Inula Power

The other day I woke up and I felt like I had been buried.

I noticed my energy as I walked to the shop.

It was so different to how I had been feeling just a few days ago.

I had been deeply connected to my soul purpose, experiencing transformation in all aspects of my life, I had been feeling alive, connected, deeply in love with all that I have been given, and all that is calling.

But that day I felt like I’d been buried. I couldn’t feel much, it felt heavy, like I couldn’t move, like something was lying over the top of me. I walked up past my allotment and remembered digging up inula (a plant I’d been preparing to do some intuitive work with). Inula helenium is the latin name for Elecampagne and is medicinally used for lung and chest complaints and is often associated with grief. As I was digging it up I had been reminded of something a friend had told me about women during the witch hunt being buried at crossroads so that they couldn’t find their way home in the afterlife.

Something about what my friend shared with me hit me viscerally. I started sobbing. Like I was releasing something so deep I hadn’t even known was there. I have experienced this kind of crying before. Whenever I am able to touch the core of my wound. I am not crying about something I am crying something out of my system. It feels like something is unwrapping around my heart and more light can get in.

Digging up Inula felt like I was connecting to something deeply buried. As it came up it felt like a relief and a release. It came up with some effort and then with ease and as it released it felt simultaneously powerful and dangerous. I sat there for a while, kind of in shock by the feeling, aware of the quiet winter energy, aware of the power held in the ground and how strong it felt now that root was out of the ground and lying next to me, how strong the opening of the earth felt.

As I went to leave I picked up the root from the stem of the old withered plant and in that moment I felt a connection to all those who have ever used the sacred power of the earth and plants for good and for bad.

I felt the energy coursing through me and to be honest I was afraid. I was afraid of my own connection to that power.

I have never identified as a witch, there are too many dark associations to that word. It is a word I’m not sure I know what it means, it has been abused so much and so many meanings can be derived from it. But I know that I would have been considered a witch at the times of the witch hunt.

I don’t know if witches were buried at crossroads to be honest I don’t want to trail through the dark verses around this subject to validate this evidence. It doesn’t matter because what is important is it connected me to something buried inside me that wants to surface.

Like that root coming to the light to release its power.

We have many buried parts of us that want to be released.

As I walked to the shop in that dark stupor, I couldn’t even relate to that part of me that was living in alignment with my soul purpose, as I had been feeling just a few days earlier. I rejected it. I didn’t want to carry on, I must have been deluded to think that was even my path. I felt the weight of soil on top of my body. I felt like I couldn’t find my way home!

When we step towards something that we are called to we have to make a choice to leave that which we don’t want anymore. When we are in an en-lightened state this can be easy but when we hit overwhelm, or trauma we cannot distinguish between the two roads, it seems we don’t have a choice.

The story of the crossroad burial hit me hard because I have been working with the crossroads with my clients.

To get to clarity we have to know the choices, stay where you are or where you want to get to. Trauma keeps us confused, not knowing the way home.

As I noticed my own trauma response on the road to the shop. I dealt with it as one. I loved it, reassured it. I felt it.

I noticed it as the weight of my ancestry, of all those known and unknown, unable to channel their life-force into their souls work. I noticed it as an invitation to choose something different something deeply alive, deeply powerful, waiting to be unearthed.

As I touched the stem of Inula, connected to its root I felt all of it. I felt the power and I felt myself shut down to it. I felt the responsibility and the fear. I felt the potential for good and for bad.

For me to be fully expressed still feels dangerous. Our lives may not be threatened anymore but our bodies hold the resonance.

Connecting our spiritual healing work to financial growth can feel like a step towards danger but in my experience every step helps me shake off another layer of soil.

I am seeing the crossroads for what they are, I am making a choice, I know my way home.

As healers that work with sacred, plant medicine we hold all of that. Our connection to this power is needed. You know what is calling in you. At times this is strong and urgent and you will do anything to bring it into being and other times you will ignore this calling. You will prefer to take another road, turn your back on it, bury it.

My calling is to help you find your way home. It is to help you honour your gifts through financial reward as well as spiritual. I know the terror it can bring up, the dissociation, I know the road. I also know the liberation it brings just by stepping out. Each step toward that which calls in our hearts is a step of freedom, of emergence, of light and life.