breakfast, in a small quantity, have always been my breakfast of choice. I don’t enjoy cereals and sugar for breakfast. I want to fill up on nourishing food that I love, whole foods full of diverse flavour, colour and nutrition. I don’t want to waste tummy space on boring things like bread, cereal and refined sugar. Bleh! With a tummy blessed with gentle soothing pumpkin (very good for helping us relax and see the funny side of life), I headed into my day!

I had so much fun with my first two clients. The first was a young man I hadn’t seen for a few years. It was good to see him again. The second was a regular gentleman client whom I greatly enjoy working with. With both clients I found myself working a lot with the topical application of herbs to the aura. I particularly liked the blend of aniseed with gem elixirs: what a glorious scent! I sent one of my clients home with a tincture of lavender herb with iolite. If you know your herbs and gems, you will know that the colour frequency of these two ingredients is a stunning deep blue-purple. Besides being very calming and supportive for the brow and throat chakras, this is the ‘spiritual awakening’ aura colour, capable of initiating profound shifts in the aura. Phew! I love my job! We backed this up with some meditative and mantra work, practising first on the table and then agreeing to continue this work as homework.

Then I mixed up some herbs for other clients. I made some ashwaganda, also known as winter cherry or withania. Have you heard of it? It belongs to a family of herbs called adaptogens. Adaptogens are herbs that help the body normalise its function… I think in the olden days they were probably called ‘normalisers’. If they didn’t call them that, they should have, because this is a very good name for them. Ashwaganda is a pretty general adaptogenic, but you can get ones that are specific for particular systems or organs. Hawthorn, for example, lowers or raises blood pressure depending on what is needed. Another adaptogenic herb is meadosweet, which balances stomach acid. I love adaptogenics (sometimes referred to as tonics), because they bring balance rather than forcing our body to go one way or another… they just helps the body rediscover balance. This totally fits with my healing philosophy.

I also made some raspberry leaf tincture up as a gargle for someone with tonsillitis. I normally use sage or thyme, but something just felt right about using raspberry leaf, perhaps because it sits slightly lower in the aura, around the heart chakra. It’s more gentle and less cutting than the other two- more yin, and my client definitely needed a yin approach. I also scooped up a few herbal tablets blends on my way out the door with a few other people in mind, who I knew I would be spending time with.

Then began a comical circular dance in search of car keys and the realisation that my car might not start because of a tired battery. I had the strangely calm feeling that all would be fine and it was, everything flowing and falling perfectly into place.

At Martin’s cafe a couple of people met me and collected their blends, and then I had lunch with a delightful new friend, Tania. It’s so good to talk with a kindred spirit. The conversation meanders meaningfully through heart and spirit, with quiet thoughtfulness, an occasional feeling of inspired upliftment, soft laughter, warmth and humility. She feels like a sister. I like her grounded softness and the spaces between her thoughts.

Lunch at Martins. One of my favourite places. I didn’t get a Martin hug today because he was busy but I did get a glorious pumpkin dahl with brown rice. This is what happens with food spirit medicine; when plant spirits lock on to your aura with healing intent, they kind of follow you around for a while, all irresistible like, and you just can’t get away from them until their work is done. I’m having a permanent (possibly life-long and hopefully daily) love affair with avocado, but pumpkin is a friend who comes and goes.

After lunch I went shopping… the silly supermarket was a dud- no organic produce. But I did find some silicon cupcake holders. Did I tell you I’m going to start making my own vegan dog-food? Anyway, I digress. Back to the story.

I then made a house call. The client was late coming home so I stretched out on his balinese outdoors day-bed and drank in the day. How beautiful, the sound of the world going by, the way the light reflected off the window, the sweet weather….and my favourite part of all, an incredible wind chime with really deep tones. It had me fully entranced for a good ten minutes. Then my client was home, with smiles and hugs. This really was my favourite session for the day. I talked him through a healing, telling him about his spirit guides and describing the healing work they were doing with him. It was amazing how accurate the information was- it made so much sense in relation to what was happening in his life. In amongst it all, I started getting smells, tastes and images of food spirit medicine.

The first came while a female guide was working with his heart chakra. She had reached into an old wound and was stroking her fingers through a sticky, slimy, brown substance that smelled really bad. Frankly, I was glad I was just watching! My hands wouldn’t have liked that. They are going through a fussy phase. “We only want to delve about in love, light and beauty”, they reckon. Picky beggars! Haha!

Then, much to my surprise, the spirit guide pulled out a big lump of smelly mush and bit into it! Ewwww!

I heard a lovely fresh crunching sound. She smiled at me and held up the brown mush ball so I could see it. It had a bright white centre, almost like she had bitten into an apple. I looked at her questioningly. Chestnut, she replied. I then decipher this for my client, asking him to make a connection with Chestnut. “Research it”, I said. “Find out about the different forms it comes in and bring it into your life for a while. I have a feeling there might be a chestnut flower essence, but it’s also a food.” I also explained the scene in terms of metaphor, psychology and soul-retrieval concepts.

There were three other food spirits that came through, two of which I wasn’t familiar with. All of them, like the spirit guides, were Asian. I really enjoyed working with them and helping spirit make healing adjustments to my client’s aura. Afterwards we chatted for a while and then I headed onto my next destination, just around the corner. My friend Lou has an incredible food garden that spills out onto the sidewalk and I was enchanted by a delicate white flower I found on her fence. “Is this a passionflower?”, I asked her.

“Yes!”, she replied. Passionflower is one we use in herbal medicine. It calms people down, especially if they are prone to panic attacks, asthma triggered by anxiety, and insomnia.

“Do you have any edible flowers?”, I asked. I’m obsessed with making raw vegan chakra cakes at the moment and am loving using flower petals as ingredients. Sure enough, she had some. Orange, pink and red:

I’ll use the pink ones in the love potion cake I’m making tomorrow for my friend. This cake is going to have a meditation to go with it, or a sacred ritual or something. Not sure yet!

Lou and I had a meeting about arranging a public screening of a movie we are both passionate about: Speciesism. It was definitely my kind of meeting. Lots of decisions made easily with no fuss and instead of just talking about it, we took action, made phone calls and researched things online.

On the way out I found an amazing looking vegetable hanging off the fence. Lou told me it was a snake gourd. Wow!

Then home again, to a stressed dog, because my state is too dumb to outlaw public use of firecrackers (there’s a wee whisper of that old mood creeping back in!). Thank goodness for Kava. I drugged him, handed him over to my husband and had one last session for the day. An eskimo spirit came through with a husky, passing along some good wisdom, and aniseed spirit medicine showed up for the second time in one day, with her liquorice-like scent. I loved the association-anchoring we did with this client, rich with visualisation, cross-linking colours with values, words, actions, scent and food. Good brain-wiring!

Now I am sitting quietly with my husband at my side. He is researching for our overseas trip and I am exuding calmness and light in a quest to keep my dog alive. He has finally stopped vomiting. We sprinkled him with homeopathy ipecac and then I made him a rescue remedy aura spray containing homeopathic phosphorus, herbal rehmannia, a couple of flower essences and a gem elixir. Now he is sleeping even though it still sounds like the world has gone mad out there. And my lungs are happily protected by closed doors and windows.

In a brief scowly moment earlier tonight I reflected on how the pleasure people gain from firecrackers surely can’t be worth the trauma it causes to others. We were so worried about our dog for a while that we made a pact to leave town with him next year, before the crackers start.

I’m am emanating prayers, sending them out into the wind, weaving their way in amongst the explosions of light and sulphur, touching and enlightening hearts with love and raised awareness. May we have compassion for our brothers and sisters, the feathered, furred and cold-skinned ones, the insects, the trees, the earth herself. Giving the earth a big hug. May her skies be clear.

Blessed Be