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The Pink Melastoma flower, also known as wild Rhododendron, grows in northern Taiwan. We found it in a hot springs area, next to an icy river on Yangminshan mountain. This flower feels like a warm embrace. It expands your aura into greater warmth, compassion and gentleness. It helps you acknowledge and accept all parts of yourself, even your shame, anger and self-perceived limitations. It helps you welcome your own true inner nature, as well as the sticky, rocky, edgy aspects of your character. Embracing the challenging, irritable parts of ourselves with love speeds up resolution. Read more here!
As you work with Pink Melastoma this month, notice whenever you catch yourself feeling really uncomfortable, or tight or impatient; if there is any discomfort in your system. In that moment, stop what you’re doing, take a few minutes to yourself.
You’re going to give that part of you that is feeling irritable, upset, crunchy, grumpy, whatever that part of you is experiencing -- you’re going to give that part of you something nourishing.
It can even be as simple as taking a deep breath and breathing in compassion from Mother Nature, like washing your body in compassion. Just taking a few deep breaths and offer softness to that particular part of yourself that is experiencing discomfort.
This is a simple way to train ourselves to stop when something is energetically out of alignment. Rather than to just keep on going like we're used to, Pink Melastoma invites us to soften and welcome those parts of ourselves with understanding and compassion.
By being intentional when taking our flower essences, we remind ourselves, our guides and the universe what it is we want to embody. Choose one of the phrases below that most resonates, or make up your own! Every time you take your elixir, close your eyes and set your intention:
I welcome all parts of myself
I embrace all parts of myself with compassion
When I welcome all parts of myself, I am able to do the same with others
Compassionate love speeds up the resolution
I am perfectly imperfect
To take it one step further, as you take your elixir and set your intention, visualize everyone else in this program, all around the world, feeling light and free. By connecting with others in our group, we exponentially multiply the benefit + ripple effect!
Location: Heart 1 is located in the depression of the center of the axilla (armpit). Ren 14 is right on the upper belly - between the navel point and end of the sternum (breastbone).
Indications: Heart 1 is known as “Utmost Source” and connects us to the root of the spirit and the source of the fire element. These refer to the love that innately and divinely bathes every part of our lives - every cell in our body, our relationships, and everything in the world around us. When we are connected to this source, we feel the expansive presence of all-encompassing and unconditional love. It aligns the divine within and the divine without - as they are the same. It is helpful in times of panic, worry, melancholy, uncertainty or isolation
Ren 14 is known as the “Alarm Point” or often translated as “Great Deficiency” because it is such a deeply nourishing point. It is said to be one of the most nourishing points for the heart energy.
Heart 1 is like our balancer - we’re going to use that to help internal and external compassion and interconnectedness with the world. Ren 14 is going to make sure we have the resources to be able to do that effortlessly; that our cup is full, and we have that access to innate love & compassion.
Learn more about Erin’s work and book a 1:1 consultation with her here.
When do you feel ashamed of some part of yourself?
Which aspects of your character do you dislike?
Which parts of you are embarrassing if other people know?
When do you get angry or irritated with your limitations?
When do you turn toward yourself with compassion?
What happens when you welcome even the ugly parts of yourself?
Prefer to have a printed sheet with the writing prompts, exquisite practices + a calendar to track your month?
Download the Pink Melastoma Support Guide here.
Sit with all of the parts of yourself that you don’t like. If you notice any resistance or tension arising, breathe love & compassion into those areas.
Visualize your heart as a flower mandala and bring it to life. You can also draw, color or paint your heart mandala as you desire.
Channel what’s arising in the moment through a daily movement practice. It can be a dance, a series of poses or movements; let your body guide you. Take it to the next level by recording a video of yourself each day.
Write a love letter to yourself.
I will help you experience:
Use me when:
What I'll say this week is that this is by far one of the most powerful remedies for helping you understand that it's okay to be imperfect. And to give you this visceral, tangible sense in your body and your mind, and in your heart that, you know what? I'm not perfect, and it's okay.
So often we self criticize, we self judge, we get down on ourselves for making mistakes. We're not as perfect as we would like ourselves to be. And so this elixir really shows us in a more amplified magnetized way, magnified way of where our shortcomings are or where we set ourselves up to fail. Where we set ourselves up to self sabotage or to fall short of what these sort of invisible, unattainable perfection norms are.
So it kinda drags us through the mud a little bit in this sort of gritty down-to-earth sense of like, you know, I kind of see.. I visualize like that gorgeous Cuban woman with the cigar hanging out of her mouth, you know?
Or, you know, somebody kind of smoking a cigarette on the side of the road, changing their tire. They just had a popped tire and it's a hot day and sweat's rolling down their face and their back and you just like, this is life, right? This is me. I am perfectly imperfect.
You may notice that some kind of edgy, harsh, jarring aspects of yourself come to the forefront. You may notice that you're a little bit irritable, fierce, you're edgy. You might notice that arising and that you kind of are in a way becoming more at peace with those aspects of yourself, rather than like, let's smooth those out. Let's just be smooth.
No more smooth. It's like feeling the grit, right?
I'm feeling the like, errr, and then just like, aaahh, that's me and that's okay and I am imperfectly perfect. And I'm perfect just as I am and there's nothing I need to change or fix or solve. And in that sort of deep acceptance of those crunchy edgy parts, we can experience total healing and resolution.
So, the question for this week is:
Notice when you feel irritable, edgy, crunchy and then notice when you feel like.. It's almost like a healthy sort of defensiveness, right? You know, when you feel that defensiveness of like, well, I'm trying to think of how to articulate it. It's like a healthy defensiveness. It's like, you're defending yourself to yourself, right?
So, notice when you get that kind of crunchy, irritable, you see something that isn't perfect. And then notice the secondary reaction, which is like, and you know what, doggone it, I'm okay.
It's week two of Pink Melastoma and you may hear some pounding in the background. That is one of our doors being fixed here at the building. There's also a little dog to my right. And remember this flower elixir is about learning how to embrace the perfection in every moment, even when things are totally imperfect.
And so we thought it was totally in keeping with the flower elixir that there was lots of noise and things going on at the same time. And that's really the essence of this week's theme, is embracing the imperfection or what we would perceive as imperfection. And that sometimes we wait until the conditions are perfect right? Whatever that idyllic fantasy of perfect is.
We probably most likely in most cases don't even know what we're thinking is perfect but we'll put things off or we'll delay or we'll do it tomorrow or we'll do it later or maybe now's not the best time or I didn't have it planned, right? Because it's not perfect.
And actually what Pink Melastoma teaches us is it's totally perfect. Now is the time, the imperfect now is perfect.
Notice this week when you find yourself being more flexible and open to circumstances that arise in your environment; your surroundings, your life.
Maybe somebody spontaneously asked you to go and do something that you didn't have in your plan, that wasn't really a part of what you wanted to do today but then suddenly you just say, yeah of course, of course, I'll go with you to do this unusual and spontaneous thing.
Or plans may change and you may find that you are much more spontaneous in your behavior because there is this freedom from the conditions being set in perfect and as you were preparing for them. There's such freedom in things being imperfect and thrown together and kind of tossed together like a salad. And in fact, sometimes it's more perfect when it's just haphazardly tossed together.
So the question for this week is:
In what ways do you find yourself being open to the perfection and the imperfect moment and being more spontaneous?
There's another aspect of the Pink Melastoma elixir that's a little surprising. And that is, you know, in terms of this idea of there being an ideal time; an ideal perfection, an unexpected side effect from this dynamic would be around not feeling so responsible about how other people feel.
In a world where being PC and non-offensive is glorified we are all pretty entrenched in a collective consciousness where we're afraid to hurt people's feelings or we're worried about, are they happy or are the people around us are in our lives are they comfortable, are they uncomfortable. And oftentimes it's hard for us to sit with an experience of being with a loved one, a friend, a colleague, someone in our environment, if they're unhappy, right?
And particularly like this year, we're seeing a lot of our own fear of conflict. We put ourselves in situations where we either may or will or could encounter some sort of like public conflict even. And I think this goes really, really deep inside of us. It's like, this sense of not wanting someone else to feel uncomfortable and we feel responsible in some way, even if there's no way we can feel responsible for another person's mood, right?
We know intellectually that there's nothing we can do to actually make someone happy. You know, there's nothing that any other human being can do for me to make me happy, that's my job. My happiness is my inside job and your happiness is your inside job. And so we're not actually responsible for any of the mood states, the mood swings, the happiness, irritation, comfort discomfort of any other human being or other being for that matter on this planet. Different, you know, it's not, totally different from like, I'm not gonna feed my dog dinner tonight. Or, you know, the kid is totally hangry because he didn't have lunch.
Obviously there are situations in which we make ourselves responsible for the wellbeing of other beings. But in terms of happiness and how we respond to certain things in life is really other people's stuff, is not our business. And so one of the unexpected side effects of the Pink Melastoma elixir is as we release this idea that there is a perfection, that there is an ideal, we feel less apt to smooth over the rough edges. We're more able to look at our own jagged edges and our own edgy parts of ourselves as we are more open to experiencing all the different sort of rough, harsh, you know, unsavory, jarring aspects of ourselves.
As we're more open and welcoming to those aspects of ourself; we're more open and welcoming to other people experiencing harshness or irritation or discomfort. And we essentially become more comfortable with not only our own discomfort that dissolves and then we become more comfortable with other people around us experiencing discomfort.
We have less desire to smooth things over and make sure everybody's happy in every situation. We just put that down and we're more able to say, hmm, what is gonna make me happy right now? And I'm going to execute from that position because that's really not selfish. It's not selfish, it's more just like that's a point that I can make a decision from. I can operate from that position of, What's in my best interest right now? Okay, I'm gonna do that. And we really start to train ourselves that what is in my best interest is in everyone's best interest.
Me spending a lot of energy on worrying about How do I make this person happy? How do I please this person? How do I smooth over and soothe the irritation or discomfort of this person when we've just dropped that baggage and let everything be perfectly imperfect and jagged and rough and harsh and irritable and uncomfortable and whatever it may be and we just operate from a position of what is the best for me in this moment or the best for, you know, all the good of everyone in this moment. And then we execute from that position without fear or worry of how other people will respond or will they experience comfort or discomfort.
Out the window, no more smoothing over, let the jagged edges be there, let the cards fly and land and fall where they may and everything is gonna be okay. That is the essence of Pink Melastoma. What a relief, right?
So the question for this week is:
When are you noticing that you're more okay and at ease with speaking your truth, saying things like it is, setting boundaries, making choices, claiming, you know, stating what you're up to without worrying about how it will affect someone, without worrying about whether they'll experience discomfort without trying to please or make someone happy.
So as you know, with the Pink Melastoma flower, we are looking at these dualistic extremes of perfect and not perfect. So again, that is the theme, and I'm gonna keep coming back to that and trying to say it in different ways because there are several layers and levels of nuance to the complexity of this elixir is amazing. I absolutely love it.
Okay, so what I wanna talk about this week is that we have this deep-seated pattern that is unconscious, that we're not totally aware of, until we start working with Pink Melastoma, and it starts to show us another alternative to behavior.
I'm gonna give you a couple examples. It's like a very deep patterning that there's inherently something wrong with us, that there is inherently something not enough about us, that there is, you know, inherently something not perfect about us. That if it's off, it's wrong. It needs to be remedied. It needs to be fixed. It needs to be solved. It needs to be padded. It needs to be smoothed, right? That we might be too much.
I remember talking about this on one of the podcasts that just came out last week with Antoinette Beauchamp, and we talked about intuitive scheduling, but she also talked about having this, like, fear of being too much, right? Of being too joyful, of being too loud, of being too crazy. And that falls into line with this, you know, am I perfect? And oftentimes, we don't even know what is this structure or framework that we're holding on the inside of what perfection is.
And it's almost like we imprison ourselves in this framework of perfection that we don't even really understand until we work with Pink Melastoma, and we can kind of see the light peek in, and then we realize that we're in this cage and then we toss it off.
Here's another example. On Instagram, I saw a meme, quote, and I don't remember all of it, but the part that stuck with me is it was in language and how you express yourself. And they were saying, instead of saying, like, "Sorry, I'm late," that we could instead rephrase it and say, "Thank you so much for waiting." Because oftentimes, you know, especially in those situations where something really important happened, we needed to, like, save the dog from running out into the street, or when we needed to pick up the child and they were late from school, or we needed to poop, right? And if we didn't poop, it was, like, gonna be bad, right?
So, like, there are extenuating circumstances in life. Life is crazy. Life is chaotic. Life is imperfect. And you know what? We don't really mind if somebody is a couple minutes late to a meeting place, right? So let's drop this habit of, like, "Sorry, I'm so sorry. Oh, I'm sorry." Like, no more sorrys, right?
It's like standing with conviction behind what we value, and if something comes up, and I'm not saying be irresponsible, but if something comes up, then it's much more of this, like, "Thank you so much for waiting. I know you've been waiting here for me and this thing came up and I just had to deal with it." And not living in this prison of feeling inherently, like there is something erroneous about us, there's something wrong, we did bad, we're not enough, and we're not perfect. I hope this is making sense.
So this week, you just got another little, deeper dive look at what are those situations when you notice that you might be bending over backwards or that you may have previously worried about a particular situation or how someone would respond, and you're reframing, you're rewiring, repatterning, so that you as you are, showing up as you are, showing up with dirty, unkempt hair, or snoring dog, or loud children outside, or whatever the situation is, it's okay.
I remember earlier this week, I had a meeting with somebody really important on Zoom. And it was like the circumstances of the day, just like I didn't, couldn't get to the office on time, and I ended up just running out to my car and doing the Zoom meeting in the car, unshowered, looking a little crazy and wild. And I thought, "You know what? This is me. This is the authentic me."
And this is also kind of where Open Heart ties into. We paired Pink Melastoma with the Open Heart Mist because it's just also so good for being vulnerable, authentic, being yourself, being curious and open, and open hearted to everything that comes your way. Ichi is taking a nap next to me.
So looking at how are you more able and apt to just come to the table as you are, imperfect, wrong hair, wrong shirt, unironed, wrinkled, right? Just as you are. And that's not only enough. It's more than enough. It's powerful. It's you, right?
I was coming back from my trip from Sedona yesterday, and we were talking about this Irish family on Instagram. It's a mother, a father, a son, and two daughters, and they have over half a million followers and they just do all these totally silly things and dance around in their kitchen, and skits and wear wigs and just, like... They're so cute.
We can link to them in the email because they're just so funny. But you know, you look at a family like this and they're just absolutely being themselves, and they have over half a million followers. It's, like, that's what the world needs. The world needs you and all your imperfections and your messy hair and your unshowered self showing up, being totally you.
So the question for this week is:
When do you notice yourself breaking free from the prison that you've created for yourself? That we have all created for ourselves, subconsciously.
When do you notice these glimpses of light and notice yourself breaking free and experiencing more empowerment and authenticity in who you are and not feeling sorry for the choices that you make and in feeling that you have the sense of strength and purpose and contentment, that there are reasons for why you do the things that you do and how you are the way you are and that how you are is enough, and not just enough, but vast and huge and powerful and impactful.
Perfectly, imperfectly perfect.
