Cape Breton Juniper
(Juniperus communis L.)
Indication: Body Image
For those who act out of low self esteem, embarrassment about personal appearance, or not liking some aspect of how they look.
Juniper is a shrub that can be found growing in both wild and tame places around the world. Yet I would hardly call this little beauty common. She is a spunky survivor and she does so with an air of quiet confident grace and soft green beauty.
The effects of body image on self-esteem can be powerful, especially during the teenage years. Although it’s perfectly normal to have negative thoughts and feelings towards yourself once in awhile, It's important to find ways to be positive and to build a healthy body image and positive self-esteem.
Feeling awkward and dissatisfied with the way you look or some aspect of your body will influence how the world sees you. It is true that we all look different. It is also true that we all think and feel differently and that very diversity is what contributes to our great and wonderful world and offers so much possibility for creativity, experience and healing on this Earth.
Harsh personal criticism of your looks or any other aspect of yourself makes you feel a sense of defeat before you even try and at its roots is a form of self loathing. If you were to truly see yourself through the eyes of others you would find out that most people are are paying little attention to your weight or hair color or other perceived “flaws”. All those hollywood images that are being displayed as perfect are no more real than Barbie dolls possess real figures. Plastic surgery, implants, dyed hair, capped teeth and airbrushed photos. It seems as one body part is “fixed” attention goes to obsess over another.
The Cape Breton Juniper is not afraid of who she is. She grows lush and low to the ground unabashedly proud to show off her “average” beauty. Her endowment to you is assuredness in who you are. She will help you to find your true self and the gifts that you have come to offer to others. Strengthening your sense of self image and self worth she smiles back from the image you see in the mirror. “You are much more than what you see here” she says. “You are the light in your eyes, you are the song in your heart and you are the strength of all of your dreams.” And this “you” is the transcendent and true real you that has come to Heal others and to Bless the Earth!
For me Cape Breton, Nova Scotia felt like returning home. The wild loneliness of her beaches steeped with colored rocks and littered with piles of driftwood, her formidable cliffs covered with the growth of clinging juniper, all these places met my heart like brothers and sisters shedding sweet tears at my return.
Juniper is widely distributed throughout the Northern Hemisphere and grows prolifically in the wild. Juniper has been found being used for medicinal purposes as far back as the second millennium BCE on an Egyptian papyrus.
The statements made regarding these products have not been evaluated by Food and Drug Administration. Theses products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. All information presented here is not meant as a substitute for or alternative to information from healthcare practitioners.
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copyright © 2010 by Merri Walters Great Lakes Sacred Essences sacredessences.com
