Spiritual Hygiene

Practice Guideline 1: Experience your medicine.

  • Consider what you know about spiritual hygiene and spiritual warfare. Quietly. Take notes. What questions do you have?

  • You have been taking steps to clear your spaces and bodies on physical level. To clean is a first step to spiritual hygiene. After physical hygiene is complete, then you can move to plant medicine and energetic cleansing.

  • There are many plants who will ally with you to offer you protection. Be sure to always exchange and ask for permission, as well as listening and observing the plant medicine uses specific to your lineage. The Common Plants listed are a starting place or a suggestion.

    • Spiritual Baths:

      • For Cleansing: These baths should be done cold (generally not soaking) and poured over the head, touching the scalp. This is drawing on taking spiritual baths in a river.

      • Plant medicine should be prepared in a large pot with water like a tea, then strained, and stored in the refrigerator.

      • Common Plant Medicine for Baths: Rue + Hyssop; Basil + Spinach/Kale; Coconut/Goat Milk + White Flower Petals; Salt / Sea Salt

    • Burning Plants:

      • If harvesting yourself (ideal), be sure to give gratitude and exchange. If you have a method of divining or communicating with the plant directly, be sure to ask permission. Exchange looks different in many practices, such as leaving pennies (Conjure) or giving water (Kumeyaay). Listen for what feels right between your practices and the specific plant you are harvesting. Harvest responsibly by not taking more than 1/3 in the area, not too many young plants, not too many old plants.

      • Common Abundant Plant Medicine for Burning: Lavender; Camphor; Mugwort; Pine; Cedar

    • Vessels with Water and Plants:

      • If you are unable to burn plants in your space, you can also put them in water to cleanse your space. Speak intentions over the water.

      • Common Plants to Use in Water: Tobacco; Camphor; Eucalyptus

    • Dried Plants:

      • Some plants due to their potency are effective to be hung dry strategically around a house at places such as entryways, windows and other openings.

      • Common Dried Plants: Garlic; Mugwort; Comfrey; Yarrow; Creosote; Pine; Cedar

    • Movement, Music, and Song:

      • Our traditional practices of movement, music, and song are also forms of spiritual hygiene. Movement is very important for clearing the lymphatic system, which supports immune system functioning. Music and song can be used to shift the whole energy of a space. Sing your songs into the corners of your space. Clean your home with all the doors and windows open and the music blasting. Do a little twerk move that grief out them hips and and thighs. Pound them drums to call them ancestors. Search for the planting and harvesting songs of your ancestors.

      • As a practice, you can view FLOW IGTV recordings or follow @cause.reign for FLOW lives.

New Moon Ceremony (Nov. 4 in Scorpio): Ceremony can be performed the day before, the day of, and/or the day after the New Moon. What other ceremonies will be you participating in this New Moon?

Full Moon Ceremony (Nov. 19 in Taurus): Ceremony can be performed the day before, the day of, and/or the day after the Full Moon. What other ceremonies will be you participating in this Full Moon?

Practice Guideline 3: Laughter as Medicine

  • Our TA, Z, shared a story of a Navajo tradition. Z relayed the story of a Navajo laughing ceremony, described as a baby’s first laugh is the baby coming into their self. Other allegories of “trickster," such as of el coyote (Mexico), Elegua (diasporic Yoruba), and Squash kachina (Hopi) demonstrate the ways finding humor in your situation can lead to a solution and a way out.

  • Create a meme about a triumphant moment you have had in this class thus far. Post your meme in FB Group Dreaming with Ancestors.

    To exist among difficult times is triumphant.

    To laugh among challenging times is triumphant.

MODULE 3 REFLECTION QUESTION: WHAT IS SPIRITUAL HYGIENE?