Hello, lovely listeners, and welcome to the backyard. I'm your host, Nicole Verrios. And uh can I just say that my backyard let's not meet in the backyard today for multiple reasons. One is that it's very, very hot. And the other reason is that my backyard is a disaster, complete disaster. How about we like maybe we can come into my office today instead? Office magic? We're not gonna be in the backyard today. I have a pool. I know water shortage, desert, it is what it is. Try getting rid of a pool. If anybody knows uh a simple way to get rid of a pool, uh let me know. I haven't been able to come up with one. It's actually more work to get rid of a pool than it is to just have a pool. Um, yeah, it is what it is. Anyways, the filter on my pool cracked a couple weeks ago. We ordered a new one. It has not arrived yet. I don't know if it's coming via horseback or if it's being rowed across the Pacific Ocean, which side note, I cannot remember the girl's name, but there was a girl who just rode by herself from California to Hawaii and like broke all the world records for it, and I'm like so incredibly impressed by that. I'm like, is it is somebody rowing my filter across the Pacific Ocean? I don't know. It's taking forever. Anyways, when you don't have a filter on your pool, the pump doesn't run. When the pump doesn't run, as you can probably imagine, things get bad. Water is green, it's awful. I can't, I can't like look in the backyard right now. I just can't. The pool stresses me out so unbelievably much when it is not functioning the way it is supposed to, especially in the middle of summer, because that's like an outlet for me and my daughter. We utilize the pool as like a way to decompress and to like tame down some of the fire energy of the season, especially when you live in a very hot climate. So like having your filter crack in the middle of summer is like the worst thing, the worst timing. I'm like, could this not have happened in December? If it had happened in December, the water would not be green because like as the temperature gets hotter, the water temperature rises also, which means it's easier for things to grow in there if the water is not being properly treated, which it's not because the filter doesn't freaking work right now. Apparently, I needed to venture about that. So we are not going to be meeting up in the backyard today. We're gonna we're gonna meet in my office today, where I don't have to look at gross pool water. I don't have to wonder where in the world literally is my filter, and when is it going to be installed, and when can we get the water cleaned up so we can get back into the pool and I can go back into the backyard even though it's hot. If this is your first time tuning in, welcome and welcome to um the wonderful world of Nicole's rants and going off on tangents about pools and filters and horseback riding apparently and rowing. There was a lot in that whole little commentary. What is in my mug today? It's still just green tea. I've been on a green tea kick again. I feel like I made myself some herbs the other day. Did I make herbs the other day? Yeah, I did. I just made like a cup though, like just for that morning. I didn't make a big vat of it because I've just been wanting my green tea. I don't know. Maybe it's detoxing. I I go through these phases where I just like crave it. There's like something about the tea leaves. I don't really know. But that's what's in my mug, is green tea with my local honey. And I do have like a various um impressive cocktail of very, you know, different herbs and supplements that I'm not drinking, they're not in my mug, but I am taking them in pill and capsule form. But I don't uh this isn't gonna be like a supplement episode, so we can talk about that another time. If you guys want to learn more about herbs and supplements, and like how I'm using them on myself or how I prescribe them to people sometimes, let me know. Maybe I'll do an episode about that. Maybe it'll be like a bonus episode or something. Um, because you know, this is backyard magic, like everyday magic. Magic for wherever you are. I suppose herbs and like the what you can use them for could fall into that category, but yeah, this episode wasn't gonna be wasn't gonna be that because what I really wanted to talk about was um spiritual protection, which is I think uh a really important topic for many reasons, and I re-remember this every so often. So if you've been following the show, and granted, this is a newer show, I launched it in March. It's July now, so it's been it's been a season, literally, it's been a season, which is great. Hooray! I've been doing something consistently for a season. Any other manifestors out there um understand that this is a big deal and to like be doing something consistently. It must mean that it's fine. Otherwise, I wouldn't be showing up every week to do it. But for anybody who has been tuning in to the other, you know, my previous episodes, you've heard me talk about burnout and recovering from burnout and just not feeling your best. And I did a ritual several, was it a month ago? I I'm pretty sure I finished it whenever the blue moon was. That was May, was that May 31st? Yes, it was. The blue moon was in was in May. Okay, May 31st. So, and it's July now. Okay. So it's been over a month. Over a month since I did this like candle-burning ritual. It was like a multi-day thing. It culminated on the blue moon, like that was the last day that I like finished the spell at that point in time, and it was to help with burnout recovery. So it's been over a month since I finished that. This episode will loosely be like an update about that. So I've been going through like interesting emotional waves since then. I think at this point, I can happily report that I'm over the burnout. I think. Definitely over the burnout. Um, I'm also in like a higher part of my my cycle, so that helps. But even before when I was in the burnout, it didn't matter where I was in my cycle, I still felt just like I was walking through mud. So things have improved, which is great. And I came to realize recently through a series of events and being out in public around lots of people, that some of my um my habits and routines have completely fallen by the wayside for lots of reasons. Like, this is not going to be a beat myself up episode. I am well past the point in my life where I feel like I need to beat myself up that serves no purpose. I actively encourage all of you to not beat yourselves up over anything either. We're all about self-love here and accepting where you are in your journey and like just being okay with what is going on and what you may or may not have done, you know, habits that may or may not have fallen by the wayside that were benefiting you at some point. All this to say, I used to have a really solid spiritual protection practice, and we'll talk about what spiritual protection is in a minute, but I used to have a really solid practice, and just like through the course of burnout and life, motherhood, all that, and some other extenuating circumstances like um my jewelry breaking, which I will get into that too, my habits kind of just I stopped doing most of them, like they all just kind of fell by the wayside. And I'm trying to like think back to the timeline because I strongly suspect that a big part of the burnout is because I stopped doing a lot of my spiritual protection routines, and then yeah, that must have been it. Because I'm like, I feel like it all kind of began when one of my necklaces broke. That sounds so silly, but I wear a lot of rocks, they're kind of like my grounding anchor points, so I've I typically have a smokey court necklace that's on like um like a black cord, and I tuck it under my shirt. This is jewelry that I wear not for decoration. Like I don't I usually don't like wear it outside of my shirt so that you know everybody can see my pretty crystal. I tuck it inside because I want it to touch my skin. And that's it's it had become like part of my ritual every day. I would put my smokey quartz on, tuck it in, and then I would do a couple of other things, which I will get to, that kind of set the tone for my day, and then I would do like my brief little spiritual protection rituals before I would leave the house. And then it had to have been several months ago at this point. I feel like it was in the winter, maybe winter, uh February maybe, sometime around there, my smoky cords necklace broke, like the cord broke. I could not figure out how to fix it without it looking really, really weird. And like I'm I'm not a jeweler, even though it's literally just like a hunk of smokey cords with like a cord wrapped around it, but they had like carved a groove into the stone, and the cord like kind of lined into the groove, and like I just I could not figure out how to fix it. And then I I was already trending towards burnout by this point, so I just did not have the capacity or space to figure out how to fix this thing, and I I literally had it on my to-do list or my backlog, as we call it in the time management training that I did. I I had it on my backlog to either replace or fix my Smoky Quartz necklace for months, and then I just never did, I never got around to it, and I kind of feel like that was the downfall, was when my necklace broke. And it's interesting because whenever I have some sort of jewelry that I use as a means of protection, and if it breaks, I don't know. My interpretation of that is that it's done, it served its purpose, it's time to be retired or to find a new purpose in life. But its role of protecting me, it's done. Okay, like I I get that, and that's that's kind of the way that I think of things. So, anyways, my necklace breaks, and I never replaced it, and because of that, it it's like it was one simple routine putting on that necklace every day that was like the catalyst for a bunch of other little routines that helped me to just protect myself in my day-to-day life because I think we all need to be doing this, especially when you're sensitive, and especially when you, you know, touch people all day and you like do healing work on them, and just the intensity of the world right now. I feel like we all need to be grounded, protected, centered. And my necklace was like the catalyst for the routine. Like, I would put the necklace on and then I would do my other things in a specific order, and that was what I would do. And then at the end of the day, you know, I would take it off. Like that was part of the routine too, was like clearing everything from the day. So my necklace breaks, and I it's like everything, I just forgot about everything. But as it usually goes with me, when stuff like this happens, it's typically because I need to learn a lesson. And I think the the lesson for me is that I cannot be lax about this sort of thing. Because, you know, I've I've mentioned the burnout, excuse me. Mentioned the burnout, how big of an issue it was, and it was completely exacerbated by being in like really crowded situations. I I mentioned in my my singing episode or the the magic of song sound. I don't remember the name of the episode, it was a couple episodes back, sometime in May, I think, that I was gonna be going to Vegas to see no doubt. I did. It was so good. I'm so glad I got to go. That being said, Vegas, the strip, not my scene at all. I don't drink, I don't gamble, none of that is my bag. Like the the vibe in Vegas is just so weird, if anybody has ever been there. It's so, so weird. It's crazy. I have family there, which is a big part of why I went. I went to go see the concert and to visit family and to go to graduation. It's like it was great. I got to do a lot of really fun things, but I was also publicing, and I was publicing in places that I don't usually public, and I was doing it all without protection. I I wore a different necklace instead. I have a citrine necklace that I love, but it doesn't, I don't know, it doesn't like dull things or like kind of block things the way the smokey quartz does. So like I had the citrine necklace that I was wearing, it just didn't really hit the spot. So I I wasn't doing my routine of like blocking and shielding, you know, being on an airplane and then being at a massive venue with thousands of people and like high energy, and then you know, just the the ups and downs of family and graduations and all of that. So when I came home from that trip, this was a four-day trip. I wasn't there for very long at all. It took me weeks to feel like I was recovered from that. Weeks. Normally, it takes me about a week to recover from a trip. You know, like you gotta do your laundry and you have to like fig remember how to do life at home, you know, like figure out what you're gonna eat and all that. Like you get back into your routine, takes about a week. No, this trip took me weeks and weeks and weeks. There was also like as soon as we got back, my daughter was done with school, so she was suddenly on summer break. So there was just a lot going on at that point in time, and all of this just culminated into the perfect storm of like boom, burnout, like severe burnout. And if you listen to the other episodes, you you know you heard it, like you kind of witnessed the journey. And so I've just been laying low, recovering from all that. And the other day, it was the 4th of July, we went to um a fireworks show, and I won't tell you the whole story, but it was kind of funny, even though it wasn't funny for my daughter. It was like there was a popped balloon, uh, yeah, big overwhelming feelings, but it was it was a whole thing, but it was so crowded, so crowded at this thing that we went to. And like my daughter wasn't having a good time, my husband wasn't having a good time. Like, they my my husband especially didn't want to go to this thing at all because he knew that it was just gonna be loud and crowded and hot. And so I feel like he got all of his stress out before the event. And so, going into the event, I was like, No, it's gonna be great, we're all gonna have fun, or at least my daughter's gonna have fun, and that's the whole point. Like, it's for her, like it's not for the grown-ups, it's for her. And so we go, you know, shall series of events transpired, and my daughter had a big meltdown, understandably so, got extremely overwhelmed, did not have a good time at all, and when we were leaving, she was like, Mommy, can we just stay home next year? I was like, Yeah, we could stay home next year. So long as our pool is functioning and the filter isn't cracked, we can just be in the pool and like watch the neighbors light off fireworks, or we can get a projector to put outside and watch the Disneyland fireworks, you know, because nobody puts on a fireworks show like Disneyland. That's our plan for next year. So, anyways, the next day, Sunday, the day after the 4th of July, I was a hot mess. And I remember my husband was like, Are you okay? And I was like, No. I was like, I'm so emotional, but I have no reason to feel this way. And then I stopped for a minute and I was like, Oh my gosh, I am having empath overwhelm. I haven't talked a lot about this on the show because I'm far enough into my uh travels, my spiritual travels, mental, emotional travels, not physical. I haven't gone anywhere. My inner journeys that empath problems aren't really a thing anymore. They are kind of a thing of the past. And so my husband was like, I haven't heard you mention empath stuff in a long time. And I'm like, I know. I haven't felt this way in a long time. So I'm like, okay. Luckily, because I'm far enough along on my journey, I knew what to do. I was like, all right, I'm gonna go clear myself. Like, I gotta go get grounded, centered, all the things. I might do an episode about that too. Like, how do you thoroughly clear yourself? I I don't know. Maybe these need to be little mini classes that I do where I teach people this sort of thing, because I realize not everybody knows how to do this. Um, I certainly didn't when I was first realizing that it was a problem. And if you're not aware, when you're empathic, it's like you just kind of soak up the energy of other people. That's pretty much all that means. When you don't understand what's happening to you, you think that all of the big feelings that you have are yours, and then you think you're going crazy, and it it's a whole thing. Actually, this is why I started shamanic training, is because I was looking for a really good solution to help me with my empath problem so that I could keep doing community acupuncture, which is where you see like a ton of people in one day. Yeah, I very quickly realized empath overload. That being said, exposure therapy is good and you get used to it, you do kind of figure it out as you go, but it's helpful to have like routines and whatnot in place. Anyways, it's suffice to say, it's been a hot minute since I've like really felt empath overwhelm. And even my husband, he's like, I haven't heard you mention that in a long time. I'm like, I know, it's so weird. So while I was like in my room just clearing, meditating, getting back to myself, I realized it was from the Fourth of July event that I had been to the day before. And then I just felt completely silly because it all clicked as I'm clearing myself and getting centered and grounded, releasing all of the vibes from the previous day and like how crowded it was, and just how overwhelming and how loud. My poor daughter in the popped balloon. Um, what I realized is that I needed to get a new necklace. It was like very suddenly, I'm like, I gotta go to the rock shop, like immediately. I have to get a new smokey quartz or some other necklace that's calling to me. But I'm like, I have to have a rock that touches my chest, touches my skin, because that is like the catalyst for the whole routine. Because like once once the rock goes on, it's like I'm putting on armor, and this armors me for the whole day, and then it reminds me that I need to take a moment to ground and center myself to kind of put up a little energetic barrier. It's like it makes me aware to be mindful of what my energy is doing throughout the day, and it took this Fourth of July experience for me to remember that, and then I've so I've just kind of been reflecting like for how long this necklace has been broken for months, and I'm like, I haven't been doing a consistent grounding and shielding, like energy psychic protection practice in months for months, and I'm like, no wonder the burnout hit me so hard. Like, I'm I'm just sensitive, and I'm sure lots of you who are listening to this are sensitive too. By the way, I talk about human design. You guys should check out your human design charts. You you get the most accurate information if you know your exact birth time. Although, if you don't know your exact birth time, you'll you'll still get a pretty good read because you get this thing called a body graph, which is it's like a loose shape of a body with a bunch of uh nine different shapes in it. The shapes that are colored in are called defined, and the shapes that are white or left blank are undefined. So the more undefined, like not colored in shapes that you have, the I have found, the more sensitive you are, like the more sense like susceptible you will be to the energy of others around you. So there's nine, there's nine centers. I've got seven of them that are open. Seven. That's almost all of them. I only have two that are defined. And so I as I look at a lot of human design charts, it's like kind of become part of my practice. Like it helps me understand my clients better. So like I'll look at their charts because I want to see where are you open and where are you more solid in your power, like more less likely to be susceptible to others. Like it just helps me understand people and their symptoms and how I can best support them. And so I have to remind myself, I'm like, you have seven open centers. I'm like, you are an energy sponge, like you're going to be sensitive to energy. You have to be mindful. And funny, funny little side story. If anybody in the US, I don't know if this is national. Is Costco national or is it just in certain parts of the country? I don't know. For anybody who doesn't know, Costco is like a huge uh bulk place. But how do you describe Costco? You go to Costco when you want to buy like a giant vat of bitchin' sauce, or get like three dozen eggs. You know, like you you go there to like stock up on bulk items. And I don't go to Costco very often because it's big, it's overwhelming, there's always so many people there. The carts are gigantic, the shelves are like cathedral size, like it's just it's a huge, big, overwhelming place. I remember I studied abroad in China in 2017. I was in Shanghai. Huge, huge city. So, and you know, they're China just built like a billion people in China, like significantly more populated than the United States. And I remember like just getting used to being in China and like all of the people. Like, I I had to have pretty solid like grounding and shielding techniques while I was in China, especially because I was in Shanghai. And I remember when I got back from that trip, I had to go to Costco for something. I think it was for pictures, actually, because you could still get film or film, ha. Film. I still have a film camera, by the way. There is a dark room uh near my house that I could totally go to, and I just have to remember how to do it. Well, I got really sidetracked there. There's no film anymore. I was going to get my digital pictures printed when Costco still did that. And I think that was why I went there. Anyways, I just remember fresh off my trip from China, walking through Costco, and I looked around, and I remember how overwhelmed Costco used to make me feel, and I just started laughing like a crazy person walking through the giant aisles of Costco, cracking up, because I was like, I can't believe this place ever overwhelmed me, you know, like after being in China. And that was totally like exposure. Like I got used to being like that in China, and then you know, you get back here, you get back into your normal routine, and now Costco is overwhelming again. So that's just a funny, funny little side note that I needed to throw in there. But I guess the fact of the matter is when you have seven open centers, or even if you have any open centers, you're going to be you're going to be sensitive in some ways, you know. Um, I have yet to meet anybody who has all of the nine centers defined. My nephew has eight centers defined. So he is a stubborn little bull. Um, but he is sensitive. Like it's interesting. He's he's got one open center, but he is very, very sensitive. Anyways, I don't know why I went down the rabbit hole with that. Human design, it's a thing. Some people, you know, you just you're sensitive. When you're sensitive, you really, really need to be mindful about protecting your energy because there's just a lot. Other people, especially if you're in a crowded area, um, some people get sensitive to like events. I still notice this from time to time. Like, I'll get sensitive on like holidays. Um, like Mother's Day is a big one, um, Thanksgiving, definitely a big one. Well, there's a lot of reasons for that, but it's usually like big holidays, especially if they fall on a Sunday. I don't know what it is about Sundays. I used to call it the Sundays. If you guys have ever seen Office Space, you remember that old movie from like the late 90s? They called it having a case of the Mondays. I was always like, no, it's the Sundays. Like you have a case of the Sundays. I think it's because people are like dreading going back to work the next day. And so there's like this collective vibe of just sucky energy, like nobody wants to go to work, everybody's feeling depressed, and like when you're sensitive, you can kind of pick up on this, like on a big scale. It's like, oh, the whole city is feeling the Sundays. This is overwhelming. This is where protection magic comes in. Where you basically just you have to release the energy of others, all the energy that you're picking up on. You have to like find a way to clear it out of your field, and then you have to ground yourself in your own energy. That's pretty much the quick and dirty of it. Like it's a simple theory, like it's simple in theory. It's honestly simple in practice too. But if you're new to it, or if you've never really done it before, it takes a lot of effort and it takes time to remember it and to like do all the steps, and then you're like constantly having to hold your shield all the time. If this is you, like you're you're new to this process and you're figuring it out, I can tell you that it does get easier. It gets easier, it gets way faster, and you could do this in like no time at all, which is where the point that I'm at now, when I remember to do it, which is where I kind of got hung up because I I guess I felt uh what's that phrase? When I can't remember, there's a phrase for this. Like when you get so comfortable with something, you just kind of think you're indestructible or like untouchable. I I don't know, I kind of felt like I fell into that trap a little bit where I was like, meh, my necklace broke, it's no big deal, you know, like, and then I I wasn't taking my practice seriously, which I clearly discovered. Oh, you can't do that because then you have a day like Sunday where you're completely overwhelmed and you can't do anything because you like absorbed all this energy from a bunch of other people that you don't even know. So I'm like, oh yeah, reminder, you have to do this. Maybe this this would be a good thing to talk about on my podcast. So here we are protection magic. There's lots and lots of different ways you can go about protecting your own energy. You've already heard mine, well, you've heard part of mine. I've got my necklace. I put on my smoky quartz. That's usually step number one. And this is like as I'm leaving to get ready for for the day to like leave the house. Even if I'm not leaving the house, I'll still grab my smoky quartz and put it on. But that's kind of like step one. And from there, I do a really quick because I can do this quickly now. Um, if you're new to this, it might take you a little bit longer, but I do um a very brief meditation visualization, like the tree one. I don't know if you guys have ever done this before, where you um imagine the roots coming out of your feet and grounding you, but then I draw the energy up and imagine that my body is like a tree trunk, and then my head is like the branches going out into the sky, and I like kind of pull down the heavenly energy, is what they call it in Chinese medicine, and I bring that back down, I mix it with the earth energy, and then then I like push it out and like expand it into a bubble around me. It sounds complicated. Maybe, like I said, maybe sometime I will do an episode or like a little mini course where I actually teach this and slow down and do it, but I I can do it quickly at this point, so you know, I like put my little energy shield up, and then I've got an essential oil roller that I really love that a friend of mine made for me, and I put that on. I like I roll it on my wrists, on my neck. That's like I have all these acupuncture points. It goes on P6 on my wrists, it goes on gallbladder 20 on my neck, and it goes on kidney 27 on my chest. All the points serve a purpose. And if I'm going to be at work especially, I will put on my bracelets. I've got stone bracelets that I'll wear, and I kind of think of that as like my armor that helps to kind of keep the energy in my hands when I touch people, so that I don't like draw the energy back up into myself, if that makes any sense. And that seems to work for me. And that's that's pretty much like the quick and dirty, this is what I do every day sort of thing when I remember, which I've realized again, don't forget, you will regret it. So that's that's what I do. There's so many other things you can do. I've like I've learned so many different techniques for grounding, for shielding, for protecting yourself. Like you can call up mirrors, you can put up various different like energy fields. Um, there was a point in time where I was working with fire, like I would like put up a fire shield that anything that would try to get in would like get burned. Um, I've worked with thorns before, like putting thorns up. This is all like energy work and it's a lot of visualization. Um, I know not everybody can visualize, so you can kind of just feel what that would feel like to be protected by thorns or fire. There's so many, so many different ways to go about this. Um, qigong is also a really good one. Um, yoga can be really good because it helps get you grounded. It's basically like anything that gets you settled into your own energy field, grounds you, connects you to the earth, helps you remember the bridge that you are, you know, because man or humans, human, we are the bridge between the earth and heaven above, or the sky above, whatever terminology you want to work with. And it basically it helps to orient you with where you are in time and space, and it reminds you that your energy is yours, you are a sovereign being, and you are in control of what comes in and what doesn't come in. The point though is that you have to be mindful about it. Because if you're not, if you're, you know, if you do what I did and you just like slack off and forget, eventually, even if you're practiced in it, like energy will start to seep back in, and then it impacts you, and it starts to affect your life in not always positive ways. So it's it's important like to be mindful about your energy hygiene and your just spiritual wellness operating in the world, especially the the modern world. It's like so chaotic and overwhelming and overstimulating. Goodness gracious, is it overstimulating? I think we all just need to go take a trip to the trees and do some forest bathing. That's another another good way to help help with um grounding and shielding. You could you could use tree energy, like kind of like what I do, like the the tree meditation, but you could literally like use trees. If you have a tree in your yard, you can touch it. If you have plants in your house, you can like use the energy of the plants to help you with this. So many different ways. If you guys are interested in learning more about this, let me know. I will put my contact information in the show notes. But yeah, let me know. I could dive into this a lot more thoroughly. I just kind of wanted to briefly touch on it today to let partly as a reminder, a public reminder, to hold myself accountable, to make sure that I'm doing this consistently as I know that I should, because if I don't, things like it impacts my life and like in a domino effect, too. Like everything just kind of steadily collapses and falls apart. And I don't want that to be the case, so I I have to be mindful about this, and I'm choosing to be mindful about this. So here's my public accountability. But if anybody else wants to learn more about this, let me know. I'll figure out how to make that happen. But yeah, this this was kind of just like a PSA sort of episode, and like give you some ideas and to just bring your awareness to it too. Like, hey, if you're not already doing some sort of like uh protection magic or rituals on yourself, now's probably a good time to start. And it can look like whatever you want it to look like so long as it is works for you, and so long as you're being consistent with it, is really the thing. So that's all I got for you guys for today. Thank you so much for listening. And like I said, if you're new here, thank you. If you're enjoying the show, getting something out of it, I would love it if you would leave a review. Especially if you are listening on iTunes or Apple, whatever the purple one is when you have an iPhone. Apple Podcasts, I think that's what it is. Apple Podcasts. Yeah, reviews on Apple Podcasts would be great. Thank you again so much for listening. Have a great week. I will catch you guys next week. Bye.