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May 12 through May 18, 2025

The weekend opens with a powerful Scorpio full Moon, bringing our greatest wishes to the surface. The theme of this moon is to “dream the impossible dream” so let’s allow our emotions and ideals to run wild! The Moon moves into Sagittarius on Tuesday, surrounding us with a light-hearted and playful mood for the next two days. In fact, the only two days we’ll be highly productive tend to be Thursday and Friday under a diligent Capricorn Moon, so those are the days we can plan to be busy bees! Our weekend will unfold under an Aquarius Moon, meaning whatever we have planned will likely change at a moment’s notice. We’ll need to practice flexibility, trust in blocks and delays, and be willing to alter our schedules at a moment's notice. No worries though, as it’s all designed to bring a fuller and more adventurous tone to our weekend!

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.

I have always been very sensitive and intuitive. I am a hairdresser and a manicurist, so in my line of work, I am constantly touching people. If a customer has a pain, I will feel it for the next few days the same way they did. I was told I have healing hands, but instead of helping others, they seem to sicken me. How can I continue helping others without taking on their problems myself? Please help me.

Yasmeen

Susyn:

This is a very common experience of natural healers: we tend to become sponges for other people's problems, and take them on ourselves.

If you can work with gloves on, I recommend you wear them when you work on your clients. If that won't work for you, try using hand sanitizer after each appointment. Of course, we don't actually have to touch a person to absorb whatever is wrong with them, so taking the measures above should only be considered the first steps in protecting yourself.

The good news is that you can pass healing to other people without jeopardizing yourself. Ideally, you will want to use a ritual for spiritual protection before you go to work, one that will allow you to continue healing others but keep you from absorbing their energy. I like to visualize a clear, large bubble surrounding me before I work. This is similar to the one that Glinda, the good witch in The Wizard of Oz, traveled in.

I also recommend wearing protective stones and colors as you work on others. These are natural ways to keep others' energy from clinging to you. White, yellow and red are good colors to wear when you work on others. Earrings, rings or bracelets that have quartz crystals, amber stones or red gems such as rubies or garnets can also create a protective shield around you.

Next, you will need to practice higher awareness when dealing with clients who are in pain or emotional distress. Be aware that to heal them, you will be bringing their energy into your own body. Instead of holding on to their troubles, however, you will perform a ritual that removes these troubles from your own body or emotions as well as theirs.

Once you have finished with a client, take a few minutes to focus on the trouble they had and visualize it leaving your own body. This may take a little practice, but in time, you will be able to move the negative energy away from them, onto you, and then out into the atmosphere.

I support your desire to continue practicing with your healing gift. Once you have set up these protective measures, you should experience less stress and pain as a result of your sensitivity.

*****

Mata Maya

What you describe is very common; in fact, I experienced something similar as a new healer. When I prayed about the matter, I was led to a wise teacher who enlightened me; as a result of her teaching, I've become a much more powerful healer and haven't had a problem since.

While it's clear that you would also benefit from some training, I'm a bit hesitant to recommend it since most of the energy healing methods being taught are in my opinion fundamentally flawed.

Energy healing is simple and is something anyone can do. You don't need any special knowledge, mystical symbols, expensive attunements or secret codes. What you do need is a heart full of divine love and unwavering faith.

Many traditional methods teach you to look for problems to solve; since what we focus upon grows bigger, this is their first mistake. Further, healers are encouraged to connect with people with great empathy and compassion. While it may seem like this is the kind thing to do, it actually just draws you into their problems instead of empowering you to uplift and empower them.

As an energy healer, your job is not to figure out what needs fixing and how to fix it. Instead, your job is to embody perfect well-being and draw others into that high vibration. If you truly believe that all is well and everyone is experiencing whatever they need to experience in order to learn what they need to learn, then you can remain calm and full of faith regardless of what people may be suffering through. If you know without a doubt that death is not an end but rather the next stage in an endless journey, then you will be able to maintain a high, peaceful, faithful vibration even if the person you're healing is struggling with a life threatening disease.

To put it another way, if someone is lost in darkness, you could go into the darkness with them and stumble around, trying to help them feel their way out of it, or you could simply turn on the light. To be able to turn on the light, you must be in a state of radiant health and well-being on all levels yourself. Though many may disagree with me, if you're not there yet, you would be wise to focus on healing yourself before you undertake healing others.

Whether you are trying to heal others or just cut their hair, it is important that you learn to set your own tone. This way what you create in your life will come from within you instead of from outside influences. To do this, I highly recommend you study and work with the law of attraction.

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.