What the Heck is Spiritual Medicine?

Yoga, the Moon & Me: One yogi's musings on travel, spirituality, the moon and life!

Show Notes: What the Heck is Spiritual Medicine?

This podcast is brought to you by “Peaces of you Manitoulin” offering in person and online courses and healing sessions. If you're interested in learning how to connect with your higher self, check out Ashley's upcoming program called.

Your Guiding Light beginning Thursday, November 3rd. This is a five week program introducing students to muscle testing as a way of checking in with the higher self. In this way, you bypass your ego and go straight to what is truth. Students will also learn a technique called sway release, which is a waking hypnotic technique that works with the right and left hemisphere of the brain.

We use sway to release old programs which do not serve you, and to invite in new beliefs which will serve your highest. And greatest good. For more information, go to www.peacesofyoumanitoulin.com and that's pieces, P E A C E S.

Hey everyone. Thanks for joining for today's podcast today. I'm here with my very good friend and colleague, Ashley O'Connell.

We were just talking about when we met and started working together, and it feels like 400 years, but it's only been 10. So welcome Ashley. Thank you, Mel. Thanks for suggesting. Yeah, It's good fun. So Ashley and I are in Manitoulin well, we're not in the island, we're actually on Manitoulin Island.

And Ash does a lot of really interesting things, a lot of energy work and teachings, a lot of healing. But they also own this magnificent lodge on the island. Ash, do you want to talk about you just a little bit so everybody knows who you are and what you're all about? Sure. This is not my strong suit, talking about myself.

That's okay. We just actually moved up to the island about a year ago. We felt very connected to the land once we started visiting, back in 2017 here on Manitoulin. And we purchased this property really shortly after our first visit here. Which was like a risk. Yeah. And a wee bit stressful!

Yeah, it was a wee bit stressful and it was definitely out of our comfort zone. But definitely happy that we did it. We came from the Kawartha Lakes. I've been running Reiki classes for about 12 years now, so I'm a Reiki teacher and a hypnotist and a hypnosis instructor, and I run trips to Peru, for people to experience Andean medicine.

My guests can also experience Ayahuasca medicine if they choose and visit the sacred sites that Peru has to offer. I'm moving to, some more online classes, some intuitive classes online, learning how to tap into your intuition and tap into your inner knowing, your inner guide.

And doing some more continuing education with Reiki classes. A lot of people take, a reiki class on the weekend and then they don't really do much with it. Or if they're not sure where to go, so, And then what next? Yeah. What do you do with it? Yeah. So, yeah, so that's a me in a nutshell, I guess.

Okay. Tell us about your lodge, where we are this weekend. Let's just back up for a sec. So we are here this weekend because we're running a retreat, which we do, here spring and fall. So I feel really grateful that Ashley lets me come and hang out and we work really well together.

So, I offer the yoga portion of retreat, and Ashley does the meditation portion. And then we always come together and come up with a theme about what we want to focus on, whether it's a full moon or, I don't know. We've come up, we've had a lot of different, themes over the years, but for this retreat, we are focusing on helping people find their spiritual medicine. And honestly, I was sitting here this morning, maybe it was last night, and I was like thinking, what if Manitoulin is my medicine? So, Ash, tell us about this very beautiful lodge that you guys have purchased. So we're on the west end of, uh, Manitoulin Island.

It's very, very quiet out here. Lots of little lakes around. Our place is specifically on Silver Lake. We are about 20 minutes from the actual West end tip of the island surrounded by mixed hardwood forest. It's just beautiful. It's quiet. It's 40 minutes from any small town . It's so quiet.

It is just so beautiful. I'm going to put it in the show notes if you guys are interested in looking up Ashley's Lodge. They rent it out on Airbnb in the summer months and very soon in the winter months as well. I'll put the link in the show notes, it's called Serene Waterfront Property on Manitoulin Island,

It's absolutely beautiful. It is so peaceful, and it allows us to be able to do our work here, to do our own soul work and to invite others to do that work as well. So we thought that, because I am endeavoring to offer you guys a podcast every week and talk about something intelligent.

I thought we could talk about what it actually means to find your spiritual medicine. What does that actually mean? What is your spiritual medicine? What, lights you up? What makes you feel great? Ash, do you wanna add to that? Um, well we had such a good conversation earlier on it and I wish we were recording.

It's taking into account that everybody's medicine is different and what works for you isn't necessarily what's going to work for the next guy. Let's define, for everybody what is, what is your spiritual medicine?

So not to be confused, we're not up here doing drugs and we're not up here with narcotics or pharmaceuticals or anything like that. It's really about connecting with nature and finding yourself, connecting with yourself and your soul and kind of stepping out of, um, well, for me anyway, stepping out of the busy-ness of life.

But for some people, their medicine might be being in the busy, I'm not really sure. Right. Yeah. I, I guess it's kind of like what lights you up? What makes your soul sing? What makes your heart sing? Yeah. Is your medicine, your spiritual medicine up? Yeah. And you know it when you feel it. It's this feeling of peace and joy and just connection all at once.

It's one of those things that's hard to describe. But when you're in it, you know it. Right. Earlier we were talking about the different types of spiritual medicine, it could be trees and nature, it could be music, it could be crafts. If you're very creative, that could be your spiritual medicine that could fill your spiritual cup, right?

Yeah, it's for sure not for me. Or traveling. There's just so many different, types of medicine. And so we're here this weekend to try to help people find their spiritual medicine.

And so we have, a few different things planned for them, that we might be able to help them find theirs. We have some neat stuff planned yoga, of course, every day, which is beautiful medicine. Melanie runs a beautiful yoga class. Absolutely fantastic. Oh, thanks. I love your yoga classes, you know that, as does anyone I know who's ever taken a yoga class with you.

Awesome. And our meditations are absolutely beautiful and meditation itself is a medicine and just even sitting by the water is a medicine. Sleeping by the water is medicine. Mm-hmm. having a fire and having some laughs is medicine. Oh, I forgot about the fire. Yeah. There's a certain, magic to fire.

Just sitting and looking at a fire. It's almost like a meditation in itself, in a way that. Hmm. I know in meditation we're supposed to be present, but it does stop thought sometimes, like if you're gazing into a fire and almost takes you to an altered state, really?

Yeah. Yeah, Absolutely. Beautiful. And just even...