Crystal Energy, Chakras and Auras Explained

Happy Tuesday, friends! We have had a very busy week here in the hive, with the launching of our IG shop (@homeinthehive_shop if you wanna check it out!) and the announcement for our new Inspirational Workshops project, with the first one coming up on Thursday. We are also hosting our first official giveaway through IG this week and would love for you to check it out if you haven't already! (@homeinthehive #hivegiveaway.) Woo hoo! Busy bees, indeed. As always we are overflowing with gratitude for the support and love we have found through this community. Thank you, friends!

Oscar and I have been doing extensive research and lots of hands-on learning lately, with regards to crystal healing and all the amazing interactions that can occur between the elements of nature and our physical bodies. It's amazing how science and technology are now proving what so many have felt and known for centuries, that we are completely and undeniably connected to everything around us, everything contains a frequency of energy that can either uplift or lower our beings. There is so much to digest when it comes to comprehending this type of information, but once you do, it really just all starts to "click". This video portrays a very amazing and easy-to-understand message regarding how crystals, chakras and energy frequencies work. We were SO happy to find it and we hope you enjoy it as much as we do!

If you are interested in crystal healing, please be sure to check out what we have to offer in our Etsy shop! http://www.etsy.com/shop/homeinthehive

That's all for now, folks. Hope you feel inspired and encouraged to go connect with the land around you! Sending lots of love and high vibes from our hive to yours.

You're Invited To Gather In The Hive!

Hello and happy Friday! We are so excited to be writing this announcement for the newest stage of evolution in our family's plans and visions for Home In The Hive. For the past year we have watched in wonder and amazement as our online community has blossomed and bloomed, providing such wonderful fruits of community and support for all of us to learn from and enjoy. Time and time again we have witnessed the power of this collective coming together to nourish and love one another through our journeys of pregnancy, birth, spiritual growth, raising a home, and all aspects of life. It's been so beautiful to be part of creating such a space of communal inspiration! Lately we've been talking a lot about the importance and necessity of community and our desires to connect with this online realm in deeper and more tangible ways, going beyond the platforms of our blog and Instagram. We wish we could invite each of you into our home to share a meal and a conversation, but since that is not currently a feasible option, we are aiming to get as close as we can with our new intention! 

Each week we are privileged to be in contact with families and individuals from all across the globe and each week we are given the opportunity to pour our love and energy into answering questions and being a resource and support in all the ways we can, but we want to do more! After a few days of deep meditation and receiving inspiration from some very close friends, we are so excited to announce that we are going to start hosting inspirational workshops here in the hive, that all of you will be invited to attend and participate in! In order to streamline information and make more significant connections with you, our online family, we are going to be facilitating conference call inspirational workshops where everyone will have a chance to tune in and hear a message from us, as well as have time for input, feedback, questions and answers. We have seen what the power of this collective community can do and we really believe that so much more is yet to be accomplished through our synchronized energy and intention, and it's for that reason that we will be hosting these gatherings in our hive.

As we continue to sustain our ability to do this type of work, growing the hive, and most importantly, to stay home and raise Luna together, we will be accepting donations for these inspirational workshops, but we absolutely do not want this to prevent anyone from being on the call. All are welcome and any amount of energy sent to the hive is deeply appreciated. Workshops will cover a wide variety of topics, from natural birth and parenting, to astrology and crystal healing, from sustainable living practices and real food eating, to alternative medicine and so much more! Our plan is to gather once a month, with the first gathering taking place on this very special upcoming New Moon! Each month we will post the new topic and some things to be thinking about before the next call takes place. If you feel inspired and have the means to support our work with your financial energy, we will be accepting donations for the gatherings through paypal. If you have questions or comments, or to make a donation, please use the email homeinthehive@gmail.com for all contact. Thank you! 

Here's what you need to know for the first gathering!

When & Where: We will meet on the next New Moon, Thursday, January 30^th at 5:30pm PST. Everyone is invited to dial in at (530) 881-1000 and enter the access code 119076# when prompted by the automated operator. You will then hear an invitation to introduce yourself, at which point you can go ahead and say hello and your name, or you can pass and remain a silent listener, totally up to you. Of course we would LOVE to hear from everyone, but we understand that this type of thing is new to most, and intimidation is a fear we all must face at one point or another along the path! So we welcome all to do what feels comfortable at this time. If you are going to be arriving more than a minute or two late on the call, please refrain from introducing yourself as we may have already started the session and we want to respect everyone's time. Thank you!

Topic: This first inspirational workshop will serve as a sort of meet & greet and getting to know one another on a deeper level. We will start the gathering with a guided meditation and then Oscar and I will both be giving an introduction of ourselves, going deeper into our backgrounds and how we both found the path we are on today. Oscar has a degree in psychology that has led him on a path of deep interconnectedness and understanding of the human race, through many realms of work and intensive study in the metaphysical world, he has developed a strong sense of passion and direction for what we can all be doing to create conscious shifts of love and positivity in our lives and in this current paradigm. I am a licensed cosmetologist and have been submersed in studying the world of natural health and wellness for almost ten years. The opportunity to travel around the world doing missionary work as a child and teenager has greatly shaped my perspective and calling to bring healing and restoration to this earth and her inhabitants. Both Oscar and I will be speaking more deeply on how we got started with the paths we are on now, how we are working towards where we want to be, and ways we believe we all can start to return to the garden and bring new life to this beautiful earth of ours.

We would be so pleased to have you join us for the first gathering in the hive and to spread the word to anyone you know that might be interested in coming along! Thank you for reading this, for being a part of the journey, and we can't wait to connect on the New Moon! Love & Light from our hive to yours.

Ashley, Oscar, Luna & Francois

  

The Sling Diaries, Vol. IV // Everything Shines: Dreams

During my seventh month of pregnancy I found out it was possible for Luna to be having dream activity during her sleeping states. There were so many things that amazed me during that sacred time of carrying life, but I remember with such clarity the awe and wonder I felt at this notion of our unborn daughter, asleep and dreaming in my womb. What possible sorts of magic could those dreams be made of? Oscar and I talked ideas of a new earth, celestial beings, rainbow dancing, all the mysterious intricacies of starlight. We waited in great anticipation for her arrival and for the arrival of those heavenly dreams, wondering what kind of impact and influence they would bring, always hoping to be able to guide her through knowing and understanding herself through this process and ritual of sleep.

All throughout ancient civilization, we see recorded in our history this incredible respect and reverence for dreams, their meanings, and their link to the spiritual world. The Bible references dreams or visions and their guidance over seven hundred times. Priests residing in original Grecian and Egyptian temples were actually dream interpreters and people would come to them whenever looking for insight into the symbolism of their dream life, and the actions suggested to take thereafter. The significance of dreaming only began to fade as cultures developed and a line was drawn between the mystical and religious. It became a subject of avid interest again when Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams in 1900, and modern psychology has since that time come up with countless ways of analyzing and deciphering dreams, but none of them go back to the type of magic we envision when we think of our sweet Luna dreaming.

We wish for nothing less than for her, and ourselves, to see angels in our dreams, to hear the voice of God gently speak, to be guided by the great mystery. The city too often sang the modern song that turned down the mystic tone on dreams of old, and we moved into the mountains to give this desire for spiritual dreaming the space to blossom and grow. We moved into the mountains to attune ourselves to silence, to become sensitive to what our bodies and spirits need, to understand the quiet dance of nature, the secret of ancient ways. We moved into the mountains to remember the feeling of moonlight, to relearn the language of the wind, to see the signs in the sky. I am thankful for this land we together explore by day and the bed we share by night. May our guided dreams lead us only to deeper, greater, richer things.

 

 

This post is part of the Sakura Bloom Sling Diaries. I'm wearing a simple silk sling in sandstone. All photos were taken around our home by the amazing Cori Jean. Luna actually fell asleep in her sling (which she rarely does nowadays) as soon as we were done with taking these. Pretty perfect for a post on dreams! Thanks so much for following along. We love you and hope you have a happy Monday!

The Joy Of Propagating

Good morning and happy Friday! It's always so wonderful and exciting to share these blog posts and today is no exception. I've been planning this one for a little while now, which has really given me the time to contemplate the subject to even greater depths, and WOWWW... What is up with P L A N T S?! Really, truly, just amazing. Not only are they some of the most beautiful things on earth, plants actually improve the quality of our air by purifying it, increasing oxygen levels, and removing toxic pollutants. On a mental level, they reduce stress and encourage the release of endorphins and other happy hormones. If two plants are grown in the exact same conditions, except you talk to one on a daily basis and not the other, the plant you talk to will actually grow stronger and faster, therefore completely creating the possibility for emotional and spiritual connections to also be established between plants and ourselves. God has truly created such a beautiful and precise way for all of the natural world to support and rely on each other, in such a magnificent exchange of nurturing and care.

Like so many people out there who have discovered this wonderful connection in their own way, it has become a necessity to now have plants surrounding and filling our house. And lots of them! This can quickly become an expensive interest, but it doesn't have to. Today I want to talk about one super easy way to multiple your green space without spending a dime, through the simple act of propagation. It's also one of the best ways to make gifts for your family and friends! When you breed a plant from the parent stock, it's called propagating. One simple way propagation can be done is by taking a cutting from one plant in order to make another. If you've ever wondered how this is done, I'm going to show you step-by-step how this amazingly fun and interesting process works! 

1. To start with, you're going to need a parent plant. There are dozens of plants - including succulents, herbs, vegetables and more, that you can do this with. I'm showing examples of two common houseplants, which are also very resilient and easy to grow for those looking for a good plant to start off with, if you're new to this! 

Chlorophytum Comosum - Spider Plant

Philodendron Hederaceum - Heart-Leafed Plant

2. The spider plant grows very obvious "babies" that can be gently pulled off the vine. For the heart-leafed philodendron, and most other plants, you want to make an angled-cutting just below a leaf node, the brown bumps that look like little roots.

3. Place your cuttings in water so at least a few inches of the new stock is submerged. Keep in a sunny spot and watch in awe as your cuttings develop a root system of their own! This can literally happen overnight, or may take a few weeks, depending on the type of plant.

4. Once the roots have grown to about an inch or longer, plant into a pot with soil and voila! A new member of the family!  

I hope you enjoyed this post as much as I did writing it. Plants really bring so much joy, excitement, energy and healing! Hopefully you're now feeling encouraged to get creative and see what new forms of life you can help cultivate and spread. Sending lots of love and warm hugs from our Hive to yours!

Six Months With Luna Cove

2 Days Old

Sweet Lotus Moon

Today we are so happy to be celebrating six months with our sweet little moon! Starting a family has been such a challenging honor and joy. We are grateful for the opportunity it has been, and continues to be! The most common advice we hear as new parents is to make every moment with our children count, as they just seem to grow up so fast. We're starting to understand that this really is true and the other day we were reflecting on how many changes we've seen take place in Luna and who she has become over the course of just six months. So amazing! Luna is a bright, happy little baby, with a huge capacity for patience, joy and love. Always flashing smiles and offering up affection, she is incredibly alert and attentive to the world around her, taking great interest in eye contact, laughter, and genuinely connecting with the people she encounters. Luna fusses only to communicate her needs and true crying is reserved for when something genuinely painful occurs. Her ability to pick up on and understand moods is amazing and she shows such a great awareness for feelings and intuition, as all babies do. We try to nurture this in her as much as possible, consistently going out of our way to provide her with the most calm and peaceful environment at all times, in an effort to honor her developing body and spirit. Such a privilege it has been to be her parents and to share in this wonderful process of growth! 

All of the decisions we've made since she was born follow in the same frequency of energy that we applied to how we brought her into this world, in what we felt was the most gentle way possible. Having her by ourselves in the comfort of our own little apartment and keeping her attached to the placenta through the tradition of Lotus Birth, was the best experience we could have asked for. Her posture towards life is special and unique for babies we typically see here in the US, but we do not think it is a miracle or a one-off chance by any means! We credit so much of her demeanor to the influence of the decisions we've made, especially those that challenge the status quo. Birth and parenting have, in general, become very complicated and corporate matters, more often than not dictated and controlled by a system that discourages intuition and does not operate from a place of love or heart-centeredness. Most of the behaviors seen in children these days are a result of being brought into the world and raised through this type of system. The picture of birth and parenting that we typically see represented is far from the beauty and power that this creative process innately contains or has the potential to be. One way we can start to heal our earth is by healing attitudes and practices around birth and parenting, empowering families to really take this sacred experience into their own hands. We hope to be a catalyst for this change by how we live as a family, and already we feel so grateful for how Luna has influenced and blessed this world with her presence. We celebrate you today, Miss Luna Cove Castro, for every precious moment you have been in our lives, and all of the joyful moments to come!

A Foxy Girl And Her Father

Sitting Up!

Flower Child

Until just the other day I had completely forgotten that we recorded video during labor. We had planned to film her birth, but the camera was abandoned at some point during our long adventure with her, and so these few minutes are all we have. It's not much, but it was so special for us to discover we had it, and we thought it would be fun to share it all with you as a little glimpse into what our experience was like. And of course to celebrate Luna being six months earthside! This was taken 16 hours into labor, 12 hours before she was actually born. A long and wild journey, indeed! You can really get an idea of just how tiny and city-congested our apartment was. (Yes, that is an airplane going overhead at minute 5:30!) Such special memories. It was a joy and an honor to give birth to this beautiful baby and I look forward to the day I will be blessed to do it again. You can read Luna's birth story and more about our Lotus Birth experience here and here. We hope you enjoy and have such a wonderful Sunday! We send thoughts of love and encouragement from our hive to yours.

 

If you didn't have a natural birth, it's never too late to start natural parenting! Gentle birth, gentle mothering by Sarah Buckley is a great resource to start with for those interested in more on the subject.