Despite overwhelm or chronic fatigue from daily modern life, Running Iris dissolves our tendency to view our experiences as laborious, tiring or a drag on our energy. With the people who surround us on a daily basis: rather than avoidance, isolation or feeling like ‘it’s all about me and how I feel’, we’re able to authentically engage with others in a more meaningful and intimate way. Running Iris magnifies our ability to focus, and be aware, flexible and tolerant. Read more here!
Notice when you feel tired. Take a moment to address that tiredness. Do you truly feel physically exhausted? Do you need to take a nap, a break, a day off, a rest?
Or is there something that wants to arise in your consciousness that needs you to slow down in order to be with it? In that case, can you allow yourself to rest, without agenda, allowing yourself enough spaciousness to allow what’s hidden inside you to arise, so that you can see it?
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:
In the spaciousness of the present moment, peace is within me.
Even when I’m irritated, I can be curious about discovery.
Being in the present moment is the antidote to everything.
If I think I’m tired, my brain might be lying to me.
Being ‘tired’ may be an excuse or a resistance to growth.
Fatigue arises from not being in the present moment.
Am I really tired?
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, feeling light and free. By connecting with others in our group, we exponentially multiply the benefit + ripple effect!
Locations: 2 finger-widths up from wrist crease, on the lateral edge of the arm OR 2 finger-widths up from wrist-crease on the lateral side of the medial forearm.
Indications: Lung 7 is like a lightening bolt for the body - breaking up any built up stagnation, pressure or dampness to reveal the true vitality underneath. It is the master point of the Ren Meridian, which is a meridian associated with inner our truth + purpose.
The lung meridian in general supports our interconnectedness with the world and clear communication. Ascribed to the Metal Element, lung energy is clear, precise, gentle and divine. There is a deep connection between meditation and spiritual practices to support lung health.
At this moment, what in particular makes me ‘tired’?
Am I physically, mentally, energetically tired? Or just needing a rest?
When do I feel like isolating myself from others?
When do things feel like a drag? What are those things?
Do I need more rest, a nap or a break perhaps?
How can I be more open to engaging with others?
Prefer to have a printed sheet with the writing prompts, exquisite practices + a calendar to track your month?
Download the Running Iris Support Guide here.
Question every time you think or say to yourself, “I’m so tired.” Is it just a habit/pattern?
Notice when you feel reluctant to engage with someone. Can you shift that by resting in the present moment?
Scan your beliefs and speech; see if you can find any rigid beliefs or intolerance of any kind.
Reflect on what you’re grateful for.
Notice the effort others make.
Take a nap. Lie down. Rest. Just breathe.
I will help you:
Use me when:
Okay, I'm super excited to talk today about a flower called Running iris. Irises are so beautiful and there are so many different types of Irises. This one is by far my favorite type because it is so exotic and otherworldly. Many people say, and I also feel the same, that it looks like a cross between an Iris and an Orchid. It looks like an Iris and an Orchid had a baby. It is so... When you look at it there's something about it that is just so otherworldly. So, I'm just gonna hold up the card and show you an image. So it comes in three different colors white, indigo purple, and yellow. And what I find most fascinating about this plant is why it runs or walks.
It's got these sword-like leaves and the flower will bloom for one day only. It's one of those super rare flowers that blooms for one day and then it's gone. Right, so it's an incredibly beautiful flower and the little plantlets will come up and reach out and then they start to bend over and then they touch ground and then a new plant will form there. And so basically this Iris will start walking around your yard and depending on where you grow and how fertile the soil is, and how moist and humid, and how conducive it is to the life of this Running Iris, it will literally run around your landscape.
So it is a fascinating plant and the flower essence, the flower essence is interesting and I believe over the next few weeks more information will unfold but if I try to speak from the perspective of the flower, it is for those times when there is something happening in your life that is draining you. When there is -- and you may know what it is, you may be conscious of it, or you may not know, not understanding it. It may be something that's running in the background or subconscious. You know how the computer is running programs and something sort of bogs it down because there's something running in the background? So, it can be a situation like that where you're not necessarily sure of what it is and you just feel tired, you just feel, exhausted.
Like things that normally wouldn't elicit that sense of draggy drainy feeling. Like let's go out, let's go to the grocery store, let's meet up with friends, let's wash your clothes. Whatever it is, starts to just feel like, "Oh my god, the effort to get there, "like I just wanna lie down, "I just need to rest, I need a nap." And oftentimes that's what's indicated.
So, this elixir will help us recognize when it really truly is just time to stop and relax and take a nap and recharge our resources; and when is it time to say, am I really tired? Or is there something else going on? Am I really tired or is there some subtle level of resistance to growth? Is there something that I'm avoiding? Is there some reason I want to isolate in my bed cave under the covers and watch Netflix and not deal with the world? Is there some reason I just wanna back away and shut everything out? So, when the fatigue or exhaustion or tiredness comes paired with that, ugh, "I just want to be alone”, and that feeling of when just like people around, it's just like draining.
Typically, it's because there's something running in your energetic system that's worth looking at and addressing and having curiosity about. Because even when we're irritated or compromised, we can still be curious. There's still just enough energy to have curiosity. Also, just as a side note, sort of a miscellaneous, this elixir is also really good for people who have had chronic illness, chronic overwhelm, stress. It's great for hospice. It's liberating our potential to experience a meditative mind and to know that no matter what's happening, being in the present moment is always the antidote.
And it's also really good for food awareness and body awareness. So, knowing how much food you need, don't need, for situations of weight loss, weight gain, and really just becoming really aware of what your body's needs are. So, Running Iris, spontaneous receptivity, meditative acceptance, and body awareness.
I'll be talking more about this flower as we go this month and I'll leave you with a question for the day, and that is: How are you feeling right now? Is there any part of you that feels tired or drained or dragging? Or are there certain things that feel like a chore or laborious? Or like, "Oh god, I have to do that." And then do you need a nap or a break, or just to pull back into yourself to garner more resources? Or is there a subtle resistance to seeing something, discovering something, being curious about something?
I want to share more about the Running Iris flower elixir. It is a powerful ally for helping you discover ‘what's underneath the surface’.
I like to think of ducks or the swans in a pond - they look so graceful as they're gliding across the water, but really, underneath the water, their little webbed feet are moving like crazy.
Oftentimes, we’re like that. Other people may look at us and assume that we're gliding along and everything's just fine - but actually, there is something bubbling underneath the surface. Something going on underneath what we are revealing to the world.
Sometimes we even feel toourselves like we're just gliding along through life, when in fact in our subconscious, there's something that's spinning.
Combined with the support of Truthteller blend to help you see the truth about the whole situation, Running Iris helps you see what’s bubbling up, so that you can address it -- whether it's just observing it or through speech/communication.
You may also notice that you have a desire to go to bed earlier, rest more, nap, and take more time off. You might suddenly feel like leaving work early or wrap up on whatever you're working on early in an unusual way.
My first week of taking Running Iris elixir, I took a day off -- which is pretty much unheard of for me. For me, taking a day off usually means I don’t work on Sunday. But I took off Thursday, a day right in the middle of a week -- totally unusual for me!
There was this tremendous amount of freedom of having the day off. Instead of planning what I was gonna do, I allowed what I would be up to and what I would be focusing on unfold moment-by-moment. Because it's in that present moment that we allow the spaciousness to show us what's arising and what is most important.
Another quality of this flower elixir is that it helps us slow down and not be such an overachiever -- or superwoman or superman. Instead of having the mindset that, “I can do it all and I can do it all perfectly,” it allows us the freedom to just do the 1-3 things that are going to do the most positive impact. It gives us permission to let the other things on our list that were just going to drain us or make us tired fall away without feeling like we didn’t do enough or failed at what we said we were going to do.
Running Iris helps us look at the things that are making us feel tired, drained or fatigued and assess if there’s a way we can change the way that we’re doing it so that it doesn't feel tiring or a drag. And if it isn’t in alignment with our vision, our lives or with our energy, we can just drop it, skip it or don't do it.
So if there's something in your life that's making you feel tired,can you reframe it or just kick it to the curb?
While working with the Running Iris elixir, allow yourself moments of rest so you create enough spaciousness to allow whatever is bubbling under the surface to come up. Use this time to reflect on where you're putting your energy.
Life is so short & passing by so quickly.
Knowing that in every moment, we are on top of the most important, vital, precious thing/person/project is not only energizing and inspiring, but when we feel in alignment, it liberates more energy in our system because we know that we're just always going from the most important, to the most important, to the most important.
Okay, so I wanna tell you about a phenomenon that you may experience if you're working with the Running Iris elixir. I would say about after week two or three, you may notice, and you may have heard me say last week that -- you may notice this desire to take a day off, or to pull back, or to stay home, or to take a trip. Literally just to take a day off.
And I wanna make the extra recommendation -- when you're working with Running Iris, if it's possible for you and your schedule, see if you can take one day per week and spend the whole day in nature. If you can't do that, I recommend spending it at home with no plan. So, if you can be out in nature, the benefit of that is that it will. If you live in a big city like I do, it will reduce all of the static, the urban static, the cellphone, the WiFi, the unseen waves of things that we see. And also just like the saturation of living in a city, the lights, all of the different frequencies that are occurring.
So, if you can get out into nature, or even if you live in a rural area, you're ahead of the game because you will be able to experience the benefits of actually all flower essence. But you'll be able to more acutely experience in your own body the benefits of working with Running Iris.
You may notice around week two or three, your regular consistent use of Running Iris, that you don't want to plan anything. There may be certain things that have felt tiring to you, so you just scrap them. And it's like Running Iris, what it's doing is -- it's sort of like unscrewing certain things in our systems that aren't working, so it can re-screw them in a more creative, revitalizing way.
And part of what happens is that we are teaching ourselves, the Running Iris is helping us conceive of far more comfort with the unknown, by helping us notice how exhausted and tired we become with all of this planning that we do in our lives. Planning what we're gonna do five minutes from now, where we're gonna go to lunch, planning what we'll do today, tomorrow, the next day. Filling up our schedules, etc. So, it is teaching us what does it feel like when we engage with the present moment, right in the present moment. So, rather than planning too far into the future, to allow ourselves to engage with life as it arises in the moment.
And the way that you can really acutely experience this again is by taking a day off and staying home or by taking a day off. I highly recommend it. It's just getting out into nature. There is a deep sense of peacefulness, incredibly spacious expansive, wild, freeing peacefulness that comes from not knowing what's happening, not knowing what you're going to do, not planning and allowing yourself to make the choices of what comes next in the present moment. So, in a sense, it's not like going with the flow.
Going with the flow to me always seems a little bit passive like, I'll just wait for the signs and go with the flow. Although you could refer to that as similar, it's more like a heightened active awareness of what's happening around you, and a knowingness and a trust in yourself that whenever the next moment arises, you will then know what to do. It's like an unfolding of your life in the present moment rather than trying to buffer and get in front of it, which is a habitual pattern that we all as humans have. Is a sense of, whether it's control, or whether it's a sense of stability or foundation or something we can lean into that feel secure to us, is this habit of planning.
But it also takes up so much energy. So, see this time as an experiment, as an exploration and an experience of, what does it feel like to allow yourself the freedom to not have any plans and to decide to engage with life as it unfolds moment by moment.
So, I would say your homework as you're working with a Running Iris elixir is one day off at least per week where you have no plan. You're either at home, but preferably out in nature. Try to get rid of your cell phone. The best is if you can go to a place that doesn't have any cell phone reception, for even just like a couple of hours.
And the question for this week is after you've maybe done some of that at home:
What does it feel like in your body?
What does it feel like in your muscles?
What does it feel like in your mind? When there's no pressure to have anything figured out?
There's no plan, you have no idea what you're going to do right? It leaves it up for so much more adventure and opportunities and possibilities. Maybe you run into somebody, maybe you don't. Who knows? What does it feel like in your body, in your mind when you allow yourself to operate and make decisions based on what is arising in the moment on your heightened into, activated aware and awake sense of the present moment.
Notice when you find yourself going to plan. Like for example, a situation I was in: oh, I'm stuck in a really bad traffic accident. Like stuck in the mountains. And then the mind will start to try to make a plan, right. Well we'll like, look it up on the map and then we'll get to the next exit and then if we add the next exit, it's still really bad We could do a U-turn and we could go stay somewhere else or not go home or.. Oh, but we don't have cellphone reception. So there's no GPS. So we can't even see when the next exit is. Hmm, I guess we'll just rest in the present moment.
So, noticing when your mind wants to go to figure out those, figure out the future.
When do we go to figure it out, and when do we allow ourselves to rest and feel the visceral spaciousness and deep sense of peacefulness that comes from just being in the present moment and allowing ourselves to engage with life as it arises in the moment?
What does that feel like? And can you relax into it? That's our work for this week with Running Iris. Our effortless, self-arising, revitalizing time with Running Iris.
So, we're nearing the three week mark with the Running Iris flower elixir. This is my favorite time of the month.I love it when we get into the second and third and fourth layers of the single flowers. I'm noticing more than ever now that working with combination flower elixirs is much more immediate. You feel the effects within the same day oftentimes. and with single flowers it's like this unpeeling process. So in the first week, maybe not sure what's happening. And then the second week you kind of go, oh wow and the third week, whoa it goes even deeper. So it's almost like the water going through the sand.
I really just love working with single elixirs for that reason. It's just like every week there's some new insights. I hope you're feeling the same way. We had a wonderful Flowerevolution Touchstone on Saturday, our time. And we were in Flagstaff. If you missed that, we're sending out the recording. And, a couple of things that I wanna reiterate from there that let's say another thought that I had that's really important is, remember how I was talking about looking at the things that make you feel tired or that feel like a drag.
I just wanna emphasize and really make clear that this month you might have noticed yourself feeling tired in a particular area of something that actually you love. And that may take you off guard. And you could be really hard on yourself, or you could just say I really need to regroup and reorganize my energies around this particular project because I do love it. Because it is important to me. I myself, like as an example I love doing the podcast but for some reason this month I needed to just push back and take a summer break.
So, for four weeks we haven't had any podcast episodes published with the exception of the weekly Moonshine episodes and I love doing the podcast. So, I could be really hard on myself and say like you've been doing it every Wednesday for the last two to three years and now you're just a lazy butt. Or I could just say it's a summer break, it's totally okay and the reason why I wanna step back is to reorganize some aspects of the way that I'm doing it to make it more dynamic and interesting and fun.
So, if you have had something that you feel a little bit like, man, why am I dragging on that? That's something I love doing. What's wrong with me? Just remember this and not to be self critical. That in fact it's healthy to regroup your energy, especially when it's around the things that you love. Because then you can come back with a fresh new energy and reorganized in your approach about the thing that you love. Also, wanna mention that now more than ever I feel gosh, I'm just so in love with the Running Iris and I think I had three bottles already. I'm working on my fourth.
And I am noticing more and more and more and more this concept of self-trust. That there is this particular flower is a teacher through experience, it's an experiential learning. It's really hard to put words to. It is a teacher of being able to, something we talked about last week which is living moment to moment and being able to make decisions in that moment as it's arising. Or being able to engage with something in that moment as it's arising. Not planning, not overly constructing how we're going to spend our day.
And in that practice of being open to the unknown, of allowing yourself to make a decision in five minutes or 10 minutes when we get there or when we get to this point then we'll make the next decision is a school of self-trust. We are being schooled in learning how to trust ourselves on the inside. And then now more than ever it is important to really trust our own inner authority especially with all a million things and perspectives and viewpoints and ideas arising in the world around us, it is so important to be able to push back from social media and news and external influences and be able to locate our own sense of spaciousness, grounding, inner wisdom, and above all, inner authority in the sense of what feels right to me, what doesn't feel right to me. And being really able to trust that compass.
So think of Running Iris an experiment, an exploration, and sometimes the pendulum needs to swing all the way to the opposite extreme, right? So, like you may be hypersensitive type A person who plans everything out to the nth degree and suddenly on Running Iris you're wondering why can't I get it together? Why do I not feel like doing all the things I normally do? In any range, in any shape or form but just know that the pendulum swings to one extreme so that we can then find the middle.
So know that whatever your experience is this month may not be how you are forever it's just swinging you back on the different extremes so that you can find your happy medium and happy middle.
So, the question for this week is:
To trust yourself to such an nth degree that you may not know what's going to happen, many things could arise in the future and that still you trust yourself that you will know what to do when that moment arises.