Once a month at Museflower during the full moon period, I hold a fire release ceremony as part of our vibrational healing wellness class. As mentioned in one of my previous blogs “7 Ways to Heal from Stress”, a fire release ceremony is a very powerful way to help us release what no longer serves us symbolically and energetically.
However, since the air pollution has been really bad at Chiang Rai with a lot of haze and smog, I decided to go with a water release ceremony this month.
My intuition has guided me to offer something similar before in a private intuitive healing session, but this would be my first time facilitating a water release ceremony as a group.
In my mind I could already envision how the water release ceremony would go, so I prepared the materials the night before and went to bed.
Next morning I went to setup in the pavilion to be ready for the water release ceremony. A, our yoga teacher, and our two guests were there to join the class today. I had my color markers, 3 baskets and towels ready. A helped me to setup the rest of the space.
Setting up with pavilion to be ready for the water release ceremony
I was excited for a couple reasons.
It was my very first class since my holiday last month. One guest who was joining the class was a repeater guest, and I was looking forward to reconnecting with her. It was also my first water release ceremony as a group and I was curious to see what would unfold.
After I shared an introduction of what we would do in today’s class, we went around the circle to share our names and intention for the ceremony. Then I guided everyone for a short visualization meditation to help ground and re-center our energy.
Everyone would have some time to journal afterwards to write down what they would like to release in the ceremony today. It could be any limiting beliefs, emotions, memories, attachments, habits, situations, people, or anything else that were no longer aligned with our Highest Self.
Then I asked everyone to pick some stones that were just lying in front of the meditation pavilion, and use the washable color markers provided to draw and paint on the stones.
I explained that for every topic that each person wrote down on what they wanted to release, they would draw that out on the stone in any colors they wanted.
The key was in the process of coloring the stones. Allow the feelings and emotions of each topic to come up and express them as colors and drawings.
As I began my own process, I felt like that I was picking stones that represented a part of me. I placed four stones in my basket and returned to the pavilion.
When I was coloring the stones and transferring my feelings and emotions onto them, it was almost like the stones came alive. I followed my feeling and took my time to slowly color each one.
I didn’t plan to but I ended up painting a skeleton face on one stone, and a one-eye monster face on the other. As I was doing so, at one point I felt like I was going to cry.
I felt like my inner monsters came alive, but they were not as scary as I thought. They were just parts of me that needed to be heard, that needed some tender loving care.
Coloring the stones as part of the release process felt different than writing what I wanted to release on a piece of paper and burning it in fire. Of course burning the paper is a very powerful way to release. But the stone has turned what I wanted to release into a three-dimensional object, something I could touch and feel with my hands.
When everyone finished decorating their stones, we headed to the Chi lake platform together. I shared the instructions first and everyone would go on to release their own stones in the lake silently.
I offered my first stone into the lake and it quickly disappeared into the water. Though I couldn’t see the stone anymore, I saw the fishes and insects in the water and it was interesting to imagine that my stone would now be washed (as the colors were washable), returned to its original form and home (as these were river stones), and stay in this big body of water with lots of other living organisms inside. It was a very different feeling than witnessing a piece of paper being burnt into ashes.
With water, there was flow. There was ripple. There was life.
Our Chi Lake platform where we went to release our stones
I wanted to hold onto my second stone a bit longer before I released it; it was the one with the skeleton face on it. Because of the uneven surface on the rock, it looked like there was a real eye on it.
I felt that was a part of me – an old part of me that needed to be let go now. It wasn’t anything bad or negative, it was just with the change of time, I was not the same person one month ago. And everything around me was not the same as one month ago, especially coming back from my holiday I could see things differently – more clearly with a pair of fresh new eyes metaphorically speaking.
I realized there were many limitations I imposed on myself because of the label I placed on myself subconsciously. I felt that I was not good enough, and I was scared to fail. I was scared of disappointing myself. I had a lot of ideas, but I often felt scared to act on my ideas and the guidance from my intuition, and to show them to the world.
I know that I would feel safer this way, keeping all my ideas to myself so I could never be judged by others. But to be honest, I also built up a lot of frustration within me – a frustration of wanting to do my own things but never got to do them.
I got good at being busy doing other things and taking care of other people’s needs, and I felt like I never had enough time or energy to do the things that I wanted to do for myself.
It was time to move on and to gain a new perspective, and by releasing this stone, it was a symbolic way for me to move on emotionally and energetically too. It was time for some parts of me to catch up with other parts of me to be on the same page again.
I wanted to wash the painting of the skeleton face off first before releasing the stone, so I did. The skeleton face was a sad face with tears, so I wanted to clean that off with water as part of my own release process.
I then dropped the stone into the water slowly and offered my gratitude to all the stones and to water for helping me in the water release ceremony today.
Everyone finished and we gathered back at the pavilion one more time in our circle to share our experience. We finished our class with a gratitude meditation and picking an oracle card.
I shared in the circle that it was interesting when one person in the group threw the stone far away, it would rock the whole platform that we were all sitting on. When that happened, I was reminded that we were all on the same boat indeed.
Besides the ripple that was created in the water from the stone, there was also a ripple effect that was being created on the platform with everyone. That’s why a group release ceremony is always more powerful than doing it by ourselves.
After the class was finished, I was cleaning up with A and I realized my phone cord adapter was broken. Speaking of release, the Universe already showed me something that I could discard right then – a cord (literally and metaphorically maybe?).
As I was leaving the pavilion, I almost stepped onto a lizard. Luckily I didn’t. The lizard didn’t even move or run away, it was just sitting on a stone. Perhaps it was another sign from the Universe…?
