I have two big pieces of news:

* The website has a new, awesome design! I'll still be tweaking around some pages, but the design is set and it is great. Many, many thanks to Hello World Web for all of their amazing help with WordPress implementation. Please take a look around.

* I will be journeying (in body) to Iceland in March! Colonized by the Norse and the Celts, Iceland is a country with a very strong shamanic tradition. Additionally, it's a hotbed of geothermal activity, straddling the Mid-Atlantic Rift, with at least two active volcanoes and enough ground warmth to heat the streets of their capital city. If I don't manage to update my blog while there, I will certainly have a lot to report upon my return.

We are in a period of high solar activity. As a reminder:

Sunspots and solar flares disrupt the magnetic field in the atmosphere, negatively affecting satellite communications, and disrupt fields here on the planet as well. Being that human beings have an electro-magnetic field, we are all affected. People report feeling "jangly", raw, edgy, or hypersensitive. It may be hard to sleep or focus. Traffic accidents may be more common. People communicate more poorly.

On a spiritual level, this is an invitation to connect with the heart of the solar system, the sun itself, and to realign ourselves.

Drink more water, preferably with a little fruit juice in it. Eat things that are closer to their original state, avoiding prepackaged items. Give yourself time to acclimatise to new situations. Remove yourself from conflict whenever possible. Be gentle with yourself.

Cut the people around you some slack, because they feel like you do, but with less information and fewer tools. Breathe. Communicate clearly and patiently. Give people who are agitated a wide berth if possible, so that they can process their experience in their own time. The more aware you are of the experience of others, the easier your life is going to be.

Once you've got all that physical world stuff handled, you can focus on Spirit. Consciously connect yourself with the heart of the planet through your feet. Breathe, slowly and deeply. Reach up, as if you were gathering the air together, and imagine you are reaching all the way up to Sol, connecting with that energy, and draw it down, through the top of your head, into your own heart. Let it mill about there for a moment, and then send it down through your feet into the heart of the earth. Do this three times, connecting the heart of the solar system to your heart and the heart of Terra. Allow whatever shifts that need or want to happen to occur. Stand in that energy for a few minutes, feeling it, experiencing, allowing it.

We are all the Light of the World!
Ayamanatara