how to fuck around and find out: a beginner's guide to spiritual practice
- cece
- Sep 2
- 42 min read
between the ongoing discussions about the role institutional religion plays in creating, spreading & maintaining oppression, the growing dissonance for many women between the way they were socialized and their updated understanding of the world around them, an increasing interest and scientifically "validated" awareness of the metaphysical phenomena happening around us, movements led by indigenous & queer communities to reclaim and return to a decolonized way of connecting to the divine, and of course all the realities and anxieties that accompany the fall of this empire... there's a lot of women interested in, discussing, experimenting with developing a spiritual practice of their own.
maybe you’re like me and didn’t grow up steeped in any particular religious teachings. maybe you grew up with a religion that no longer feels like it fits, or maybe it never fit. maybe parts of it fit, but you feel a call to explore more. maybe you actively avoided it because of an awareness of the harms of institutional religion. maybe your empowerment is making it harder and harder to find the middle ground with what you were taught to believe as a little girl. maybe you also cringe a little bit every time somebody refers to the ultimate creator as "He". maybe you're a recovering church girl. maybe you come from a culture with a rich spiritual history that you feel disconnected from. maybe you're feeling disillusioned with this world, or find yourself experiencing a spiritual desire to manifest a better world. maybe you’ve felt called to this. however you got here, theres a lot of personal and political reasons to invest in creating a framework to access your connection to something beyond you, and figuring out where to start doing that can be overwhelming if you haven't been taught any particular rules or ways to be spiritual. if you've had the threat of hell beaten into you since childhood, the thought of experimenting with new ways of connecting can feel scary and sure to land you in an eternal fire of other whores & witches who dared to light incense.
i’m also somebody who has been exposed to a lot of different practices and ideologies. because of the lack of specific instruction on this, the privilege of exposure to many ideas and a willingness to experiment, i'm pretty visible with the ways ive been building my practice over the years, so i get a lot of questions from women who are similarly feeling called to incorporate more of this into their own lives. i also have a big beautiful altar in my home that i LOVE and has spurred a lot of curiosity and convos. and bc im so visible with a lot of these things, ive been asked various questions over the years-- what is one supposed to do for a moon ritual? how do you put together an altar? what crystal do i need? what is meditation supposed to feel like? these are the kind of questions ive asked and answered for myself as ive built my spiritual practices, and i feel like these are the questions at the heart of a lot of womens' interest and/or reluctance to develop a spiritual practice.
probably bc im so into discussing and doing a lot of these things, women sometimes assume i am an authority on these practices or concepts and i dont claim that-- at all. i am nobody's priestess but my own. my spiritual practice can most effectively be summarized by “fuck around and find out”, which for me has meant a mish-mash of theories, fragments of beliefs, an unfinished philosophy degree, a phone full of metaphysical memes, random knowledge about different biological processes, and processing my own undeniable spiritual experiences. so, all this to say, im referencing a range of theories, beliefs, and accepted-facts in here. im not a perfect specimen for any particular ideology but i think im building a pretty cool one for myself thru years of watching, listening, learning, and a lot of fucking around and finding out. experience is quite the teacher. and ultimately, that's what is at the core of this church of fucking around and finding out. experiencing, experimenting-- safely, and with intention, but experimentation nonetheless, a freedom to fuck around, so you can find out what your personal connection to spirit feels like.
and while im sharing my thoughts and beliefs about the personal & political importance of spiritual practice, i dont want to be mistaken as believing we can just vibe our way out of material harm. but i do think a spiritual practice can be a personal touchstone to return to during times of high stress, to help maintain balance, to help regulate your nervous system, and to navigate the world with as much strength, compassion, flexibility and resilience as possible. i do think looking at the routines and rituals, the things we find ourselves naturally drawn to can and should be considered as part of a spiritual practice. and yes, i also believe that it's one of the more accessible and immediately actionable ways ppl can "fight back", which is why we so routinely see the demonization of personal spiritual work. basically, if your spirituality doesn't look like being in somebody's church on your knees in front of Him, you're doing it wrong. women who take their spirituality into their own hands are labeled "witches", women are ridiculed for being into astrology, and one of the first and most prominent religious teachings many get is about a woman who ate from the tree of knowledge and therefore cursed humanity. spiritual practice, especially the kind that honors women, goddess religions and the kind practiced by matriarchal societies throughout history, have been routinely and intentionally targeted for destruction by colonizers who were on missions to instill patriarchal religions. there's been an understanding that women taking spiritual practice into their own hands is a direct threat to institutional religion and the other systems it supports, like racism& capitalism-- and every effort has been made to shame, silence, suppress, ridicule, threaten, kill any iteration of such.
if you're interested in the history of goddess-led religions, their connection to women's empowerment and the way they were identified as a threat and destroyed in favor of instilling the patriarchal monotheistic male god as a tool of oppression, i can HIGHLY recommend the book "when god was a woman" (free link)
its important that women who feel called to deepen their relationship with themselves and the divine should follow that calling, for themselves, and for the collective.
you wont find love spells and tips on talking to the dead here. i am sharing a few specific things i do, and many of these things are gonna be things you already do, or concepts you’re familiar with--standard good practices for mental and physical wellbeing. so when you see things like “hang out with your friends” know that we aren't getting into particularly complicated work here. think of this more as a guide on how to build a foundation for your own spiritual practice-- a start, a (re) thinking of what spiritual practice is, what spiritual practice can look like and can be. that spiritual practice can be extracted from or integrated into anything, even & especially the everyday... is kinda the point i’m hoping to make here. a lot of my spiritual practice is just being more conscious and intentional with the things i already am drawn to. so, this is not meant to be a guide to tell you a "right" way to be spiritual. it's meant to be a guide to how to start practicing what being spiritual manifests as for you. a guide to fucking around and finding out, for yourself.
bc at its core, i believe a spiritual practice to be any intentional action taken to bring yourself more into alignment with higher consciousness. i like this because this leaves it open to anything that holds meaning for the person practicing it. you get to define the intention. you get to define the action. you get to decide what alignment means. you get to determine what the higher consciousness is.
this kind of freedom can feel silly, scary or foreign, especially if you’re accustomed to trusting an entity outside yourself to define these terms for you, like a church, a parent, a religious text. and you very well may find that pieces of previous practices or thoughts still find a home in your new relationship with your spirituality, and thats cool too. the goal here is to build something that fits for you.
these are 7 principles i think are good for building a practice from scratch, with some thoughts on why it matters and then some ideas on how to implement and/or get more intentional with them. ive been learning a lot about chakras so it was an easy framework to lean on, and in general i think conceptualizing spiritual practice as it relates to our physical vessels is a cool way to tie everything together. think of your body as an instrument attuned on multiple levels to a divine purpose, an aligned collective, a bigger universe, a higher God. hopefully, wherever you feel that you fall on the science/religious/vibes spectrum, you’ll find something here that’s helpful or useful in some way.
apologies in advance for my gratuitous use of the word "vibes". it had to be this way.
(click to jump to a particular section)
ground yourself -root- develop a grounding routine
in order to build something, you need a foundation, and a spiritual practice is no different.
"grounded" is a word you'll see both mental health professionals & spiritualists use to refer to the feeling of being stable, secure, connected to the earth and those around them, surviving on the most basic human levels. turns out that the same things that keep ppl pretty healthy with a flexible, regulated body and nervous system are the same things that help keep you in the best state for spiritual practice. you should try to get all the sleep you need & can, you don't really need to open a 2nd bottle of wine, you do need to drink water & mind your business. giving your body the basics of what it needs gives it the best roots upon which to branch out and explore and build your connection to your body, your environment, to other ppl, and to the divine.
a lot of women's hesitation around taking a more proactive role in their spiritual practice come back to concerns around things like "opening pandora's box", making oneself vulnerable to different energies, spiritual psychosis, "playing with things you don't know about" etc-- and while i def believe in a healthy respect for what youre doing (more on that later), for now ill say that making sure you're grounded is a great way to keep a balance for any spiritual learning and experiences you have.
the reason that so much systemic violence focuses on interrupting these connections, destabilizing people's sense of security and safety (like threatening those basic needs like food and shelter, human connection), is that its much easier to control scared, vulnerable, people. people who individually cope by vascillating between more extreme nervous system states like fight (very reactive) or freeze (very unreactive)... states which are then mirrored in the collective, as a populace that tends to separate into two groups: the very-reactive volatile ppl who seem to feel everything, and those who collapse into feeling nothing. each extreme has its particular cons, but anything that keeps people out of centered presence is a win for an entity that needs people stressed out. a step towards centered presence is one way to fight back.
a reliable grounding practice is a good tool in both a physical and spiritual endeavors.
and while grounding practices like breathwork or meditating have been shown to have benefits at the individual level, there's evidence that grounded, stable ppl are kinder, more compassionate ppl to those around them. no surprises there, but a lot of times women specifically are led to believe that any investment in their own wellbeing comes at the cost of the collective's wellbeing, another bullshit lie to keep women on a never-ending journey of self-sacrifice. bc its actually true that not only does this investment into your own wellbeing raise yours, it has a similar effect for those around you. this phenomenon, i recently learned, is officially called the "social ripple" effect-- but i will still be referring to it the way god intended, "raising the vibration" (and as a side note and regardless of what it's called, just wanna say im very tickled by the fact this phenomenon is like.. measurable. i love when metaphysical phenomenon that have usually been written off as woo-woo get some data-driven validation. ppl usually position "science" and "spiritual" as two opposite ends of the spectrum and for some contexts i agree with that framing but i also feel like the more i learn about what's considered "science" , the less i find the distinction between the two obvious, or necessary.)
anyway, more on the "social ripple effect"-- grabbing a quote from an article i read @ scientific american on meditation a few weeks ago--
When one person takes the time to regularly be still and attend to a specific cue, such as their breath or a mantra, their practice can have spillover benefits for the people around them. It’s an idea that several studies have explored to date and one that dovetails with recent investigations into what scientists call the social ripple effect, or the idea that one person’s behavior, mood or attitudes can spread throughout a community. Research demonstrates that people who meditate show increased positivity toward others. For instance, training in meditation is linked to increased sensitivity to and engagement with human suffering and an increased tendency toward altruism. Similarly, meditation interventions aimed at increasing kindness are associated with reduced bias toward numerous “others,”
--and whether you assign this phenomenon to a metaphysical phenomenon, biological process, or some combo of the two (almost always the conclusion i personally come to), the implications remain the same— a direct impact on creating a better environment for yourself and thus a better world, when you pay attention to and make efforts to ground yourself.
so, developing and practicing grounding not only serves as a real good foundation for your own spiritual work, but its really good for the collective too. and im guessing that anybody reading this has had moments, probably several lately, where the state of this world freaked you out too. one of the greatest benefits of a spiritual practice, probably at least part of your motivation for developing one, one of the things religious ppl often find appealing about traditional institutions-- it gives you a sense of connection to the larger collective and soothes anxiety. practicing regulating your breathing or grounding may seem small in the fight against all the big shit, but consider how much of our current world is set-up to prevent people from being able to have even this most basic foundation-- a regulated nervous system. our artificial lights are too bright, our commercials are too loud, the phones in our hands are basically engineered bio-weapons at this point and most ppl are walking around in some kind of state of perpetual stress. and a big part of the reason for all that is there's an understanding that these things disrupt our ability to connect, to thrive, to believe in and work for change.
not coincidentally, the article i quoted starts with mentioning that americans are particularly afflicted by '"learned helplessness"—the sense that nothing we do will make a difference".
scared, vulnerable, and easily-controlled.
any action you take to restore that sense of security and safety is a step towards relief for you, elevated consciousness for you & those around you and a better future for everybody.
suggestion: develop a grounding practice.
the simpler and more accessible, the better IMO cuz this is kinda your first line of approach, defense, attack, whatever is needed. an easy way to figure out what might work is think of "grounding" literally-- what can help me connect to my physical surroundings, the earth, right now? this is the principle behind most of the more common grounding exercises.... breathwork, walking, imagining yourself growing literal roots into the ground, meditating, touching grass, these are all things that pull your attention to a specific way you're engaging with your environment, in the present.
i've been working on practicing meditation for a couple years now, more intentionally the last few months, and the more i work on it the more i like it. so im becoming a "you should meditate!" headass which is annoying but i also know it works bc i too am the victim of a "you should meditate!" headass (thanks iana!). i will say it's taken a lot of committing to it even at times when it felt like it "wasn't working" or i didnt really know what i was "supposed" to be doing or feeling. i spent many attempts feeling silly as fuck the whole time, but i did it anyway. then, on the other end, when it did start "working", sometimes shit got kinda weird and i experienced a couple energetically-charged things that felt.. not bad or scary, but just unexpected lol. so i took breaks, and returned back to it when i felt ready again. i used to be able to go about 90 seconds before my body and brain started itching and twitching, before the intensity of presence got overwhelming and my eyes would fly open again to take in the outside world. now, im up to 20 min before the feeling kicks back in.
its ok and good to listen to feeling like you should take a break too. and that goes for any spiritual practice you engage in or that ill suggest here.
and dont assume bc one doesn't work, that none of them will work. the beauty of having so many different ways we can engage our spirituality is that theres an abundance of opportunities for something to "click" for you. some people connect with yoga. some people connect by meditating. some people walk. even if nothing “feels” like its working right away, you can just pick one that seems to keep showing up in your life or that sounds interesting and keep doing it. its like any other skill, it takes time to develop and get better at it. its called spiritual practice for a reason. keep trying and you'll find your way.
this particular area is one that i love talking about because its the area ive had the most significant spiritual shift so far, because its the one ive had to do the most work on. the sacral has to do with our emotional feelings, creativity, sexuality, our physical feelings translating into expanded emotional consciousness, your body and how you relate to it, use it to express and connect.
part of the reason ive had to do so much work in this space is one that is relevant to a lot of women -- all trauma is very likely to impact all your biological systems, and sexual trauma can be particularly disruptive to things like our emotional processing & physical expression. it was just a few years ago that i realized i was dissociating --that's both a medical and spiritual term for when your body is feeling so overwhelmed by what's happening to/around you that your mind kinda just hits the emergency eject button. this is an attempt to create distance between "you" and what is happening to you, keeping your awareness hovering safely outside your body where all the scary things are happening.
this in itself is actually a valiant attempt by your brain to keep you protected from distress, but the issue for me and many others is that being in this state prevents you from experiencing the full range of your feelings, including good feelings. for me, this manifested as my mind hitting eject anytime i felt close to any intense feeling-- even pleasurable ones like joy. or orgasms. (that shit sucked so bad lmao imagine the frustration of your vibrator dying right when you're bout to finish and then multiply x100 ). while its a cool little party trick for checking out when you're overstimulated and ppl just wont stop trying to yell at you over the music, its a very blunted and kind of dull state to be in, and i dont particularly enjoy it. if you're somebody who tends to do things like dissociating, or another fav of mine--intellectualizing your feelings--working on this area of your spiritual practice can be particularly important because there's usually some blocks around/resistance to feeling your feelings. and with developing grounding practice(s), you'll have better tools to work thru, sit thru, crawl thru those shitty things. spiritualists often refer to to concept of avoiding processing negative experiences as "bypassing". in somatic therapy, you learn to increase your capacity to navigate those shitty feelings without becoming overwhelmed or hyper-reactive by "expanding your window of tolerance" thru grounding, regulating, balancing. bc no matter how many times you say out loud "it is what it is" in your 50-min EMDR session, ive learned the bottom line is the only way thru, is indeed thru.
it's been a process, expanding my window of tolerance, and my capacity to actually feel my feelings, and my body, and the ground beneath me, even when its a little shaky. so now i do a lot better with feeling my feelings, even the shitty ones, and luckily, a lot more of the good ones. expanded my tolerance for loss of control. expanded my tolerance for fear. and most importantly, expanded my capacity to feel love.
a healthy & functioning anything here on earth (brain, relationship, sense of self, nervous system, spiritual practice) isn't about building on the idea that you can just avoid or ignore the "bad" parts. it's about working on & trusting yourself to be able to navigate those parts, too. everybody wants to skip to the part of spiritual practice where you transcend suffering but transmuting requires your familiarity with the thing you want to change. understanding and trusting in your body's ability to feel is fundamentally important to spiritual practice because spiritual practice involves using your body as a conduit and a channel for energy. rebuilding my connection to my body, my sexuality, and my capacity to feel safe staying in my body has been extremely important to my spiritual work. in a lot of ways, i feel like the area i was weakest has kinda become my strength now. like by nature of having to work so much and intentionally on my sacral, its kinda even more special to me. forged in the fires-- the fires being my early 30s, a combination of getting on the other side of my first saturn return, fated relationships, somatic work like EMDR & amazing sex-- most of my most intensely spiritual experiences have come by way of sexual, sensual, sacral experiences. so we build on the first chakra to strengthen our ability to move past survival of the root into feeling this more expansive range of our feelings thru our sacral.
this chakra is also associated with not just feeling but the way that feeling manifests in your body. developing this area of yourself is developing your physical awareness that X makes you feel good and Y makes you feel bad, and that Z makes your body want to move in this very specific way. your sacral connects your emotional body directly to your physical reality. and it's this awareness that guides you into embodied knowing, of being able to use not just your sacral but your whole body as an instrument simultaneously attuned to your inner and outer worlds. a state of embodied knowing is the difference between reading a map and actually walking the path. without embodied knowing, spiritual concepts remain abstract ideas—nice to think about, but without the power to truly change you. and a state of embodied knowing is particularly effective against systems that work by manipulation of data, circumstances, people.
and from our inner world is where we really get into the act of creation, the act of birthing something into the world-- in the literal sense like giving birth, to babies, yes, but also in the way we move ourselves, the way we make things, the way our hand guides the brush. the way we take feelings inside us and transmute them from a feeling to another thing altogether to express into the outer world-- a child, an artwork, an idea, a movement.
suggestion: (re)connect to your body
the best thing that happened for my sacral chakra was getting fucked really, really well, and that continues to be my personal fav way of working on it. i was half-jokingly telling ppl for a long time that i thought sex was healing me but then when i actually learned a little about tantric sex principles and then somatic therapy in general, i realized i was absolutely right about that. bc what the sacral, somatic therapy, and the times ive been fucked to the point of tears all have in common is that they emphasize utilizing the body to connect and express. feeling your feelings instead of thinking about (or avoiding altogether) your feelings. staying present in your body while your body experiences. i hope to write soon about the ways my lovers backshot me closer to god..for now, i can say that when i stumbled across tantric sex principles there were many things i had already recognized as elements at play in the aforementioned intensely spiritual & sexual experiences i've had. so exploring those tantric principles can be a good place to start. but, if you dont have a partner you feel safe exploring and expanding with in this way, im also big, big fan of fucking myself. so i can recommend that too. i dont have one particular resource to recommend, but this site seems to have pretty basic explanations of the concepts and ways you can explore them partnered or alone . if anybody reading knows of something more interesting, i always appreciate suggestions for shit like that.
in general, connecting to your physical body can look a lot of ways— pilates, learning a new hip-opening yoga pose that you do at night before bed, somatic therapies like EMDR (which can be even more accessible if you take some time to familiarize with the basic concepts behind EMDR, theres opportunities to employ some of the methods at home), lifting weights. it can be anything that helps you develop a closer relationship and awareness of the physical sensations and feelings happening in your body.
if reconnecting with your body doesn't feel accessible or a needed addition for your practice right now, then being intentional with "creating" is a cool exercise too. one of these last years i made a new years resolution to create every day. my intention was to make more art, but once i started counting shit like passive-aggressive (but expertly-crafted!) text messages as my daily "creation" it went downhill pretty quickly, as new years resolutions tend to go. so i did not actually"intentionally create art every day" but it was still a success in my mind cuz not only did it get me creating more art, which is still progress, but it also got me thinking about the process of "creating" differently. cuz actually yes, making a beautiful salad is an act of creation, and therefore, a spiritual practice, if you think about it that way.
quite appropriately after the sacral we have the solar plexus, the doer’s chakra.
one of reasons its an important part of spiritual practice to feel your feelings is that you have to get comfy feeling your feelings to get comfy acting on your feelings. identifying your feelings to inform and then initiate your actions is a big part of spiritual practice.
the main reason im suggesting "just start doing" is cuz when i talk to women it seems like a hold-up in a lot of ppl's spiritual practice is they want to know exactly what and when and where and why a particular thing should be done. if you didn't grow up being taught "how" to be spiritual, or were given very clear instructions NOT to be spiritual, if you still have no idea what the fuck a mercury retrograde is and whether that means you're supposed to be shutting tf up or cussing everybody out, constantly flooded with tiktoks on manifestation rituals and card spreads and.. shit can get very confusing on where to start.
just start doing. what you do, is up to you.
women in particular have been taught to suppress their little urges and inklings. "womens intuition" is another one of those concepts that's been demonized and while i def think nobody should move as if your intuition is infallible, i also think a lot of suffering comes from the opposite-- not trusting and acting on those feelings bc we can't immediately explain them, bc we're socialized to invalidate them or ignore them. but luckily, for the purpose of beginning a practice of fucking around and finding out, you can start with acting on your intuition in small, low-stakes ways like lighting a specific color candle if you wake up with a color on your mind or taking a few moments to speak some affirmations or pray over your food before you eat. taking your spiritual practice into your own hands by just starting to indulge those urges is a great way to reclaim and/or develop your relationship with trusting what you feel. by strengthening your root and sacral, you give yourself the best possible chance of accurately identifying and acting on your feelings.
if you're not somebody who is accustomed to doing any of this, you might not experience a lot of clear instances of this at first. but as you work on your root and sacral chakra, as you set an intention with yourself in your spiritual practice to raise your awareness of what youre experiencing, perceiving, feeling in your body, as you give yourself permission to notice and act on these things, you might be surprised at what comes to your conscious in a way that makes you feel moved to do something.
(this is part of why i find meditation so helpful spiritually. when i quiet my mind and just let it go, sensing these things comes more efficiently)
so if & when if i feel the urge to light a yellow candle, i just do it, even if i cant tell you why... yet. i've learned that when i just act on my intuition, a lot of the time, in becomes apparent why i had whatever urge i had. now, i rarely even get caught up in the “what does this mean”? even that answer, i trust, will come with time.
strengthening your solar plexus means strengthening your gut instincts. and with your expanded tolerance for fucking around, even when it ends in a fuck-up, strengthening your solar plexus means strengthening your confidence in yourself to navigate that too, and having the courage to learn so you can do it differently next time, integrating said lesson- thus completing the cycle of finding out. practice may not make perfect, but it does make progress.
suggestion: practice for your future.
like mentioned above, noticing & honoring your little low-stakes whims is a good starting point.
in the spirit of both trusting your intuition and acting on it, a specific “exercise” ive tried & liked is writing down what a “dream day” would look like for me at some point in the future (i did mine for a year from today but it can be any timeline really). then i read that description back and thought about what i could do right now today to prepare for that assumed reality. what about my current life could i tweak to move in that direction? what skill could i develop or improve that would make existing in this reality possible, or better? how can i prepare for my dream? so in doing this exercise, for example, if you dream of one day growing your own tomatoes, you might not have the garden space today, but maybe you do have 30-min to spare to start learning about the diff varieties of tomatoes that can grow in your area via youtube. maybe you have an hour this weekend to visit a local farm. maybe you sign up for a free workshop on composting. maybe you treat yourself to a beautiful coffee table book about tomatoes and just flip thru it for inspiration every now and then. i saw a tweet or meme recently about treating your interests like little clues about your highest self. this just gets back to honoring the urges you have today, even if you're not quite sure how or when or even if they play into your future. this is all part of rebuilding trust in yourself by doing something for your future self. take a more “dress for the life you want, not the life you have” approach to your future and don't feel like you have to have the whole dream to start working bits and pieces of it into your current days. i like to think of this like powering up your manifestations and signaling to the universe you're really bout that shit.
and if you keep running into the issue of feeling delusional, lean into that and remind yourself that you're already trying your fucking hardest to keep it together in the unhinged reality that current exists. why not unhinge a little for the life you want instead?
the heart chakra is associated with acceptance, compassion, love. the first 3 chakras help us to know ourselves and what we are feeling. as we move into the heart, the expansion helps us better connect to what other people are feeling, too. this is what i most associate the heart chakra with-- our empathetic sensibilities. most often, ppl think of these concepts as they relate to our connections to others, and this is def a huge part of what happens here. for the purpose of building a spiritual practice, i think it's important to first look at these concepts as they relate to ourselves--self-acceptance, self-compassion, self-love.
there's an abundance of the love& light variety of spiritual guidance that encourages you to work persistently & consistently on being your best self. no problems there, but it can easily slip slide into that thing i mentioned earlier-- spiritual bypassing--where you're talking the talk but it's just not translating. we all know somebody who has proclaimed very loudly that they're working on themselves but was still on the same bullshit or ended up even more toxic than they started. maybe you've been that person.
so how do we reconcile the desire to be in your highest vibration with the reality of being a human with very human complexities?
at its most essential, shadow work is just asking yourself "why?". why did this thing trigger me? why did that make me feel that way? why am i upset about this seemingly unrelated thing? why did i send that fucking text? it's a process of becoming very intimate with the ins & outs of your own insecurities, triggers, behaviors, idiosyncrasies, tendencies, "flaws", all the shit we're liable to stuff in the corners of our minds and hope it just goes away.
i somewhat blame my scorpio --whats the world for 5 placements? quintellium?-- i have a quintellium in scorpio, so i have what one might describe as a pathological need to ask "why?". what i lacked in feeling my feelings, i absolutely made up for with a kind of clinical detached self-analysis in which i examine what i did and why i did it in excruciating detail. being both the doctor and the patient i am, of course, not necessarily the most objective clinician, but i can say that a conditionally-cool side effect of this behavior has been that i have inadvertently done a LOT of shadow work. i have a lot of practice identifying, examining, understanding and then eventually forgiving a lot of those behaviors in myself. and so this legacy of self-acceptance, self-compassion, self-love has enabled me to extend the same kind of understanding of my self and my fuck-ups to my understanding of others & their fuckups. it's so much easier to see the humanity in somebody else when you can see it in yourself, and vice versa.
shadow work is a very direct path to looking at those worst parts of yourself, the parts that cause you shame, guilt, grief. facing your shadows is important to the heart chakra and a spiritual practice because understanding, integrating, and loving* your shadow is the most sustainable way of loving yourself and others.
*i only put a asterisk here bc im not suggesting you just let yourself off the hook and "i am the way i am!" your way out of accountability. don't be that asshole. we're bringing love & light to the shadows so we can help understand, integrate, and transmute them instead of keep them stuffed away in isolation where they fester and seep out anyway. for example, my pathological need to ask "why?" its probably always gonna be a core part of my being, and it has it's pros. but i've also had to learn where it was causing an issue in my relationships, like when that need to ask "why" stems from anxious attachment behaviors or grasping for a sense of control. being honest with myself about this behavior has allowed me to maximize the good parts of being nosy as fuck, and minimize some of the bad parts, like interrogating ppl i love as they're trying to work thru their own shit too. the exploration of your shadow is not a final verdict, but a starting point of what parts of you need some healing. it's not necessarily about making it go away, and yes, your shadow will always be a part of you, but learn maximize the pros and minimize the cons. the goal is closing the gap between who we currently are and who we want to be.
balancing your heart chakra thru shadow work isn't about becoming "perfect" but it is about becoming whole, and taking that foundation of authenticity into your spiritual practice.
suggestion: well, shadow work.
therapy is good! ive mentioned ive done some EMDR work and i've found it to be helpful on multiple levels. i went into it expecting to work specifically on my somatic processing (feeling my feelings) but, like most forms of therapy, its also just been a lot of exploring the subconscious, including shadows.
you can also def do shadow work in the comfort of your own home & mind tho. if you're a natural over-analyzer and intellectualizer, you probably already do the whole "identifying and then rehashing your role over... and over.. and over again" part so maybe your focus can be on how to integrate the lessons your shadow provides you. where can you foster more compassion for yourself?
if you're just getting into the concept of shadow work and don't know where to find your shadows? one way is to think of your "triggers" as clues--just the way we can look at the things we are naturally drawn-to and interested in as hints to our higher selves, we can look at the times we're triggered as hints on what our lower selves are struggling with.
one of my fav ways to quickly access empathy for somebody else is doing what i call-- well i've never actually named it before but lets call it the venn diagram exercise? im not sure what to call it but the practice is one i stumbled on and im sure ill come across the official name for it at some point. but the way it works is-- when you recognize something* that somebody is doing is particularly** triggering for you, instead of focusing on the perceived difference in how they're behaving and how it could never be you, try to find what you have in common with that trait or behavior. this exercise was borne out of that pesky little habit of asking "why" after seeing ppl be triggered by behaviors that (to me) seemed relatively innocuous or annoying at worst, and while i see (now, lol) how it can be wildly unhelpful to try to prompt ppl to unearth those things mid-rant, i do think it's a practice worth circling back to once the heat of the moment has died. your triggers often point to something that needs your attention and love, so taking a little extra time to sit with them is a good way to know where you might need some shadow work.
*when i say "something" and "particularly triggering, please take this to mean being triggered by the kind of mildly annoying, non-threatening behaviors or traits ppl can find themselves reacting to in big ways, not objectively-harmful behaviors like abuse. im talking about shit like being annoyed by how "attention-seeking" somebody's clothes are, or how hard they try to impress their family, or that influencer who is a little too vulnerable for your liking. basically, if you find yourself minding --or bothered by--somebody else's business at a much higher level than it actually impacts you, there's a GREAT chance there's a shadow to be explored somewhere in that. im sure you've experienced hearing somebody else vent or have what felt like an over-reaction to something that didn't or wouldn't have bothered you nearly as much. maybe you recognize yourself as the over-reactee. and often, the cause of that is something in their specific history or psyche that has made it a more sensitive spot. approaching said triggers as an opportunity to see where you might relate instead of an opportunity to reject, distance, or dwell in righteousness could be the difference in shaming judgment that only serves to push shit even deeper into the abyss vs cultivating the kind of compassion for others, and your own shadows, that eventually brings them into the light for healing.
because i try to approach in "how can i relate" vs "this could never be me", i can find my way to understanding and compassion, eventually, most of the time. im not suggesting this be the only way you move thru life-- certainly there are times and ppl who require finding their way to a little less grace, behaviors that cause real harm, and we look at these times as opportunities to practice develop, establish, maintain, boundaries. so i understand the ability to find the common a ground to be a gift-- yes, one i've had to balance over the years, but also a key that has kept me free of the weight of taking on other ppls shit. i dont take shit personally, bc it's usually not. and one way to keep that awareness front and center is to focus on what you have in common. what are times you've behaved like this person? what would you have to be feeling to move that way? what trait do you see in them that is offending you the most. in what ways do you see this trait in yourself?
if you like to journal or want prompts to reflect on, i dont have a particular set i use but a quick google search of "shadow work" will bring up all kinds of suggestions, and you can even get more specific by adding + "inner child" or "relationships" or "parenting" or whatever you're struggling with.
i also like to use full moons as a time to reflect on what i'd like to release, and i usually do a simple burning ritual where i write down whatever that is and burn it. something about watching the physical process of transmutation, seeing my little scrap of paper with my fear, hurt, grief on it shrivel up in the flames, crumble into ash and then dissipate as wisps of smoke in the wind, i LOVE that shit. its truly cathartic and i think all women should burn some shit once a month lmao
because this is the bridge between our inner and outer worlds, ways to engage and use our voice are abundant in spiritual practice. across time, cultures, histories, religions, we see our throats and its unique ways of engaging the physical world .. we sing hymns, we chant mantras, we use vocalizations to "stim" to regulate our nervous systems. we get choked up when the feeling feels too big to move up and out of our throat, we scream when we're scared, or overwhelmed. we heal with our laughter. we use our voice to connect to others. we take a first breath to mark the transition into, and last breath the mark the transition out of, a human experience.
this is also where we take the results of everything that happens inside of us and give our understanding of it to other ppl. thats why we try to have our lower, more physical chakras aligned--when we go to communicate our thoughts to other people, to connect with other people, its helpful to have a clear sense of what we're communicating. ideally, anything coming up the pipeline and out of your mouth would be grounded in a truth that comes from a body that is safe (root), feels safe emotionally (sacral) and trusts itself to act on what it's feeling (solar). we also hope that the heart chakra is open, balanced, clear, meaning you have a practice of self-love, self-acceptance, and compassion, the kind that makes speaking your truths less daunting, and the kind that helps us deliver hard truths as gently, as firmly, as we need to. this is where you might give your individual truths of your experience to the collective, and move on from here into the upper chakras, which have to do with engaging with that collective conscious in a spiritual way.
im also thinking of a tweet i saw the other day that said "its beautiful we're designed to be unhappy if we lie a lot" and i've been thinking about the sentiment since. in relation to our throat chakra, i think a lot of times what ppl are attributing to misalignment or their manifestations not working could potentially be that you just aren't being honest with others, intentionally or not--not being honest about what you want, what you're good at, what you struggle with, about who you are. how can you call your alignment into your life if you're calling for the wrong things? are you doing your shadow work? do you know your heart? are you speaking your aligned truths?
speaking your truths is also how you communicate your boundaries. boundaries are important to spiritual practice for many many reasons, and especially as you tap into new ideas & energies, speaking your truth helps you stay clear about what is for you, and what isn't. and all these mysterious diseases that disproportionately impact women?-- it's increasingly being understood that being compelled to silence & suppress don't really make the thing go away, and those truths meant to be expressed and released start to fester in our bodies when trapped and stagnated. if your interest in a spiritual practice is at all rooted in wanting more tools to fight oppressive systems, this becomes particularly relevant. women are particularly affected by those mysterious autoimmune diseases in which the body basically starts fighting itself in one way or another. the suppressed, internalized rage, chronic stress& inflammation-- this is what happens when women swallow things meant to be expressed, keeping the energy trapped inside.
speaking your truths is your divine right, and your contribution to our collective. the practice of speaking your truths is a form of self-assertion, an affirmation to both yourself and the universe that you and your needs, boundaries, experiences, hurts, joys matter.
suggestion: invest in your connections
probably by now you've seen one of the million memes or tweets about how life feels worth living again after a night with your friends. my suggestion is to lean into that principle as spiritual practice and prioritize connecting to the collective you can engage right here on earth to lay the groundwork for connecting to the collective beyond.
its in these social settings that we get opportunities to express and heal as a collective, which is a big part of the reason women find time communing with other women so restorative. having spaces to be vulnerable, share your truths, find the commonalities in others truths-- these are integral to healing, growing, and in my experience, connecting beyond oneself.
and when i say "speak your truths" i said truthS, plural, bc many times being a whole person entails many truths, sometimes even conflicting ones. i said earlier ideally you can speak your truths from a grounded and compassionate place. obviously, this isn't always the case. having a safe space to vocalize all of your truths-- the ungrounded, the messy, the bitchy-- is wildly valuable too. cuz remember, we aren't hiding our shadows. we're bringing light to them, in part, by speaking our truths.
what's one way you can cultivate more community with other women? can you shoot your shot and invite another woman for a drink? can you organize a girls night-in where everybody brings a snack, a game, a story to share? can you share a truth with somebody who means a lot to you? can you exercise your increased window of tolerance to stay grounded as you work thru a conflict with somebody, speak your truths and make space for them to do the same, instead of discarding the relationship out of fear?
of all the chakras, the third eye is probably the most well-known one. for a lot of ppl the "third eye" has come to represent all things woo, conjuring images of the most headass variety of spiritualists who "speak in riddles" (direct quote from an argument with my baby daddy-- guilty!) and may not use fluoridated toothpaste (innocent!). but opening our third eye is indeed an important part of spiritual practice, because this is where the "spirit" part of spiritual practice really comes into engagement. the third eye is mostly associated with your insights and personal connection to spiritual truths and wisdoms. the reason we build from the root up is to keep us grounded while exploring these more lofty aspects of life and awareness. and so in honoring the need to keep that balance, my principle here for beginners is to keep it simple.
even years into my practice now, i apply this concept often. from rituals, to manifestations, to the questions i ask when i pull cards. you don't need to go out and buy a crystal for every possible scenario, like i did (altho to be fair, i def got the "has weird affinity for rocks" module in my spectrum package, so it was bound to happen regardless). im still a lover of pretty rocks but the rocks and spiritual tools in general that ive ended up actually appreciating in a spiritual sense have been the ones that have come into my life more organically than a consumerist shopping spree. gifts from lovers&friends. a cloth that belonged to my great-grandmother. a shell from a beach that reminds me of one of the best days of my life.
keeping it simple also helps with another concern a lot of women have regarding exploring spirituality on their own, which is fear of the unknown. if you've been avoiding tarot bc "what if i pull the death card?" or scared you're gonna be the person who ends up with a demonic entity attached to them, starting simple is a good way to make sure your practice doesn't exceed your understanding of what you're practicing. i def believe that specific cultural rituals and practices with long, involved histories should be engaged in a context that honors that (if at all-- remember, not everything is for everybody). if you find yourself watching a tiktok on a 30-step ritual from a culture you’ve never heard of that requires genetic material, you should probably just.. not. if you feel like you're doing too much, you probably are. keep it simple, especially to start. i'm still a proponent of fucking around and finding out--experimentation is the best way to find what is for you-- but i've def added some asterisks over the years lol. you don't need to know every card in the deck to start pulling them. but you should respect what you're doing enough to keep a curious, teachable spirit regarding anything you're doing.
i also want to say that dont fall into the trap of feeling like you have to speedrun thru developing your practice to hurry up and get to the answers/power/new job/relationship/life you're trying to manifest.. there's no need to rush the process. in fact, in my experience, "short cuts make long delays". and another reason i still return to this principle even as my practice grows is bc ive learned that sometimes you experience an awakening, enlightenment, healing, that comes thru your spiritual awareness and it can take your physical body time to catch these new wisdoms. the nature of spiritual work is that parts of you will be changed, empowered, cut away, transformed. keeping it simple also gives you time to go thru this embodiment process as gently as possible.
this is a framework you're building for yourself over the course of your life. take your time.
suggestion: develop a "ritual"
i LOVE being in warm water and one of my fav things to do is take a bath, so i decided to juice up my bath as a ritual.. this can look like saying an intention over the water before i soak in it, or adding a crystal ive been drawn to that week. i've been mixing manifesting, or meditation with my baths lately and i really really like that. i like to pull the plug and sit there as the water runs out, visualizing all the energy, bullshit, stress, projections, problems that aren't mine to hold swirling, circling around the drain with the rest of the water. i usually don't get out til the last of it is gone.
the goal is something simple, something that comes to you naturally. i picked my baths as a place to ritualize because it's something i already do pretty regularly and being in water always makes me feel better. you don't have to be super strict with yourself about the frequency of it but do keep in mind the "benefit" of a ritual comes from consistency & commitment-- its something you return to, something you do over and over, in a similar way, to foster intimacy with that ritual, which fosters (ideally) a sense of well-being. when you repeatedly associate an experience with being positive in some way, you reinforce it as being something you can reach for when you want to generate those same feelings or positive experiences again. its the same principle behind why ppl have comfort foods & shows. if you're "neurodivergent" you probably already engage in repetitive behaviors that lend themselves easily to ritual.
if "ritual" is too far a bridge for you to cross right now, think of rituals as a comfort habit. what's something you already find yourself doing repetitively or reaching for when you want to feel better? what habits or routines you already have (or would like to have) going? see if there's one you can be a little more intentional with. even shit like rolling a blunt can become a ceremony, ritualistic and spiritual in nature if you approach it as such. the same way we can "romanticize" our lives by taking ourselves to a nice dinner or wearing the cute dress to run errands, we can ritualize our lives by sprinkling a little intention like magic fairy dust.
if the third eye is associated with our personal, individual connection to spiritual truths, the crown can be imagined as our connection to the collective as a whole-- the crowning jewel of many ppl's spiritual practice is this sense of unity and purpose that makes us feel like part of something much bigger than us.
even tho "get over yourself" is the last principle im getting into here, the truth is that i think this principle is where a lot of people really need to start their spiritual practice. for many reasons, ranging from the intentional demonization&trivialization of women practicing spirituality to more personal hold-ups, overcoming the "this is bullshit" skepticism and the maybe even more prevalent "this is wrong" fear that many have regarding personal spiritual practice is a block for a lot of the women. my friend jamila introduced me to the concept of a "witch wound" which is basically the idea that many ppl, especially women, carry an aversion to practicing spirituality outside the limitations of male-dominated worship because of the long, traumatic, and ongoing history of being persecuted for doing so. so for these reasons and others, there's a general lack of faith in a spirituality that we can access on our own, which many women have been deprived of thru narratives that teach us the only way to connect is thru patriarchal religion--or that none of this means anything at all. this has been more my experience--a general skepticism that made me feel silly when trying to practice meditation, or saying affirmations. i say skepticism but if im being even more honest at the root of that skepticism was also fear-- maybe not fear of a heavenly father banishing me to hell, but a fear of looking fucking ridiculous, or even worse, a fear of realizing that maybe none of this does make a difference. scared of believing. scared of trying.
so i guess when i say you have to "get over yourself" what im really saying is you have to get over the fear(s) that have been passed down to you, whatever they might be. get over yourself and believe in something bigger than you. get over yourself and your attachment to the answers you think you have. get over yourself and believe its possible you don't have the answers at all. get over yourself and understand you dont need to have the answer. get over yourself and open yourself to the possibility there is something beyond you. get over yourself and try.
if the thought of repeating "you are loved" in the mirror a few times a day makes you cringe, ask yourself if it's not more cringey to be so scared of being "cringey" that you aren't even willing to try in the privacy of your own company. even knowing i was home alone, my lower self was SO fucking mortified the first time i meditated and my body started gyrating like a snake. but bc ive built a practice of getting over myself, feeling my feelings, trusting my feelings--i didn't stop myself in my embarrassment, i didn't get overwhelmed and interrupt the flow to try to dissect it, and in that moment, i just knew i was doing exactly what i was meant to be doing in that moment. whether the feeling it produced was the result of a somatic need to express repressed trauma, or a spiritual directive to clear stagnant energy to raise my vibration, or even a chemical placebo effect -- really makes me no difference at this point. i felt it, alignment, which for me manifests as a feeling of deep peace and knowing "im exactly where im supposed to be right now". i've felt it many times since starting my spiritual practice. i love it, a lot.
give yourself the gift of a little seed of faith and see what it grows into. getting over yourself and letting yourself believe is a microdosed, gradual kind of ego death-- one that washes over you more gently than a hero's dose of shrooms but has the same result none the less. when you get past the fear that drives your attachment to whatever your previous narrative was, when you get past the fear of the unknown, like the kind of fear that causes us to ignore our intuition and gut feelings, and the fear of doing things "the wrong way", the fear of being a different version of yourself than you currently are--
an act of submission-- certainly not to a man and not even necessarily to a man in the sky but a spiritual submission to the expansive possibilities, a surrender to the things that move you.
here at the top, the crown chakra, i think its beautifully-ironic to visualize our goal as an ability to get over ourselves, so that we might connect beyond ourselves. because isn't that already at the heart of a desire to have a spiritual practice? to connect to something beyond you? whether that "something" you connect to is a feeling, a person, a community, a rock, an idea, a ritual, a god, The God, the universe, there's an infinite number of ways to get to any particular point. what are you willing to try? what do you have to lose? what do you have to gain?
i (mostly) got over my inner skeptic a while ago, primarily thru a mix of both incidental and intentional practicing of these principles and experiencing, feeling the results of doing so. thru my dedication to fucking around and finding out, i've built a practice-- one that works on multiple levels to keep me feeling both grounded and safe to explore other parts of myself, my psyche, my relationships, my connection to the world around me and beyond.
and my inner skeptic will always be there in my heart, asking "why", trying to make sense of it all. and for that, im thankful-- its what got me here in the first place, and able to understand and find peace in the fact that some questions, ill be spending my whole life answering. i look forward to it.
if you find yourself particularly resistant to opening up to other realms of possibility, i find a lot of "evidence" for spiritual phenomenon just in learning about the way our natural world works. recently my friend put me on this movie "fantastic fungi" (the site says you can get a link to watch emailed to you, its on netflix & other platforms sometimes too) and even if you don't walk away from it feeling awe-struck with wonderment for all life, like i did, its worth watching IMO for the info on the ways fungi is providing earth-bound solutions for earth-bound problems. if you stay open to it, tho, i think that even the most grounded data-driven nerd could maybe see an intelligence, a collection of connections shared amongst a collective that both mirrors our own and reminds us-- as above, so below.
suggestion: build an altar.
i really love my altar. not only is it a beautiful venusian-coded collection of some of my most cherished memories and a functional space where i can check-in spiritually, its a very visible way of saying to myself and the world, "this matters to me, i believe in it, and im not afraid to show it". so for that reason, i think building an altar is a really good way to represent getting over yourself and the fear(s), and making a similar declaration. this matters to you, you believe in it, and you're not afraid of it.
when i say "build", this can be as simple gathering a few things that mean something to you and displaying them somewhere you can connect to them when you want. i keep mine on this huge antique buffet, my first and really only piece of "real" furniture in my house.
i love my current altar but before this, my altar was just a single shelf in my room. when i travel now i bring an "altar" with me in a 12 inch box. you can tuck an altar pretty much anywhere, just as long as you fill it with things you feel connected to.
i keep all sorts of things on mine-- a bowl of dried flowers from loved ones (and i turn the extras into floral water for cleaning my altar, i love the idea of wiping shit down with love water lmao), an embroidered handkerchief that belonged to my great grandmother, photos, my daughter's baby teeth (a fun fact that she loves to share with ppl unprovoked to creep them tf out). this is also where my spiritual junk drawer is, where i keep my candles and incense and my pretty rocks and all that good shit. i even keep shrooms here (and have learned to tread veeery lightly with altar-infused shrooms lmao)
the goal is to create a sacred space in your home with things that remind you of what and who you love. a place to honor the past, be present in the present and set intentions for the future.
this isn't my full altar set-up bc a lot of the pieces are more personal but sharing some pics here, for the vibes, you know?
so this is it. my guide to spiritual practice for beginners.
ground yourself, feel your feelings, just start doing, face your shadow, speak your truths, keep it simple and above all else, get over yourself.
any time you get that “what the fuck can i do about this shit?” whether "this shit" is anxiety, a fucked up relationship, a dream, the state of the world, you can reach for one of these tools. it doesn't matter if you’re doing it “right”. it doesn’t matter if you dont do it every day. it doesn't matter if it feels silly. its not, and if you need evidence that these “silly” and “ineffective” things if you need evidence that this DOES work, does have value, consider how much of the status quo is set-up to prevent you from doing exactly those things. they dont want you to take walks, and notice. they dont want you to stop, and look around, and name 5 things you can see, 4 things you can touch. they don't want you believing or building in change. and they certainly don't want you reclaiming power for yourself. in this climate, spiritual practice is an act of rebellion, and one worth doing, even when it's small.
a spiritual practice is something you can reach for on your own terms. when you're free to learn from, integrate, honor, choose the things that truly speak to you, you create a way of connecting to the divine and the world around you in a way that reflects who you are most authentically and become a more aligned practitioner/devotee/congregant/healer/light worker/oracle/witch/priestess.. human.
happy fucking around & finding out <3
-all artwork & photography by me
FAFO1 is the black background/white text document.
FAFO2 is a traditional white background/black text document.