Lets start with some spiritual education on how to keep yourself spiritually safe, grounded and protected. In this blog, you’ll find the tools needed to help you feel secure all year round, that can be used anytime, anywhere by anyone.

What is Spiritual Protection?
Spiritual protection can be many things or a combination of things. It is when you either, call upon any spiritual guide, angel, god, or any positive universal power, use an energetic protective shield, or utilize an object.

Why is Spiritual Protection Necessary?
In this world today there are many physical and non-physical energies that are searching for an energy source to attach to for nourishment, and if we don’t protect ourselves, we could unknowingly pick up entities and energies that get sucked into our auras and drain us, making us feel tired, unmotivated, depressed and exhausted. If the aura is weak or not protected, it’s easier for these energies to lock into us, and possibly cause negative influences in our lives.

Understanding Your Aura
All of the physical objects in the world around us are made up of molecules, and all of the molecules are made up of energy. There are many ways to describe or explain auras, but in general terms, an aura is an energy field that emanates from all molecules. Therefore, auras are present around everything, including people, animals, plants, and even inanimate objects (e.g., crystals, furniture, cars). However, auras around living things are typically easier to perceive and are wider than the auras around inanimate objects. An aura can change in color, width, and strength depending on the person and their current mood or situation. If that person is feeling happy and joyful, the aura might be yellow, bright, and strong, but if they are feeling depressed or sick, their aura could be brown or gray and very weak, dingy, and translucent.
So, for example: When you go through times of great stress, depression, anger, traumatic experience, pain, sickness or physical injury, your aura becomes weak. Drugs and alcohol can also weaken an aura, making it vulnerable to outside energies looking for a source.

How to protect yourself:
Step 1: Ask
There are many different methods of protection, and many ways to install them with the strongest being, asking God/Source/Spirit, Angels, or guides to be present with you, and protect you from any seen or unseen forces. Some people call it prayer, but you can refer to it any way you deem fit. As an example, many people call on Archangel Michael to protect them in times of fear, anxiety or danger. But, if you don’t ask for help, in accordance with the law of free will, the spiritual realm is limited to what they can do. And yes, there is such a thing as divine intervention, but asking for help is much more efficient and securing.
If you don’t feel comfortable asking God, Angels or guides directly for help, you can say a mantra or invocation like:

I invoke the light within me,
I am a clear and perfect channel,
Light is my guide

You can also come up with your own mantra or saying, and use whatever feels right for you.

Step 2: Energy Shield
After you’ve asked for protection, the next step is to energetically surround yourself in a spiritual shield. Shielding is an easy, fast and effective way to protect yourself if in an area where negative energy might be. It only takes a moment, and it is done by asking your guides or angels to surround your body with a protective layer of light and energy. Simply by holding this intention, the light will be installed around you immediately, without exception. You can visualize, feel, or even think of yourself surrounded in a cocoon of light. You will need to re-shield yourself periodically because shields wear off. In relatively peaceful environments, shields can remain in place for up to 8-12 hours. However, you will need to re-shield more often in negative environments (e.g. every few hours or whenever you feel a need to protect yourself). Some people can actually feel the energy bubble surrounding them with either an all over warmth, vibration, chill, or tingle. Even if you don’t feel it at all, just trust that it is in place, and you are protected.
You can use any color, and different colors can be used for different purposes. If you like, you can also layer yourself with 2 or 3 several different colors (any more than that, and you’ll be surrounded with too much energy that can be overwhelming):
White Light: (All-purpose protection) Invokes angels to protect you from any harm. Often used for protection against crime or physical attack.
Gold: Gold is the highest vibrational color, and often associated with the high vibration of archangels. Only energy of the highest good can get through gold light so it can be used for general protection and will often increase your vibrational rate.
Green: Healing, and rejuvenating. Used when you are sick or ill.
Lead Shield: This is the ultimate shield against toxic energy, because nothing can permeate lead. Use it whenever you are going into a very toxic environment, around a conflict or when you are feeling vulnerable. See or feel yourself completely surrounded in light weight lead.
Mirrored Ball: Use this technique if you are feeling vulnerable to attack or when you have to go into a particularly harsh environment. (e.g. crowd, intense business meeting). See or feel yourself stepping inside a mirrored ball. All dark energy bounces away from the ball.

Step 3: Objects

Another powerful way to protect yourself along with the energy shield is having protective objects around you, in your space, or wearing them. Religious icons, talismans, and crystals have their own energy and can help you feel safe, powerful, and protected. You can even empower your objects by surrounding them with an energy shield like the one’s listed above, or getting them blessed by a religious or spiritual leader. Out of all the objects, crystals have the most vibration or frequency and can hold, or put out energy of their own. Crystals have a level of conciseness that can be perceived by people, animals and spirits by their aura and vibrational field, and each crystal has a different meaning and purpose.

Here are a list of protective crystals:
*All black crystals are grounding and protecting*

Black Tourmaline: Grounding, protection, dispels/transmutes negative energy.

Hematite: Grounding stone, enhances strength/clear thinking/common sense, focused energy.

Tiger’s Eye: Provides protection and gentle grounding, facilitates clear business decisions, aids in understanding core issues that block flow of abundance.

Black Obsidian: A powerful cleanser of psychic smog created within your aura, and is a strong psychic protection stone.

Citrine: Cleanses energy and transmutes it into positive energy, blocks negative energy, expansive energy, increases mental clarity/concentration.

Kyanite (blue): Elevator stone, cleanses negative energy, increases psychic abilities, assists with connecting with guides, improves dream recall, facilitates meditation/tranquility.

Smokey Quartz: Efficient crystal for grounding and cleansing. Assists with healing, and stimulates all chakras, improves meditation and brings in serenity.

Selenite: Cleanses/purifies, invites guides to be present to support your efforts, provides spiritual insights, clarifies situations, promotes access to past and future lives.
(Note: Form of crystallized Gypsum)

These crystals and stones are all protecting with a few cleansing ones that will help you determine which ones to use in certain situations.

How to Ground Yourself:
Staying grounded can be a big factor in keeping your mind and aura positive and strong. The best way to describe being grounded is explaining what it is not. When you are not grounded, you’re often confused, disoriented, unable to focus, you might be constantly dropping things, clumsy, dizzy, daydreaming, forgetful, head in the clouds, etc. Below is a technique you can use at any time to get yourself grounded so you can feel focused and ready.

• Take a few deep breaths
• Get yourself in a relaxed and calm position
• When you’re ready, imagine a root coming down from your root chakra at the base of your spine, and going down deep into the earth, then see/feel it clasp on to mother earth. Some people can feel the energy of the earth as the roots connect.
• Then imagine roots coming down from the soles of your feet and going deep into the earth and clasping on.
• You can take as much time as you like feeling and absorbing this nurturing energy.
• Take a few more deep breaths to center yourself.

You can do this exercise as many times as you like throughout the day, or any time you feel ungrounded. This is not the only technique, but it can help you get started into other things to help you feel grounded and centered.

After you’ve done all the necessary steps to spiritually protect yourself, you will start to see a difference in your life. The steps will start to become a routine, and as long as you do your best to stay positive, you can live a happy, healthy, protected life.

Meditation

Why it’s Important & How to do it

By: Dixie Tantardini 

Meditation is something that everyone knows about, but not everyone knows how to do. It is the ancient wellness practice that focuses on training our minds towards attention, awareness and compassion. It also provides mental, emotional and spiritual health that can reduce stress and anxiety, and increases concentration, while making us feel calm and relaxed.

In this blog, I will give you directions and helpful tips on when, why and how to meditate, and hopefully give you some insight on what it’s all about!

Why Meditation is Important

Meditation has been used around the world since the beginning of time, and is even taught in children’s classrooms in certain countries. It has been the staple of yoga instructors, gurus and anyone in the spiritual profession, as a time of connection, reflection and tranquility. Meditation helps center and ground ourselves and relieves the stress of everyday life. It helps us find peace inside our self, giving us the strength and power to maneuver through life with a more positive outlook. It can connect us on a spiritual level with our guides, angels, deceased loved ones or religious figures, who give us advice and greet us with warmth, security and love. Many use meditation to lift past, or negative emotions they might be feeling, and to move forward, letting go of all the things that no longer serve them as a person. It helps bring in love, acceptance and forgiveness for ourselves and others, causing a chain reaction of peace and love for everyone around us. This is why meditation is so important, especially at this time in the world, where so many people are lost, scared and uncertain. 
But let’s be real… not everyone has the time to sit around for hours om-ing and spiritual connecting to another realm of peace. We all have crazy, chaotic lives that can require a LOT from us, and most of us forget to just take a moment to literally, smell the roses, and take a breath. We forget to replenish our symbolic well that gives to others, and instead, live day to day on autopilot, hoping the next day will be better. As time goes by, we feel more drained, exhausted, weak and irritable, with a volcano of emotions growing inside us just waiting to erupt. So, let’s talk about real-life meditation that can improve your life without requiring a lot of time or thought.

Unconventional Meditation 

The hardest part of any meditation ritual is, how and where to start. This is where it becomes difficult for most people to grasp the concept of meditation, and unfortunately begin to believe it is an unachievable event that they can never accomplish, and give up way before they even start. We have actually put a bad stigma around the subject, but you would be surprised how many things are considered meditative that we do all the time that we would never think to be. Everyone already has a preconceived visual of what we think mediation SHOULD look like (thanks to TV and social media). Spoiler alert… you don’t need to sit in the lotus position with tranquil music playing and incense burning while om-ing to meditate… but that would be ideal if you can make it happen! But for the rest of you, here are some examples of unconventional meditation: Walking, reading, writing, practicing an art related activity, music, relaxing in your comfy chair, laughing, getting your hair or nails done, taking a bath, dancing, singing, playing video games, etc. Anything that you love to do can be meditative! If it takes your mind away to another realm where you are happy and relaxed… it’s mediation. We just need to learn to do more of it to feel calmer in life. This is considered, “You Time”, a time when you replenish your well so you don’t feel so overwhelmed from your daily life. Even if you can find 5 minutes to yourself a day, this can help improve your mood and outlook, making the world around you seem brighter and more manageable. 

When to Meditate 

If you can do a little more than unconventional meditation, here is my recommendation: set a time for yourself and start to make it a ritual. Example: “Every day at 5pm I have 30 minutes to meditate and take some me time”, and then follow through! Make your boundaries very clear with the people, kids and things in your environment. Let it be known that those 30 minutes (or however long) is YOUR time, and request that no one bother you. You owe it to yourself to take a break from life for a short time frame, and you deserve it. And yes, I understand with kids, animals and family, putting your foot down and asking for a break can sometimes be near to impossible, but I live in a house with 12 cats, a husband, mother-in-law and family, so if I can do it in that noisy environment with the TV constantly blaring, you can too! You will learn to drown out all the noise and focus on you. Or find a different time, like when most of them are asleep… and sometimes meditating in the car is just as good! Just remember, it doesn’t matter how long you meditate, as long as you are consistent, and do your best to have some kind of meditation schedule to make into a daily routine. It’s better to have a time set aside for yourself, but life happens, so do your best to meditate at least once a day at some point. 

How to Meditate 

If you can find the time and the location, the next step is spiritually protecting yourself! (And this doesn’t apply to unconventional meditation, but you can always do so if you’d like) just remember to always protect yourself before going into an altered state. You want to make sure any spiritual connection you have is from the light. So, visualize yourself being surrounded in white light (and optional gold light for extra protection), ask your angels and guides to protect you during your meditation, take some deep breaths, ground yourself by visualizing roots coming from your base root chakra or tailbone area, along with roots coming from the souls or your feet, and going down deep into the earth, and just focus on breathing and relaxing. You can also envision a door opening to let the other side know you are open and receptive to spiritual connection, and closing the door when you’re done, but this is optional. And for those of you who are afraid of opening yourself up to the unknown, remember, that as long as you spiritually protect yourself beforehand and close yourself off afterwards, you will be safe! Just make sure your intention is very strong that you only want to connect with those in the light. And for those you like to write, keep a notebook next to you when you meditate to write down important messages, images, or sounds that can occur. When you’re done with your meditation, thank your angels, guides or anyone that came to visit you, and take another deep breath, and visualize the spiritual door closing (if you choose). This lets the other side know that your meditation is done, but you can always come up with your own ending. Another tip: Don’t worry about if the messages are coming from the other side, or just your own thoughts. Either way, it doesn’t really matter as long as you feel safe and the messages are positive and uplifting. You will be able to discern thoughts from messages in time with practice.  

The Rest is Up to You 

Here is where I will leave you to do the rest. Don’t worry about if you’re doing it right or wrong. There is no right or wrong way to meditate, only what works for you. You can listen to relaxing music, burn sage, incense, or candles, sit or lay in a comfortable position, or listen to a guided meditation with someone walking you through the process. A great app that I use on my phone is called, Insight Timer. It is a free meditation app that has literally thousands of different meditations with different time limits. You just put in how much time you have to meditate, 1 minute or 3 hours, and it will pull up all the meditations for your time requested. You can even listen to live meditations and interact with groups of people. You can even search what kinds of meditations you would like to try, i.e. spiritual connection, talking to your higher self, letting go of old behaviors, literally anything! You can always explore YouTube, other Apps, or anything else online to find what works for you. Just try to find a routine or schedule you can stick with that won’t overwhelm you. This should be a positive, calming experience and should never be stressful or produce fear. Some animals and children like to meditate as well, so you can always include them if you’d like! Family meditation can help bond you as a unit, and make you more connected to each other, but this is completely optional! Other meditation options are: Meditation classes, yoga classes, sound baths (with sound bowls and other instruments) etc. You have the choice to make mediation your own, and customize it to your favor so it works for you. Remember to just have fun with it, and relax!

I hope this helps take the fear or anxiety away from the thought of meditation, and gives you a better idea, explanation and direction about it.Good luck, and happy meditating!   ~Namaste~