sorrow

Ylang Ylang Essential Oil

/ embracingspirit / Leave a comment

For the last few months I have been so drawn to a specific and potent aroma. I can’t stop reaching for it and I got really curious about why my brain and my body has been wanting this one so much.

This divine floral is all about the heart, being vulnerable, and finding sweet moments of childlike joy.

This year has been a little rough in my world. Some aspects of my life have flourished into greatness, while other areas have been heart breaking and have brought about quite a bit of grief and sorrow.

Truth is, my heart has been hurting. There I has been some loss and with that opportunities for acceptance that are seeking to emerge.

Ahhh. So that is why my spirit has been craving this smell. It’s sweet floral is an instant soothing to the soul. And the heart.

One of the most fragrant among essential oils. In fact, it is being used as a critical ingredient in the legendary perfume Chanel No. 5.

Ylang Ylang helps us connect to our heart and become balanced by releasing negative emotions and deep emotional sadness. It calms the heart and balances emotions during times of high stress, crisis, tension, or depression.

More importantly, it opens the heart to receive more love and acceptance. 

As a reflection of Ylang Ylang’s ability to restore a healthy flow of positivity in the heart, the essential oil helps encourage a healthy circulatory system. It improves blood flow, fights inflammation, and assist with other heart problems.

The Emotional Benefits:

The oil of a childlike heart
• Powerful for melting the walls around your heart
• Increases love, compassion, trust, empathy, and intimacy
• Softly releases any negative emotion or trauma you’re carrying within
• Use when you’re struggling to connect, put yourself out there, or be vulnerable and tender

Ylang Ylang, meaning “flower of flowers”, has its petals used in Indonesia to decorate the beds of newlyweds due to its aphrodisiac properties. Just so ya know.

Other health benefits::
• Promotes libido and hormonal balance
• Favorite for heart health, including healthy blood pressure, healthy heart rate, and more
• Calms the stress response in the body
• Used for a very restorative sleep

It is just so good. The investment is so worth it because it is so versatile for uses. Check out this gorgeous ebook that breaks down the many uses.

Follow me for more goodness!

The Sorrow

/ embracingspirit / Leave a comment
It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. 
I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow,
if you have been touched by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain. 
I want to know if you can sit with pain,
mine or your own,
without moving to hide it,
fade it,
or fix it.

Every life has pain.   It is in the pain that we often find the deepest parts of our soul and yet as humans we are afraid of pain–emotional and physical.  We try to convince ourselves that we should be going around the pain.  Avoiding pain.  Not being willing to sit with pain.

It is impossible to be with another person’s pain if we are not able to be with our own. Our pain is often the window to deep wisdom about ourselves.  In that same way, when we are able to be with someone else’s pain–simply BE with it, we can also learn how to observe a reaction and how our impulse is to remove the pain by fixing it or fading it.

I believe that we must move into the shadows of ourselves. We rarely are willing to look at the dark spaces to find out more about who we are.  Dipping into that intimate parts of ourselves that we often hide.  But to show up in life full, we have to be willing to go into the vastness of the mysteries within us. Learning to be fully with ourselves, another and the world is the work of the soul.

When we learn to be with our pain, we call back parts of ourselves we have attempted time and time again to leave behind, we are to once again find that wholeness.  We are able to leave behind the idea of ‘perfection’ that often holds us back from a life of fullness and deep compassion for others.

Be with your pain and be willing to listen to the whisperings of your soul.

We will be exploring this on the mat this week and looking at the inner parts of us that back away from our sorrow, and search for the wisdom that comes from the pain.