a-archives

S2E200 – The Drum of Midgard

Midgard is the middle world, the drum-skin stretched between chaos and order. When life feels scattered—too many tabs open in the mind—this episode offers a steady beat to gather yourself.

Begin by finding or making a drum: a real one, a tabletop, or your own chest. Tap a slow heartbeat—lub‑dub—and walk the room in a circle for three minutes. Movement plus rhythm tells the nervous system, “We are organized.”

Next, choose four beats to structure the day: Wake, Work, Nourish, Restore. Draw a circle and place them like compass points. Under each, write one concrete action that would make that beat true. Keep ambitions small enough to complete in one song’s time.

Third, the tangle-break: for ten minutes, alternate thirty seconds of drumming with thirty seconds of doing a single overdue task. Repeat ten times. The drum summons; the body answers. You will be surprised how much unties when you stop negotiating with avoidance.

Fourth, mark transitions with three breaths and three taps. End an email? Three taps. Close a meeting? Three taps. Train your attention to come home before it wanders to the next field.

Fifth, for seven days, keep a “beat ledger”: at night, note where you lost the beat and where you found it again. Confusion is not failure; it is a cue to return to center.

When overwhelm returns—as it will—place your palm on your chest and drum gently: “Middle world, hold me.” The point is not volume but steadiness. Life answers rhythm with rhythm.

Gather yourself by beat and breath. The circle is close; step inside it and let the drum remember you.

Today’s show sponsored by Trinity Road Websites.

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Be well my friends,

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#akulfhednar, #ulfhednar, #norse, #shaman, #alaska, #belysning, #oldways, #rhythm, #focus, #procrastination, #habits, #attention

Njörðr, lord of sea‑roads and harbors, sends the north wind to clear stale air from the heart. This is an episode for those suffocating under cluttered thoughts and decision fatigue. When every choice feels heavy and every room crowded, the north wind offers a salt‑bright reset.

First, open a window—literally. Stand there and breathe five slow cycles, imagining cold, briny air rinsing the mind. Say, “Fair wind, fair tide.”

Second, choose one corner of your life to declutter in twenty minutes: a bag, an inbox folder, a shelf. Set a bell or timer. Move like wind—swift, impersonal, grateful. Keep, release, or set to voyage (donate). Decision fatigue eases when choices are simplified by ritual pace.

Third, write a brief harbor log with three lines: Weather (mood), Draft (what weighs you), Bearing (the next small heading). Keep it to ten words each. The mind steadies when it has a heading, not a map.

Fourth, walk if you can beside water or, if not, pour a bowl and watch the surface. Whisper to the restlessness: “You want movement; I’ll give you direction.”

Fifth, appoint two wind‑days each week to repeat the twenty‑minute clearing and the three‑line log. Frequency matters more than force. Njörðr favors sailors who keep their kit tidy and their eyes on the horizon.

When shame about old messes rises, remember: ports exist because storms happen. You are allowed refuge, repair, and relaunch. The north wind’s purpose is not to scold but to carry you out where the stars can be seen again.

Let the wind clear a lane through your week. Lightness returns not by magic but by brisk, kind movement—choice by choice, draft by draft, toward open water.

Be well my friends,

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There is a path that begins in the soles of your feet and runs backward through time. The ancestors’ trail is not nostalgia; it is a medicine against loneliness and drift. In an age of glowing rooms and scrolling faces, many feel untethered—no clan, no kitchen table, no shoulder to lean on. Tonight we walk the trail to remember we are not self‑invented.

First, choose one kitchen memory—smell of bread, a song, a phrase an elder said. Write it down. If no memory comes, borrow one from the land you stand on: the river’s patience, the mountain’s spine. An ancestor can be a person, a place, a craft well kept.

Second, make a small altar with three simple things: a bowl of water, a piece of bread or salt, and a photo or symbol. Speak aloud the names you know. For those unknown, say, “To the kindly ones who carried me here.” Pour a little water; break a little bread. Reciprocity opens the trail.

Third, practice the kin‑breath: inhale four, hold two, exhale four, hold two, as though you were walking and pausing to listen. On the exhale, whisper, “With me.” The body learns presence by rhythm.

Fourth, extend your line forward. Who receives your care tomorrow—child, neighbor, passerby, your own future self? Do one small act that the elders would recognize as good: mend, share, sing, sweep. Belonging is a verb.

When grief for what was broken rises, sit with it. Place your palm on your back where a hand might rest. Say, “I am arrived.” Loneliness loosens when contact is imagined and then enacted.

For nine days, return to the altar for one minute. Add a name as it comes. The trail brightens with each step. You do not walk alone; you are the latest bead on a long cord, shining because others held the thread.

Be well my friends,

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Blood carries one history; breath carries another. Many of us come from mixed lines, torn archives, or stories spoken in whispers. When the papers fail, the land and the virtues still speak. Your ancestors are those whose love and labor made your being possible—and also those whose ways you choose to continue with integrity.

Begin with the known names, however few. Light a candle and speak them aloud. If there are gaps, say, “For those I do not know, I honor you.” Place a bowl of water and a small piece of bread or fruit; these are common languages across many traditions. Offer a single sentence of gratitude for the gift of life that reached you through imperfect hands.

Now listen for lineage through qualities, not only surnames. Who taught courage in your line? Who carried the work quietly, mended what was torn, fed the children first? Write three virtues you wish to inherit—truth-telling, hospitality, steadfastness—and make them your chosen ancestry. When you practice a virtue on purpose, you join the river of those who lived it before you.

For mixed heritage, hold the strands without forcing them to blend. You are not required to flatten difference to belong. Learn enough of each line to be respectful: how they prayed, how they greeted the day, how they marked grief and joy. Ask living elders for stories, not proofs. A true story is a map; a proof is a fence.

Where harm exists in your line, do not carry it forward. Name it. Choose repair where repair is possible and boundary where it is not. Light another candle and say, “What began in pain ends in my hands.” Then act: apologize, donate, volunteer, or change a habit that repeats the wound. This is lineage work also.

At the end, take your bowl of water to the threshold. Pour a little outside with thanks to the old ones and a little inside with thanks to the living. Stand between and feel the currents meet within you. You are not a broken branch; you are a graft that can bear good fruit.

Be well my friends,

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Frith is the old word for woven peace—the warmth of a hearth that makes a room safe enough for truth. In families and teams frayed by sharp words and silent distance, this episode gathers embers and teaches how to tend them back into flame.

First, we build a simple hearth-rite. Place a bowl (the hearth), a candle (the flame), and a small woven thing—a coaster, scarf, or even crossed string (the bond). Light the candle and say, “We heat this house to soften speech.”

Second, practice the ember-breath: inhale for four, exhale for four, eyes half‑lidded as if watching coals. Let the shoulders drop. The body learns peace before the mouth does.

Third, set a “two-logs rule” for hard talks: one log of appreciation, one of clear request. Speak appreciation first in one sentence; then speak the request in one sentence without blame. Frith grows when clarity is warm.

Fourth, choose a weekly “mending hour.” Bring tea, mend a sock, fix a hinge, pay a bill. While hands mend, ask one gentle question: “What made your day heavy or light?” Listening while doing keeps sparks from flaring.

Fifth, establish a truce gesture—a palm on the table or a small bell. When tempers rise, anyone may use it. Pause, breathe embers, return when steady. This is not avoidance; it is tending the fire so it does not scorch the house.

Finally, close the day by extinguishing the candle together and saying, “Heat remains.” Frith is cumulative; each small tending thickens the weave until even difficult truths can be laid upon it without tearing.

Peace is not passive. It is a craft practiced at a hearth you choose to keep. Begin with a candle, a breath, and two honest sentences.

Today’s show sponsored by EBookers Ireland.

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—

Be well my friends,

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#akulfhednar, #ulfhednar, #norse, #shaman, #alaska, #belysning, #oldways, #mythicpractice, #nervoussystem, #ritual, #mindfulbreath, #resilience

Jera, the harvest rune, turns like two sickles chasing each other across the year. In autumn it teaches the weary heart what our hurried age forgets: growth ripens by seasons, not by panic. This episode gathers those who feel behind—burned out, scrolling through other people’s milestones, measuring worth by speed. Jera offers a steadier calendar.

Begin by naming your field. What are you cultivating—sobriety, trust, a skill, a home? Write it at the top of a page. Beneath it, draw the Jera rune: two hooked crescents revolving. Mark four quarters around it—sow, tend, reap, rest. Place your current life in its rightful quarter. If it is sowing time, stop demanding harvest. If it is resting time, stop calling yourself lazy. Rhythm is medicine.

Next, choose one sowing act (fifteen minutes), one tending act (maintenance you avoid), and one resting act (recovery that isn’t a screen). Stack them like a small braid each day for two weeks. Jera works by humble repetition. Burnout eases when effort is braided with rest.

Go outside and collect three autumn things: a leaf, a seed, a remnant stalk. Name them “what I’m releasing,” “what I’m planting,” and “what still sustains me.” Set them where you’ll see them. Let the room keep time with the land.

When envy rises—an old thief—touch the rune and say, “Their field is not my weather.” We do not harvest at the same hour or under the same sky. Jera is justice by seasons: each gets a turn.

Finally, close the day with the harvest breath: inhale for count of five, exhale for five, nine cycles, while listing what was sown, tended, reaped, and how you rested. You will notice: even quiet days offer grain if you look for it.

The autumn rune does not hurry you; it dignifies you. You are not late. You are ripening. Trust the wheel, and let the season teach you when to place your hands on the plow and when to set it down.

Be well my friends,

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In the old north, Hel is not a villain but a keeper of thresholds—the quiet hand that steadies us when we meet what cannot be changed. Tonight we walk her road to face a modern affliction: the dread of endings—breakups, lost work, illness, the slow wintering of a dream. Anxiety urges flight from the dark. Hel teaches us to sit with it until our eyes adjust.

First, name what is ending. Speak it without embroidery or apology. The ancients knew an unnamed thing becomes a noisy ghost. Say it plainly: this chapter is closed; this person is gone; this version of me is finished. Feel how the breath loosens as truth lands.

Second, practice the Hel-breath: in through the nose for four heartbeats, out through the mouth for six, as if fogging winter air. On the long exhale, picture frost clarifying a windowpane. The extended out-breath signals safety; the body learns the ground will hold.

Third, light a small candle and ask three questions Hel loves:

1) What is truly dead and deserves burial?

2) What is only sleeping and needs time?

3) What is trying to be born from this ending?

Write the answers without judgment. Grief and growth are siblings; both sit at Hel’s table.

Fourth, take a threshold walk. Find a doorway, a bridge, the line where stone meets water. Step across and back three times, naming what you leave and what you carry. Ritual gives the nervous system markers; the body believes what the feet rehearse.

When memory rises like cold fog, place one hand on chest and one on belly—the Hel-rope that anchors breath to heartbeat. Whisper, “I can be with this.” Shame loses power when met with companionship. You are not alone; ancestors who survived harsher winters keep pace beside you.

Finally, make a covenant: for nine nights, tend one small living thing—water a plant, clear a drawer, write a letter you do not send. Hel honors those who feed life while grieving the dead. Anxiety starves when life is nourished in steady, faithful portions.

The secret of Hel is not morbid but merciful. Endings are doors. Sit in the dim long enough, and you’ll notice: the dark is fertile, and your eyes remember how to see.

Be Well my Friends,

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