Jenee: 0:06

Welcome to the Heartlight Sessions, a podcast about light working your way through dark times. I'm Janae Halstead. I'm a singer-songwriter, holistic vocal coach, intuitive guide and plant medicine facilitator. I'm also a survivor of childhood abuse, autoimmune issues and my 30s. I'm also a survivor of childhood abuse, autoimmune issues and my 30s. I'm on a lifelong healing journey and, along the way, I want to share the ideas and teachings that rock my world.

Jenee: 0:33

Every week on Heartlight Sessions, I call in artists, healers and thinkers to explore what's helped them live and thrive from a heart-centered place, because the heart, it's where the best things happen. If you've ever wondered how to unlock your biggest breakthroughs or how to come back from that stuff that tried to kill you, you know the stuff I'm talking about, the stuff that's supposed to make you stronger. Or if you've ever wondered how to just do you straight from the heart, you're in the right place. So join me, won't you? Let's turn on that heart light. I am so excited to have Jessica Allen with me today. She is a flower witch and feminine ritualist. She teaches you how to work with plant consciousness and ignite sovereignty through ritual, and I just thought your one-line bio was so perfect and magical I was like I'll go with that. Is there anything you would like bend into that bio?

Jessica: 1:47

Thank you for asking Funny, because it's been such a challenging thing for me to try and dial something in Like how do you compartmentalize so much work, you know? So I'm glad that feels resonant. Thank you, you know, in this moment, I think the term feminine ritualist is really the thing that it can encompass everything that I do. So we'll leave it at that for now, and dive in.

Jenee: 2:18

It's all the things that I love and that make me, you know, alive and feeling good flowers and and ritual, and sovereignty. And so I was like, oh, I have to have one. This is like you know, just like through your Instagram, like yum, yum, yum, yum. Oh, thank you so much. Yeah, can you tell me a little bit about how you got started in this work and how the flower consciousness started to communicate with you?

Jessica: 3:12

I was always like a very spiritual being, very connected to the fairy realms and spent a lot of time in the stream, in the back of my house and in nature in general, and always felt a deep communication to the elements, like from the trees and the waters and the rocks and the waters and the rocks, and it was where I really felt home and where I understood, even as like a very young person I'm talking under seven years old like what God meant to me. You know what that like universal connection, feeling like I understood that very, very young, um, like I understood that very, very young. And so I've always had that real, deep connection to listening to nature. You know, listening to the land and the trees are always, you know, a big, big um messenger or friend actually to me, to me and, um, you know, fast forward whatever life. And in my um, sorry, when I was 18, I started yoga. Yoga came to me in a, in a moment of my life and, um, I was in some seriously gnarly dark disassociative. A big pocket of my life was there and yoga was the first thing that started giving me a language for the experiences that I had, because I was having these connections. But there was this insane dissonance from the outside world that I experienced growing up in like classic suburbia, you know, and no examples of what I felt inside or what I felt life, you know, was meaning for me. So yoga started giving me a language to the energetics of the body and the energy body as well, not only the physical body and I started training and studying. I started teaching when I was 26 and left. I had a job for a hot minute and left that and just went fully into it saying we'll get back to this.

Jessica: 5:26

But really the origin of my entire healing journey was mending the connection to my inner voice, you know, because I had this deep knowing this, like you know, really intense, like understanding within myself and then very confused looking at the world. I moved to New York City when I was 21. I can still remember being on the train, being like what is going on? Does anybody care about where they're going? Why are they going there? What's happening? You know what is going on here and um and just so much of my internal struggle and the darkness that was really manifesting, had manifested in my life, was a result of not being able to live what I was being told from my heart, because everything outside of me was like you can't do that. No, it's not like that. It's like you know all this, like what I call whack-a-mole-ing. You know that whack-a-mole game where you're just like boom, you know boom. You just kind of keep getting knocked down.

Jessica: 6:35

So, basically, when I was 24, I decided I don't like anything. Everything in my world is like. I was very clear, like. I was like I don't like my boyfriend, I don't like my job, I don't like where I live, and I feel totally stuck. And that was the moment that I was like and I'm choosing it. I'm making this choice. I'm waking up every single day and going to that job. I'm waking up and saying yes to this relationship. I'm waking up and saying yes to where my, where I live. And it's my responsibility to just make a different decision and figure it out from there. And that's when I really started to go.

Jessica: 7:15

I don't care what anybody outside of me says. I'm going to turn my listening inward to my heart and I'm just going to courageously start following it, no matter what. And one of my things I share a lot and I still do this in my life is I say when I want to change a pattern. You know, I say let's play a game, let's play a game, make it a game Right. And? And what if I do this? Let's play this game. What if I just listen to my heart and I follow it? Like what, what will my life be? And so? And then, alongside that mantra, I have the have a plan B, but never plan to use it. This is like my, my little hack for keeping the mind at ease, like it's okay's okay, we can always go back, we can always find something else, like let's just play this game over here. And so, anyway, I started playing the game. I started playing that game and ever since, yeah, I changed everything and have just been following my heart. So yoga was really the main thing that reconnected me to my body and my intuition and started me on the path of living from my internal world and what I really feel is a sovereign existence, right when I move, as life is guiding me, as my heart is guiding me, and I trust that and I follow it and I stay devoted to that, regardless of what is going on in the external world.

Jessica: 8:52

And I started working with some plant medicines in my late twenties. I never experimented with any psychedelic medicines prior to that. It was like always something that seemed very scary to me and I didn't have like a good anyone to show me like a positive purpose to working with them. And then someone came into my life and introduced them to me in this way of like no, we work with this medicine to heal and to explore consciousness. And I said, okay, I can get down with that. This I can get down with, totally relate to this, yeah. And then I was like, oh, okay, this is basically at that point in my path, when I had said I'm just going to play this game, those medicines said you're doing it, girl, you're right. It showed me, it affirmed everything in that visual way that we so often need to see things. It showed me, I saw it and I said, and it just really anchored me into into my path and into the decisions that I had made.

Jessica: 10:09

So I started working with plant medicine then and went through a series of different, a couple of different medicines and then um, and different lineages as well.

Jessica: 10:21

I was brought into one medicine lineage. Really, someone had invited me in. I wasn't like really seeking the medicine, but a woman who was teaching yoga with me said come along, I think you would love this. And I said, okay, I'm down, you know. And so sat with a lineage that was multi-cultural and like, very like in a teepee with the big fire and lots of different songs and very kind of like uplifting, and that was beautiful and I did that for a bit. And then something in me was just not like totally aligned with the whole frequency of that space and I released it for a bit. And then I met my partner and he introduced me to a Shipibo lineage, which then introduced me to working with master plants. And at a certain point in my medicine journey I received a pretty clear message that was like you're, like, you have come as far as you can go with the medicine alone and if you want to continue on this path you have to start working with master plants, otherwise, like we've, you get out of the boat.

Jenee: 11:44

Basically, you know, it.

Jessica: 11:46

We've carried you as far as we can carry you with this. You want to go further. You have to start working with the plants. So it's kind of like this full circle thing. Is that the the first, you know, dieta I did was a tree. You know, this is like bringing me all the way back to feeling this amazing connection with these trees as a child and and so it just made sense in my, in my body, to be a student of the earth, right, because I always felt that connection and studentship and had that guidance and teachings coming from the earth, and so that's what really opened me to working with the master plants.

Jessica: 12:30

And it was actually on my first diet that I had this vision. I was like I just I want to be a flower, I want to be a garden, you know, and I've never actually been like super drawn to flowers in my life. It was something that I could definitely have been like more on the trees and the waters, you know. And then all of a sudden, this like flower consciousness opened up around me on this first diet and I started getting falling in love with flowers and started moving into dieting flowers and um, yeah, so I have a few. That's a big part of like. I mean, that's kind of what opened me mysteriously to like the flower realms and, um, I have also done, you know, women's work and somatic work and ritual work and as far as continuing the, the feminine embodiment of practice, the flowers are just so that right, so they're so easy to integrate into that essence which is a lot of my also, my healing, and what I am, you know, very called to bring to others and and support.

Jenee: 13:52

Yeah, that seems like you have a really deep relationship with lavender and I'm that was the first flower that kind of connected with you on this journey Um, and I would love for you to tell the audience kind of how that opened up for you and helped you heal.

Jessica: 14:11

Yeah, totally Fun fact about lavender is I used to hate lavender? Wow, yeah, because you. You know like I've been in the yoga world for so long, you know they're always like lavender in the spas and lavender with it and I was just like God.

Jessica: 14:32

You know, I wasn't really into flowers. I was, like you know, one of very grounding essences. Like the flowers were like very etheric and like the floral sense also didn't attract me. I always wanted warmth and like really deep earth energy. So lavender, I just was like, oh, I can't stand it. Oh, I know it's so funny. And yeah, then I did a diet with lavender. Lavender was actually the first flower that I that I dieted. Um and um, there's a creature, creature in here and it's entered um fairy. Uh huh, we'll call it that for sure yeah, yeah, yeah exactly.

Jessica: 15:25

So, yeah, I, you know I was kind of I went into it just like super excited because I wanted to start working with the flowers and so I was like all right, let's go. This was the one that presented herself to me and I had a really deep experience with lavender. Oftentimes, you know, like I think obviously we understand lavender to be a presence of calming right, a nervous system down regulator, just like an overall, you know, know, supporting you with rest, which is why it's used in all of these spaces and spas and you know, yoga rooms and places that we are moving into that rest, and the first thing lavender showed me was true to that, like all of the places that I was carrying way too much in my life, all of the places that I was pushing and trying way too hard, and why all of that was was causing me exhaustion, why it wasn't working, and like what I needed actually to bring into my life in order to sustain what I am creating and holding, and it was very devastating for me. I've heard Lavender also described as being one for inner child, but also having a childlike energy. I haven't had so much of that, you know.

Jessica: 17:10

I think that there is a lot of, or what I have found over the years of working with plants in this way, is that there is objectivity to properties and frequencies that these plants hold, but that they're also very subjective right that they meet us where we are and we meet them.

Jessica: 17:33

You know our consciousness meet each other in relationship.

Jessica: 17:35

Just as you would meet different people, you have different kinds of relationships with different people, even though those people are the same person. Everyone has different connections and, um, so Lavender really just has been, over the years that I've been working with her, become like the foundation actually of my um, of of how I care for myself, um, and she's presented herself also as this, like the ground in which everything can rest, that that if we ourselves can become this rich soil for receptivity, soil for receptivity, that everything can kind of grow, you know, from that capacity, from that resource, from that nourishment and I know we're going to wrap around to this but then she's also presented herself as like the pathway to the intuitive voice, because in order to really hear, you have to really be soft, you have to really be, you have to relax the body of contraction, of holding and tension, right it like, you have to open and let go and soften enough that you can really feel that the listening is coming from a feeling and she supports. She supports that listening.

Jenee: 19:15

That's profound. The listening is coming from a feeling and she supports that that feeling. That's so incredible.

Jenee: 19:28

I can feel lavender in right now. I can feel how it, what it does to my nervous system and my subtle, subtle body, just by, like bringing in the consciousness, and how much she attunes the subtle body, the energy body, to really you, really, as it down regulates the nervous system. You start to feel your energetic body, your subtle body, sort of come online. It's almost like a breath, like ah, I'm there, oh, okay, and then the grounding comes in. And it's funny because I had a cup of coffee this morning and I'm like just pulling in the consciousness of lavender and I'm like, oh, thank you, thank you. Let's talk a little bit about intuition and how lavender started to guide you in that way I'm sure there were other plant medicines that also did but how she's been your teacher on like really learning how to listen to your intuition and also a little bit of the difference between you know the voice of fear versus you know how can we hear intuition and hone it and follow that path when those voices of fear come up, you know.

Jessica: 20:56

Yeah, that's a great question. So, you know, since I have really been in deep practice with just living in alignment with my intuitive voice and my heart for so long like well over a decade at this point and I can honestly say that there's absolutely nothing that I have done over the past decade of my life that has not been fully guided from my internal world, Wow.

Jessica: 21:29

And so you know, for me, lavender has been working with me over the years in many different ways, but I have been. I am a being of service, right, I? We are all beings of service in our own ways, but I teach practices and ritual and I teach people how to have practices and connect with themselves, and I teach people how to listen to their intuitions. And so when I was receiving the download to start teaching people how to work with plants as teachers, lavender came and said you know, and I will be the foundational intuition guide because of what you were just saying, you know, when she comes in, she's just like it's all good, just like lean back take it down.

Jessica: 22:28

Take it down take a breath, feel your breath, you know. Let the nervous system shift into parasympathetic. Feel the ground beneath you, listen, which is the foundation of understanding and and trusting.

Jessica: 23:03

Ultimately, you know the messages that are coming from your heart and knowing, you know to your point the messages that are coming from your heart, which ones are the heart messages, which one are the fear messages, which one are the doubt or things like this, um, and discerning also, I mean it's, it's, it's such a fine-tuned listening really to know, like the intuitive pull which is why I said the listening is a feeling, intuitive listening is a felt sense.

Jessica: 23:39

It's like there's an actual at times, there's an understanding that comes through like a feeling, before it comes in the form of words and thought.

Jessica: 23:57

Before it comes in the form of words and thought, you might, even one might even be feeling called or a magnetism, a magnetic, you know, pull towards something like that doesn't exactly have the answer yet and it will reveal itself, but that, like physical calling's, you know, and a good way to feel into it is like, really simple does this make me feel lighter?

Jessica: 24:33

Does it make me feel more expansive in my soma, in my body, or does it make me feel heavier, dense or contracted and like? You don't even have to go into story at that point, you just go into like, does it make me feel lighter. Does it make me feel lighter? Does it make me feel heavier? And if it makes you feel lighter, there's truth, and if it makes you feel heavier, there's not. And this is complex right, because it's not to say that we are not going to feel fear as we move towards the things in our life that are calling us forward. Right, it's not that it's like we're not talking path of least resistance here, because often there is a lot of resistance on the right path.

Jenee: 25:30

Yes.

Jessica: 25:31

So there is this, is there's a lot of that fine tuning, refinement, right, we're not just like, oh, this is going to be this beautiful open thing, this makes me feel lighter, everything's going to be like that. It's like okay initially if the essence of the call is like yes, but then also like, oh, my God, this is going to ask so much of me. But then this is where you know you become a warrior in life and this is where you know you become a warrior in life. As I always say, the plants make us earth warriors. So yeah, just to kind of loop around to that listening, is that Lavender is really saying I'm going to?

Jessica: 26:14

open this field of listening for you and hold you in a space where you can listen. One final thing I'll say about this is is that you know I've been a practitioner for 20 years and I have studied so many modalities of practice. You know, I healed my self initially through practice, through the practices that I did for myself. Therapy is like talking to people, like these things didn't help me. I needed the physical experience of the practice, and even when I was a full-time yoga teacher and doing all of this, I still really struggled with having a daily practice and it took me a long time to establish that. And now, of course, it's been many, many years of having like a very non-negotiable practice. But what I have found and I've guided so many people through creating that ritual or practice, or what I refer to as a listening space you have to listen to yourself every day for a period of time as a foundation to your life, and this is something that I've been helping people with for many years. And what I have found is that we're only going to show up for something if we really like it. It doesn't matter if we know how good meditating every morning is for us. It doesn't matter if we know how beneficial you know because we don't know it until we really embody it. Even if we know it from like, oh, I should be doing this, oh, I know I should be doing that, I know I should be doing that, but until you really do it you don't actually know from experience why. Yeah Right, like we only know from experience. So until I have had a daily practice for one, two months, consistently, consistently, I don't actually know what my life is going to look and feel like when I have that. So it's a lot of like, especially at this point, that you know everyone knows you should be meditating or everyone knows you should have right. But even if you know how potentially good it's going to be for you, if you don't want to do the thing, you're not going to do the thing. So, after years of working with people trying to find a way in, it's like, let's find a way in how do we make you want to do this? How do we make it accessible? Make it accessible.

Jessica: 28:55

It's really been through the feminine ritual that I have found the easiest way to devote yourself to yourself. Essentially is what having a practice is. I'm not devoting to the practice, I'm devoted to the practice, because I'm devoted to my own heart, I'm devoted to knowing myself and living in my truth for myself and the world. And so what the feminine?

Jessica: 29:23

When I say feminine ritual, I mean something that engages your senses, something that is like delicious and beautiful and supported and resources you, something that you know like when you sit down you're like this is going to be nourishing and even if I'm processing something really effing, challenging in my life, that I'm going to be resourced and held in this space. And this is where the plants have really come in to support the frequency field, the smells you know, and create this energetic hug, speak and hold us in practice and know that there are these tools, allies, really to support us in staying true to our own heart. So that's really where that has kind of come in after all of these years of actually like a lot of masculine disciplines to moving into the feminine devotion of practice.

Jenee: 30:37

Oh, I love this so much. I am doing the rose dieta right now with Kat Gordon and we're on the fourth week and I just really, this week, kind of, I've been, you know, setting my. I always have an altar but I'm not always like so active with it, but I'm not always like so active with it. Um, I I have a tendency to be much, much more active in the fall. Um, living in Phoenix, and you know it's like, uh, you know, fall is just my favorite time of year.

Jenee: 31:07

But, um, through this, this diet, uh, I've had this chance every single day to go to my altar and be with the rose and the rose consciousness and have my rose tea and, you know, light the incense. And I, finally, this week, was like this, is it? This is what's going to get me to show up, like it's these things of feeling so loved and held and nurtured, and it's like you're not doing it yourself, like Rose is there for me. Because I'm working with Rose right now. She is holding the space for me to sit down and get in front of my altar and to sit down with my journal and start writing and start breathing.

Jenee: 31:57

And I had, you know, I was a hardcore kundalini practitioner for years and would just be like driving myself, like you know, get up and do the work, and you know, it was really like, like you say, a very masculine, you know, practice and just to really force yourself in. And it's so interesting that you're speaking about this because, like in the last year, I just haven't been able to get myself there. You know, and and I, you know, I'll do breath work a couple days a week, but I'm just like I need something else and and now I'm really realizing that this is the pathway that I need, as you're speaking to this, it's really hitting the bells and it doesn't have to be much.

Jessica: 32:47

Yeah, this is something that again, when I was doing a lot of one-on-one work with people, teaching them how to have practices, I was like what can you commit to every day? I don't care if it's 60 seconds.

Jenee: 33:01

Yeah.

Jessica: 33:02

The point is that you say yes and you sit down and you show up and you start programming. I believe this is a quote from the Buddha that 99% of enlightenment is memory. And what he means by that is that every time you show up to your cushion, you bring all of the past times that you showed up to that cushion into that moment, and we're literally training ourselves to enter the field of presence through repetition yes and so, even with ritual, if one, like if you can say yes.

Jessica: 33:49

that's why I tell I'm like, if you can say yes for two minutes, say yes for two minutes, because eventually you'll be able to say yes for five, and then you'll be able to say yes for five, and then you'll be able to say yes for 10. And it will grow itself, building from the fact that your body will be able to drop into the space from the memory of doing it.

Jenee: 34:10

Yeah, that is so beautiful. How important do you feel it is? Now, I mean this is sort of rhetorical question but, like you know, especially for the people who are of service right now, like how imperative is it to sit down every day?

Jessica: 34:30

It's non-negotiable. It is a non-negotiable. This is this is kind of like the lights really coming in very harsh right now, but you know, there's like the classic thing. That's like if you're making a ritual or your daily practice, you know you want to have it be like brushing your teeth. I mean, brushing your teeth is a ritual. Yes, it is, it is right, it's an action. It is a conscious action that you take every single day to keep your mouth clean. And you know, if you go like even a day without doing it, yeah, and then you go two days and your mouth starts to get like filmy and like bad, yeah, that's your energy body, absolutely, that's your consciousness, that's your thought processing. And if you are not having a space to clean and align your vision and your energetic world every single day, it's no different than like not brushing your teeth.

Jessica: 35:39

And you one will really start to learn this when one begins to have a practice. And then they don't do it for a couple of days, right, because again, back to like. We only understand things through the embodiment of it, right, through actually having the experience. That's the only place wisdom lives. Um, that takes time to to do, to have the experience, and then you drop away from it and you'll see the difference.

Jessica: 36:20

At that point, people who are not having a practice at all and don't understand what happens to your consciousness as a result of that don't have a why really to start. Um, that's like the tricky thing with a daily practice is, um, it's not instant gratification. Oh yeah, you've got to. You've got to stay with it to understand the benefit. Um, but I think just really to to touch again on your question is like, if you are not sitting and listening to your truth and cleaning out others people's opinions, the media, all these things, if you're not cleaning those out and realigning with yourself every single day, you're going to start to get pulled into different, you know other people's agendas, other people's timelines especially right now, more than ever, and this is just more intense.

Jessica: 37:39

Oh yeah, we're in this for the long haul. We're in this for our life and far beyond that. So this is not like a okay wake up for like a couple of years here. It's like, no, this is it, this is, this is. This is a reality now.

Jenee: 37:53

Yeah, and this is the warrior stance. This is, you know, the eye of the needle and, yeah, it's imperative, like you said, it's a non-negotiable. You know, it's like it's so easy right now to get co-opted. You know, let's talk a little bit about like the heart and the heart frequency and listening to the heart. I mean just hearing you.

Jenee: 38:19

It sounds like from the time you were very young and just this like beautiful relationship and I so I was going back to seeing myself in the garden at like five and eating the heads off the onions and like picking the raspberries and like that was my magic world and I just got like so many goosebumps listening to, hear to to you talk about that and I'm curious like when this really it sounds like this real relationship with the heart and the heart frequency and just that through line of you know, hearing that voice through time and knowing when you, when you were getting up against it in New York city and just being like I I moved to New York when I was 25 and I was just like what is this world? I do not understand. It was so hard, hard on my nervous system. I didn't last there, but I wonder if you can speak to that, yeah.

Jessica: 39:22

You know, I think that, um, it's just, you know, we're, we are a mind oriented society and and we're, you know, human. And so we have this super power of a brain and it's incredible, incredible, incredible tool. But the brain and the mind is, it's the brain and the mind. Its purpose is to solve problems and create patterns. The mind loves patterns. So, basically, in these two things, there's two major problems, although there's a lot of benefit, right, like when we need to problem solve us, it's great, thank goodness we have such amazing problem solving mechanism, um, and thank God that we can also create beautiful patterns that sustain us in our life.

Jessica: 40:27

You know, so it's just, it's a matter of, like, consciously working with the mechanism of the mind and unconsciously allowing it to run. And so, one thing like the brain, since it, since it wants to solve problems, like that's its job, it will just always find problems to solve, like, even if there's no problem, if you're just letting it run amok, it will like, look for a problem to solve, look for something to do, look for right, because that's that's a job, that's what it wants to do. And then, like, the other aspect of it is that it feels very comfortable in patterns, the brain loves patterns, and so you know when we are becoming our identity from you know zero to seven or so, and we're not consciously working with our brain, like we're basically getting programmed with a bunch of patterns that the brain is then going to loop, and you know indefinitely, and the heart doesn't have this, doesn't have these things. So there's a quote, and I can't remember exactly what it is, but the essence of it is essentially that the mind is like a very good mechanism but a very bad leader. Yeah, that Einstein quote, thank you, do you remember it?

Jenee: 42:10

Yeah, I can't remember the the quote, but it's basically like it's not the master should not be the master, correct?

Jessica: 42:14

and that really the mind should be in service to the heart, right, that the the mind should, should listen actually to, to the heart and and move from that space and um, yeah, I mean, obviously that is that it's true, but the mind is so dominant, you know, it's just like sight is so dominant. This is why, when we have to listen, we have to close our eyes, because the sight is the most dominant sense, right? So if you're looking, it's very hard to have your other sensory gates open. So when you, when you shut that down, all of your other sensory gates open. So when you, when you shut that down, all of your other senses get to kind of come online a little bit more.

Jessica: 42:57

Yeah, um, but the heart voice, as I have always experienced it, is an innate knowing and a cord, an energetic cord to the mystery. It's like love it. There's like this um, do you have you seen Donnie Darko? Yeah, so the scene in Donnie Darko where, like they have these portals coming out of their chests and the portal starts moving and then you know, he gets up from the television and he starts walking into the fridge Right, but the portal is moving first.

Jenee: 43:42

Yes.

Jessica: 43:43

And then the body moves. Yeah, and this has been my experience in relationship to the magnetism of the heart that, like that innate knowing, that voice, that cord to the mystery, you know, is the portal that is gently guiding us. It's like unfolding first, and then it's our work to stay tethered to it and just follow its wisdom and allow the mind to surrender really to the unknown, right To the mystery. It's just so hard.

Jenee: 44:30

We have to give the mind a job, because it doesn't understand the difference between past and present. It's constantly doing this thing where, oh, you're not safe, you're not safe. So we have to give the mind a job. It needs to feel important, but it also needs to take that back seat.

Jessica: 44:52

Yeah, well, it's about, you know, kind of training the mind. It's like in there there's so many things to talk about, you know, basically like having reins on the mind, like a, like a horse that you would ride or like a wagon. Right, you have to have the reins. Yes, you have to. You know, for kind of lack of a better word, here you have to. Right, you have to have the reins, you have to. You know, for kind of lack of a better word, here you have to control it. You have to learn how to direct your mind, cause all the time it's going to happen, all the time it's like, all of a sudden you're like running some crazy pathway in your mind and you're like, oh my God, you know you can just shake yourself and redirect it.

Jessica: 45:31

But, you have to have the level of consciousness to even witness the mind taking that track.

Jenee: 45:37

Yes.

Jessica: 45:38

And then say like, let's find something more productive to do with this energy. And, yeah, take a hold of it and direct it. And the thing is is you can live in devotion to your heart and the mystery, the feminine organizing force, as I like to refer to the mystery and also have the mind highly engaged and very beneficial, right. That's like the masculine force. It's, it's the part that makes things happen, it's the, it's the um.

Jessica: 46:15

I once heard this described the masculine and the feminine, feminine energies from a maestro that the, the wheel of the car is the feminine and the pedal is the masculine energy, where the wheel is kind of like receiving the guidance and the direction, and the masculine energy is the force that moves it forward. So to be in devotion to the heart is to open yourself to the mysteries of life, to surrender to the unknown, but to allow and then to bring the mind in, to allow yourself to move through it. So when I'm talking about the heart, it's like I feel called to create this thing. I feel called to this path in my life. I feel called to interact with this person.

Jessica: 47:11

Okay, great, now you have the call, but you have to execute it. You have to do it. If you want to create a program, if you want to create an offering or learn something new, you have a calling to learn something new. Okay, well, there's a lot of action and work that goes into actually manifesting, like bringing that to form where the heart just gave you the direction. Yes, the mind is going to, is going to help you do the rest, like in a more driving force way. Right, like, I have to get on my Google spreadsheet, I have to write my emails, I have to post my content, right Like there's like all these things that I have to do, but it's all in devotion to the call of my heart.

Jenee: 48:05

I was launching a women's program for the Voice over the last three years and it was interesting because I got very, very burned out very quickly and a lot of it was just burned out about, like, creating content and writing and selling and dah, dah, dah, dah dah. But also, like you know, it's really interesting. Through this conversation, I'm really really learning a lot about what happened there, and what I ultimately knew was there was a lot of internal fear for me around one not feeling fully embodied and ready to teach this work in the way that I wanted to teach it, and so there was a lot of learning and also healing that needed to happen on my end. And then finally coming to this understanding of like oh, it was the witch wound. I had to come through the fire of like fully understanding the block that was holding me back and feeling like, oh, I can't, I can't carry this work, you know, and it's not like you have to be healed, you don't. You know, it's just that you have to be a few steps ahead, you know, to be able to hold and hold this and guide.

Jenee: 49:22

And you know, and I I had this part that was like in my masculine, my mind would go backwards on me, because it would. It would just kept telling me, like you, you're so off base, You're so you don't know what you're doing. And, like it was, there was so much fear that was kicking up and to really, and I so I was like, oh, this work isn't for me, but it would never go away, like it would always be like tap, tap, tap, tap, tap you know way, like it would always be like tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, you know, and finally it's like working with a few master plants and really like unfolding this and healing this within myself and being like, oh, it was all there.

Jenee: 50:03

That fear was just very palpable because you know whether it's from my ancestry or from past lives or just my life, you know whether it's from my ancestry or from past lives or just my life, you know. Now it's like that was real and to honor that, you know, and just be like it doesn't didn't mean that I was supposed to drop it. You know which the mind was like nope, nope, you're off track, you're off course. No, no, no.

Jessica: 50:29

The mind's like not a pattern, I recognize not a pattern, I recognize not a pattern, I recognize this isn't safe. And then you have that, that tap, tap, tap going listen, listen to me, keep coming Right. And that that is the dichotomy that is happening. Like that, that happens all the time. You know, like when we want to change and we can talk about the patterns of the mind and the relationship to the nervous system and patterns, right, what is known and familiar is safe and what is unknown is not safe, and that's just. You know that's the program. And when you understand that that's the program, you can say okay, hey, listen, it's okay. I hear you, we're going to try this thing and I'm going to be with you while we try this. I'm going to be with you, mind, I'm going to be with you, body, nervous system. I'm listening to you, I'm not ignoring you, but I'm going to tell you that there's something here for us. We're going to figure it out, we're going to do it. It's okay thing here for us.

Jenee: 51:30

We're going to, we're going to figure it out, we're going to do it. It's okay. Yeah, and the soma is really where the foundational work needs to happen. You know, we have to bring that the body, the unconscious mind, to the forefront. No, we can't like. If we don't feel safe within the body, within the nervous system, like it's, it's nearly impossible to do this kind of work in the world.

Jessica: 51:56

Yeah, and we also need to know our bodies, because a lot of our thoughts are being derived from the experience of the body. And if we are not in tune with the experience of the body and how energy is moving through, with the experience of the body and how energy is moving through, because we're over associated as a society with the mind, which is also a product of masculine, patriarchal energy. Right, where the body is, the, feminine is is the yeah, feminine is the? Is the body, the yeah. Feminine is the is the body. Um, so we have like learning this kind of upsurge of somatic work that is happening in the field right now. I see it as a rebalancing of the feminine energy. Right, is everyone returning? They're listening to their bodies and getting to know the nervous system, getting to know the way that the body feels and responds in different spaces, so that you can work with that. You know and and you would understand why certain thoughts are happening at certain times, based on the experience of the body as well.

Jenee: 53:08

Yeah, that's huge. I mean even certain movements you know could trigger like a past memory or cause a lot of that is so much of it is stored in the body.

Jessica: 53:21

Indeed, everything is hanging out there.

Jenee: 53:24

Yeah, yeah, oh, this has been like such an amazing conversation.

Jessica: 53:39

Oh, this has been like such an amazing conversation. Wow, do you want to talk a little bit about the way of? Well, and you know, as a yoga teacher and somatic practitioner and everything, the body is a huge part um to balancing also the more etheric realms of the plants. So the the name of the business, I guess, for lack of a better word, is I have you know, she has presented herself the name name is the temple of wild wisdom, and when I say temple, I'm referring to the body, right. So this body wisdom that we have and the listening and intuition, right that comes from the body and the wisdom that the body is innately holding. So first, first and foremost, kind of like, the temple of wild wisdom is housing this initiation program and all that will come forward under, yeah, her umbrella or her arms, so to speak.

Jessica: 54:49

And the way of the wild wisdom is the initiation program that basically invites you into both feminine ritual, working with plants and embodied sovereignty, embodiment in life, sovereignty, embodiment in life. So it's, and although it is an, it's an initiation program in the sense that there will be like a lot of teaching on how to be working in ritual and working with plants. It is for everyone, at all times and all points in their relationship with their bodies and plant work and everything. I have some folks coming in who've been doing plant work for a long time and people coming in who have it's completely new, too. Right, because as much as it is an initiation into working with plants and ritual, it is also a pathway to sovereignty, in the way that I understand it. So just a brief overview is it's a three month program. One month the first month we spend with lavender, which we talked so much about today as the foundational plant to support listening, to teach us how to listen, to teach us how to feel into our intuition, to really set that foundational listening tone.

Jessica: 56:19

And then the second month we move into Rose, and Rose has been a huge boundary teacher for me. Yes, when I first started working with Rose, a lot of womb work started happening. You know, a lot of of vocal work started happening, and then a lot of amazing boundary work started happening as well from her, and so I've been doing boundary work for a long time and the way that Rose came in it was like we're going to look at boundaries from our sensual nature. So instead of like putting up walls and looking at what doesn't feel good for us in order to establish boundaries, we're going to go in and readdress our needs and desires and what does feel good, what does feel good and from that place embody, become the embodiment of our needs and desires, in which boundaries will naturally express themselves. So, taking boundaries away from this like very kind of harsh, scary thing, to going, I'm going to resource myself, reintegrate my needs and desires and allow these things to come from there, which is really building on the intuition, right, in order for us to access our needs, in order for us to be able to trust, you know, we have to know what our intuition feels like, we have to know that space. So that's like that next building block.

Jessica: 57:55

And then the final month we will spend with blue Lotus doing shadow work and dream work. And you know, in one sense it's like, okay, lavender, we're listening, we got our intuition like practice on, like feeling our truth. And then rose, we're like I'm communicating my limits, I'm nourishing my sensuality, I am setting my boundaries, I have my container around myself, right, I know how to do that. Now I'm ready to invite some shadow work in, right, like I've built some capacity for ritual and everything for resourcing myself. And now I'm going to go into the shadow and again, the way I see shadow work is shadow integration.

Jessica: 58:48

Because what are the shadows Like? Yes, they're the aspects of the subconscious that we are unaware of, that we can't see, but they're really just aspects of ourselves that someone else has told us isn't okay. The shadow and the ego get built right alongside each other by people saying our caregivers right, saying yes, that's so amazing, and don't do that. So it's like the ego gets built here on all the yeses and the shadows get built here on all the nos, and so what we're really doing in shadow work is lovingly reclaiming the aspects of ourselves that we have tucked away to create safety in our nervous system when we were young. And because of this, shadow work is the greatest manifester that I know. So the shadow work being like the last month of this program, is so juicy because it also just like skyrockets manifestation, because as we bring these shadowed parts of us back online, we get really empowered to make movement and change in our life. So so brilliant. Yeah, that's the whole thing and the way this has really been a culmination.

Jessica: 1:00:17

This, this program, is a culmination of, like, my life's work up until this moment where there will be ritual and working with these plants, and also somatic rituals, somatic exercises, all sorts of nourishments, learning how to work with plant baths and essences and ritual smokes, and all of this will be like, highly supported with music and meditations and guided practices from everything that will lean into the themes of each of these. But what I have found in my life is that if I can trust my intuition, if you can trust your intuition, if you know your intuition, you can trust it. If you know your needs and capacities and communicate them to everyone in your life, and if you can lovingly do shadow work and integrate yourself into the totality of who you are, you're good. You are sovereign. You can take care of yourself and these plants. Once you establish these relationships with them, they're your allies forever. They are there for you when you need to reconnect, right, you're like, ooh, I need some lavender now and she's going to be there for you forever.

Jessica: 1:01:42

After you programmed all of that in with her for a month, and then you know you've got like shadows coming up or whatever. You're like, okay, I'm going to go spend some time with blue Lotus and go back into this realm and juice up and they become your allies, they become your friends and you yourself carry yourself through life. You're not like, oh, I need help here, oh, I need someone, I need something. You're like I know myself, I've got my plants, I've got my, like my allies, my spirit team, and like I got this. So that's like the path of sovereignty, there, you know, like this, like, yeah, you know, take your torch.

Jenee: 1:02:26

I love it. You're so brilliant. It's like it's amazing to hear you speak about your work, about all of these things that, to me, are like my favorite subjects, my favorite things to to be in conversation about, and um, yeah, I'm so grateful for your time today and I'm going to put the link to the registration Is it up now in your bio, yeah, yeah, it's all live and well, yeah in the podcast description so people can take a look at the program and like, get on a call with you. Thank you so much for your time.

Jessica: 1:03:04

Thank you so much for having me. I also just love talking about all these things. It was so great to share and connect with you to be here today.

Jenee: 1:03:13

Thank you. The Heartlight Sessions podcast is executive produced and hosted by me, janae Halstead. It's edited, mixed and mastered by me too, and that theme song you hear it's called Heartlight. And yep, you guessed it, it's from my record. Disposable Love. Got questions about a certain healing modality or about heart-centered healing, or maybe you just need some advice on life, love or creativity. Send it my way, email me at letters at heartlightpodcastcom. Until next time, I'm Janae Halstead, and thanks for listening to Heartlight Sessions, thank you.