The Spring Equinox is upon us.
I always feel the energies of the Equinox before it arrives. A subtle urgency in the air. A balancing point. Light and darkness holding one another in equal measure before the season tips.
This year, the air feels heavier.
The drums of war are louder. The instability is no longer abstract. I scan the headlines and my chest contracts. I feel the deaths – especially the children. It does not matter what border, what flag, what justification. A child’s life leaving the body is a rupture in the human energy field. I feel it. Deeply. And I weep.
And I have to be careful.
Careful not to drown in collective grief.
Careful not to let my body absorb more than it can hold.
So, I return to the Earth.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
I place my hands on the ground. I stand barefoot when I can. I lean my back against a tree. I speak quietly to our Earth Mother – not as an idea, but as the living intelligence that holds us when we forget how to hold ourselves.
This is not dramatic spirituality. To me, it is return to myself.
In the past months, I have noticed something else in my shamanic practice.
More men are reaching out.
More young people.
More mothers whose children are trying to grow inside structures designed to constrict.
There is a tremor running through humanity. You can see it in the eyes of teenagers. You can feel it in exhausted parents. You can hear it in men who do not quite have language for what they are carrying.
When the world unravels, something ancient in us remembers.
For most of our history, we did not process fear alone. We lived in tribes. When war approached, the tribe gathered. When grief came, the tribe witnessed. When a psyche faltered, there were elders who knew how to support it.
Now we are separated, scrolling through global catastrophe in isolation.
Our bodies were not designed for this.
And so, people are reaching – not for spectacle – but for something older. Something real.
When I say “shamanic practice,” I do not mean costumes, performances or altered states for fascination. I mean relationship.
Relationship with the body.
Relationship with the Earth.
Relationship with each other.
Relationship with fear without surrendering to it.
These past weeks, when I feel the collective field contract, I go outside. I kneel. I cry. I breathe into my belly. I imagine roots growing from my feet into earth older than any government, older than any war.
I remind my body: You are held.
This is what shamanic practice has always been for me. Not escape. Not bypass.
Return.
Return to center.
Return to ground.
Return to responsibility for my own field before I attempt to interpret the world.
As the Equinox approaches, I am asking myself simple questions:
– Where have I been taking on fear that isn’t mine?
– Where am I checking out instead of tuning in?
– How can I stay open and still stand strong?
The world may not quiet soon.
But we can strengthen our inner axis.
In my next letter, I will speak more plainly about what shamanism actually is – and how it functions in times of peace and in times of upheaval.
For now, as light and darkness balance, step outside, my friend.
Touch the Earth.
Let your body remember something older than the headlines.