Nurturing the Bond Between Mother and Baby: A Holistic Ritual

Hello wonderful souls, 

For my blog today I have teamed up with Katy from Mother Gaia to guide you through an amazing holistic bonding ritual you can do at home. With Katy’s experience as a Reiki master and my knowledge of journaling, we have put together a wonderfully relaxing ritual for you to enjoy, not just in the moment, but for years to come. We hope you enjoy our blog.

Nurturing the Bond Between Mother and Baby: A Holistic Ritual for Expecting Mums

Pregnancy is a beautiful and transformative journey—one that not only changes your body but also deepens your emotional and spiritual connection with your baby. As your body nurtures life, it’s essential to take time for self-love, to support your emotions, and to honour the profound changes unfolding within you. This is a time to embrace self-care practices that not only strengthen the bond with your baby but also nurture your mind, body, and soul.

One beautiful way to foster this connection is through our holistic bonding ritual, blending Reiki, chakra crystals, and journaling. These practices, rooted in love and mindfulness, can be easily incorporated into your daily routine, offering moments of peace, reflection, and healing.

Firstly Katy explains how to use Reiki and Chakra Crystals to create a relaxing bonding opportunity.

Reiki and Chakra Crystals: A Sacred Practice for Connection

Chakra crystals have long been valued for their ability to balance and harmonise energy centres in the body. During pregnancy, using these crystals in combination with Reiki—a gentle, hands-on energy healing technique—can support both your physical and emotional well-being, helping you feel grounded, centred, and connected to your baby.

How to Begin Your Reiki and Crystal Meditation

1. Create a Sacred Space: Find a quiet, comfortable place where you can relax. Arrange your chakra crystals in a circle or pattern that resonates with you.

2. Select Your Crystals: Choose a crystal for each of the seven chakras to balance and energise your body. You can use your own or one of the wonderful crystal sets pictured above from The Natural Path:

   - Root Chakra (Red Jasper): Grounding and stability

   - Sacral Chakra (Carnelian): Creativity and fertility

   - Solar Plexus Chakra (Citrine): Confidence and personal power

   - Heart Chakra (Rose Quartz): Love and emotional healing

   - Throat Chakra (Blue Lace Agate): Communication and expression

   - Third Eye Chakra (Amethyst): Intuition and insight

   - Crown Chakra (Clear Quartz): Spiritual connection and enlightenment

3. Connect and Meditate: Sit comfortably, holding or placing the crystals on their corresponding chakra points. Take deep, cleansing breaths and visualize a warm, glowing light flowing through each chakra. As this energy flows, imagine it connecting you with your baby—feel the love, support, and connection growing stronger with each breath.

You can find a free Reiki meditation on Katy’s youtube channel @Mother_Gaia_Crabtree

4. Reiki Healing: If you are familiar with Reiki, allow the healing energy to flow through your hands, into the crystals, and then into your body. Focus on sending love and positive energy to your baby, creating a peaceful, nurturing environment within.

5. Affirmations: Reinforce this bond with positive affirmations, such as “I am connected with my baby” or “My body is supporting my baby with love and care.”

6. Journal your experience: here Niki explains journaling and the easiest way to do it.

Journaling for Self-Love and Connection

Journaling can be a powerful tool for self-love during pregnancy. It offers a space to process emotions, reflect on changes in your body, and deepen your connection with your baby. Writing from a place of self-compassion can help you embrace the ups and downs of this journey, providing clarity and a sense of peace.

Consider journaling with these prompts:

- Self-Love and Support: How is my body changing today, and how can I support it? What emotions am I feeling, and how can I honour them?

- Connection with Baby: Have I felt the baby move today? What sensations did I notice, and how did they make me feel emotionally?

- Emotional Reflection: What challenges am I facing? How can I shift my mindset to bring more positivity and balance into my life?

Through journaling, you allow yourself to embrace the changes of pregnancy with grace and self-compassion, nurturing both your emotional well-being and your connection with your baby.

Supporting Your Journey

This bonding ritual is a gentle way to embrace the beauty of pregnancy while honouring yourself and your baby. Reiki, chakra crystals, and journaling come together to create a nurturing environment, one that promotes love, peace, and connection.

For those looking to deepen this practice, Katy offers personalised Reiki therapy sessions @mothergaia to support your journey into motherhood with healing energy. Additionally, explore Nicki’s curated selection of chakra crystal sets and beautiful journals at The Natural Path to enhance your rituals and find deeper connections through these sacred tools.

By dedicating this time to yourself, you are not only strengthening the bond with your baby but also embracing the self-love and support you deserve as you prepare for this new chapter of life.

We hope you have enjoyed our blog today, let us know if you try this bonding ritual and how you felt.

Until next time, Many Blessings, 

Katy and Niki

Intuition

. Trust Your Intuition .

Something we hear all the time right? But we’ve had a few questions lately from some of you who are struggling with how to connect to such. I know I always start off with the same thing but it’s important to know, when it comes to your own natural talents it’s always best to go with what feels right for you. Just because a certain way resonates with one, does not mean it will resonate with you.

The best way to learn how to trust your intuition is to use it! You know that gut feeling, that’s your intuition talking to you. Listen to it and go with your instincts. Here are a few easy tips or exercises I like to suggest to help you with such:

. Play the card game. This can also work with anything like colours, pictures etc but, for the sake of this let’s use oracle or tarot cards. Sit down and draw a card. Take a moment to ground yourself, open yourself up to spirit, to source and ask your higher (inner self) or guides to help you to receive the messages clearly. Then take some time to look at the card. Connect with its energy, what images are you seeing, do you hear words? Are you getting an emotion, a sense or a vibe? Do this on a regular basis to strengthen both your connection and your listening abilities.

. Fake it until you make it. Ever been around someone who seems perfectly lovely but you get an off feeling about them. That’s your intuition talking. Energetically you are reading their energy. You might not understand it at first, but put your faith in your gut feeling and follow it blindly anyway. I promise you it won’t steer you wrong. The more you do this, the stronger it will become and the more faith you’ll have in your intuition. Sometimes it can be hard to “fake” trust in the early days but, try and take that leap of faith. It’s the first step. How can you learn to trust it, if you don’t ever allow it to make your decisions for you?

. Discernment. You will need to learn what is truly a gut feeling and what is a projected fear or belief. You can do this by listening to your body, where does the energy sit, where is it coming from when you feel it? Are there emotions or fears attached or is it just a pure feeling? Usually gut feelings, intuitive feelings will not have an emotion and especially a fear attached. That’s usually a projection that your ego is putting out there to try and hold you back from a situation. Remember ego does not like to be challenged, it wants to protect itself because challenging the ego results in an ego death.

. Make sure you are coming from your heart centre and not your head. When we think too much we are on our heads and we need to bring our energy and our awareness back in to our hearts. Here, in the heart space is where we truly connect. It is through pure feeling (not to be confused with emotion but sensing) that we receive our intuitive messages. If you catch yourself in your head space, pause and take a few deep breaths. Imagine roots coming from your feet, grounding you back in to the earth. Then start to drop your awareness from you thoughts and your minds, to your heart space - connecting to what you are feeling, the energy you feel, where’s it sitting, what smells or noises can you hear. Quiet the minds chatter and just allow yourself to feel a situation out. I know it sounds so easy and yet quite hard but honestly, once we quiet the mind and become present again, taking ourselves away from the many distractions this busy world likes to throw at us, we come back to our natural state and you will begin to feel and sense again. That is our natural state of being. Tune out to tune in.

. Leave the judgement at home. Another important thing to remember is to treat yourselves and your intuition with love and gratitude. Believe me, there is a reason it’s speaking to you and even if you never find out why, always know it is right and working for your best interests. That person who just felt so off to you, may of ended up hurting you had you let them in. That person cosying up to you that you felt the need to reject, may not have had your best interests at heart. The whole smile to your face and laugh behind your back sound familiar to you? That job you just felt like you needed to decline even though you couldn’t find a logical reason why, could have lead to a very unhappy work life. Sometimes, it’s ok to never know why you felt something. We don’t need to know why, in order to act on something. That’s what instinct is all about.

. Get to know yourself. I know it may sound silly but, how many of you have sat and held space for yourselves? I’m talking about listening to your feelings, listening to what your body, your heart and your mind wants to say to you because believe me, they are talking to you all the time. Do you know your patterns of thought, your prospectives, your wounds or triggers? Do you truly know what you believe in life and what your true belief is about yourself. Once we know how we work, we can observe our energy easier. It becomes easier to discern between the mind and the heart, an emotion, fear or self limiting belief and a pure natural instinct. No two people will ever be the same and the best person to get to know and understand you is yourself.

Why not try these suggestions out and let us know how they work for you and if this doesn’t resonate with you, amazing! Keep following your gut.

Lions Gate Portal 8:8:8

Today marks the Lion’s Gate Portal. A time where we are flooded with a wonderful surplus of light, activation codes, downloads etc and a time where our light bodies can absorb and integrate much more higher levels of light, speeding up the ascension process. Essentially we are light being and the more light we take on, the more light we bring in to our fields, the higher we ascend mentally, physically and spiritually.

The lions gate portal falls in the sign of Leo, hence the lion’s gate and brings forward the attributes of Leo, as well as, the energetic numbers of 8:8:8. The 8th day of the 8th month, finished off with an 8 year in numerology (2024 = 2+0+2+4=8)

In numerology 8 signifies abundance, prosperity, leadership, creation, manifestation, transformation and so on. This is a potent time for change as the increase in light accelerates the ascension process. Be warned however, that this is not a time of action. Those of us who choose to listen to our bodies and light bodies will notice the ascension’s symptoms we are so often plagued with, when integrating such higher levels of light. These can be headaches, purging symptoms and stomach issues and even fatigue. Be gentle with yourselves as you integrate this new wave of light, make sure you are grounding, balancing yourselves and journalling as more light will also illuminate more shadows. This can be an emotionally charged time, so take time out to really look after yourselves.

For those who are intrigued and new to the Lion’s Portal and the concept of light and light integration, here is an amazing article I found online which explains it perfectly - https://www.ask-angels.com/.../the-888-lions-gate.../

Have a wonderful lions gateway. I already feel lighter and dare I say a little giddy from the ascension energies. Today will be a day of good organic, healthy food fuel, rest and grounding for me.

New Moon In Leo

Tonight marks the New Moon In Leo. The incredible fire sign speaks of getting serious. Fire is all about transformation and Leo, the natural leader, is pushing us forward in our quest to seek more light, more alignment, more authenticity and more truth.

As we step on to our own power, we invite the fire to burn away all that no longer serves us, revealing our true authentic natures and helping us to reconnect once more with our passions and desires. This new moon, like all new moons, is about forward movement, projection, reviewing where we are currently at and setting course with our own manifestations. What really makes your heart sing? Get ready to sit down and really work that all out!

As always, our wounds and shadows will also come to light during this time. Make sure to hold space for them when they do. They are powerfully teaching tools that help us reconnect to all facets of ourselves and natures. Look at it through the heart chakra, through love and acceptance and face those emotions rather than turning away. Harnessing true power is learning how to become comfortable with what is not comfortable This new moon is all about finding our way back to ourselves, to love, learn and appreciate all what makes up us, to face those shadows and illuminate them with love, acceptance and allow our true passions our true hearts to always lead the way. Have a beautiful time reconnecting to yourselves, have a blessed New Moon. Love and light.

Full Moon In Capricorn

Tomorrow marks the Full Moon In Capricorn and sees the end of the emotionally charged cancer season. Giving us the time and space to deal with the stirrings this season ignited within us all. This shift allows for us to develop our discernment, making it easier to navigate what we need to work on and what we can choose to let go of.

The last new moon in Capricorn was some 6 months ago. During this time, we set our intentions and began manifesting those hopes and wishes for this year. As this Full moon in Capricorn brings a close to the cancer season, we are able to sit back and inspect the path we have traveled. Have you made progress with your intentions? Have you noticed progress within your healing or even new emotional needs that may have meant you drifted off track? Now’s the time to take stock and adjust anything that may need re-aligning or even, being brave enough to change direction if that’s what you are being called to do. Checking in with yourself and your authenticity is what’s most important here. What we thought we wanted 6 months ago may not actually align with ourselves anymore.

It’s time that we hold our emotions, disect them, find the truth and the honesty within them. We need to be strong in our self care and deliberate in holding space for ourselves. It’s now that we need to either re-visit or begin to carve out very sacred spaces in our lives, to allow us to hold our emotions in. We need these pockets of inwardness to allow us to really get to know ourselves and make the changes we need in order for our growth. You can be selfish in a positive way! How else will you ever transcend what’s been weighing you down, what’s been causing challenges for you in life, if you don’t ever indulge yourself in those moments. Going inwards is granting yourself time and space to connect to your inner thoughts and feelings. Allowing your intuition to speak to you and learning or unlearning things about yourselves that will, directly lead to personal growth and healing in your lives.

This full moon is giving us all an amazing opportunity to truly connect with ourselves and release a lot of the stuck energies we are carrying around within our light bodies - that have been having an effect on us in our everyday lives. Capricorn is an Earth sign, which is the perfect energy we need right now to ground our own light bodies and our emotions, deeply, to bring ourselves back in to balance and see and feel things through a clear, balanced prospective. This will prove vital for us, when making those life changing decisions and reassessing where are, in our healing journeys for this year. Take comfort from yourselves, you are the safe harbour for life’s storms. Never forget that. Have a blessed full moon. Love and light.

New Moon In Cancer

Tonight marks the New Moon In Cancer. A beautifully feminine moon, the element of water and its free flowing energies are pouring through.

Cancer is an incredibly intuitive sign. This New Moon is urging us to find our own divine flow and set up home within ourselves. A truly emotive sign, it lends its energies to expression. Helping us to embrace our true natures, become more in tune with ourselves and express our authentic selves at any given moment or phase.

There is great power in embodying all that we are. Truly connecting to our own divinity allows us to harness all of our frequency and truly step in to our own power. Like the water we can rage, we can crash mighty waves against the rocks and carve in to them, and we can also be still and peaceful. Both of these sides hold power and reverence. That is the art of duality. This New Moon calls for us to embrace all facets of ourselves and play them each to our strengths. This is a time to truly go inwards, to allow you intuition to be heard loud and clear, and light the way for your forward movement. Get out of your heads and flow back in to the heart, for it’s the way of the heart that allows us to walk this intuitive path. Everything in life is guided by intuition, learning to flow with it is such a graceful and natural thing. That truly is our natural state and nature. Have a blessed new moon. Love and light.

Meditation

Meditation is not just an amazing spiritual tool, it benefits mind, body and soul! Did you know meditation:

. Calms the nervous system. When we relax our nervous system switches from an autonomic - fight or flight mode to a parasympathetic nervous system - which is when our bodies can begin to heal.

. Is an excellent tool to combat stress. Again, when we are stressed our autonomic nervous system is triggered. Taking us in to a state of fight of flight. Our bodies are running then on the adrenal that is produced as a result, which can damage our organs over time. Relaxation helps to combat stress and bring our bodies back in to a parasympathetic nervous system which is our natural mode for healing. Our body can start to repair.

. Improves sleep. Meditation encourages you to slow your breathing down. This helps to put the body in to a state of relaxation. When we slow our breathing down we in turn lower our heart rate. Both of these help us to drift off to sleep.

. Improves mood which helps our overall well being and enjoyment in life. Meditation helps us to quiet the mind, allows us to go with the flow and allow thoughts and stresses to come and go without attachment or judgement. This helps us to feel less burdened and boosts our overall mood.

. Improves fitness. Sitting during meditation helps us to strengthen our cores and develop muscle memory. This is also true for the rhythmic breathing associated with meditation - slow breaths in through the nose, making sure to extend the belly and breathe through that area, rather than breathing through the chest so that the ribcage rises and falls. It can also help improve focus and clarity.

. Improves our physical and mental health. Meditating can boost your immune system. This is due to the relaxed state you enter and as explained above, when our parasympathetic nervous system is running the show, our bodies can begin to physically heal and repair. Stress is also linked to an inflammatory response in the body. Inflammation is at the route of every disease, creating an unhealthy environment from within. When we meditate and relax, we activate our vagus nerve. Increased vagal tone (which is activity of the vagus nerve) can modulate cytokine release. Cytokines are signalling proteins that help control inflammation in the body. Therefore, meditation has been linked with reduction of inflammation. Meditation also lowers blood pressure which leads to improved heart health.

Tips On How To Journal

The key to healing is connection. In order to heal something we first need to make friends with it. It’s through coming to know all aspects of it, that we can transcend it. There are levels to any shadow work and the roots often run deep. Journalling is an excellent way to understand those multi faceted layers of ourselves. Here are some tips on how to begin your journey with such:

. Put pen to paper. Take a moment to really let the pen rest on the paper. This can allow us to become fully present which makes it easier to tune in to our thoughts or feelings. Often, just taking a moment can lead to intuitive writing. And you’ll find things naturally begin to flow.

. Ask yourself questions. Struggling to connect or not sure on how to begin? Try asking yourself questions like “how are you feeling today?” Still drawing a blank… give a run down of the events of your day or week and see what topics or situations emerge.

. Don’t put pressure on yourself. Shadow work is often detective work. Connecting the dots can have its own process. If you feel you aren’t hitting the nail on the head, come back to it and see if you have a fresh prospective on it after a breather. It takes time and effort to unravel and learn from healing work. Don’t put pressure on yourself to get over something. You will, once you have uncovered and put effort in to healing all aspects of it.

. This is a judgement free zone. Often, you’ll find unexpected thoughts or feelings may arise as you get in to the nitty gritty of what’s on your mind. Don’t judge yourself if something you thought you breezed past, actually did have a reaction that you’ve come to uncover. Remember, shadow work allows us to bring light to past, present and even future self limiting beliefs so that we can move past them. They are teaching tools. Every thought, feeling and trigger is working with us, to help us to grow. They are friends, not foes.

. Be consistent. Consistency really is key. The more you journal the more connected you are to self. This will help you to understand your thought processes and inner workings more easily. You’ll find over time it becomes second nature to know what’s on your mind, in your heart, and what to do to heal it.

. Enjoy the experience. Sure, healing work requires courage but notice how even after the heaviest journalling session, you feel lighter for having gotten it all off your chest. Even after a good crying session, you’ll find you always feel better. Releasing energy is freeing and good for our overall well being. Journalling allows you to develop a deep connection to self. This is a wonderful relationship to have, as you’ll learn to appreciate and love the many aspects that make up you and love as we know, is incredibly healing. It’s completely possible to feel loved and supported by yourself alone don’t forget unconditional love starts at home.

Shop our Journals Range Here

New Moon In Gemini

Tonight marks the New Moon In Gemini This is an exciting new moon as gemini is an Air Sign. Air signs are all about communication, taking action and applying thought to everything.

This new moon is buzzing with the energies from this social sign. It’s time to gather our tribe, share our inspirations/ideas and get busy experiencing what life has to offer. This new moon is asking us to look at our mindsets, thought processes, beliefs and expectations. This way we can learn why we see things the way we currently do and shift perspectives to ensure we stay on track with our personal goals.

Gemini can also have a very ungrounded energy. Our minds can race, we can jump from thought to thought and even become too enthralled with our internal thoughts. We can also become overwhelmed with our emotions and find it more difficult to decipher what we are feeling, as these energies can throw us off. Make sure to take time out to ground when you feel these energies rising. Don’t become too caught up in the logical, it will only distract you from listening to your intuition - which is always the way to go. Let the energies come up for you and create balance between the logical side of yourselves, and your intuitive instincts. What we think we in turn create so it’s important to highlight the areas in which we feel stuck of stagnant and adjust accordingly. Thought and intention are incredibly powerful and this new moon is all about realising how our mindsets have a direct effect on how we manifest.

Full Moon In Sagittarius

Tomorrow night marks the Full Moon In Sagittarius As always, full moons are about releasing and with the full moon being a fire sign, it invokes transformation.

It’s time we face what no longer serves us with honesty and bravery as we commit to the long needed change and release them. Fear is something we all struggle with from time to time and lately it’s crept back in. The fear of stepping outside of our comfort zones and facing all of those shadows, piece by piece has forced us to sometimes cling to the familiar, no matter how much it doesn’t serve us. This full moon is shedding light on those areas, and asking us to step in to our power as we release them, once and for all. Greatness lies outside of our comfort zones.

Sagittarius is the eternal knowledge seeker, the globe trotter. Seeking adventures of new. This energy is coming in to support us and challenge us to step outside of the norms and embrace the new adventures and new cycles once more. It’s time to shake off those old stagnant energies and start a new exciting journey who’s with me .

This full moon is asking us to be brave, to face all of our shadows, identify the areas where fear has crept back in and be brave enough to cast them aside. Usually new moons are full of excitement for the new energies we will be welcoming in but I very much feel that excitement this full moon too. Have a blessed full moon and good luck on your new adventures

Dark Night Of The Soul

. Dark Night Of The Soul .

Have any of you lovely lot ever heard of this phrase before? Have you gone through it? Are you currently going through it? We’d love to know. So for those of you who aren’t aware of this phrase, what is the Dark Night Of The Soul?

As we walk the path of light, back to our true and authentic selves and reconnect with the truth that we are the light beings and not the body, we in turn raise our vibrations and begin to ascend. There are two sides to such, one side that speaks of the light - all the good and amazing high vibrational things that we align with when doing such, and the other speaks of the dark - the lower emotions and the struggles of ascending. This is what the dark night of the soul is. Please do not be afraid. It can be a difficult journey but it’s only a temporary stage in our enlightenment which once we come through, leads to the most beautiful life filled with authenticity and perfect alignment.

As we raise our vibrations, as we begin to ascend we in turn leave behind all that no longer serves us. This can be the start of a period of time where we see those things no longer in alignment with ourselves, fall away. Though it is for our best interests and will undoubtedly lead to new things coming in to our lives that are in perfect alignment with our higher energies, it can be a hard time of adjustment and an emotionally charged time as we say goodbye. It is not uncommon during this time to see the breakdown of friendships and relationships as sometimes, not everyone can grow with us.

We can also see changes in our career, interests and desires. We can see small changes and sometimes we can see big changes, depending on where we are at in our ascension journey and how much things are currently aligned or not aligned with such. I like to refer to this period of time as growing pains, as we challenge ourselves to face and work through the shadow work that presents itself to us. As we grow in light, we open up space and room for healing, transcending all that is of the dark (which is merely just empty space for the light to inhabit) and bringing new light to those areas - mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually. It’s a time of dedication, perseverance, growing, learning and unlearning. It can still be a beautiful time as healing work is magical, it is alchemy after all. It can be fun to learn, grow and widen your horizons and push the boundaries of your beliefs. I promise you though you may see many people exit your life during this time you will eventually find new wonderful people who share that same energy with you. When that happens, it is truly magical. As painful as goodbyes can be, the welcoming into a new family, often a soul family, can be absolutely life changing and bring about an even deeper period of healing, surrounded by unconditional love and unwavering support.