Making Malas: Companion Episode

Tatiana was my second guest as a launched my Abundant Parent workshops.  (Catch my other blog post with her workshop and links!) Knowing how much every child I’ve ever met LOVES stones, I knew I wanted to host a workshop discussing the meaning and healing behind all these stones.  I had met Tatiana by chance a year earlier and we connected immediately with our similar trips to Napal and Tibet and the ignition of a spiritual path. But she also funded her trip to Nepal by tying mala!  Mala is a beautiful craft meditative in both creating the stones beads into necklaces (or mala) but then also in their use to bring meditative rhythm to our thoughts and practices.  Tatiana used her incredible knowledge to help make a workshop that would bring stones, chakras and meditation all together in a basic understanding in how Mala can benefit families… all that, and she also showed us how to tie mala!!! Hand-tied Mala pictured with a book of spiritual Buddhist teachings. The writings and story of our current Dalai Lama played an integral part of my spiritual journey and understandings. Book Pictured The Dalai Lama: His Essential Wisdom Catch the Companion Podcast Here: Podcast: Play in new window Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Google Podcasts | Spotify | RSS When All Else Fails, We Turn to Faith and Trust So why was I so passionate about stones? It began in childhood. Like all children, I was drawn to them.  But when my mom was diagnosed with cancer when I was 7, I saw a shift in her.  She began to have faith in things she hadn’t prior.  While she was not anticipated to live, she also wasn’t giving up, and when friends would suggest strange mushroom and herb teas, acupuncture and crystals, she said “why not!”   It was definitely a point in her journey where she figured it couldn’t hurt, and in the practice of applying these tools to her life along side saying  affirmations, she also began to trust that they might actually be helping too.  After having her initial mastectomy, and while undergoing chemotherapy and radiation, my mom would take on the new habits her western doctors recommended through diet and pharmaceutical treatment, but also some energetic habits. She would lay on our sofa with a big beautiful clear crystal quarts in her hands and hold it against her chest while saying “I do not have cancer, nor will I ever have it again.” Chanting, crying, breathing, whispering, begging… and in time, believing.  Forces Out of Our Control Needless to say, this was a very impressionable age for me.  At a newly arrived