Which direction of the Medicine Wheel are you standing in right now?
The Medicine Wheel is an ancient, living map found across lineages worldwide—from the First Nations and Native American teachings to the Mayans of Central America and our own Northern European Celtic wheel. It reminds us that your life moves in continuous spirals, not straight lines. Like energy itself, which physics tells us cannot be destroyed but only transformed, your well-being depends entirely on flow. As Sandra Ingerman often reminds us, we are part of nature, not separate from it; when you step onto the wheel, you remember how to dance in rhythm with the cosmos rather than fight the natural seasons of your life.
The Wheel provides an eagle's-eye perspective. It allows you to rise above the daily noise, look down at your human journey, and discern where your energy moves with ease—and where it is dammed up.
The Four Directions: Cycles of Your Soul
The East (Dawn, Spring, Fire): The place of birth, rising light, and fertile soil. This is where your fresh ideas ignite, dreams take root, and new ventures begin.
The South (Midday, Summer, Water): The season of passion, expansion, and outward play. Here you send out branches, test your personal power, and learn emotional flexibility.
The West (Dusk, Autumn, Earth): The season of harvest, maturity, and introspection. Your fruits are gathered, but the leaves must fall. It asks you for honest refinement—shedding what is complete to make space for what is essential.
The North (Midnight, Winter, Air): The sacred sanctuary of stillness, rest, and ancestral wisdom. It can arrive as a whisper or a fierce storm. Here, outward hustle ceases, the slate is wiped clean, and in the quiet dark, your soul dreams the future into being.
As Michael Harner brought to light in his pioneering work on core shamanism, indigenous mapping systems are fundamentally practical frameworks for accessing spirit and restoring personal wholeness. In the Toltec tradition, HeatherAsh Amara speaks of navigating these cycles not as rigid boxes, but as fluid rings of awareness that help clear out old conditioning.
Take a breath, scan your body, and locate where your spirit rests today:
Inquiry for the East
In Balance: Do you feel inspired, hopeful, and excited to take courageous creative leaps?
Out of Balance: Are you frozen in procrastination and self-doubt, or scattered across dozens of half-baked ideas without the discipline to root any of them?
Practice to Rebalance: Rise before dawn to watch the first light break over the horizon. Stand facing East, breathe the morning air deeply into your belly, light a candle, and commit entirely to just one small creative action before midday.
Plant Ally (Calendula / Marigold): Carrying the bright warmth of Grandfather Sun, Calendula lifts heavy spirits, soothes the inner child, and reassures you that a new dawn is always possible. She teaches you to bloom boldly even in lean soil, cleansing old emotional wounds and opening your heart to creative joy.
Inquiry for the South
In Balance: Are you actively playing, exploring, and leaning into your daily passions with heart?
Out of Balance: Are you operating in burnout and reaction, letting unhealed wounds dictate your choices, or clinging to exhausting commitments out of guilt?
Practice to Rebalance: Go to living water—a sea swim, a river dip, or a warm salt bath. Place one hand on your solar plexus and one on your heart, speak a loving, firm “no” to an obligation that drains your life force, and do something purely for unbridled play.
Plant Ally (Stinging Nettle): Nettle is the ally of your inner warrior, teaching you how to set fierce boundaries and stop scattering your energy across too many branches. Spiky yet deeply nourishing, she helps you shed victim mentality and transmutes exhaustion into grounded, resilient passion.
Inquiry for the West
In Balance: Can you look at your life with deep gratitude, acknowledging the fruits of your labour while gracefully letting expired roles die back?
Out of Balance: Are you stubbornly resisting change, terrified of ageing or letting go, or blaming others instead of claiming radical personal responsibility?
Practice to Rebalance: Step outside at dusk with a notebook. Write down three hard-won lessons you are grateful for, then write what you are ready to put down. Gather a fallen dry leaf or twig, blow that expired identity into it, and bury it in the earth with full trust in the soil's medicine.
Plant Ally (Red Clover): A master at clearing psychic static, Red Clover helps cleanse away emotional projections and collective stress so you remain anchored in your sovereign truth. She gently quiets the striving ego, bringing your energy down from overactive thoughts and into grounded, self-loving maturity.
Inquiry for the North
In Balance: Can you sit comfortably in silence, trusting the pause, dreaming deeply without the manic urge to produce?
Out of Balance: Are you trapped in cold isolation, numbing your grief, or paralysed by fear of the unknown?
Practice to Rebalance: Wrap yourself in a heavy blanket in an unlit room or beneath the night stars. Put away all devices, sit in uninterrupted quiet, and allow tears, heavy sighs, or stillness to move without rushing to fix anything; invite the ancestors to sit beside you in the dark.
Plant Ally (Hawthorn): Standing as a wise, ancient guardian across the winter landscape, Hawthorn weaves a protective psychic shield around your tenderest places. She holds the heart through deep grief and heartbreak, transforming cold fear into ancestral trust so you can rest safely in the sacred dark.
As Dr. Gabor Maté wisely reminds us, when we do not know how to say a conscious “no” to what drains us, our bodies and spirits will eventually say it for us. The Medicine Wheel is your mirror—revealing where that boundary must be drawn so your life force can return.
How to Work with Your Plant Allies
Integrating these herbal guardians into your daily life does not require elaborate ceremony—plants respond to simple, heartfelt invitation and focused intention. To invite their medicine into your energetic and physical field:
Mindful Infusions: Brew a simple cup of organic tea with your chosen herb. Before taking your first sip, hold the warm mug between your hands, breathe in the rising steam, and quietly invite the plant's consciousness to commune with yours. Ask it to illuminate where your energy is stagnant and to help shift your awareness into greater balance and alignment.
Vibrational Flower Essences: Flower essences capture the pure energetic blueprint and subtle frequency of a blossom. Taking three to four drops under your tongue or in a glass of spring water morning and evening weaves the plant's spiritual resonance directly into your subtle body, gently recalibrating stubborn emotional patterns without force.
Sacred Ritual Baths: Prepare a strong, rich infusion of your plant ally in a pot, strain it, and pour the fragrant liquid directly into a warm bath (or add several drops of flower essence). As you submerge, visualise the plant's living spirit washing through your skin and aura—cleansing away emotional residue, untangling psychic knots, and washing away the expired attachments holding you back from stepping boldly into the next quadrant of your Wheel.
Altar Offerings & Silent Sitting: Simply sit in meditation with an image of the plant, an altar bowl of the dried herb, an essence bottle, or where possible, sit with the living plant outside. All these actions will help you create an energetic connection, and the plants become your personal allies. Place a small offering—a pinch of sacred tobacco (mapacho), cornmeal, or a strand of your hair—at the plant's base in gratitude, and listen with your heart to the quiet medicine it reflects back to you.
Living the Medicine: My Turn in the West
Like you, I walk this wheel every day. After decades of branching out through herbalism, bodywork, hypnotherapy, and shamanism, I am currently sitting squarely in the Golden West.
Three years post-menopause, my calling is to prune back the branches, complete long-standing books, and distil thirty years of practice into lasting offerings. Living in the West means willingly lightening my physical load to make space for what comes next:
Becoming Custodians of Medicine Drums: For years, handcrafted drums have beaten at the centre of our circles. A curated collection of these sacred pieces is ready to leave my hearth. If you feel called to become the guardian of a medicine drum to anchor your own healing work, they are ready to meet their keepers. Explore the Sacred Medicine Drum Collection
Crafting Your Own Medicine Ally: If you feel the call to birth your own sacred tool, join us in Margate for the Autumn Equinox Sacred Rattle Making & Fire Ceremony Workshop. Crafting a rawhide rattle is an intimate initiation in calling back your personal power. Join the Autumn Equinox Workshop
Walking the Sacred Wheel in Community
If your inquiry today revealed that your compass is spinning—or if you feel ready to step into a grounded container to navigate these directions with mastery—the circle is waiting.
This October, we open the door for The Shaman's Way: A 13-Moon Journey in Margate.
Over thirteen moons, we walk the four directions, balance the Divine Feminine and Masculine, attune to the cosmos through Grandmother Moon and the star nations, and deepen kinship with plant spirits and Source energy. Shamanic practice clears away the conditioned paths laid out before you, restoring your sovereign capacity to author your own life.
We begin at the roots, sitting with the ancestors, and walking the seasons together so you can anchor permanently into the guidance of your own heart.
There are currently just two spaces remaining for this October circle.
Explore The Shaman's Way & Claim Your Place
Take a quiet breath, place both hands upon your chest, and listen: What season is your heart whispering to you today?
