salty bake club

Remembering Your Inner Magic

• sara grace • Season 1 • Episode 12

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Here is where you get in touch. Work with me, share your experience or requests > this is how to reach me. Love, - Sara

Have you ever felt disconnected from your body? That sense of living entirely in your head, caught in a cycle of productivity, discipline, and intellect? You're not alone. 

In this deeply personal episode, I explore how modern life has trapped many of us in what I call the "Athena mind" – that intellectual, wisdom-driven headspace that society rewards but that slowly distances us from our natural, magical selves. After years of building my yoga teaching practice and entrepreneurial skills, I realized that my dedication to discipline and growth had inadvertently pulled me away from the embodied wisdom and cyclical awareness that once guided me.

Spirituality isn't about crystals or chanting (though there's nothing wrong with either!) – it's about remembering our place within nature's patterns. It's recognizing, as Brené Brown beautifully states, "that we are all inextricably connected by something greater than us." That connection doesn't need a religious label to be powerful; it simply needs our attention and devotion.

I share practical ways to bridge this gap: how yoga reactivates neural pathways numbed by trauma, how simple daily rituals create touchpoints with our deeper selves, and how working with archetypes can mirror aspects of our psyche we've forgotten or repressed. My own ritual of reflecting on astrological archetypes during new and full moons became a profound mirror that helped me navigate years without a permanent home – and it's a practice I'm recommending and recommitting to now.

Join me on this journey back to your intrinsic nature. Whether you consider yourself spiritual or skeptical, there's magic in reconnecting with the animal wisdom your body already holds. What rituals might help you remember?

Speaker 1:

Welcome back, friends, to another episode of Salty Bake Club, and this week's episode is brought to you by my very smoky, dusty and a little bit sore voice, so please forgive me if the listening comfort is slightly different than usual. I also baked a cookie that, what I thought, matches my voice and the theme of this week's episode, and these are one of my favorite cookies. Now, it never happened before that many people wanted my recipe, so if you do want it, please write me. You get these fudgy brownie cookies with a slight walnut crunch and, as always, I'm sprinkling a little bit of sea salt on top.

Speaker 1:

This week, there are two major events happening that I want to speak about. First and foremost, my podcast couch has finally arrived. I have been looking for a couch from where to podcast from, looking for a couch from where to podcast from, for months, and this one suddenly appeared, and I got it yesterday and I was so freaking happy. So if you're listening to that, maybe head over to my Instagram or to YouTube, where you can watch this podcast episode on video. And having a podcast couch finally feels a little bit like having a home from where to speak to you guys. The only thing that's really missing now is a jingle. So if you have any clue how I could approach this, I'm so freaking grateful for any advice on how to make that musical intro for the podcast. But you know what, for the last few months and years I've really learned to not overly grasp to having every little detail in place, because if I would do that, this podcast would have not seen the light of day just yet, and our topic for the week also feels a little bit like home for me, because I want to gently nudge you towards the realm of spirituality, whether you're one of my YTT people and you have your own spiritual practices or you don't see yourself as a spiritual person at all. Let me be very clear. What I mean when I say I want to take you towards the world of spirituality is I want to bring you towards the world that we have forgotten. I want to unveil the connection to our cyclical nature. I promise you I will not get woohoo at all in this episode.

Speaker 1:

I really see spirituality as a connection to our animal body, the knowledge and the intrinsic actions that we have somehow forgotten along this modern lifestyle. Simply take a moment and appreciate all of the many patterns that you see in nature. I mean, how do birds know which direction to fly? How does a deer feel the weather change in their bones? There are so many things that our animal body knows, but we don't listen to it anymore, and I will simply assume that you who listens lives quite a modern life. Now, in this modern life, we usually turn towards innovation, we spend our time on our phones, thinking about how to up-level our career and, in short, we're very, very trapped in this cycle of improving a very plastic life that we have created as a society. Now, all I am saying is we collectively would certainly need a remembrance of our old ways of living.

Speaker 1:

My very favorite definition of spirituality is, as so often, from a Dr Brené Brown, and she says spirituality is recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected by something that is greater than us, and I don't care at all if you give that greater force a name like God, allah, like Shiva or Buddha. All I'm saying is that we have to remember that there's something that connects us, that there is a structure, a pattern behind nature, and that we are a part of nature. Whether we remember that or not, you are part of a whole and this greater force is driving you and you know I have been there where I forgot my magical, natural side. I have been there so many times in my life. Yes, I teach yoga and yes, I remember that magic for a living. And yet this complex and beautiful modern world is so well set up that even I find myself in times where I slightly lose connection and touch to that organic, natural side of me. I really want to call it magical side of me, and that has happened quite intensively over the past years.

Speaker 1:

If you listened to last week's episode, you know that I was on a retreat in Greece and this retreat has really shown me and given words to me of how I have, little by little, abandoned the rituals, the wide-eyed gaze into the sunlight, how I have become accustomed to the discipline, the hustle and the mind-based living. In the last two and a half years I have up-leveled my game in who I am as a yoga teacher and who I am as an entrepreneur. I have categorically worked on changing my moodiness into discipline. I have built habits and I have shifted a lot of patterns within myself that did not serve me. But what happened was that I also lost touch, this play with simply being, with the little joys of life, and I'm not saying that I did not have any joy in my life anymore. It was a really fulfilling time.

Speaker 1:

I only want to state that my presence would lie more in my mental space, my intellect, than in my body and my animal nature, and one of the facilitators of the retreat in Greece called that living in the Athena mind. Now, athena was the goddess of knowledge, of wisdom. She was literally born out of Zeus' head, so she's always described as something very heady and funny enough, she's also the favorite daughter of Zeus, which kind of relates to that. We do love both women and men who live in their heads, who are driven, who are factual. We in the society cherish and champion people who live in their Athena minds.

Speaker 1:

And let me tell you, in those two and a half years I have gotten so much praise for who I am, for who I grew into, for how I'm doing things, and that of course, creates a habit, creates a loop, because if we get praised by the ones we love, the ones we cherish, the outside world, our society, then we very much repeat that habit, that pattern, and I think many people get trapped in the cycle and, step by step, lose touch with their body, and I see so many people who feel a disconnect to their body, who do not embody themselves anymore. Just take a moment and think of the people in your life. How many are there who do not fully embody their body, who do not fully live and move through this world as one with their I'm going to refer to that again and again as their animal body, and I mean, you know, just look at how people walk. How many have so much tension in their body, like it's hideous. It's crazy that Our society thinks something is normal that makes us sick or that leaves us in a very, very one-sided way of living. If you relate to anything that I'm saying, then please know there is a way out, and I fiercely believe, if we want to heal this crazy world, this crazy batch of humans that we are fighting wars, thinking about ourselves, building bigger houses instead of growing more trees, then we have to get back in touch with nature, and nature is our body.

Speaker 1:

Now, the easiest step and the easiest tip that I could give everybody is do yoga. Yoga changes your relationship to your body. Yoga at best brings you back into your body. It's really mindful movement that re-engages some neural circuits, not only mentally, but also the connection between the neurons in your body and your brain. So the connection between your mind and your body gets cleared and cleansed and revitalized. Studies show that yoga lights up parts of your brain that get distorted or even numbed by trauma. This is nothing factual, this is just my opinion, but I do believe that what disconnects us from our bodies, from inhabiting our magical, intrinsical side, is trauma, whether that is capital G trauma and something really, really bad happened to you, or it's the lowercase trauma, the everyday trauma that all of us carry in our bodies.

Speaker 1:

Before I started telling you about what I would do to get out of this Athena mind, I should have probably also mentioned that it does require devotion. It does require for you to really do what is best, for you to make different decisions in your life, and that comes with a crazy and hard awareness that if we change something in our lives, we break out of a habit cycle. Right, we want to change something from the comfortable, repetitive patterns towards something unknown. Bake lab I'm back with different lighting, different outfit and approximately five cookies later. That was a little interruption. First my battery ran out, then my boyfriend's mom came over, then my mom swung by and we all had a nice little coffee chat and I'm trying to remember where I left, I think, all in all, I really want to say we gotta get more into our dark side, our dark chocolatey side, you know. Enjoy the pleasures of life without being bound to them. Deep dive into your body, your feelings, the sensations you notice in this life. And another way I was able to reconnect to that primordial magic is to follow rituals. And here's the thing about rituals they keep you in a loop. Oh my god, bake Club. Believe it or not, this was another interruption. My boyfriend just came home and now I'm recording the third take of this podcast episode. It's going to need a lot of cutting, but let's get back into it Now.

Speaker 1:

I was going to suggest that you implement ritual into your life. What do I mean by that? Imagine having some simple acts that you do over and over again, that are part of your routine, whether that is daily, weekly or monthly, which bring you back in touch to that side of you that you so often forget living this busy life out there. Having a ritual means immersing yourself in devotion. Now that ritual can be as easy as giving prayer, singing a song first thing when you wake up. My boyfriend, for example, lights an incense almost every morning in our house and it has become a ritual that changes the scent of our home. It created a different atmosphere and with that it changes how we show up in this home. So think about what rituals you can implement into your daily life. What is easy, but what can you do with a whole lot of devotion. And if you want to go a little further than that, here's another suggestion that I want to explain a little bit.

Speaker 1:

Back in the days when I was traveling a lot, when I didn't have a home, when I was fully immersed in my yoga practice but didn't feel very grounded because of the lack of a base, I literally survived. I stayed grounded because of my rituals, and these rituals were really bringing up and grounding a lot within me. These rituals were twice a month. I would sit down, whether that was on a morning or an evening, and I would confront myself with the present state of events outside and inside of me. Friends, we all need boxes. I know I'm a big advocate for opening boxes, for unboxing what is inside us, but, truth be told, in the complexity of life we are so often only able to function correctly if we have something to grasp. So we need a. So we need a form, we need a structure, and the structure that I used back then and that was for years, I used astrology.

Speaker 1:

Now, once again, I want to be really clear here. I'm not speaking newspaper astrology. I am not believing that next week I'm gonna receive a whole lot of money because I don't know the sun or cancer or whoever sits in a certain sign. But I do believe in archetypes, I do believe in our innate body wisdom that can be mirrored in these archetypes and I believe in learning from archetypes, because archetypes are universal experiences. So for the sake of this ritual, it doesn't freaking matter if you believe the stars or astrology has any impact on you at all, whether you believe that or not. That's a totally different discussion and not really relevant to what I'm offering here. What I'm saying is that in order to see yourself, you need a mirror.

Speaker 1:

Carl Gustav Jung very beautifully brought to our attention that the mythological figures that we know from tales from Greek mythology, from Hindu mythology, from Celtic mythology they very often put into words and into relationship what we could not grasp, what we wouldn't otherwise be able to see or witness that is going on within ourselves, witnessed that is going on within ourselves. So just imagine you are a fragmentation of many archetypes. They all live within you to a certain degree, to different intensities, differently charged. Some you really like, some you can live out there in the open, some you shoved down so that nobody else would see them. Now that's the beauty of this work Every month, on a new moon, sun and moon, which represent your masculine and your feminine, they sit in the same astrological sign.

Speaker 1:

Now, once again, I do believe that we are part of nature and the moon and the gravitational forces. They move the oceans. You are about 70% water, so it would be pretty foolish to say it doesn't move you at all. But for this discussion and for this ritual, it is totally irrelevant if you believe that you are impacted by a new moon, a full moon, by whatever sign the celestial beings sit in. If you, once or twice a month, so for a full moon or a full moon and a new moon, you take some time off your daily life, your hustle, your Athena mind, your very charged intellect and your research. You immerse yourself with that one specific archetype that is given in the sky. For example, if you're listening to this podcast, when it comes out Tuesday, wednesday, depending on where you are in the world, we experienced a new moon. On this new moon, the sun and the moon were both sitting in the sign of Cancer, and Cancer represents the mother, the nurturing side of you, the deep, wavy emotions, the crap. Also the shell and the armor that we build in this world. I want to repeat this over and over again. It doesn't fucking matter whether you believe this has an impact on you or not. It is so brilliant to take this natural occurrence in nature and reflect on your association with this archetype.

Speaker 1:

What do you nurture? A mother is something that gives life, even though the mother is a female archetype. Also, men have a motherly side, have that cancerian energy. What do you give life to? What do you nurture? What's those things that are deep emotional currents. Are you in touch with these currents? See, if we ask ourselves these questions, which are universal questions, if we ask ourselves these questions repeatedly, they will make us better, more aware, richer, more colorful humans. It certainly has an impact on us humans. It certainly has an impact on us because we choose to not only live unconsciously, being washed forth and back by the currents of life, but because we choose to look at them, to swim with them, to jump if we do want to, or to hold back and hide if it's necessary.

Speaker 1:

So that's the ritual that I'm suggesting, and I have done that for years, but in the past two and a half years I've kind of lost touch with it. So I do want to pick up that ritual myself again. So if you do that too, we're starting it off together. Now, if you do that once a month, let's say only for every new moon, when there is one sign, one archetype highlighted, If you learn about yourself and your relationship to that archetype on that very day, well, that is a ritual that will unravel some parts of your psyche, some parts of your mind, some parts of your body, relationship, trauma, things you have stuffed down. That's going to be a mirror that will grow you into a more aware and wholehearted human.

Speaker 1:

That is my quest for these next weeks, months, years. I want to stay in touch with my intrinsic nature, with that magical side that is always there but that isn't easily seen in the daily hustle of a Western life. Please write in if that resonates with you and if you would want me to share more on that, because in those many years before where I did that ritual, I have acquired quite some knowledge and some experience in that field. I'm not an expert, but I would love to share what I can with you if that resonates. So I very much hope that my own experience, ideas and struggles of dipping my toes back into the magical world inspire you to invite your mystical self back into your life.

Speaker 1:

Thank you so much for being here with me and I also really want to draw a bridge and say this podcast has found a home with this podcast couch on that freaking new moon which stands for a new cycle in cancer. That represents the mother, the home. So I'm really excited for the time ahead of us. I'll be tuning in every week now from this lovely couch. Again, text me if you want to have the recipe to these heavenly brownie cookies and I'm going to see you next week. Big club. Thank you, I love you.