The Witch's Book of Self-Care: Magical Ways to Pamper, Soothe, and Care for Your Body and Spirit - Arin Murphy-Hiscock 2018
Spells to Battle Stress
Mental and Emotional Self-Care
Managing stress and anxiety improves your daily functioning, enabling you to cope more effectively with the very situations that can stress you. Managing stress can improve your physical, mental, and emotional health, as well as support your self-esteem and confidence. See the section on meditation in Chapter 4 for more techniques that can help you cope with stress.
Fill Yourself with Light
Taking a few minutes to fill yourself with light can give you the mental break you need to reset your headspace. It can also function like a quick cleanse of your aura (personal energy that surrounds you). This is an excellent way to take hold of yourself if you are stressed or panicky.
What to Do:
1. Center and ground.
2. Close your eyes and take three slow breaths. With each breath in, imagine yourself drawing in light through your nose or mouth. With each breath, imagine your body filling with light. After your third breath, breathe normally, eyes still closed, enjoying the sensation of being filled with light. Note how it makes you feel emotionally as well as physically.
3. Allow the light to begin to expand past your body into your aura. As it passes into the aura, imagine it beginning to sparkle. Imagine sparkles loosening and clearing away any negativity or unwanted energy clinging to your aura.
4. When you feel that you are done, take one final deep breath and exhale with conviction. Allow the visualization to fade, then open your eyes.
Transformation
Sometimes you can feel stuck in a rut. You know you were headed somewhere, but along the way you either derailed or ran out of steam. The transformation you seek feels stalled. In cases like this, grand gestures can do more to destabilize you than help. Instead, work for patience and clarity to help you refocus, and open yourself to change to help ease the transformation.
What You Need:
♦ White candle and candleholder
♦ Matches or lighter
♦ Clear quartz stone
What to Do:
1. Cleanse the materials according to your chosen method(s) (see Chapter 1).
2. Center and ground. Light the white candle and hold the quartz crystal in your hands. Close your eyes and breathe evenly, bringing your body and spirit to a sense of equilibrium.
3. When you are ready, lift the quartz crystal and hold it to your forehead.
4. Say, “I call on light to help me see clearly. May I be open to the change working in my life; may I have the patience to allow it the time it needs to develop, to gestate, to unfold, and to weave itself into my life securely. May this change be for the best and benefit me and those I hold dear. It is so.”
Exercise: Five Things That Stress You
As uncomfortable as it may be, sometimes you need to take time to think about things that trigger anxiety. It is valuable to know what knocks you off balance or what clouds your thought process because the situation is ratcheting up your stress level. Take the time to think about things that stress you, then make this list in a safe place in a calm frame of mind.
What You Need:
♦ Journaling candle in a candleholder (see Chapter 1)
♦ Journaling incense (see Chapter 1)
♦ Self-care journal
♦ Pen or pencil
What to Do:
1. Center and ground.
2. Light the journaling candle and incense. Open your journal to a new page and mark the date and topic.
3. Take a few moments to settle yourself comfortably. Close your eyes and breathe deeply for a few breaths.
4. In this safe place, think honestly about what situations create stress. Write them down as they come to you. If you prefer, write down your thoughts as they come in a stream-of-consciousness record, then sift out the distilled points at the end of the exercise.
5. Don’t make excuses and don’t judge as you write. In order for this exercise to be as valuable as possible, you have to be as honest as you can.
6. Don’t worry if you can’t be very precise about your stressors. The mind spends a lot of time avoiding thinking too hard about danger and things that can trigger stress, since even thinking about stressors can elicit a response similar to those caused by a real-life stress encounter. Do the best you can in this session.
7. If at any time you find yourself having a stressful reaction beyond what you feel you can handle, allow yourself to end the journaling session. Return to it a day or two later. Don’t avoid it for too long; the point of this exercise is to recognize and isolate the situations that stress you so that you can work to head them off or learn to cope better during them.
8. To finish the session, close your journal. Close your eyes and breathe deeply for a few breaths, then open your eyes and extinguish the candle and incense. Alternatively, you may allow both to burn out on their own.