Now is a most challenging, compelling, and crazy time for many of us. If one is to move through these times intact, rather than be reduced to and by the madness, our BodyMindSpiritSoul Practices are essential. Spiritual Practices such as prayer, chanting, or meditation help center and ground us. 

This includes Self-Care Practices. What are yours?

Nature Walks in forests, on the beach, and in parks… Drives along the coast, and visits to national parks like Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, as well as neighborhood parks. Self-Care Practices also include quality time at a spa with hot tubs, saunas, and massage therapists.

Quality time at Museums like the Met or the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Art Galleries, Carnegie Hall, and Broadway Productions, like Othello. There are local museums where you live. In the San Francisco/Oakland/Berkeley Bay Area, the DeYoung Museum, Legion of Honor, Palace of Fine Arts, and Asian Arts Museums, MOAD-Museum of Art of the Black Diaspora, the Oakland Museum of California, Theaters such as Paramount or Fox Theater, and Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley.

Music like Rock Steady – Aretha Franklin; What’s Going On – Marvin Gaye; The Temptations, Hip Hop and Rap, and of course, our hymns in Spiritual settings. What are some of your favorites? I think of Precious Lord…

Are there other Spiritual Practices that engage you?

REST

Just as the North Star guided the enslaved on their journeys to freedom, visionary artist and founder of The Nap Ministry, Tricia Hersey, leads us to imagine a new world: one in which we subvert the narrative of productivity at all costs and embrace rest as a healing, spiritual practice. 

Inspired by vintage hymnals, prayer books, and abolitionist pamphlets, We Will Rest! is a modern sacred object, medicine for a sick and exhausted world. Weaving together meditations, poetry, storytelling, and powerful art, Hersey provokes liberation through refusal and trickster rebellion in the face of capitalism and white supremacy. 

There is another way. Focus on the escape. Focus on the transformation. We can just be. We are beautiful. We are enough. We are escape artists. We Will Rest!

The Nap Ministry | Rest is Resistance

Community is also essential! It can be your neighborhood, workplace, spiritual center, fraternity, or sorority… basically a group of people with whom deep alliances have been cultivated, and belonging is like medicine to the soul.

The Feminine Presence

Why do you think we use terms like: Mother Earth, Mother Nature? In Western Cultures, The Moon is feminine, while the sun is masculine. In Africa and the Diaspora, we call on different deities that are relevant to our Cultures, our Ancestors, and Ways of navigating the world.

I’m currently working with the African Goddess Rising pocket oracle by Abiola Abrams, a woman of African Guyanese heritage, from generations of Intuitives and Healers. She channels divine downloads because it’s her heritage and purpose. Let me list a few of the Goddesses she features:

25 Oshun – Yoruba/Nigeria; love, sweet water
2 Mawa-Lisa – Benin; cosmic power, divine feminine/masculine
6 Sara la Kali – Egypt; highest divine lineage
7 Marie Laveau – New Orleans; Voodou Queen, divine abundance
8 Ngame – Ashante/Akan; What you desire desires you
36 Queen of Sheba, Ethiopia; I am committed to the Divine 

Call to Action

I’ve only been able to offer a few Self-Care and Community Care Suggestions. To explore more, schedule a GPS Guidance Purpose Session or invest in a Liberation Journey Session at: https://www.schedulicity.com/scheduling/TWRUM8