Native to Asia + Europe, the Lady's Mantle dew drops or leaf tip sap was said to promote conception and awaken a woman's life giving power in her womb. Tapping into the vibrantly-colored chartreuse flower, Lady's Mantle elixir promotes emphatic engagement with life and our surroundings. It helps us push past boundaries, get outside our comfort zone and forge the way. It dissolves apathy, boredom and the doldrums, and helps us feel energetic, cheered up and excited. It revitalizes our childlike essence, giving us a fresh perspective. Read more about the magic of Lady's Mantle here!
By being intentional when taking our flower essences, we remind ourselves, our guides and the universe what it is we want to embody. Choose one of the phrases below that most resonates, or make up your own! Every time you take your elixir, close your eyes and set your intention:
Nothing can stop me.
Nothing can hold me back.
I'm pushing past limiting boundaries.
Going out of my comfort zone is exhilarating.
To take it one step further, as you take your elixir and set your intention, visualize everyone else in this program, all around the world, breaking boundaries and getting out of their comfort zone. By connecting with others in our group, we exponentially multiply the benefit + ripple effect!
Click here for the Discovery Story transcript
Click here for the Rediscovering the World transcript
Click here for the Curiosity as Awareness transcript
Prefer to have a printed sheet with questions, practices + a calendar to track your month?
Download the Lady's Mantle Support Guide here.
List out all the projects in which you've felt held back. Make a plan to break free.
Write down the ways you’ve felt held back, then a list of possibilities that will propel your forward.
Who are the people who inspire you to break routines and engage more? Spend more time with them.
If you do something that feels boring to you, make it meditative, stop doing it or delegate it.
(USE FOR 15% OFF YOUR PURCHASE SITE-WIDE THROUGH JANUARY!)
Lady's Mantle ~ Discovery Story
Lady's Mantle is one of the most beautiful wildflowers I have ever seen color-wise. It is like fluorescent chartreuse like you can see in the photos, like star-shaped petals and the color is just insane, beautiful. When we were in Iceland we found it growing commonly next to waterfalls which is so cool and oftentimes also near hot springs. We found some actually growing at the base of the hot spring that was my favorite of all time favorites in Iceland.
It was this hot springs river. It was just incredible. It's actually only about an hour, hour and a half or so outside of Reykjavik so it's really easy to get to actually. You park your car at the base of this mountain and you climb up this mountain for an hour or two. It is the most beautiful hike. It is insanely gorgeous because you're walking up the path. Not only is the landscape just stunning as usual, like everywhere in Iceland, but it's a super geothermal area there. You see the steam vents. You see big bellows of steam coming up from different places. There are areas in parts of the path where you are actually walking across a bridge over little sputtering, steaming crevices. Some of them have just boiling water - it's spitting out hot water and you run across the bridge. Some of them are more like boiling mud pots. You're just walking along looking inside. It's just spectacular. There are beautiful flowers everywhere and everything's different shades of green. And it's so incredibly peaceful. You just feel like you can hear the inner workings of the Earth.
You climb and climb and climb and hike and hike and hike and hike. And the reward at the end is this massive hot springs river. The whole river, obviously it's really hot. The whole river's steaming so there's just steam coming up from this river. There's a couple tiny, little, very simple structures where you can change. Literally it's a wall made out of wood and you just hop over on the other side when no one's looking, strip down your winter clothes because even in summer ... we were there in July. You're still wearing your winter coat and your hat. It's chilly. You strip down your clothes and put on your swimming suit and dip into this crazy, steaming hot springs river.
It's a river. There are ample places for people to get into the river and just lie there. It's not super deep so you can lie down on top of the rocks and just have the water stream over the top of you. We would lie down and our heads were up by the top and then our feet pointed downward, downstream. These hot, bubbling waves of hot spring water just washing you from head to toe. Anything and everything ... as you're laying there you're just feeling so in tune and in touch and so grateful for Mother Earth and all the gifts that she offers. You just feel like she's just bubbling up right from the center of the core and making wishes and prayers, "May I purify and cleanse and wash away anything that's no longer needed? May the power of this water ... "Making wishes for everyone downstream, that they may have happiness and feeling so grateful for the nature spirits and the water and the land and the place and this incredibly deep appreciation.
After that it's like life is totally different. Part of it is the place. Part of it is the water. Of course the water will have healing benefits to it. The other part is just the deep appreciation of the place and tuning in and connecting in and the power of wishes and prayers. After whatever amount of time that you want to take soaking and stretching and sitting up and laying down and getting too hot and sitting out in the grass and getting cold and getting back in, then the sun was setting so we watched the sunset and the sky was pink. We got back our dry clothes on.
This place is in the south of Iceland so the sun actually does set whereas in the northern part of the country during that time it never really sets. It's just sunset, sunrise. Sunset runs into sunrise for the whole night, but in the south it actually sets. The light was going down and the sun went behind the mountains. We put on all our winter clothes and gear and bags. The walk back down the mountain was insanely exquisite, very hard to put words to, something I would recommend.
The three of us actually walked down the mountain in total silence for the entire hike back down which is, I think, an hour and a half, two hours or so. Wow. I'm almost reluctant to describe it. It was so profound but the bottom line is I think I have never felt so profoundly moved and touched and connected to Mother Earth as at that point. Literally no thoughts and a sense of being super relaxed, almost as if every time the sole of my foot hit the rocks and the pathway it was like I was one with the Earth, inseparable. All of us were just completely in the zone of being fully, 100% aware and present and awake and perceiving everything with all of our wide open senses. At the same time super relaxed, super clear, inseparable essentially, free of any disturbance really, free of any mental disturbance or attachment or fear. One of the most profoundly freeing feelings that I've ever experienced.
This is the place where flowers like Lady's Mantle grow. The flower is such a perfect embodiment of a place like that. You get to the mountain and you climb up and you're discovering everything and seeing all the steam vents and the bubbling stuff and getting into this river. It's just the whole thing just feels like the experience that the Lady's Mantle gives you of curiosity and wonder and discovery and pushing past boundaries and discovering a whole new world, discovering a whole new world that you may not have ever experienced or that you didn't know existed or a certain sensation or feeling that you've never perceived or felt before. That is the essence of that particular place and that is the essence of the Lady's Mantle flower. Enjoy.
Lady's Mantle ~ Rediscovering the World Around You
I think often times when we think about discovery, we think about something new. Like discovering a new place, traveling to a new country or city, and seeing things that are new to us. And I've been thinking a lot lately about rediscovering the world that we live in, the everyday world. Having a sense of wonder about things that already exist in our daily life. And really, the invitation to having a deeper appreciation of those little things in life.
It could be something as simple as like, reading something that you wrote in your journal, reading an old poem, going through your closet, looking around your room at the things that are surrounding you in a fresh new way like you would through a child's eyes, almost. Or connecting with your dog or your cat or looking at their paws or their ears or looking at a tree out the window that you've seen a million times, but seeing it in a fresh new way.
I think like so many of these flower elixirs, it's like finding all these unique ways to bring us into the present moment and into a deeper sense of awareness. So often we're going, doing, thinking a mile a minute, long to-do lists, responsibilities. And, what really brings the moment alive is that awareness state in which everything becomes spacious and joyous, a new discovery. Even the things around us. You know, a coffee cup that we use every single day for years, if we just look at it with new eyes, it can become a discovery.
In the same way that we as human beings are constantly evolving and changing on the inside and so the outside and the way the outside reflects back to us changes. We see it through new eyes as we become new. As we strip away old patterns and come closer to our more child-like purity, essence, we see things in that light.
And so, I believe that, that's one of the greatest teachings from Lady's Mantle is remembering that child-like sense of wonder about everything and being able to bring that into our daily lives, into our cups of coffee or tea. Into those comfy old jeans that we've worn a million times. Or the people that we see on an everyday basis. Really challenging ourselves to see things with new eyes and fresh - because every moment really is fresh! We don't get this moment back. And, this is a completely new moment from any other moment we've had before.
So rather than ask you a question this week, to reflect on something instead of using your reflective capabilities, I would love to invite you to do this practice. And remind yourself to do this practice as often as possible in the next week. To really deeply appreciate the things around you and see them with fresh eyes. Especially, those things that have been around for a long time. Whether it's an object, a person, a place, to really sink in and see something new about it. Challenge yourself to have that child like discovery about the things that are in your life and that surround you all the time.
Lady's Mantle ~ Curiosity as Awareness of our Responses
Last week we talked about the role of curiosity and how we can have curiosity and a sense of discovery in our everyday lives versus, say, like in a new travel adventure. This week I would love to talk about the role of curiosity when we're having difficult situations or challenges are moving through us.
Because the human mind is somewhat of a mysterious thing. I think, especially those of us who really put a lot of attention and focus on emotional patterns, and we're taking flower essences, and we're really trying to awaken into our full potential, and see what are those things that trip us up or trigger us, and unravel them and observe our mind streams and our mental patterns ... I think, in some ways, when you have this awareness or understanding, in some ways you can be harder on yourself because it's like, "Well, I should somehow be better. I should somehow understand." And the truth of the matter is that no matter how much "spiritual work" or practice that we do, unless you are a fully enlightened being, there's always more to do.
Part of what I think me, personally, I am so amazed about is how unique that process is depending on whatever you're going through and whatever you're working on. To not be vague, for example, I had something really painful happen about three weeks ago. It's just been sort of moving through my system. We all process things in the way that we can and through our practices. We move through it or we walk into it, and we let it move through us. And we just observe.
What I find so interesting is to have a sense of curiosity about yourself when there is a habit of being hard on yourself especially. This is interesting because I had this experience yesterday, and I just shared it with another team member who had a very similar experience, where you have something disturbing happen and then you go through these various stages of unraveling or working through the rubble that's left afterwards.
I went through a stage yesterday that was very unexpected, very out of character, like apathy, like I just need a break, I just need to push back. I can't look at another email. It's Sunday. I'm just going to watch TV all day long. And eat five containers of almond milk yogurt and three bars of chocolate. And a croissant, even though I should probably be staying away from wheat, what have you. Sort of indulgent behavior and apathetic. I didn't go to my dance class, felt sort of rebellious. I just couldn't care less about the things that I normally care about. Not that I didn't care, it was just like I really need this time to just push back and do whatever I need to do.
I think it surprised me because it in no way, shape, or form appeared like self-care, especially watching the jelly rolls grow after I was eating all this snacks and stuff. But I realized that, that is also part of the process, and we have to let things move through us at their own pace and let one layer after another, and one layer may not look like the next layer, and keeping a sense of curiosity and discovery about one's self is at least one way to be with yourself and let things move through without clamping down on yourself or being hard on yourself or trying to overly manage yourself.
Just let yourself be bad once in a while. What's the problem of having three chocolate bars and a bunch of snacks and watching TV? It's not that big of a deal. For you, it may manifest as something else. I think what was so surprising to me about that experience was that it just didn't epitomize self-care to me. I spoke to another one of the team members and she had a similar experience and was talking about pretty much the same thing, like junk foods and TV. I realized that might just be a phase in the grief process that just hasn't been adequately described. It's the TV-junk food phase. Some of us may be more or less accustomed to that phase, or know about that phase.
The point being, whenever you have a challenging situation, or even when you have a really positive situation and you find yourself resisting a bit, having a sense of curiosity and discovery about how we respond to the things that arise in our lives is so important because it opens up the doors so much wider for things to move through us. Then we can move through them so much more quickly than if we clamp down on ourselves and are hard on ourselves for whatever our response is. It will stay longer or get stuck somewhere or we'll fixate or we'll hang onto rather than to just be like, "Oh, that's interesting. I am super apathetic. All I want to do is watch a movie," or "Oh, that's interesting, I'm resisting this or normally I would really want to do this but actually I want to do something else," and not judging ourselves, and not thinking it's going to be a permanent thing. Just seeing everything with a sense of curiosity and discovery, allowing whatever needs to move through move through. Allowing yourself to have your process, whatever that is, and the next day is different.
So this is how Lady's Mantle is supporting me this week, is to have more curiosity and a sense of wonder about myself and how I respond to things, and to those things bubbling up in the subconscious that we don't even know are there. They're bubbling up and they have to somehow come up to come out. And it's just a waste of time to judge them. Just let it move through in whatever way it needs to move through. Even if you're watching TV all day, something emotional could be working its way through you, so opening up those doors with curiosity and discovery.
The question for this week is:
In what ways could you be more curious, like a child observing yourself and your responses to the outer world, and to your own inner world, especially to your own inner world?
When something arises inside of you that's confusing, seeing it with a sense of curiosity, and not just seeing it, but how can we observe our response to it with a sense of curiosity and wonder and discovery?