Psychic Self Care

While in the midst of absorbing the wonderful knowledge gleaned from the conjure workshop, planning a very personal piece of spellwork, inching forward with faery seership, and (oh yeah!) taking care of the six thousand little things that make up daily life, I have been thinking about good psychic self care. Unless you're a hermit, you spend every day surrounded by people. Many of these are wonderful, delightful individuals who enrich your life, but many of them are not. Maybe they're rude, or maybe they are just radiating so much stress that some of it sticks to you -- it doesn't matter. You end up accumulating psychic junk. Plus, unless you are far more enlightened being than I, you produce plenty of your own. Over time that accumulation of gook is bound to drag anyone down. Some sort of regular cleansing routine should be part of everyone's life, especially if you are a witch/pagan/psychic of any sort.

I know all of that. And I also know that my depression means that I produce more psychic gook of my own than most. I am perfectly well aware of the fact that a regular -- perhaps even daily -- psychic cleansing would do me a world of good, especially considering how fantastic I feel whenever I do manage one! So why don't I do them more often?

I've spent the last two weeks intermittently pondering that question and trying to think of something I could do regularly. Do I want to use Florida Water? That has a pleasing and subtle aroma. A friend suggested carrying jet with me to repel some of that energy, but I'm having trouble finding any in my local shop. After encountering Garden of One's energy peels I began to consider whether I needed a purifying scrub for the shower. Since I prefer to make things myself when possible, I began extensive research.

After spending almost an hour researching different recipes for salt scrubs and the metaphysical properties of essential oils I had an epiphany: I was being an idiot. I have a perfectly good cleansing recipe, which I've been using for years -- equal parts eucalyptus and lavender essential oil in a base of salt and oil. The base has no shelf life to speak of and needs to be mixed in single doses, which is a big part of why I don't use it more often, but all I need to do is find a slightly more lasting salt scrub recipe, pop in the essential oil mix, and I have a dandy little psychic cleanser for the shower. And if that's not enough, I have my beloved bottle of White Light from Twilight Alchemy Lab! I use that sparingly because the aroma, while quite lovely, is also extremely strong. It will overpower any perfume I wear, and I like to wear perfume. That means that I tend to reserve it for emergency situations, and not for over day use. I've bemoaned that fact for years, but the simple solution finally dawned on me. I found a tiny decorative bottle and blended one dropper full of White Light with 4 dropper fulls of jojoba oil. It's just as effective as the pure stuff, but the aroma fades much more quickly! This is something I could use every day if I wanted to. And because it's diluted, my bottle will last that much longer.

The morale of the story: don't reinvent the wheel. Look to see if you already have something that can be modified to suit your purposes!