I have been thinking about some of the lessons of Pompeii lately. About what can disappear in an instant and what might persist long after we’re gone. About the legacies we leave as individuals, as communities, as cultures. Sometimes these questions feel abstract and sometimes very close to home.

We all go through times when we feel out of sorts, off our game, stuck in a rut, activated and triggered, or repeating the same unhelpful behaviors. These times provide an invitation — to go inwards and reclaim and unleash our true power, purpose, and vitality.

In each session we’ll learn and practice techniques to help us call forth the qualities and potencies of each chakra.

We are continually interacting with other people’s energies, positive, negative, high, and low. Depending on the nature of your boundaries, you might be letting in and carrying more foreign energetic “material” in your field than you realize, affecting your mood, emotions, energy levels, and even thoughts.

In this soft, spacey month of August I’m thinking about dreams and their power to convey information, prompt awareness, frighten, and entertain.

I used to be afraid to talk about my dreams because I worried they would reveal something dark and twisted about me. I blame Freud.

As summer’s sultry vibe settles in, time seems to slow and expand. We have places to go, things to do, people to meet, and yet the heat dictates a slower pace.

While this can feel frustrating when we are trying to get things done, it also provides an opportunity to reconsider the value of taking a slower, more deliberate approach. For healing and self-awareness, for example, softness, curiosity, and compassion can yield more subtle and profound rewards than aggressive action.

Spending some time working with the sacral chakra, the seat of our deep life force energy, can help if you’re not feeling connected to the fertile abundance around and within you. The sacral chakra, in the lower belly, draws energy up from the root and uses it to fuel our vitality, creativity, sensuality, sexuality, playfulness, and sense of freedom and flow.

Is your intuition getting a busy signal?

How do you tend to make decisions? Do you go with your first instinct no matter what? Do you weigh pros and cons, ask a trusted friend (or many!) for advice, read articles, fret and fuss? Or maybe you put off choosing until it’s almost too late and then let circumstances decide for you?

While I have done all of the above at different times, more and more I’m making an effort to skip all the hemming and hawing and instead turn to intuitive guidance.

We pick up energies as we move through the world, and sometimes they stick like lint on a nice pair of black pants and don’t come off in a regular wash. Even when fear, grief, worry, anger, and despair are ours to experience, analyze, and process, it’s all a lot more challenging when obscured by environmental gunk. A good energetic lint-roller can do wonders to alleviate fogginess and pressure.

When the subject of "self-love" comes up, does it make you smile? Or cringe? Shrug? Cower? So many of my clients struggle with self-love because they don't feel worthy. It's disheartening but not surprising — our culture of showy self-aggrandizement does not exactly encourage compassionate self-acceptance.

Have you had the experience of “waking up” at some point during your day and realizing you hadn’t been fully present until that moment? It can be startling and also clarifying, like when the optometrist clicks that just-right lens into place. Experiencing clear vision brings the realization that up until that point you’d been seeing everything blurry.

With temperatures dropping, indoor crowds increasing, stress levels spiking, and viruses multiplying, below are a few of my go-to practices for keeping blood circulating, lymph moving, and energy flowing. If you have a favorite time-tested practice I would love to hear it!

When I’m feeling out of synch with the time, the weather, and my schedule, or if I’m repeatedly waking up depleted, scattered, foggy, or overwhelmed, I know it’s time to do some grounding. Connecting the root chakra to the Earth provides a deep sense of stability and support while aligning the body to seasonal rhythms. Now is an especially apt time before all the year-end festivities, pressures, and triggers start to accumulate.

Placebos have been on my mind lately. My family has been passing around a tough cold these past few weeks and going through a fair amount of DayQuil for symptom relief. You may guess where I’m going with this — did you catch the recent news from the FDA announcing that its decongestant ingredient (found in many common cold medications) does not work?

This time of year can be particularly challenging as many of us transition to spending more time indoors. Our systems have to contend with a thicker stew of energies end emotions in the vicinity. You might be noticing the effects of “energetic detritus” in your kids or in yourself — overwhelm, crankiness, emotional swings, and general over-saturation. We are exposed to more than we realize. While things like hand-washing are important, making a practice of also tending to “energy hygiene” can do wonders for your overall well-being.

Whether it’s weather or something else that’s triggering your stress response — the fight, flight, freeze, or fawn state — it’s important to know how to turn off the cascade of stress hormones and recover your calm. Even when we’re not actually under threat our bodies can react as though they are, and our health and well-being suffers.

When my son was little he used to get angry listening to the radio in the car — “Why are ALL the songs about LOVE?!” Love is a Battlefield. All You Need is Love. Endless Love. Tainted Love. Baby Love. Modern Love. Stupid Love. Crazy Little Thing Called Love. Is This Love? What’s Love Got to Do With It? There are many different kinds of love, and recently I was thinking about how to describe the “love” I feel during sessions with clients. It’s not romantic love, of course. It’s powerful and yet soft, coming from me and also through me. It’s closely related to “compassion,” but even that feels like just one aspect of it. While I don’t say “I love you” to my clients, I do love them, in this way. There just isn’t quite the right word for it.*

When you’re feeling unmoored, askew, roller-coastery, or spiraling, re-anchoring in your center is an essential first step for recovering a sense of clarity and presence. From there it’s possible to respond to challenges with intention and care instead of reactivity.

Taking a break from all of the energetic "noise" of the human world — including what we experience just from being inside or in any human-designed and dominated environment — to engage with trees, water, birds, bugs, rocks, dirt, and plants gives our system profound relief.

In my work I think a lot about "thawing." Softening, warming up, melting parts of the energy field that feel cold or stuck. Recently I had my own experience with this process. I had been waking up and noticing a hard, uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach. Sometimes it felt hollow, sometimes like a tangled knot, and sometimes like a solid object lodged in my gut. When I first noticed it I thought maybe it was some kind of indigestion. But when I brought my awareness into that spot, I suddenly burst into tears.