Welcome
“A spiritual practice, whether it be movement, meditation, prayer, withdrawing the senses to go inward, or remembering our connection with Spirit, is a gift one can return to time and time again.”
Thank you for joining in the self-guided 40-day Finding Refuge Sadhana in honor of my newest book, Finding Refuge: Heart Work for Healing Collective Grief.
I appreciate your carving out time to engage in work meant to heal your heart and honor your grief and the collective grief that is being experienced at this time. I appreciate you making space for intentional and consistent practice. My hope is that through your participation in the 40-day Sadhana you find some stillness, time for reflection, space to acknowledge and let grief move through and ease.
What is a Sadhana:
A Sadhana is a dedicated practice. Many are structured as 40-day sadhana because 40 days is said to be long enough for us to break samskaras—patterns, and create new practices and behaviors. A sadhana can be a consistent practice of meditation, mantra, movement, self-study or pranayama, or a mixture of these practices. The Finding Refuge Sadhana provides a combination of mantra, pranayama, movement, meditation and self-study through journaling prompts and reflection.
The Finding Refuge Sadhana is designed to guide you through becoming present and exploring heartbreak, grief, resilience, connection with ancestors, and the medicine you can bring forth at this time. This Sadhana is a tool meant to support you in healing and deepening your spiritual practice and it is a resource that beckons you to present with the heart-brokenheartedness and open heartedness.
To prepare for the Sadhana:
Get a private journal. This journal will serve as a space for you to record your thoughts, feelings, awakenings, and ideas.
Create a space in your home, car, office, or a natural landscape (such as a favorite park, hillside, a river, or stream) to practice the mantras, pranayama, movement, meditations, and journaling offered throughout the Sadhana.
For the movement practices you might want a mat, towel or chair and any other supportive props.
The Sadhana runs for 40-days. The 40 days are broken up in five day increments (a week for the purposes of this sadhana) and each week has a different theme. Each week also include different practices based on the week’s theme.
Week 1: Presence
Week 2: Heart
Week 3: Wholeness
Week 4: Intuition
Week 5: Ancestors
Week 6: Hive Mind
Week 7: Root/Taproot
Week 8: Medicine
The weeks are structured as follows:
Day 1 Mantra
Day 2 Pranayama
Day 3 Movement
Day 4 Meditation
Day 5 Journaling Prompt
For example:
Week 1: Presence
Mantra: “I am fully present and my presence holds great power.”
Pranayama: Equal part breathing
Movement: Back, side, up to a seat
Meditation: I’ve arrived, I’m here
Journal Prompt: When I am fully present I notice…?
This flow will repeat throughout the different themes until the end of the Sadhana.
Each practice is 5-12 minutes long. You can choose to practice in the order the practices are outlined or if you want a longer daily practice you can move through all of the practices for that week (five day period) each day of the week until we transition to the next theme/week.
All of the practices are audio recorded with the exception of the movement and journaling practices. Given the mantra, pranayama, movement, and meditation practices are 5-12 minutes, for the journaling prompts you can spend as long as you would like reflecting and writing. I would suggest a minimum of ten minutes.
Thank you so much for joining in these Sadhana practices.
I hope they bring you peace, clarity and space to process what you might be holding in your heart at this time.
Love, Michelle