I’ve been away for a couple of weeks, some time skipping around in the borders with my mum and her magnificent new dog (pictured below, because we always love to see dogs!) and the other half spent up in the Highlands learning how to pour sweat lodge. I love sweat lodge – these ceremonies are some of my favourite medicine. Stronger than firewalking, sound work, more powerful than most kinds of ceremonies I have ever been to. It is incredibly powerful healing work, and spending a week so far from home focused on the fire and the sweat was very intense. Big medicine.

I had a lot of fun up there and I received a great deal of healing insight. There was work I had been chipping away at for months that appeared to “suddenly” reach resolution while I was on the retreat. And, of course, there was the flip side. Work I had not been anticipating rose up to the surface. Many buttons were pressed, and I came away with a whole new layer of work to do. Multiple layers, probably.

I arrived back home to Glastonbury only yesterday, so today was the first day my normal alarm went off and woke me up in my own bed, the first day I get to sit typing blog posts at my kitchen table, recording shamanic journeys in my own temple room. But before I did, I settled back in to my own morning connection rituals – little medicine, if you will.

My little medicine

I have many forms of little medicine. These are my daily ones: I write the morning pages, I do a Reiki meditation (Hatsurei ho, aka the bestest Reiki meditation there is!) and I do a small practice I call “shamanic sitting”. The latter is just me checking in with my ancestors and spirit allies to see where my focus should be. Sometimes it takes two minutes, sometimes I need to get my drum out, or do a ceremony or spend half an hour on self healing. It’s usually quick but I have to allow space for whatever comes up.

My other forms of little medicine include, but are certainly not limited to:

Prayer, going for a long walk in nature, singing, going for a run, cuddling people’s pets (see above), reading books in the bath, journaling, writing poetry, watching live music, a glass of wine with friends, listening to a whole, beloved album from start to finish. These aren’t just the little things we like doing – it’s the little things that recharge and mend us, and keep us on track. They at make our brains and heart cleaner and clearer places to be.

Little medicine in the regular practice, the small doses that keep us honest and on the healing path.

But it’s the regular practice, the small doses that keep us honest and on the healing path, that I have been so pleased to lean back into now as I continue to integrate the healing from last week. And it’s the regular practice that meant the first big shifts while I was up in the Highlands were able to happen so “suddenly”. Real healing is never sudden, even when it feels it. It comes about – and is able to be held on to after the fact – because of our consistent commitment to it. Without my morning pages, my walks through the field, my hatsurei ho, my scribbling down the insights of my ancestors, I would not have been able to hold the clear vision I had on retreat. And without those things, I couldn’t ground the new questions and directions I’ve just been shown.

There is no big, lasting healing without the little medicine.