Moontime Dreaming with Mugwort

Welcome to the Thymely Drops of Wisdom podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Carmon, founder of Resourced Apothecary, where we are asking you to rethink how you refill your cup. Resourced Apothecary offers sustainable practices and products to help you deepen your connection to yourself, your community, and to mother earth.

here in this podcast, I'm sharing the plant spirit medicine I receive from the plants and the land. The plants share their wisdom through messages and actual medicines. We'll discuss both in detail. In addition, I provide sound healing and guided meditation to help you connect in with the plants in your unique way.

and I offer suggestions for integrating all of this into your life with rituals and practices that are both manageable and powerful. I'm thankful you're here. Let's get into today's topic. 

 Welcome to February. This month we are working with Mugwort and Larimar. 

In December and January, we focused on finding space and time and grounding our energy, really strengthening that root chakra. Finding safety, security support, not only outside of us, but inside as well.  And as we follow the path of energy through our chakras, we feel it rising and starting to move into the sacral chakra.

Originally mugwort called out as an ally to facilitate moon time dreaming. My initial impression was that mugwort would come in and kickstart the dreaming process, waking us up to the creative flow after we were really grounded in the root chakra. I love that it was mugwort who came in to follow Pine.

Mugwort has been an elusive one for me over the years. When I first turned to mug word to help me open my third. I got the very clear and direct, no, excuse me. What?

Oh, okay. Mugwort just said you're not ready. And I listened. There was more to it. Basically I was being lazy and calling it efficient. Something you've heard me do before.  I was asking mug. To work with me while I was sleeping, so opening my third eye and helping me open to  that dreaming, visioning process all while I slept.

And to be fair, that is something mug wart will do. I was just approaching this relationship all. As time went on, I kept growing mugwort and forming a better relationship with the plant. And this fall mugwort came back into my awareness by way of my friend Sheri. We distilled mugwort hydrosol, and shared our understanding of mugwort's gifts.

It wasn't until I was listening to Sajah and Whitney Popham  of the evolutionary school of herbal medicine, talking about mugwort that it clicked for me. Mugwort has an affinity for the endocrine system, especially the female reproductive system.

When I shifted my assumptions and expectations of dreaming from a third eye experience to a sacral experience, I felt like I understood how mugwort wanted to work with me. Things moved quickly from there. I started applying the mugwort body oil to my lower belly and lower back. Really focusing on the creative waters of the sacral.

Also focusing on the moon and the energy of the moon, how the female cycle tends to follow the moon. Applying at night, I noticed increased dreaming. At first, I was trying real hard to interpret these dreams, but somewhere along the line I got the distinct impression that these dreams were signs of energy being cleared out.

The content of the dreams didn't necessarily matter as much as the act of my body and my mind releasing all that pent up creative energy.

Hmm, okay, cool. I'm not awesome at remembering my dreams anyway, so it felt good to drop the pressure of trying to figure out what do they even mean? 

Now I know that not everybody wants to invite dreaming into their nightly routine and after some particularly draining dreams. I got curious about how else to work with mugwort.

Isn't it funny how exhausting dreaming can sometimes be? Like, nothing crazy's happening. I am not running for my life or trying to escape a killer or anything like that, just super involved in whatever random scenario is playing out. 

So I switched up my routine. In the mornings I would apply mugwort oil to my throat to activate my thyroid to my mid back to activate my kidneys and adrenals.

That's a real fun one to watch me try to reach, by the way. But anyway, I would apply to my right side to activate my liver and then over my lower belly to activate the ovaries in the uterus. After several days, I started to notice some shifts.  in my body I felt small changes. They were really small and it has taken, looking back on the whole experience to realize it was like my body was releasing stagnant energy.

All these different areas were just kind of letting go. As that happened, I started to notice shifts in my daily life.  I was moving through blocks and challenges that had been giving me trouble for quite a while. All of a sudden, my perception would shift and I'd see a new path forward, or I'd think of a way to ask for help that hadn't occurred to me before.

One big shift for me was I started looking at how I organized my day.  I typically would prioritize the admin work I had to do and save my creative activities for after. As a kind of reward, I guess.

I noticed that made it hard to start my day or really look forward to my process at all. So I shifted to play first then work. As soon as my kid got on the bus, I turned on some music and either sat down to sew or worked on another project I'm really excited about and it became something to look forward to and I realized I was accomplishing a ton before I would normally even be able to drag myself to my computer.

I'd get to a stopping point about an hour in, and then go do my admin work. 

With this process, I am able to get so much done and not get bogged down in the minutia like I was before. I know you might be thinking, okay, Jessica, thanks for sharing your story, but that's you and my life doesn't look like yours, so mugwort can't help me. 

To which I will reply. I know that story is super specific, but I'm trying to illustrate that mugwort nor any other remedy for that matter, is not going to come in and completely transform your life overnight.  it's not going to completely transform you overnight. In fact, if you aren't open to the process and don't pay attention, you might just feel like you're using a delightful moisturizing oil, because let's be honest, it is still a delightful oil even if you aren't working with it on a deeper level. But I digress. 

I'm trying to show you how shifts will start happening that you could miss if you're not paying attention. But if you keep at it, there will be no denying the shifts. Your job is to explore. Hey, I've been budding my head up against this brick wall, and I had an idea this morning about an easier way. Maybe I should follow that thread.  or Hey, this routine I have just is not for me. Wonder what else is out there. Or I feel like speaking up about this topic I've been keeping quiet about. Let's see what happens. 

And I do want to say, I'm not sure I can devote all the credit here to mugwort. We've been doing this powerful grounding work with Pine.

Is it Pine or is it mugwort? My answer here is both. We can't support these shifts until we are grounded. Energetically, it's going to be hard to find a sustainable way to create if you haven't addressed the foundation of safety, security, and support. Hmm? I said energetically but that applies at all levels, doesn't it?

So yeah, this is a cumulative process. I'm taking you through the progression of energy as it moves through the chakras so we'll have a roadmap. And we'll make sure to zoom out and see how energy is not just flowing neatly in one line through our bodies. Plants are not isolating their gifts to just one area of the physical or energy body. But it sure does make it easier to wrap your head around when we focus on one area at a time.

And on this journey through the chakras, it feels like mugwort is helping us move from the root to the sacral.. It's as though the path has been blocked with stagnant energy and old beliefs that no longer serve us, and Mugwort is coming in to move all that and activate the waters of this sacral.

If you remember back to the beginning of this episode, I mentioned Larimar.

Larimar is a crystal that is mainly found in the Dominican Republic. It is coming in strong and I look forward to preparing ReSourced Apothecary's first gemstone essence for you and sharing more about Larimar and how it is working with mugwort to bring these shifts and dissolve blocks. 

Though February is short. We've got big work to do.

If you want more hands on guidance in this work, please join me In the Resourced Rituals membership, where you'll get 12 months of guidance in the form of meditation, journal prompts and personalized rituals all delivered to you in private podcast form. There is also an option to have the corresponding products for each theme delivered right to your door.

You can find more information on the Resourced apothecary website that's linked in the notes for this episode.

As the light starts returning here in the northern hemisphere, there is energy building. May we all remember the power in letting that energy build. No need to rush into big action. Just keep letting it build and perhaps start to dream of what's coming. Knowing that what is coming will serve your very highest good.

Until next time, big love my friend.