Just in time for Eclipse Season, Valerie Oula brings the healing power of flowers to a tapping ritual for grounding… Artwork:Karolina Daria Flora
There’s a new kid on the holistic healing scene: floral tapping.
During sadhana a few months back, I received the “download” to work with flower essences topically. It’s not often that I get such clear cut, specific instructions from The Universe. And so when this happens, despite any resistance, it feels like I’d better follow through at some point.
And so I’ve been using the flowers in both my private sessions and workshops, and while people aren’t quite sure what’s happening, what they do know is that they feel different. A shift is happening.
Flower essences are the energetic imprint of the flower/tree captured in water. Subtle energy medicine. They do not have a scent and are mixed with grain alcohol or brandy as a preservative. The essences are vibrational remedies that work on the emotional energy body. When we use flower essences, we get attuned to the healing frequency of the flowers – which is essentially about raising our own vibration.
Since this is subtle energy work, it can take some time to recognize the shift that is taking place. It’s not like popping a pill for instant relief – although in this Aquarian age, as more and more of us are waking up and tuning in through energy work and practices like Kundalini Yoga, we may feel the effects faster.
As for floral tapping? It’s a technique that combines these vibrational essences with various tapping (Emotional Freedom Technique) modalities. In fact, think of it as EFT – super-charged. By delivering the vibrational essences along several acupuncture points around the ear as we tap, we are loading up on energetic goodness.
And with the swirling energy of Eclipse Season on the way, here’s a grounding floral tapping ritual for extra vibrational support.
What You’ll Need
A grounding flower essence such as Walnut – which is excellent for grounding and protection, to help with change and transition. Also to be used as a shield during an epic sample sale, or the subway at rush hour. Bach flower essences are available in most health food stores as well as at Whole Foods.
A small cup/bowl of spring water or filtered tap water. To prepare, hold the bottle and tap the bottom into the palm of your opposite hand eight times to activate, holding your intention for your ritual in your mind. Add two drops of the essence to water.
Floral Tapping :: The Flower Power Tap – Right Side Only
Prepare a short, simple grounding affirmation expressed in the positive. Some examples you might use: “I am grounded and calm” / “I am grounded and sovereign of my energy / “I embody my truth” / “Sat Nam” (which means “truth is my identity”)
Now bring the fingertips of the right hand together, bunched loosely. Dip your fingers in the activated flower essence water.
Begin solidly tapping with the fingers, starting at the right temple by the opening of the ear. Continue to tap, circling the right ear, while saying the affirmation. Take a deep breath in and out. Tune into the rooted, grounding energy.
Do this three-five rounds at least five times a day, and at least 30 minutes apart.
In the midst of our busy lives in our glorious urban jungles, tap into the essence of the flowers to ground you back to earth. Vibrational medicine works to support us, to allow us to live our life in the full technicolor sensory system of our very human being.
London-based Jody Shield has gained a reputation as the healers’ healer, and signed as a Lululemon meditation ambassador. She shares her journey with Ruby Warrington
“Quit your job.” It was back in 2013 that Jody Shield heard the voice, subtle and yet insistent. “The sensation that came with it was one of, ‘it’s fine, you’ll be supported, don’t worry, trust’,” she remembers. “But still I was like, ‘no, no…what’s going on?’ And it just kept repeating, ‘quit your job, quit your job, quit your job’…”
Until this moment it had been a regular day in the office at the London ad agency where Jody had worked since 2005, rising through the ranks to become Business Director. Sure, she’d suffered a degree of burn-out in the role, had taken a sabbatical to Peru to “find myself.”
Since her return, she’d been dabbling in alternative therapies, and quietly working to develop what she felt were her natural healing abilities. But she’d found a happy medium, or so she thought. Her newfound skills were simply tools to help her navigate the demands of her own life in the “real world.” But now it seemed as though Spirit had other plans.
“I realized I couldn’t ignore what I was hearing, and almost as if some external force was pushing me to my feet I found myself walking into my boss’s office to tell him I needed to talk. I resigned on the spot,” she remembers.
Within three months, “I had a business as a healer. People had actually already been contacting me about sessions, and I’d been seeing family and friends at weekends. Once I made the decision to focus on it fully, people just kept coming back, and I was like, ‘okay!’”
In the two years since, Jody has become one of the most sought after alternative therapists in London, also gaining a reputation as “the healers’ healer.” This fall, she was signed by Lululemon as their first ever European meditation ambassador, and with a busy public speaking schedule to boot she’s become a leading voice in the Now Age movement. For anybody seeking a similar transition to a career in healing, her journey is a lesson in surrendering to your calling.
Born in the North of England, “growing up, I always had a sense that there was something bigger out there and that I was going to be a part of it. I used to look at celebrities and think, ‘they’re no different to anybody else, they’ve just got big energy’. And I felt that way about myself, too,” she says.
As far as connecting to Spirit, “I had a sense of the different energies in our house, and would get goose bumps when I walked into certain rooms. I’d drag the dog in with me for ‘protection’,” she laughs. But like so many psychically-developed young women, “I shut it all down when I hit my teens and began to discover boys…”
The first indication that she would one day be asked to use her gifts blew into her life on the winds of tragedy – after an ex-boyfriend was brutally murdered. “I woke up in bed one night not long after it happened, and there was an outline of him next to me on the matress. I realized his soul wasn’t able to pass to the other side, and I so I just told him, ‘it’s okay, be at peace now. You don’t need to worry about anything.’ And he just left.”
Back in real life Jody was focused on climbing the corporate ladder – even if the incident with her ex had left its mark. “I was emotionally burned out, and self-medicating with drugs and alcohol to the point I had to take time off work due to ‘stress’,” she says. Eventually, she set off for South America for what she thought was some much needed R & R. Instead, she found herself on an intensive plant medicine retreat.
“Nobody was talking about Ayahuasca back then, so when I heard about it in Peru I really had no idea to expect. Even on the boat to the retreat center, I remember wondering what on Earth I was doing there, and thinking I would probably just be an observer,” she says. In the event, her 12-day shamanic immersion would prove absolutely pivotal in her journey to becoming a full-time healer herself.
Not least because she was immediately confronted with a truth she’d been hiding for years, even from herself – that she was living in the grips of bulimia. “When we arrived we were asked to drink something to make us vomit and purge the toxins from our system. The potion didn’t work on me, and the facilitator told me to stick my fingers down my throat. My immediate reaction was, ‘but you can’t do that in public!’ I’d kept my eating disorder a secret for a decade.”
In ceremony, having drunk the Ayahuasca itself, “it felt like being cradled in the arms of the Mother, looking down on me and loving me, but going; ‘you’ve got something to confess, and you have to bring it up so I can help you with it.’ When I shared about this afterwards, it was the first time I’d spoken about my eating disorder to anyone.”
Jody took part in seven ceremonies over 12 days, sharing her little jungle hut with giant cockroaches and spiders, and emerging with an unshakable sense that her bulimia was behind her. “It was as if my brain had been re-wired and I couldn’t even remember the physical process of the illness. I had also made a contract with the plant to never eat meat or take drugs again.”
Further, “I had been recognized by the indigenous tribe as one of them. After one ceremony, they all made a bee-line for me, calling me “doctor, doctor, doctor.”
It’s testament to the grounded nature that makes Jody so approachable as a healer that she was able to pack this experience away with her guide books and resume her “normal” life back in London. Albeit with a desire to discover more about the healing arts, and her own abilities in this area.
It began with the study of EFT, or tapping, but it was discovering the work of Damien Wynne that tapped Jody fully into her gifts. Having developed a system for karmic, emotional and energetic “clearing” called Light Grids Therapy, “for me Damien was the whole package – a very expansive spiritual channel, yet very, very grounded in his human experience,” says Jody. She decided to travel to Germany to train with him; “My mum insisted on coming with me though, to check I wasn’t being indoctrinated into some cult,” she laughs.
“I connected to the work instantly, which centers on the mantra ‘I am that I am,’ and is essentially about allowing you to fully claim your ancestral seat in this lifetime. After five days of working intensively on healing and opening up my own emotional body, noticed quantum shifts in my perspective on my own life and purpose,” she claims.
“But I was afraid. I was like, ‘if this IS my path, how do I bring this to London, and how on Earth do I explain this to people?!” she says, echoing what must have been the thought process of so many great healers before her. But it was shortly after this that she heard The Voice, while experiencing the sensation of being fully supported by the Universe on her journey.
The rest, as they say, is history. And with with London’s creative and business leaders lining up to work with Jody, there’s a sense of her childhood awareness that “something bigger” was out there waiting for her having been fulfilled.
To find out more about Jody Shield and her work and to book a session visit Jodyshield.co.uk
On mainlining my flower essences, and why you have to see Pan the movie…
I experienced Floral Tapping. I’ve made no secret of how much I like to work with flower remedies. I’ve found them to deliver exactly the kind of gentle support and subtle shifts my system really seems to vibe with – especially during weeks like this! Seriously, the number of texts I’ve had from my Numi crew like; “WFT is going on, I feel very very strange right now, a combo of crazy excitement and totally can’t be a**ed.” Also, everyone is late for their period.
But back to the flowers, and thanks to my lovely friend Valerie Oula who taught me a new way to use them this week. Flower essences play a central role in her Luminous Shift series, a five-part workshop in which she creates a custom blend for each participant based on their intention for the month, combined with kundalini meditations and EFT to amplify their effects.
Cut to my favorite part. You usually take flower essences using a dropper directly into your mouth, but half way through Tuesday night’s class Valerie had us soak a tiny piece of tissue in our essences, ball it up, and then stuff it into our belly button! We then did a modified Body Talk tapping practice (by the way, the girl in this video is also AWESOME) to help activate them, followed by an 11-minute kundalini meditation to Expand the Physical Body.
Woah. 1) During the meditation, my mind played me two little movies of a certain situation I’d been feeling kinda paranoid about – one showing things as I was seeing them, the other just how easily I could see the same situation from a completely empowered and loving perspective. Pure gold! And 2) Totally. Blissed. Out. All the way home.
Yes, I will be mainlining the flowers this way again. Valerie’s next Luminous Shift series will take place over five consecutive Mondays 11/02. For more details email: [email protected]
I’m making Peter Pan my new power animal. Sometimes Hollywood gets it so right, Joe Wright’s new Peter Pan movie being a total case in point. I’d pretty much forgotten (or never really connected in the first place with) the downright Numinosity of the Peter Pan story – orphan child gets kidnapped by pirates to mine for magical fairy dust; escapes and discovers he can fly, but only once he “believes” he is part-fairy himself; in doing so, rediscovers his superpowers, overthrows the pirates, safeguards the magical Fairy Realm, and connects to his long-lost family / tribe.
If the underlying message to believe in your superpowers and the notion of a “fairy uprising” alone aren’t enough to convince you to go check out Pan the movie this weekend, here are five more cosmic reasons to see it:
The set-up. The story begins with Peter finding a letter from his long-lost mother in his “file” in the “records office” of his orphanage. Cue brilliant visual reference to the Akashic Records, in case you were struggling.
The psychedelic rainforest scenes. Seriously, the cinematographer has got to have been dabbling with some Amazonian plant meds…
The costumes. The wardrobe crew were most definitely checking out the Instagram account for the Spirit Weavers gathering when designing outfits for the tribe guarding the Fairy Realm.
The mermaids. Played by Cara Delevigne.
The crystal cave / fairy hive. Since the film is also in 3D, the final scenes are as close as you’re likely to get to fulfilling your fantasy of hanging out in an actual crystal cave, built by actual fairies, without having to take any Amazonian plant meds.
