When’s the Last Time You Looked at Your Daily Practice(s)?

With Samhain season coming to a close for another year, I start to look ahead at what’s to come and that means reviewing my daily practices.

The unflinching resolve of the pandemic has made many days seem monotonous and my energy feel stagnant. Sometimes that’s quite alright, as survival is a good thing. And sometimes surviving doesn’t look all that exciting.

But if you’re anything like me, the trick with boring days is that is can slow my magickal focus. I get so caught up in whether the dishes are done that I forget about whether my heart is nourished.

I might have food in the fridge, but I’m still hungry for more in my life.

Enter daily practice.

Or the thing I have to keep renewing to renew myself.

What’s on the Altar for You?

I’ll start the renewal process by cleaning the altars. Asking the deities if they want to move to a new place, if they’re happy where they are.

And get rid of the dust. And the dried out things that look like trash instead of offerings. And the candles that have held what they needed to hold.

Compost. Toss into the trash. Burn it. Give it away.

Make room for something that’s going to nourish.

Make room for myself to offer the nourishing and fresh cups of my devotion.

Something new. Something sacred. Something that’s holding the energy that serves.

The energy that calls to me, even if I can’t quite make out what it’s asking of me.

Let me make a place for it anyway. Open and ready.

How Do You Wake and Invite in the Day?

You don’t have to be a morning person to wake up well. You do not have to spend hours worshipping your trauma or absolving yourself of decisions that were perfectly reasonable when you made them.

You can wake up and be thankful for the waking.

You can wake up and smile.

You can remember one thing you’re grateful for.

You can pet your cat / dog / partner.

You can call into the space the feeling you want to feel or chase.

You can light all the candles and do all the meditations.

You can pull a tarot card. A rune. A bone. A fleeting dream image.

Ask what it means. What it might offer you as a direction of your devotion to a world with the perfect conditions to welcome someone like you.

You can sit at the altar of your heart and feel how it beats, what it beats for today, what makes it skip a beat — for better and for worse.

What do you need, my dear heart?

Movement and Daily Practice

One of my favorite things to do for a daily practice is to walk. Sometimes I’ll play music to set the tone for the day or to continue the tone of the energy I’m working in my life.

(Sometimes I’ll sing aloud. I don’t care who sees or hears.)

I’ll walk in the dark, in the daytime, in the spaces between the bedroom and the kitchen and back again.

Or I sit in the space and move my body gently, as though in water. As though grounded in my place. As actually grounded in my place. Feeling the weight of my body in the chair, the bed, the blanket.

Noticing the contact and the space I take up. It varies, I notice. And sometimes, I can’t notice my body as well as I can on other days.

Hence, practice. To feel as I can, when I can.

What Calls You Back to You?

The thing that makes a daily practice is the thing that calls you back to you. It can look a hundred ways on a hundred days. It can be in ALL CAPS and sometimes it can be in lower case, brief movements that remind you of the home in your chest.

And the stretch of your breath today.

No one is judging what you do. Unless, of course, you choose to judge yourself.

Find what works for you. Try it on, see how it wraps around your shoulders. Does it fit? Does it itch? Does it hold? Does it warm?

Then do it again.

And again.

Coming home to yourself, each time.

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