inner journey

Creating a Vision for 2023 and With the Help of Animal Guides

Posted by Barbara Techel

Late December I started to see the familiar offerings to take part in creating a word or vision board for the New Year. But it didn’t particularly call to me and I had no plans to do this. Vision boards, especially, I’d found to have become too focused on material things though I’d certainly participated in doing them a few times.

Not that I don’t like material things, as I do. But, let’s just say that they aren’t quite as important to me as they used to be. I realized that over the years, buying things was sometimes more about not dealing with my inner emotions.

It was during two oracle readings in December that I did for myself on the new moon and then the full moon and the card I pulled from my Animal Reflections Healing Oracle that Deer presented herself each time. In my deck, Deer represents gentleness. Both times I pulled the card, tears immediately pooled in my eyes.

I can still be hard on myself at times. I realized Deer was reminding me of the importance of checking in and examining why I get lost within myself at times.

From my guidebook: Deer, gentle and sweet, is a reminder you are your own gentle and powerful healer with the ability to regenerate new roots as you heal your wounded parts. As you become adept at making positive changes you are then able to connect with your empathetic nature, becoming a thoughtful and skilled listener for others who are also in need of some gentle care, understanding, and love.

The more I sat with the word gentleness, the more it moved into my being as a personal focus I wish to live from on a more consistent basis. It fits those areas I can still feel challenged by.

Then came along an offering to do a vision board based on how one wants to feel in the New Year. Now that spoke to me.

And from that experience came my vision board, incorporated with my word for the year, which you can see in the photo above. Then just this morning during my breathwork session, I saw the vision for pulling an animal guide for each of the categories I’d created for my board.

We could choose from a total of eight categories and could do all of them, or pick the ones that most spoke to us. I chose four: family/pets, health/well-being, love/friends, and passion/creativity. I also chose to try and find just one image to convey what I want to feel in each of the categories.

  • Family/Pets: John and I have been talking on and off over the past six months or so about bringing another dog into our life this year. What’s different this time around, is that it is a decision we have made together. Summing it up, the one sentence that bubbled to the surface for me from journaling is not only that our waiting until it was right for both of us, which gave us the experience of deepening in love and peace with each other, that welcoming another dog will have us deepening in love for another being and experiencing the peace and joy that a dog so often brings into one’s life.

Dragonfly with the message of graceful reminds me that when I move from a place of ease and trust that life flows in such a magical way.

  • Health/Well-being: I continue to practice breathwork to help me with my asthma, though I can become quite frustrated when I have flare-ups. In this category, I especially feel the word gentleness is key for me. I love the image I found of the flowers blossoming on the end of tree branches that are shaped in the image of lungs. Breath connects me with all that is really sums it up because when breathing consciously it is what makes me feel alive and connected to my mind, body, and spirit.

Cat with the message of choice says to me that I always have a choice – I can feel frustrated by my breathing challenges and go down the rabbit hole of internally beating myself up, or I can pause, check in with my breath, allow myself the space to do some breathwork, and check in with where I’m at. This is what helps not only allow my lungs to expand but for my mind to expand and let go of any negative thoughts.

  • Love/Friends: This one came up for me this year as a good friend of mine I’ve known for over twenty years will be moving in the not-so-distant future from Wisconsin to Colorado. All the things I’d thought in regard to the future for us have now been changed. While I have no doubt we will stay connected via phone, and Zoom, and when she comes back home to visit, it’s just the realization she won’t be a city away that has had me grieving at times for this impending loss. But I also trust that perhaps a new friendship will come into my life, or perhaps I’ll be just fine with the distant friendship. But most important is that when I’m my authentic self this is what brings me into connection with other like-minded people and together we thrive.

Hummingbird with the message of believe reminds me to continue to focus on my own north star and that when I do the rest of my life falls into place just as it’s meant to be.

  • Passion/Creativity:  I continue to be passionate about how when we do our inner work and connect with animals and nature, we not only thrive individually, but we thrive as a planet. Guiding people to connect deeper with themselves, animals, and nature I express with joy through my oracle readings for people and for pets and their people, my writing, my animal art, and the Animal Reflections Healing Oracle deck I’ll be releasing in Spring.

Vulture with the message of poised is so perfect. I know that when I continue to do my inner work this is what joyfully and passionately feeds my creativity for all that I do, not only for others but in my personal life too. The more I put my focus first and foremost on taking care of myself, the more I am poised to be of service to those that need my guidance.

And just like that. I have a word for 2023 and a vision that feels in alignment with who I already am and who I will deepen into becoming. And best of all? I really appreciate how it evolved in the most organic way.

XO

Barb

To book a private oracle reading just for you click here.

To book a private oracle reading for your pet (and you) click here.

    

A Reading for the Fall Equinox with My Deck – Animal Reflections Healing Oracle

Posted by Barbara Techel

Happy Fall Equinox!

A time of inward reflection on what the year has taught us so far and how we wish to not only move through these last few months but in the next year too.

With this in mind here are three questions I asked for us all to contemplate and relate to in our own lives.

🍁What needs our inward attention at this time?

Kangaroo – Honor: How often we want to just leap forward and we get caught in the illusion that we are running out of time and that we must keep moving and make things happen. But we are being reminded to honor our own inward flow instead of the cultural conditioning that keeps us stuck in a maddening loop.

Any time of introspection always pays off in the way of knowing more deeply who we really are, which gives us the courage to move forward when it is time.

Honoring the cycles of the seasons is what helps us connect deeper to our true selves.

🍁What is it that our hearts know?

Llama – Healer: Our minds are a powerful part of us that work hard to convince us that it knows what is best (which often comes from a place of protecting us from pain). But within our hearts lies our true healer.

Llama reminds us how it is that at times we default to a guru or other external influence for the answer because this is what we’ve been conditioned to believe. But Llama is here to assure us that we are our own best healers.

🍁What is our most meaningful way forward at this time?

Lion – Courage: Following the call and the roar of our hearts – whether that is a loud or gentle roar – it’s about sharing who we authentically are.

Yes, this does take courage. But Lion walks beside us with the reminder that when we do the brave and courageous inner work of examining and releasing emotional wounds that kept us bonded to fear, we are granted the gift of clarity and a sanctuary of inner peace.

We can then stand in our power and welcome in a rush of acceptance for our lives instead of engaging in the angst of struggle.

***

Just an update that I received the first prototype of my Animal Reflections Healing Oracle deck! I did have to make some minor adjustments so it is back out to the printers and I await the second prototype. Inching closer to having the editing done for the booklet also and then that can go into design mode. I’m aiming for the early part of 2023 to have my deck available while realizing I have to stay fluid to changes that may occur! 🙂

But I was excited to be able to use the first prototype set of cards to do this reading and share it with you! I hope you enjoy it and find it helpful.

XO

Barb

    

Gidget Shares Her Magic Once Again (from the World of Spirit)

Posted by Barbara Techel

What other nuggets of wisdom do the animals have to offer, I wondered? This was my thought a few weeks ago as I was nearing the end of writing the first draft for my Animal Reflections oracle card messages.

In the first draft, I’d written them either intuitively and/or incorporated personal insights I’ve received from different animals on my own healing journey. I also read more about the behaviors and habitats of each of the animals represented in my deck.

It occurred to me as I pondered going back through the messages to do what I often do when I am wondering if there is more insight or perspective that I am not seeing for whatever reason. In my own journaling when I’m working through something I’ll often just write out my feelings first. Then I will pull an oracle card to go deeper, which often will reveal an insight I was blocking or that added another perspective.

So I decided as I began the second draft of the message for each animal I’d pull an oracle card from another creator’s deck to add another potential layer to what I’d already written.

I’m about one-fourth way through my animal cards a second time. So far, two of my animal cards I didn’t feel needed additional insight. But now it was the card I created representing Dog which is depicted by my dachshund, Gidget, who is now in the world of spirit.

When I pulled an oracle card for her, the card I got was Loyal Heart. I felt a rush of sweet, gentle, and loving energy flow through me which made me feel quite emotional.

Gidget’s card (Dog) represents the Sage within each of us. The one we can often push aside and don’t trust those inner nudges and voices when they are trying to get our attention.

The Loyal Heart card and the image of the two owls looking at each other represent for me what Gidget saw in me that I couldn’t see about myself and that which I needed to heal. Gidget saw my strengths and knew what it was I needed to heal and release. She was one wise sage who did everything in her tiny ten-pound power to mirror that to me.

She never gave up and eventually, it worked! Loyal Heart is then for me about staying loyal to my own heart and when I do my heart grows in compassion and empathy for myself. Instead of that inner talk that bullies me about what I think I may think is ‘wrong.’ It’s also about her loyalty to me and her belief that I could work through all those self-doubts and emotional pain I’d carried with me for far too long.

The additional magical part to this Loyal Heart card is that I’ve pulled it a few other times in the past related to Gidget. 

A while after pulling the card and simmering in its wisdom, I sat outside on my deck for lunch. Out of the corner of my eye, just a few feet from me, I spied a chipmunk sitting atop the birdhouse off the corner of my writing cottage.

This prompted a memory to bubble to the surface about when I was in middle school and had to go to a new school. How uncomfortable it was to go to the cafeteria for lunch being a new student, not yet having any friends, and having to sit alone. But I realized seeing that chipmunk that I’m never alone.

And I linked this encounter back to the Loyal Heart message from Gidget earlier. That even though she is no longer here, she is still here in a different form because of what I felt in my spirit and the beautiful emotion that moved through my body when I pulled that Loyal Heart card. I knew it was Gidget connecting with me. 

We are never alone.

As I boiled water for tea after eating my lunch I glanced out my kitchen window to see a large feather on the lawn. How often they represent a message from loved ones. Again, we are never alone.

As I sit at my writing desk completing this blog post, I see yet another layer for all that magically transpired. When I continue to be loyal to my own heart, I grow even more confident in my being…

which makes me enjoy my own company…

And thus once again, I am never alone.

I shall savor this unfolding and I’m grateful once again for these experiences that always leave me in awe and remind me once again of how connected in life and death we really are.

XO

Barb