With the sun in Libra, that sign holding the symbol of the scales, the timing seems perfect to speak on balance and the interplay between our internal and external world that we are living in. It is common to find ourselves restless or in our own righteous rage these days. How do we balance ourselves internally and continue forward with our intentional lives (righteous rage and all) without the scales being tipped too far to one side or the other?
Understanding The Scales
Before we get into balancing techniques, it is important to weave a story that might allow a better understanding of balance and the need to bring it fully into our own consciousness or awareness. If I sit down and think about myself as a person, I know that my thoughts and feelings (internal) are a force and tend to affect my actions (external).
This is especially true in relation to outward influences – it is the ebb and flow of daily life.
This includes our everyday experiences of others, of places, and of our own thoughts and feelings based on past experiences as well.
All these things from outside affect us internally and we reflect that outwardly too, affecting everything surrounding us in a constant feedback loop. There are layers upon layers of patterns of change in our environment of people, places, and things. It is a lot like being embedded in a spiral and so is everyone else! From within the spiral, we are emanating energy and we are subject to the emanating energy from outside influences. It is the feedback loop of the Universe.
Spiraling out of control
I am sure we have all heard a version of this phrase somewhere, indicating a lack of balance. From personal experience it can appears in many forms and varying degrees on the scale:
- being too much in my head and bouncing around from one thought to the next very quickly
- jumping from one task to the next without completing even one thing in a day
- not sleeping enough or sleeping too much
- being too talkative or not connecting at all
- inability to focus on any one thing or being too focused on only one thing
- Tension or discomfort of thoughts/feelings or in the body/muscles, pain or not feeling anything at all (also applicable to thoughts, feelings, or physical self).
What I have learned with balancing practices is how to slow down, bring it into conscious awareness by taking an inventory of the spiral and possible influences. This allows me to utilize my own power and magic to bring myself back into my own witchy homeostasis.
Bringing it into our consciousness
In the picture above, I wanted to bring it into our view how everything is truly connected even if it is only via the energy we exchange. If we can grasp that there are so many things emanating energies outwardly just as we are, it becomes apparent why we can feel out of balance or we need to find some time to ‘unwind’ a bit. What is not shown on my drawing is that it is also a spiral of time, each moment of our lives building upon the previous moment and all of the influences we were subjected to or that we emanated outwardly. It adds a layer of depth, as do the planetary influences.
At least now though, we have a baseline understanding and we can now frame it in our consciousness for immediate corrective action or contemplate the ways we can take preventative measures.
Awareness of Ourselves
Recognizing that we are in an ecological system of energy (where we send out energy based on our thoughts, feelings, and actions) that is nested within a framework relating to time and the energetic fields of other people, places, social structures and dynamic planetary influences is one step of many to bring about awareness of balance or imbalance. Once we recognize that we are out of balance, there are corrective measures we can take and even work to take preventative measures to strengthen our awareness and our ability to stay more in balance.
Most of us are so intuitive that we know when something is off, but we have blocked it from our own conscious awareness.
We energetically know that we do not feel right in our bodies, minds, or spirit. We have our own internal scales, but we must be aware of them in addition to being fully accepting (have courage and give ourselves a bit of grace here) of what comes up for us.
So it begins
Best practice to increase awareness: Self-Check in’s
When: AM/Mid-day/PM
As a Hekatean Witch, I have a Witch’s Compendium. These are a set of personal magical books that function as tools for rituals, spells, and record of foundational practices for my intentional life.
This is not your mom’s Book of Shadows.
Create a simple grid on a page and set an alarm for yourself for to check in not long after waking, at your mid-day, and prior to bed. At each alarm you will take one or two deep breaths and then note how you are feeling, what you need right now, and one word that describes your present moment. One. Word. This does not take long, maybe 10 minutes a day, but getting it down on a grid is going to help you locate your own energetic patterns of deficiencies and excesses.
Excess and Deficiency
To balance the scales, we must locate and correct the energy of either excess (too much) or deficiency (too little). In the patterns of nature, this has a taxonomy based around the elements of earth, air, fire, and water. We are made up of these elements as well: learning to read and identify the taxonomy of our patterns from the grid we have started is the single most important thing to heightening awareness and intuition. This will help to adjust where needed!
| Element | Pattern | Excess | Deficiency | Balance |
| Earth | Sensation | Overloaded sensory perception, tension | Numbness | Acceptance |
| Air | Thinking | Looping thoughts, overly focused on one thing | Mindless autopilot, inability to focus | Flow of thought |
| Fire | Action | Re-Active (knee-jerk), task jumping without completion. A lot of ‘fires’ out of control. | Inability to start tasks, walking without direction, autopiloting tasks | Intentional action |
| Water | Emotion | Mania, egoic, highly intense or irrational for extended periods of time. | Emotional numbness, inability to feel emotion or suppression | Awareness |
As we begin to increase our awareness, we notice that even though we can classify these into categories, they are all interconnected. This is important because separation is an illusion:
- I have an excess of emotions that is also displaying as knee-jerk reactions to others around me (excess in water and fire). How can I resolve this?
- I am experiencing too much perception, sensory overload, from multiple places. A smell is too strong, and there is a noise that bothers me, and my muscles are tight now and I cannot focus because it is all too much (excess earth, air deficiency). How can I resolve this?
Seeing the patterns as interrelated assists us in our Witchin’ ways of problem solving.
That is what witchery is, right?
We perform our workings to sway outcomes in our favor and that work starts in our own mind. Our spell work and rituals are formulated with an intention. They are made more powerful with correspondences through our understanding of the energetic framework or qualities those correspondences represent. Then we perform our spell or ritual while we do the work necessary to ensure we are aligned to the outcome we seek. That alignment is perfected through our ability to be balanced. As such, we can perform our own energetic adjustments and preventative/maintenance treatments to tip the scales where needed.
Energetic Adjustments
Sympathetic adjustments are adjustments used that utilize the same energetic elemental component when one is experiencing a deficiency. It helps increase that element/energy within us. Having a deficiency in air, we cannot focus, we can utilize the energy of air through meditation, putting our minds doing the work of being present.
Antipathetic adjustments are adjustments used that utilize different energetic elemental components to even out excesses of one or more elements. For example: we have too much water (emotions). We can utilize earth, or sensory input such as music, grounding and releasing techniques. We can also utilize fire: burning incense or crafting/creating something.
Preventative/Maintenance Treatments
Once we become aware of our patterns through the grid exercise, we can fully utilize the data set to see where one-off items occurred or where there is a pattern of consistency. Are you super watery and that has led to deficiencies in other areas consistently? Find daily practices that speak to you and will engage your personal excesses and deficiencies of the elements. Here are my top 3 practices that provide prevention of imbalances and increase our wholeness, sovereignty, and personal witch power:
Yoga
I am not an expert in yoga, but I have a few teachers that I adore as well as personal experience of what it has done for my emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being. It allows me to get out of my head and into my body as well as release additional energy that may otherwise stagnate or lead to frustration. It has helped to build awareness and increase time spent in the present moment. For those of us who do not particularly go off personal experiences to start a practice, I also like science:
Yoga used as a therapeutic practice, such as for breathing, stretching, and strengthening the body twice a week has been shown to decrease pain in the body (1). Yoga has been shown to decrease stress, anxiety, and depression symptoms while increasing motor and cognitive function (2) (3).
Meditation
Personal experience in both creating and participating in a daily meditation has had a profound effect on my mental, emotional, and physical well being by allowing the space to be present. To ground my energy and release anything in the moment that is not serving me well. I wrote an entire article on meditation with great scientific resources.
Journaling
My journal is a part of my Witch’s Compendium. There is no one right way to keep or maintain a journal so it is important that you find one that works for you. I know many witches who have a wellness guided journal and I know many witches who use automatic writing to quickly jot down their daily insights or channeled messages. Some witches use it when they wake up to record their dreams, the daily astrological forecast based on one’s natal chart, their daily divination translations, and affirmations. Some use it again before bed to record the day’s events, gratitude statements, the next day’s goals, and their own thoughts or feelings.
The important thing is this:
Just Start.
Just like the daily check-ins, a journal can also point us to our patterns that allow us to increase personal awareness. Journaling allows our witch’s mind to discern our needs, our ability to heal, heighten the power of our thoughts and feelings, and ultimately guides us in our magic.
This trio is a part of my daily practice, and 2 of the 3 have been a daily practice for years now. It is how I have become a stronger witch, continue to live a magic-filled life, and continue to stay in balance.
A candle and key,
Stormie
You can now find Stormie on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter
Feature Image Credit: Ferdinand studio via Unsplash
References
- Colgrove YM, Gravino‑Dunn NS, Dinyer SC, Sis EA, Heier AC, Sharma NK. Physical and physiological effects ofyoga for an underserved population with chronic low back pain. Int J Yoga 2019;12:252-64.
2. Rivest-Gadbois, E., & Boudrias, M. (2019). What are the known effects of yoga on the brain in relation to motor performances, body awareness and pain? A narrative review. Complementary Therapies in Medicine, 44, 129-142. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ctim.2019.03.021
3. Shohani M, Badfar G, Nasirkandy MP, Kaikhavani S, Rahmati S, Modmeli Y, et al. The effect of yoga on stress, anxiety and depression in women. Int J Prev Med 2018;9:21.