Nourishing Heart | Bath Ritual

“Rose flowers gladden the heart when it is burdened with stress, grief, overwork, and unpleasant emotions. Even just inhaling or looking at them imparts healing properties, helping you “stop and smell the roses.”

— Maria Noël Groves

Taking time to cleanse our hearts, it’s essential if we long to live a beautiful and fulfilling life. The heart, is such a remarkable power center, realize that when we let divine love seep into our hearts, we experience a greater capacity to love.

But also when we experience feelings of stress, anxiety, rage, and grief, it is our heart that attempts to process these hearty emotions. And if and when these emotions are ignored, they become stored and eventually a harbinger for imbalances and potentially serious illnesses.

When life thrust us into seemingly stressful situations, it is imperative that we both nurture and honor the space where we have found ourselves in. All the while, cultivating an awareness that we not get stuck or Velcro “ed” to these stressful emotional states.

In order to live with an open heart, we must invite the space of uncomfortableness into our lives — to sit with it, just as we would a friend in need of support. And through this willingness, the pain has a chance to begin spiraling through and finally out of our being, leaving us with a sense of softness and Grace.

Healing one’s body or one’s life challenges – or developing symbolic sight – requires daily practice and attention. “ — Caroline Myss

One beautiful way to lend support to the body, mind, and soul is through the energetics of water and plant botanicals. When we commit to spending 10 -20 minutes solely on nurturing our heart, we experience the transformative power and strength of the water + plants. They help to carry us through and to the other side of both large and small sorrows.

Warming + Strengthening Rose Bath

When choosing the roses, feel into the colors offered and choose the one that resonates with you.

Spend a few quiet minutes giving gratitude for the roses (considering, who may have grown them, how they have arrived into your hands, imagine each and every person who made this possible -continue to expand the gratitude toward Mother Earth, nature, and spirit).

Give thanks and blessings to the water, a commodity that we often take for granted. Now is the time to honor the water and all those who help to bring us safe water.

A dozen fresh eco-friendly roses, gently snap the rose bud off from stem, and sprinkle petals into warm water

1 quart strongly brewed Sweet Rose Tea

10 -15 drops of rose essential oil

Add crystals to the bath water (if you have them) preferable rose quartz

Soak in the bath for at least 10 minutes, let the rose petals swaddle you, feel how soft and velvety.

Release any hurt, anger or bitterness from the heart. Be courageous enough to let the heaviness go.

If it seems impossible to let go, close your eyes, take a nice full breath in, and ask to be shown the way toward letting go of these (no longer needed) emotions.

Imagine that there is an unseen spiritual heart, and it houses an infinite capacity — to hold the pain and sorrows of the world. Trust. Soften, Invite “your” heart to release into the all-pervading spiritual heart.

Spiritual and ritualistic baths are intended to be a soak, not a time for actual bathing. Some even suggest showing prior to a sacred bath. I say, follow your own inner knowing.

Sustainable Flowers can be purchased at most Trader Joe’s look for the ones that read, “organic or eco-friendly”.

Online check out California Organic Flower

For more Botanical Medicines for the heart: