KAJAMA.COM NEWSLETTER

April 21 through April 27, 2025

The Aquarius Moon will inspire us on Monday and Tuesday, as it provides innovative ideas and new options for us to consider. Things slow down considerably when the Moon dips into Pisces Wednesday and Thursday, providing us with a few days of easy-going and time for contemplation. However, once the Moon marches into Aries on Friday, we'll be moving full steam ahead for the next few days, which in turn, makes the end of the week the most productive. We'll experience a new Moon in Taurus on Sunday, marking a two-week cycle when we can move on to new projects, find compromises to break any impasses we are dealing with, and for all intents and purposes, make decisions we've been holding off on. Make a wish, as this is one of the most powerful Moons of the year for manifesting!

Three Tips to Help You Manifest Your Best Night’s Rest, by Clare R. Johnson, PhD

(Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal.)

Sleep is the ultimate act of self-love. When we push sleep away, we push good health away. Many people are chronically sleep deprived, losing an average of an hour of sleep each night. By the time they reach the age of 30, they will have missed out on thousands of hours of sleep. When we don't get enough sleep, we become more likely to gain weight or catch a cold, and our risk factor for illnesses such as heart disease or diabetes grows. The good news is that the detrimental effects of accumulated sleep debt can be recovered when we relearn how to embrace restful sleep.

Sleep is also a connection with the divine: it's not only a physical event, but a spiritual one. Throughout history, humans have created sacred spaces to connect with the divine. My newest release, Elixir of Sleep: Practical Solutions for a Good Night's Rest, explores the sacred aspects of sleep. It offers 64 somatic, imaginative, playful practices to help you manifest a soulful night of rejuvenating rest.

Here are three tips you won't find in the average sleep book.

Tip #1: Create a sacred sleep altar.
The ritual of altar-creation is a wonderful way of setting an intention around your sleep and dream life. What would you love to experience tonight—blissful sleep with healing dreams? The pre-bed time is an excellent moment to set a powerful intention to welcome your ideal night of sleep.

Gather anything linked to your night of sleep that makes you feel serene, powerful, and protected. Some people choose a statuette of a deity, or a treasure chest, colorful crystals, or those little cushions filled with lavender or other soothing herbs. Arrange your objects in any way you like, preferably in your bedroom so you can see your altar before you sleep and when you wake up.

The sacred sleep altar is best seen as energy in motion rather than a fixed entity: any element can be added or removed at any time. If you dream of a parrot, add a sketch or a toy figure to your altar. Or just write the word "parrot." If you have a bad night's sleep, add lavender to your altar the next evening, while setting the intention for a deep and restful sleep. Bring in things you find in nature—a feather for mobile air energy, moss for earth and grounding, or a shell for ocean power.

Connect with your altar before bed. Now's a good time to set an intention for your night of sleep. Consider what you would love to experience: pure, blissful rest; adventurous dreams; or an encounter with a wise guide. There's no need to set an intention; this can also simply be a moment of mindful calm before you settle into bed.

Tip #2: Imagine sleep as a gorgeous animal.
Try this imaginative practice from Elixir of Sleep to explore the unique energy and personality of your sleep.

As you lie in bed in the darkness, think of sleep as a gorgeous animal. Which animal do you most admire? Perhaps a wild, shaggy-maned lion; a wild dolphin; a jewel-eyed sloth bear; or a rainbow chameleon. See your chosen animal clearly in your mind's eye.

Now imagine that amazing creature's habitat shrinking, forcing them to exist in a restricted way, cutting off their potential. How can you help this magical creature to regain their rightful space? Using your hands, make a gesture to enlarge their habitat—for example, start with your palms together and then extend your arms outward. See your creature's habitat grow large and expansive, filled with things they love. The lion roars with joy, the chameleon's colurs glow with happiness.

Make a promise to continue to create space in your life for sleep. With your hands on your heart, send your sleep animal love and feel that love radiate back from them to you. By fulfilling your side of the bargain and creating space for sleep in your life, you are nourishing your body, mind, and soul.

Tip #3: Take a candlelit bath with the vibration of OM
When we begin to welcome sleep into our lives, we simultaneously welcome many other self-care practices. One of my favorites is the candlelit bath ritual. This is a way of cherishing ourselves as we prepare for our healing journey into sleep.

A pre-bed bath is also a science-supported practice for promoting sleep. When we take a warm bath or shower, all the blood goes to the surface of our skin. Once we get out, all that extra heat leaves, so our core body temperature drops, helping our brain and body to fall asleep and stay asleep. When healthy adults have a warm bath before bed, their sleep quality improves and a 10-15% increase in deep, restorative sleep is experienced.

In Elixir of Sleep, I share a wonderful practice that will elevate your bathtime ritual to a cosmic level by bringing the universal sound vibration of OM into your bathtub. If you have no bathtub, you could try it in the shower, or even in a swimming pool. If you have mobility issues, a lovely variation of this practice is to sit comfortably in bed and gently close your ears with your fingers while you chant OM. This amplifies the sound inside your head, giving a similar effect to chanting OM underwater.

Run yourself a warm bath. As it fills, remind yourself of the science of sound healing. The human body is around 60% water. When we create sound vibrations in the bath, we create strong, harmonious resonances that affect our body, cells, and brainwaves. This helps us to harmonize our energy and heal. It's also wonderfully relaxing. Once you're in, sink down in the bath a little so that you're as close to the water level as possible without it flowing into your mouth. If you feel self-conscious, remind yourself that it doesn't matter what you sound like—the humming vibration is what counts here.

Inhale deeply, then open your mouth and sing "OM" as you exhale. Continue with this omming breathwork for as long as feels right. Sometimes a single minute is enough, and sometimes five or ten minutes of omming feels amazing. Listen to your inner sounds. This can take you into a profound meditative state: the perfect way to wind down before a night of radiant rest.

Elixir of Sleep has over sixty other practices to help you and your loved ones to invite deep sleep and joyful dream adventures. It also has a comprehensive Sleep Quiz to help you figure out your sleeper-dreamer type, and to fast-track you to the most helpful practices for you personally. When we take time to create a beautiful relationship with sleep, we make the most of the third of our life we spend slumbering between the bedsheets.

We regain a bright mind and a healthy body. We develop deeper intuition and engage in profound self-care. We open our hearts to the spiritual flow of life.

Let's dive under the covers with a happy heart, and wake up energized!

Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal. Copyright Llewellyn Worldwide, 2025. All rights reserved.

Is it natural to want to do bad and hurtful things to someone you once loved post-breakup? I recently ended a relationship and as much as I try to forgive and forget, random urges come over me to say and do hurtful things to him. Sometimes I act on those impulses. Afterwards I always feel bad yet I keep going through this same cycle as if stuck in limbo. Is there something I can do to stop myself from thinking and acting on these thoughts?

Taylor

Susyn:

It's common to feel anger and resentment after a break-up, and for these feelings turn into actions we later regret. Our level of spiritual development often dictates how we respond to the loss of a close relationship. Initially, it's a good idea to journal about your feelings of loss and resentment. Committing them to paper will help you process the pain you are feeling. Reviewing specific incidents that you still feel angry about can help you put them in perspective.

Whether your feelings are justified or not, there are ways to get beyond them. Keep in mind that anger is a cover-up for fear, and that in the end, you are only hurting yourself when you act on urges to retaliate.

Once you have your feelings in written form, you can burn the pages as a spiritual ritual to release the hold they have over you. You may also want to freeze your ex, which won't him but will minimize the emotions that rise up when you think about him. You can find the instructions for the Freezing Ritual at Kajama.com under Spiritual Tools.

Next I recommend a practice called Corralling Your Thoughts. This will help you let go of the past and refrain from acting on any thoughts of doing hurtful things to him.

It works like this: When your ex comes into your thoughts, stop immediately and say, I will not think about this now; I will think about it tonight at 9 p.m. Continue this practice throughout the day whenever he crosses your mind. Then at 9 p.m., allow yourself 15 minutes to think about him - no more, no less.

At the end of the fifteen minutes, if he comes into your thoughts again, you must wait until the next night at 9 p.m. to think about him. If you miss the time the next night, you will have to postpone those thoughts until the following night. After three days, reduce the time to 10 minutes, and after six days, to five minutes. This will help you gradually reduce the time you are thinking or obsessing about your ex, and minimize your concerns about him.

These practices can help as you move away from a relationship that obviously was not healthy for you. If you are without a relationship at this point, it's time to open yourself up to finding new love. However, as long as you are focused on your ex, you will be unable to find the ideal partner with whom to build a strong, healthy relationship, for to build a brighter future, you must first break free of your anger and resentment from the past.

*****

Mata Maya:

As the Buddha taught, holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. Though you may want to hurt your ex, the person your hate is hurting the most is yourself. By holding on to pain instead of letting it go, you are keeping yourself stuck in an endless cycle of suffering.

While it's perfectly natural to feel the way you do, the pain these thoughts cause you is a sign that your thinking is not in harmony with the peace and happiness you desire. You feel bad because your inner being is urging you to think loving thoughts in order to manifest loving experiences.

These thoughts and feelings are a sign that you are still wounded and need more healing. Your anger is a primal reaction to feeling hurt. When you have these hateful impulses, you might picture yourself as a wounded, cornered little animal lashing out at that which you perceive to be the cause of your pain.

As you picture this, instead of saying to yourself, I am so angry, remember to say to yourself, I am in such pain. This will help you shift toward a more sophisticated, constructive perspective on what's happening on an inner level, which will facilitate a faster journey to healing and new happiness.

Next, recognize that what you do to others comes back to you; what you wish for others you draw to yourself. When you keep in mind that what you wish for another, you wish for yourself, it becomes much easier to stretch toward forgiveness, to shift from wishing your ex a lifetime of loneliness and misery to praying for him to find new love and happiness.

I am sure you have been similarly upset in the past. If you think about it, you will see that it was only when you started to let go of your anger and resentment toward the individual involved that you began to feel better about your own life and began to move into new and better circumstances. Whenever you find yourself thinking hateful thoughts, stop and remember that you are cursing yourself, and begin to send out positive thoughts and wishes instead.

Finally, you would be wise to remember that you wouldn't want to be with someone who doesn't really want to be with you. Everything happens for a good reason whether we can see it at the time or not. If you realize that you have been set free from the wrong relationship so you can end up in the right one some day, perhaps you will eventually be able to thank your ex for making it so clear that he was not the right one for you.

Astrea:

Many times in life we hear, "You will always have what you NEED, but not necessarily what you WANT." Your spirit must have needed to experience the feeling of leaving your human body, and the suggestion in the next chapter of Sylvia Brown's book was all it took to get you there.

Even though you hadn't read it yet, your SOUL recognized the title of that chapter as something it had been seeking, and your soul, knowing that you had that reference to read after your experience, got with it and out you went!

While I don't usually recommend her books, Sylvia Brown has a wide reaching and powerful effect on lots of people. A Gemini like you would be able to relate easily to her writing and put it to good use. Synchronicity - you gotta love it!

I like your description of "getting caught." That's exactly what it feels like, isn't it? One minute you're free and hovering above the room, and the next minute, ZAP! back down into your corporeal form you go!

As a little kid, I loved that "feeling of return." With practice, most of the time we can control that event, but sometimes, when our physical ears hear a distracting noise or something else occurs to knock us back into reality, back we go. With practice you will be able to control your return better.

I find it interesting that you were visiting your mother-in-law and not someone in your own genetic family. Evidently, you and your husband got married for reasons that are even deeper than love. His family's interest in "psychic stuff" will nurture your children in such matters and help them to grow into their own abilities.

You'll never have to be concerned that when your daughter visits them, she'll be discouraged from exploring her own psychic life and power. My parents encouraged me to develop my psychic senses in a time when it wasn't nice to even discuss such things in public. Heck, it's STILL not considered a great topic at the dinner table in some families!

Your kids will get to talk about it ALL and ask questions and read and study. This is going to give them such an edge in life! Talk with your husband about how you want to present this to your kiddos, so that you are united in your approach and ready to tell them their experiences are all natural and okay.

A word or two of warning: Geminis often have difficulty staying grounded in REAL LIFE. Don't get so strung out on your ASTRAL life that you neglect what you're doing here on Earth.

You are at the beginning of a long journey to learn where your power really lies. Try to be patient with this process and take your time.