All posts by Kirsten Cowart

Kirsten is a writer who loves to practice vipassana meditation, yoga, travel, and learning about nature, consciousness, and how to make the world a better place. Her current interests involve studying and practicing flow, staying In Flow, and recognizing the natural flow of the universe. Kirsten loves to learn about the holistic healing arts. She is also interested in ancient cultures and practices such as Druidism. Kirsten is honored to be apart of such an incredible movement of love and heart centered living in this world.

Tarot 101: How To Read Tarot Cards Using Your Intuition

Tarot card reading can be a fun and revealing activity to add to your life. It’s a great way to entertain guests at parties, or simply to find some spiritual meaning in your own life. Not to mention, it’s a pretty cool skill to have in your repertoire.

Check out these beginner’s guide for Tarot card reading.

Step One: Keep it simpleshutterstock_208828732

It’s easy to get lost in the complex and mysterious systems that make up the Tarot. If you try to learn all of the systems at once, you’re likely to become overwhelmed.

Make a commitment to yourself to keep it simple and manageable.

You can achieve this by sticking to simple spreads, simple meanings, and simple techniques. As time goes on, your confidence will grow, and so will your readings.

Step Two: Personal Connection

Trying to memorize every single Tarot card and symbol can be a daunting and relentless task. There are dozens upon dozens of Tarot card books detailing the meaning behind specific cards.shutterstock_282838805

Asking your mind to take all that in, in such a short period of time acts similarly to a late night cram study session. You remember the information for a short period of time, but in the long run you find yourself drawing a blank.

 Creating a personal or intuitive connection with the cards is imperative when starting out with Tarot cards. Look to your everyday life for personal examples of the Tarot cards. What card best describes your day today? What card represents your best friend? Make it as personal as you can. Continue reading

The Science of Clouds: How to Tell What Weather is Coming Your Way Based on The Sky

Let’s face it, when we want to know what to wear we flip on the TV, or swipe open our phones and check the latest weather update. Predicting weather through cloud formations is pretty much a lost art. I’m sure we have all looked at the sky at one point or another and found a fluffy bunny rabbit, or unicorn, but have you ever looked behind their shape?

Not many of us do. In fact, not many of us can differentiate between types of clouds, which could help us predict the coming forecast. Fortunately, being able to predict the weather is easier than one may think. Take a look at the categorizations below for some information to get you started.

Categorization:shutterstock_133098281

Clouds can easily be broken into four categories; high clouds, middle clouds, low clouds and clouds with vertical growth.

Clouds are also identified by shape. Not so much ice cream cones, or dinosaurs, but more so a heap of clouds often referred to as cumulus clouds. Stratus refers to clouds that are long and streaky.

And nimbus refers to the shape of “rain” because we all know what rain looks like.

High clouds

shutterstock_193491221High clouds form at 16,000 – 43,000 feet. They are the clouds that you encounter on the top of really high mountains, or on an airplane.

Due to the extreme conditions at which they form, they tend to be comprised primarily of ice crystals. High clouds do not block sunlight. High clouds include: Continue reading

5 Ancient Survival Techniques Our Ancestors Used That Everyone Should Know

As we have evolved as a species, so has our understanding of the world around us, and our relationship to it. Through building cities, and developing technologies that can tell us where we are, look up any piece of information, or connect us to another person, all in an instant, our brains have learned to process information completely differently to how they used to.

shutterstock_391535467Our ancient ancestors used the land around them to survive, they communicated with the Earth, looking for signs to lead them to the tools necessary for furthering their survival. These signs continue to exist today, but our sensitivity to them has dulled, we have forgotten what to look for, sometimes even where logic dictates.

Here, we look at four core survival priorities and how, millennia ago, our ancestors secured each of them, ensuring survival. They are listed in order of importance, which is your first survival lesson: shelter, water, fire, food. By properly prioritizing your needs, you increase your chances of survival.

Just as early humans listened to their predecessors, learning from their stories and experiences, we can now learn from them how best to harness nature’s power and improve our chances of survival, should we ever find ourselves stranded in the wilderness.

Shelter

Screen Shot 2016-07-08 at 1.56.26 PMShelter is the most important of the four core survival essentials. Exposure can kill you much faster than dehydration or hunger; hypothermia can kill in just hours, whereas dehydration takes a few days. It is an animal instinct to seek shelter, and early humans would build bases in locations dependent on a variety of factors. Continue reading

Why Your Mind Shouldn’t Be Going “Blank” During Meditation

The most common understanding of meditation is this idea that you should “empty your mind”, a phrase used time and again in modern discussions of meditation, but it is actually totally wrong, and a common misconception of what it means to meditate.

In fact, if you’ve ever felt disheartened that you couldn’t make your mind go blank, you weren’t actually doing anything wrong. Here we delve into what should actually happen when you meditate, and why your mind shouldn’t be going blank.

Understanding EmptinessScreen Shot 2016-07-08 at 1.46.00 PM

Firstly we need to distinguish the difference between ‘making the mind blank’ and ‘not thinking’ and how this applies to meditation. These are actually very different from each other, but it’s understandable if you automatically link the two, seeing as our everyday existence is experienced via our own thoughts.

Even as you read this sentence, your understanding of it and the concept it is explaining is through your own inner-voice.

Meditation is precisely an escape from this kind of thought; silencing the verbalization of thoughts, feelings, or emotions, and replacing it with experiencing these in their purest, rawest forms. You empty your mind of the filters through which it interprets the world, rather than the thoughts themselves. You can therefore stop thinking, but your mind is far from blank or empty. Continue reading

Secrets Within The Flames: What Pyromancy can Reveal About Your Future

Fortune telling by looking into a fire, known as pyromancy, has been long celebrated as an effective and enlightening psychic reading method. Used to make important decisions pertaining to love, life and health, Pyromancy is the art and practice of divination by fire.

Practiced since the Neolithic times – potentially dating back as far as fire’s advent – pyromancy uses the interpretation of color, shape, and intensity to predict future events.

While pyromancy is traditionally performed by experts to interpret deeper connotations and meanings embedded in the flames and smoke to make logic of it, thanks to these four renowned methods, you can effectively read divinations in the comforts of your home.

Submit yourself to the process, allowing images and symbols to come to you in an appropriate time. Never rush yourself; effusively submerge into pyromancy in order to reap its benefits. Only when you ask genuine questions and believe in the power of this psychic reading will you reach certain ends.

Candles

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For candle readings, it is important to perform the ritual in a room not usually subject to drafts or gusts of wind. In addition, readings are more effective during the night in dim lighting with white candles. Continue reading

How To Cleanse your Kidney With This Delicious Watermelon Seed Tea

Instead of throwing away your watermelon seeds this summer save them and try this healing tea! While some people will just swallow their watermelon due to laziness or just wanting to add some fiber to their diet there is actually a better way to pull out a lot of healing benefits from these little seeds.

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Watermelon seeds have awesome antioxidant properties that can reduce aging, are rich in citrulline, helps again parasites, inflammation, and jaundice.

If you are dealing with high blood pressure and need something to help dilate the blood vessels then you should try watermelon seeds.

All you need to do is gather the seeds up, cook or roast them and then grind them up to extract their incredible healing power.

For around 100 years watermelon seeds have been seen by American scientists as a good treatment for kidney diseases and even urinary tract infections.

When you turn it into a tea, though, it can be a great diuretic to reduce water retention and aid the kidneys in cleansing your system. Continue reading