1. Choose a word or phrase for the year.

This becomes the overall theme for my year and helps keep me on track. My 2022 word is Becoming. For me, it symbolizes the and the major life changes I lived through last year and the embodiment of it to who I am and can be. It allows for all aspects of myself to exist within the present even those that I haven’t met yet. I have been watching my transformation for years and this word sums it up perfectly. 2022 is the year of embodiment of that transformation. What word represents you?

2. Create a vision board

for your personal goals and one for your family goals. This morning at breakfast me and my husband talk about our goals for the year. The things we want to accomplish together. We talked about adopting more earth friendly habits in the home and ways we can reduce single-use plastic. We also talked about different avenues of education for our daughter and our family’s health. We each made our personal goals that included career, finances, health and education. I am big on education and love to nurture my inner child. The first thing that came to me to nourish both was art. I added pottery and knitting as ideas to dip my toes into this year. Once you’ve established you primary goals for the big picture of your year, you can create a vision board. To create a simple vision board, gather a poster board, magazines, scissors and glue. On your poster, you can divide it into segments that cover the areas of your life you’ll be focusing on. For example, relationships, career, family, health. I wrote an article about vision boarding ideas for MASSAGE Magazine that discusses different ways to go about it. You could also forgo making a vision board and write them down in your journal or on a piece of paper and hang it in your office or a place you frequent to be reminded of your goals throughout the year. 

3. Clean out your home.

It is a new year habit of mine to get rid of a large bulk of things I haven’t used in a while. I go through my closet and look at the clothes and shoes I haven’t worn in a year and put them in a donation pile. The same goes for books, kitchen items and the pantry. I also like to empty out junk drawers. The amount of useless things I find there always surprises me. Every now and then, there will be something I needed that I didn’t know was in there. This is good practice every few months so the task isn’t grand and if you’re in the habit of letting things go it makes it easier to do. 

4. Spiritually clean your home.

After I have tossed and donated the things I no longer need, I do a deep cleaning on my home to clear the energy and make room for uplifting vibrations that come with new beginnings. While I clean, I play uplifting music. I usually play mantras, but use whatever music brings you good spirits. To clean, I like to use lemongrass in my cleaner spray bottle and mop water. Lemongrass is a powerful energy cleanser. Its strong citrusy aroma clears away layers of toxicity and negativity that often get stored in the corners of our home and furniture. It’s a good idea to also move the furniture around when you do this. Lemongrass also has the ability to cut old belief patterns and habits that keep us repeating behaviors that are not good for us. This can be anything from arguing and complaining to hoarding. You can also add lemon essential oil to the mix for a combined powerful cleanse. 

Next I use smoke medicine with powerful affirmations. Smoking sacred herbs while chanting mantras or positive affirmations clears the air elemental energy of our home of low vibrating thought forms and replaces them with positive ones. Sage, juniper, rosemary, mugwort, lavender herbs or frankincense resin are excellent choices for this purpose. Smudge bundles of white sage are commonly found in health stores and metaphysical shops, but I urge against using white sage unless the supplier ethically harvests them. The increase in popularity of smudging has led to an over  harvesting of white sage making it and other popular smudging herbs such as palo santo unsustainable. Instead, choose plants that are local and readily available in your area. For example, rosemary and garden sage are available in most grocery stores. You can even dry them yourself. 

If smudging is not possible where you live, you can lean on an all time favorite of mine – diffusing. Add any of these herbal essential oils into the diffuser. Use the essential oil you have at home if these are not on hand. All essential oils have incredible healing properties.

5. Take an herbal bath or rinse.

This is such a treat at the start or end of the day, and easy to do. You’ll need a large container to make a half gallon size of tea herbal infusion. You can use an emptied milk jug filled halfway, a bowl or large jar. There are so many good herbs to use however let’s keep things simple with herbs you can find at your grocery store. Of course if you have access to an apothecary you will certainly be able to find a wide selection there. 

My herbs of choice are chamomile and tulsi, also known as holy basil. Chamomile is a wonderful herb for purification and protection of negative energy but one of her unknown powers is to attract abundance in the form of money. It is said that gamblers would wash their hands with her before they went off to play to seal their winnings. If financial goals are heavy on your list, I would recommend chamomile. She is a daisy-like flower in the sunflower family and very much empowered by the sun’s energy. When using her for this purpose, I would place your chamomile tea in the sun for several minutes to empower that aspect of her for your herbal bath. 

Holy basil is another purifying and protective herb and considered to be one of the holy plants of India. In working with her for some time now I have seen her ability to attract an abundance of pollinators and not only bees but also some rarer pollinators like the blue wasp, which I will share a story about in another article. What I have experienced is the gentle nature of her wisdom which she shares so generously. This is the power of Tulsi and why she is revered in India and for many plant lovers. She offers enlightenment, protection, and opens the gates to your intuition. I think she is a powerful ally for the new year is because she is the loving mother who comes to listen to your dreams, hear your sorrows, and then gently guides you back to your heart to show you the answers are within you. She’s the mirror who reflects back to you your own strengths. And what a powerful way to start a new cycle then to be reminded of that. 

You can find these herbs in the tea section of your grocery store. You will need about 8 tea bags of the herb of your choice. Here are the directions of how to make an herbal bath using tea bought bags. 

How to Make a New Year Herbal Bath

Ingredients

• 8 tea bags or 8 teaspoons of herb (chamomile or tulsi are recommended)
• 8 cups of water

Directions

1. Place 8 cups of water into a pot and bring to a simmer.
2. Plant the tea bags into the hot water and let them steep for 20 to 30 minutes. Then remove the bags.
3. While you are waiting for the tea to come to room temperature, prepare your bath by filling the tub with warm water. (If you don’t have a bath go to step 5.)
4. Add your herbal tea to the bath water and soak for about 15 minutes. Add to your relaxing experience by lighting a candle or dimming the lights. As you are soaking, the plant’s healing properties will nourish your body and cleanse your aura.
5. If you do not have a tub, take a shower and at the end rinse yourself with the warm to room temperature water in the shower. Start with your head by pouring a small amount to cleanse your crown. Let it pour over your neck and face, then rinse the rest of your body with the infusion. 

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Reiki is an energy healing system that connects us with Universal Life Force. This is the energy that exists in all living and nonliving things on the planet. It is the Universal consciousness that we all originated from. Most practitioners of reiki including myself have been drawn to it by a longing to know something more about life and ourselves and to fulfill a deep calling of the soul. It is this calling that invites the teacher and practice to align with the seeker. The practice is simple and begins with an initiation followed by shared teachings of self-treatment, daily meditations and mantra. Some practitioners go on to share reiki with others in healing sessions, as I have chosen to do.

Reiki Initiation

Reiki practitioners are initiated into the practice by a teacher who performs a ceremony called an attunement. The attunement is an initiation or invitation to become aware of ourselves from a 360 degree view. It creates a shift in our frequency which opens us up to align with intentions that match that higher frequency. The shift widens our perspective of the world and is similar to seeing our lives from the viewpoint of a large window on the 100th floor of a highrise versus a first floor window. Our view from the first floor will be limited to the immediate surroundings like the parking lot and the courtyard, for example. From the 100th floor we can see the parking lot, courtyard, surrounding buildings, the streets and intersections, local businesses, and even into the windows of other apartments. This shift in our view of ourselves and the world allows us to understand the events in our life as lessons and guidance from the Universe. 

How Reiki Works

Once initiated into reiki, we learn how to channel this energy through our hands and we learn the most vital areas on the body to place our hands to maximise the effectiveness  of the healing. This intelligent energy provides the balance our physical body needs to heal itself. In this optimum environment created by the energy, places in our body where emotions like fear, shame, anger, grief, frustration and sadness have been stored or repressed can surface and heal in a safe and loving way. The daily self-treatment fills our body with unconditional love and transmutes these emotions to peace, love and joy. People often find that these emotions stored in the body are the cause of their physical pain or illness and once released they no longer experience the pain or make peace with the illness they have and use it as a tool for deeper spiritual awareness. In much the same way we perform reiki on ourselves we can share it with others and help them to experience the benefits of reiki. 

What Reiki Feels Like

Many practitioners experience reiki in the form of heat or warmth in the hands, although the energy is present regardless of whether we feel it or not. The practice of reiki can be fully devoted to our own self healing. In fact, performing daily self treatment is the main purpose because it is the work on ourselves that makes the greatest impact on the health of our  body, mind and spirit and that of our environment. When we treat ourselves to reiki daily, we are shifting our vibrations to higher consciousness and this in turn has an impact on our surroundings including our family, pets and home. We are indirectly creating a space that supports living in our highest self and this opens the door for our family and friends to do the same. It can also push people away who do not want to live in that state of higher consciousness. Living from our higher self brings a plethora of benefits including peace, joy, physical health, and intuition. We are more easily able to tap into the flow of life and become conscious creators of our lives. A thought becomes a vision and before we know it that vision comes to fruition and we are manifesting the life of our heart’s desire. 

The Miracle of Reiki

How does this happen from a simple practice of self-healing? It is a result of living from our heart space. Reiki self healing opens our hearts. It removes the blocks and walls we have created from our past experiences that were meant to protect us from getting hurt or suffering the same fate again. However, those walls have also kept us separate from the unconditional love that we are a part of. When we perform reiki self-healing treatments, we return to a place of wholeness, a place of oneness with ourselves and the planet. We fall into alignment with the ebb and flow of the planetary vibes. It is this shift from individual consciousness to oneness with all that is the miracle that reiki brings. We develop more compassion and are able to see ourselves in others, we become less judgemental of ourselves and others, and we learn to be less reactive to situations that may trigger us. 

Reiki becomes as much a part of our lives as breathing and we can emanate this goodness to all those around us.