Summer Soul Makeover

Summer is the perfect time of year to enhance your soul. The nourishing aspects of the season’s warmth, long hours and beauty can inspire a spiritual connection to everyday activities. Plus, you can enjoy vacation days or personal time off to make time for some soul-stirring activities you’ve had on your to-do list for far too long.

Passport to enlightenment
If you find yourself dealing with summer’s wanderlust, a past-life regression workshop or psychic reading might be the journey you’re looking for. Self-exploration can take you down many roads as you learn more about the karma you have accumulated during your past life experiences. We sometimes carry energetic blocks in our spiritual bodies, and these hold us back in this life. Pave the way for a more fulfilling future by washing away your karmic blocks and moving toward spiritual enlightenment.

Pause and breathe
If meditation is more your cup of tea, enhance your concentration by doing a sun-up session. Feeling the morning rays on your face will set your biorhythms firing off at optimum capacity, and enhance your concentration – allowing you to set your intentions for the day, and giving you the energy to follow through. You can add in an evening sunset meditation as well, to focus more on relaxation and gratitude. Practicing your lotus position in a summer garden may provide aromatherapy benefits, if you’ve got summer blooms in your area.

Fair-weather celebrations
The vibrations of music have been used to transcend the earthly plane since the dawn of humankind – if you play an instrument, dust it off and make a joyful noise. If you prefer a group activity, the warm evenings of summer encourage spiritually charged meet-ups – such as drum circles, chanting circles or even concerts in the park – or even better, summer music events or street festivals. Check the bulletin board at your community bookstore or natural food co-op, or go online to retrieve a calendar of events in your area.

Open up
Take advantage of the warm weather and find a yoga or Tai Chi class held in a park, at the ocean or in someone’s beautiful garden. Whether on a soft grassy lawn or by the water’s edge, these gentle forms of exercise will stimulate your spiritual side through meditative movements. You may only spend 30 minutes working out, but you’ll be practicing under the sky – not within four walls.

Flex it
Relax and heal your body with reflexology, which uses pressure on the feet to relax the entire body. Such treatments are less costly than traditional massages, and provide many of the same benefits. Keeping your body’s energetic meridians free of toxins and stress will allow you to transition more easily from sole to soul.

Honor thy mother
Getting your hands into the soil of a community garden or your own backyard is a spiritually grounding activity that will yield a bountiful harvest. If you feel like practicing some visualization, the garden is a great place to begin. You can visualize planting your intentions along with your annuals – and watch them flourish. Of course, planting a vegetable garden will nourish your body, as well.

If you don’t enjoy planting and sowing, you can still reap the grounding benefits of Mother Earth. Enjoy a hike at a local nature preserve, or a walk along the paths in a botanical garden. Join others to clean up a state beach and help keep our coasts litter-free. If you’re fortunate enough to live near a Native American reservation, go for a visit and learn more about the spiritual heritage of our first citizens.

Whether you choose to bow to the higher self within or look to nature for inspiration, choosing to recognize the spirituality present in these everyday activities keeps us connected to our spiritual core, which ultimately leads to a better life. Each step that we take on the path brings us one step closer to our true (and joyful!) spiritual nature.