Spiritual Practices for Mental Health Support
Struggling with mental health is a common experience. Just remember, you aren’t alone. We’ve combed through our catalog of books and oracle decks to find mystic rituals and practices that you may wish to invite into your life to support your self-care and self-exploration—both important aspects of your mental wellbeing.
A gentle reminder: like all mystical practices, as you observe through each offering, take what feels good, and leave what doesn’t.
Receive a daily message, spiritual action, and mantra with The Guide(s) Deck
In The Guides Book: Mapping Out Life’s Journey with Spirit by Your Side, author MaryAnn DiMarco takes you on a journey to understand your spirit guides to help you navigate your days with confidence, curiosity, and enthusiasm. Alongside the book, the companion The Guide(s) Deck is a great way to reach inward and practice oracle card pulling as a daily ritual. Each card features a message of assurance, an action, and a mantra to guide you through your day.
Here, we’ll pull one card as a collective reading. We encourage you to follow the action and say the mantra out loud (or jot it down) if it feels right for you!
PERSONAL POWER & CONFIDENCE
MESSAGE: You are a powerful being of light! Step into your strength and self-worth.
ACTION: Stand tall and visualize a bright golden light in your belly, radiating warmth and certainty. Feel the power of that light giving you strength, protection, and confidence. Your power comes from within: Embrace it. Trust it. And let it shine.
MANTRA—I am powerful. I trust myself. I am enough.
Connect to the power of nature with Dirt Gems
We all know the healing power of plants. That’s why we love Dirt Gems: Plant Oracle Deck and Guidebook by Anne Louise Burdett with illustrations by Chelsea Granger. With Dirt Gems, you’re invited to cultivate new friendships with plants, who act as tender and compassionate guides and remind us that we are not alone, helping us come back to ourselves and deepen our connection to the world both around and inside of us.
“It is time to listen to natural systems and to learn the patterns that all life follows…. Our planet is a beautiful, layered, and complex web. However intangible it may be, an intimate relationship with the plant world has benefits beyond our possible imaginings. The benefits are not of our intellect but of our organism. Our relationships to plants, to forest, to field, and to ocean are animal. They are instinctual and remind us of our place among the ancient whales, the singing frogs, the tall grasses. It is time to listen and to become forest, ocean, and wind.”
Since each card represents a unique plant, a simple one-card spread, pulled daily, weekly, or monthly, is a great way to get to know each card. If you pull the card for a certain plant, go find it, sit with it, research it, dream about it. If you can’t physically be with it, look at pictures, draw a sketch, or even write a letter to the plant.
For this collective card pull, we pulled the card Licorice.
LICORICE — Glycyrrhiza glabrra — “The Sweetheart Mechanic”
Licorice makes things work. Like lightning, Licorice conducts energy, allowing different parts of a whole to speak to one another. Licorice also has a long history with humans and healing. Known as an activator, Licorice can bring plants together in conversation, heightening their effectiveness and allowing each plant to get to where they need to go with greater ease and efficiency. Licorice also helps things stink in the body so they may have a lasting and cumulative impact.
With Licorice, a little goes a long way. This herb will calm inflamed states of the tissues, the mind, and the kind of residual angst that can linger in the body from inflammatory interactions. When we have relationships, foods, or behavioral patterns that cause us to remain in a state of agitation and stagnacy, our bodies do not send resources where they are needed, which creates deficiencies in certain parts of us. Licorice reaches through this fatigue and electrifies our vitality.
Licorice is the bringer of sweetness, at once energizing, joyful, and bright. As a powerful conduit, Licorice finds where energy congests or pools and sends streams of vital force flowing through you.
Licorice is an ally to call in when it’s time to gather our resources and use them with precision to move toward a new and powerful state of being. This begins on an individual level and ripples out into the collective. Licorice believes in the personal becoming the collective, as we work together with understanding, each of us arriving with our abundant selves to offer care for others.
Begin a daily check-in ritual with Resilience Alchemy
Resilience is defined as the ability to recover from setbacks and persevere beyond challenges. Whether we are aware of it or not, all of us contain the power of resilience. Despite everything, we’re still here. Resilience Alchemy is a deck and guidebook for self-discovery and empowerment. The concept of Resilience Alchemy is defined by creator Maude White as “a process that focuses on exploring and expanding inner strength and adaptability by generating new ways to grow and solve problems.”
Consider this deck and guidebook as a toolset to help you embody and embrace the concept of Resilience Alchemy:
“You are always facing challenges, and you are also always rising up and overcoming those challenges with grace and power. Resilience Alchemy will help you do this—make adjustments, learn from mistakes, grow emotionally, and move forward so that you can recover from setbacks and come back stronger and healthier.”
While there are many ways to work with this deck, we’ll start with a collective reading of the Daily Check-In Spread. This three-card spread can be a simple, straightforward, and undemanding way to start your day. When reading this spread, pay special attention to question #3 and what card comes up in answer. This can be a helpful way to reground and reorient yourself if your day ends up being especially frustrating or upsetting.
Question 1: How can I be loving and forgiving toward myself today?
Card: 9th Heart Remedy – Kinship
Kinship: noun. A sharing of characteristics, experiences, or origins.
MESSAGE: Alchemist, your heart has no boundaries. Every day you are invited to feel kinship with so many humans, creatures, plants, trees, places, and creations. Have you accepted these invitations? Kinship can be a joy, an astonishment, and a loving thread that keeps you present in this incredible life with others. Today, there is something in your world that wishes to be recognized as family. It is important that you feel kinship in some new and unexpected way. How can you answer this call? May you trust that what connects you in kinship with others is always more than what divides you. You are not alone.
REMEDY: In what experiences can you find and feel a sense of kinship today? Everything in the universe, including you, is expanding. Perhaps finding kinship with others is your own little bit of revolution. Perhaps this is how you are meant to tip the scales and hold this tender world together.
Question 2: How can I feel secure and confident in my identity today?
Card: 4th Action Remedy – Strengthen
Strengthen: verb. To make stronger and more resilient.
MESSAGE: Alchemist, it is important that you take time to strengthen yourself today. Do not move forward with any projects or decisions just yet. Today, you must spend time—careful, gentle, slow time—letting events unfold around you, and letting strength unfold within you. Very few things happen immediately or without effort. Do not doubt that you are growing stronger and stronger each day. Right now, you are uncovering deep reserves of power within your body and your mind as you strengthen yourself and your work. You are not perfect, but you are not meant to be perfect. You are meant to grow and learn and expand. May you nurture the kind of strength that is long lasting, meaningful, and ever growing.
REMEDY: What in your life might need strengthening? Your resilience? Your healing? Your confidence? Practice, prepare yourself, and gain strength and self-assurance before moving forward. You will be ready if you give yourself time to get there.
Question 3: How can I know myself and respond and not react to my triggers today?
Card: 12th Head Remedy – Accept
Accept: verb. To receive something that is offered.
MESSAGE: Alchemist, take special note of what you are accepting from the world today. Take special note of what you are accepting from yourself. Accept that you are whole and unbroken! Accept that you are valuable! Accept that you are resilient! True acceptance, empowered acceptance, will transform you. May you pay attention to the ideas and traditions you accept as truth. May you actively question what seems difficult and what seems easy to accept. Acceptance follows invitation, and any invitation requires understanding before it can be accepted. Embrace the invitation you are ready to accept with lightness and with love.
REMEDY: What do you need to accept? What needs to be acknowledged and received so you can move forward? Acceptance brings wisdom and relief. Acceptance lifts confusion and self-doubt and lets in the light.
Begin a nightly meditative practice with The Dreamgate Oracle
Creator Danielle Noel says that the purpose of The Dreamgate Oracle: A Self-Reflective Deck and Guidebook is to “activate the power of your intuition and creative visualizations to nurture your waking life and to help you connect with your own inner wisdom and the beauty of your imagination.”
Each oracle card is like a portal for your eyes and a gateway to your heart, with some cards offering self-care support exercises, while others offer queries and prompts for further reflection.
The included guidebook shares 9 key self-care benefits of using oracle cards for dreamwork, such as:
- They provide a self-reflective window to illuminate any tension or bottled energies.
- They offer creative solutions through their own unique language of visual clues.
- They help reveal our shadows, by bringing our subconscious blockages to light.
Danielle recommends pulling a card just before bed as a meditative practice that offers a doorway to cross into before you head to dreamland. If that doesn’t resonate with you, it’s just as powerful to draw a card in the morning and use it as a touchstone for your day.
Now, let’s do a simple one-card collective reading. Take your time observing the card’s illustration and absorbing the affirmations and message. Feel free to grab a journal to respond to the prompts.
EARTH-WALK
THEMES: Reorientation, Anchoring in Collective Wisdom, Big Picture, Nature Healing
AFFIRMATIONS:
I see the interconnectedness of all life.
I am waking myself home each day. I am of the earth.
We are all travelers, drifting along many threads of eternity. On this earth-walk, we are each being called to remember our place in the cosmos and our sacred union with this beautiful home we inhabit.
At the core of our collective human spirit, there is a deep sense of belonging. This profound sense of communion lives within us and is shared with all life on earth. As children of our planet, we are now being called to remember this truth and to forge a path of love toward each other once again. To see that we are each beholden to the lands, creatures, seas, and skies. To summon the courage to unbind our entanglements and polarizations, and to be a gentle balm to our wounds, within and without. Mother Gaia is now holding us in place and waiting for our shared remembrance. She is the eternal spark that also lives at the root of our personal and collective healing so that we can walk ourselves home with more unified grace. Open your life to her sentient, primordial love. Let her wisdom help you release any tethers that have bound you in place. Regulate your steps with the pulse of your heart. Explore the beauty she unconditionally offers.
THE MESSAGE: The Earth-Walk card is a key of alignment and nourishment. It is a sweet invitation to soften your gaze and direct your focus on the natural world a bit more. Step outside of the constructs that split you away from the earth—past the highways of technology, the human-made artifice, and the endless momentum of fast-paced living. Often, our connection to Source may become clouded or scattered if we are energetically pulled in too many directions. And today, we have become so accustomed to unnatural landscapes—without knowing the toll these may be taking. As a result, we may feel stressed, burned-out, or stretched to our mental limits, as our nervous system is forced to adapt to overwhelming standards. Sometimes, a gentle nudge toward our own earth-walk is more than needed. Connecting to this key is vital to our healthiest embodiment here.
This may be a wonderful time for you to rekindle some moments with the earth’s gentle medicine and tend to the beautiful heart you both share. Plant your bare feet onto the ground and receive a dose of healing energy. She holds the capacity to light you up. Allow yourself to retune your vibration with her natural wonder, and spend some time outdoors, soaking up the colors, sights, smells, and sounds. Let the earth amplify your higher awareness and healing. It is, after all, a safe and beautiful place to land. Be free, let go, and cleanse the residue of what needs to be released.
JOURNAL PROMPTS:
How can I connect more with my own earth-walk?
What is my earthly spirit yearning for at this time?
Regulate your nervous system with a breathwork practice from The Ultimate Guide to Auras
Author Eileen Lee’s intention with The Ultimate Guide to Auras: How to Read, Cleanse and Shift Color Energy to Change Your Life is to provide readers with the tools that will “initiate you in the process of activating your own light, finding alignment, and discovering that you are born with the ability to master and co-create your dream reality with your aura.”
The concept of energy and auras is quite powerful, and this book is the perfect starting point. Following an introduction to and history of aura awareness, the chapters will guide you through various stages of understanding your own aura so that “you are fully in tune with the ways in which your aura impacts everyday life and appreciate that your life is ultimately created by you, through your aura. Together, your mindset, choices, actions, and emotions weave the tapestry of your being.”
Get ready to learn about the chakra system, how each chakra relates to a different layer and color of the aura, how to balance your chakras, and so much more. As a preview, here is an excerpt from the book on how to use breathwork to clear your aura. Try incorporating this simple breathwork exercise into your daily routine and see how it impacts your mental health.
4-7-8 BREATH
This breath is based on a pranayama technique that is practiced during yoga for relaxation. It is wonderful for managing anxiety and stress. Using the 4-7-8 breath activates the parasympathetic system, which promotes relaxation.
Find a comfortable place to sit. Gently place the tip of your tongue against the back of your top teeth, keeping it there. Through an open mouth exhale all the air out quickly, making a “whoosh” sound. Close your mouth and quietly inhale through your nose for a count of four. At the top of the inhale, hold your breath for a count of seven. Now exhale quickly, through your mouth and making the “whoosh” sound for a count of eight. It should feel as if the air has left your lungs. Repeat these steps for four more cycles.
Take it one step at a time with the tarot and Sober Magic
Though substance use is a common coping mechanism for its numbing capabilities, that numbing effect can keep us from being fully embodied and present. Sarah Potter’s Sober Magic: Using the Tarot and Ritual in Your Journey Away from Drinking offers a way to explore sobriety through the lens of the tarot.
“Perhaps, in the past, you’ve turned to alcohol or other substances to soften the energy of the world, and perhaps that worked for you until it didn’t. That was my situation, and I learned that while those coping mechanisms never really were what was best for me, tarot and witchcraft are. Rather than numbing me, tarot and witchcraft empower me to feel comfortable in my skin and fully present in every situation by tuning me in to what really matters. They have helped me find my way back to my power, and I hope they can do that for you as well.”
The book is structured into chapters corresponding with specific tarot cards, lovingly referred to as The Fool’s Sober Journey, since the Major Arcana begins and ends with The Fool card. Author Sarah Potter recommends reading this book accompanied by a tarot deck of your choice, pulling the cards that correspond to each chapter, and keeping them on your altar or somewhere you can see them as you reflect on the lessons of each step. Within each chapter, you’ll also find simple rituals using easily-accessible household items plus reflective journal prompts and creative tarot spreads.
Dive Deeper
Featured Titles
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Guide(s) Deck
$20.00
$26.00 CAD
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Dirt Gems
$32.00
$41.00 CAD
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Resilience Alchemy
$28.00
$35.00 CAD
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The Dreamgate Oracle
$29.00
$39.00 CAD
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The Ultimate Guide to Auras
$20.00
$26.00 CAD
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Sober Magic
$18.99
$24.99 CAD
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