Uniqueness and oiling the body regularely

[leggi in Italiano]

I spent the weekend helping out some dear friends at their meditation center, and one afternoon I found myself exploring the North and South Nodes in the birth charts of nearly all their participants. It was such a sweet moment. I’d never done so many in a row before, and it made me reflect deeply on how different we all are.

We live in a time where so much advice is standardized—blanket recommendations on how to eat, live, sleep, heal. What I love about astrology and Ayurveda—the systems I use most in my work and personally—is how clearly they reflect our uniqueness. Our paths, our destinies, our constitutions: they’re all different.

In this standardized culture, where we’re constantly receiving information from the internet on what we “should” do, we can lose touch with our own inner knowing. I feel often we attach ourselves to these trends because we crave belonging. But the truth is, when we learn to use these frameworks to look inward—to truly understand ourselves—we find rhythms that are more aligned with who we are at the core. And I believe we get better results that way.

In my individual sessions, I draw from many different systems: Ayurveda, astrology, psychic massage, resonant tension, yoga. They are all just lenses—tools to help us restructure our lives in ways that feel more authentic, more whole. Holistically speaking, we all deserve to feel deeply satisfied and to live in alignment with our true nature.

So I wanted to begin today’s post with this small reflection. Even the practices I share here are meant to be experimented with, not followed rigidly. We each have to discover our own way of working with the medicines—whether energetic or physical—that are available to us.

Today, I want to talk about the morning practice of Abhyanga, the most classic of the upangas (supportive limbs) I’ll be sharing in this series.

I’ll also include a few of my favorite oils that I’ve used over the years and really love.

The way I practice Abhyanga in the mornings shifts depending on the season, how I’m feeling, and what my schedule allows. This morning, I had just returned from an intense trip, so I took it slow. I drank some hot water and chicory coffee, and then I did my Abhyanga using a beautiful oil from Benefica that’s great for balancing Vata (which governs the mind and nervous system). It’s especially helpful after traveling or before heading into a journey.

I anointed my body with oil in the bathroom, then used a wooden lymphatic drainage paddle to stimulate my skin and tissues. I stayed with the oil on my body for a bit before patting myself dry and getting into my infrared sauna blanket for about 30 minutes of relaxation and meditation. I love using the sauna with oil on my skin—it helps the oil absorb more deeply. After that, I dried off and took a shower, which was cold today, as the weather is getting warmer.

Then I did my yoga practice. I really enjoy moving with Elena Brower—her classes are on the Glo app. I love her style: soft yet strong, and she doesn’t talk too much, which I appreciate.

After yoga, I made a smoothie inspired by Harmonic Healing by Dr. Lancaster.

Below, I’ll list some of my favorite oils and their properties. If you feel inspired to try Abhyanga but don’t want to purchase a specific oil just yet, you can start simply. In summer, if you have high Pitta, coconut or olive oil can be cooling and soothing. For a more warming oil, sesame is always a good choice.

Enjoy—and I hope to see you Monday at 9 PM for our Yoga Nidra for Sensitive Souls gathering.

Medicated oil recomendations:

Eladi Taila for eczema

Dhanvantharam for high vata

Wachholder-Brennnessel Thailam for detox

Belonging

Dear Friend,

I realise that this is the first newsletter of the year, a year that for me has started wildly. Wild initiations into grief and letting go of love and ideas of love. And I am leaning into trust and finding support in relationships that help me stay with the unknown and the difficult feelings.

Holding. Softening. Allowing. Being.

I have started writing on my Substack in Italian this year, as some of you may have noticed, I did this in a wish of belonging myself to the culture and soil where I have chosen to live since a couple of years, it felt good to do this and scary to let go of the known and open up to new eyes, new readers. Again leaning into trust and not knowing where this is going. But the newsletter will stay in English and for now I plan to offer my work in Italian and English.

I have started to unpack my storage where I kept the art that I produced in Sweden in the years I lived at the Pink House, it really felt like a huge energetic step, one that I did not realise at the beginning would feel so important. As finally opening and integrating a part of me that I had put on standby. And some of the paintings are now for sale on my website in a small collection. I plan to renew the selection in the shop seasonally and play with it a bit, I really enjoy the curation process and working with it energetically feeling into what works, what elements are supportive for the season. Also at home I have hung a couple of the oils I did in Sweden and they have brought a grounding, a gravitas to the space that otherwise is very light and airy. This gravitas for me right now has been extremely grounding and healing. The oils were created with elements of the land such as ash, soil, broken seashells. They infuse the space with their alchemical earthy qualities. When I lived in Sweden I worked a lot with grief as an act of belonging myself to life, to land, to the ancestors the reminder of this process of rebirthing is a balm to my being right now.

Love,

Nalini

Two hands, two stories

Dear Friend,

it has been a while, the last few months I have been attending a specific thread of my own personal and ancestral healing: it has been rough and rewarding, every time as I open myself to dive deep into these wounds I discover new depths and new perspectives that make my lived experience richer. And ultimately I feel this is what we are here for to expand life, to deepen life, to widen her through our experience. But so much of our energy societally is spent to distract ourselves from our pain, a habit that makes our suffering linger in the background stifling the connection with Soul that we so long for. It is such a difficult balance the one to hold our humanity with compassion in one hand and the fierceness of Soul requres us to grow with the other. As I shared recently in a post on my Instagram account I love John O’Donoghue’s definition of a healer in Anam Cara as someone that helps one change the relationship with their destiny, I love it because it implies that the world does not change, the circumstances might not either, but it is the internal landscape that shifts making space for a new response to life’s invitations. It is with this purpose that I offer my work wether in group circles (more on this in 2025) or 1-1 through the Well, a term that for me symbolises the mystery and wisdom that is intrinsic in our own being and that can be remembered through listening and humility. My offerings at the moment are 1-1 Well sessions online and in person (January I will be in Bologna and Liguria) and also I would like to recommend my online course Radical Care a beautiful 7 days journey of awareness, cleansing and creating beauty inside and in ones environment, this is a course I created for my 1-1 clients to support the seeding of the work in their day-to-day, but also for anyone who wishes some support to empty out and make space renewal and rebirth. So I highly recommend it as a ritual to start the year with guidance and support.

And on this note I want to send you deep hearted wishes for a beautiful end of the year, because I really feel we can all strive to cultivate beauty whatever life offers us in this wild wild world.

Love,

Nalini

INTRODUCING: The Well Healing Circle

Dearest Friend,

I would like to invite you to a monthly offering to connect, care and resource ourselves together.. during the hour long session we will connect with the wisdom within our bodies that many traditions connect with the image of a well, hence the name “The Well healing circle”.  I love the image of the well as a space of unfolding mystery, of depth and wisdom. I imagine this gathering being a place for simplicity, beauty and being. If you feel interested visit the link or email me directly.

love, Nalini xx

On Surrender and rain

Dear One,

March is here. I am writing you from my very rainy perch in Italy, my flat is quite high up on a hill overlooking the Lunigiana region and the Apuane mountains on the border with Toscana. Last night it rained so much I felt very exposed in my little bedroom, yet I really love feeling the mighty power of nature when she unleashes herself. I feel so much respect for the powerful forces of nature.

I just returned from a three week long trip to India where I spent some time in an Ayurvedic clinic to heal my body and to soak up new tools to apply in my practice within my circle. I don’t feel I ever want to stop learning.

In the beginning of the year I spent some time creating a FREE four day course called On Surrender (previously Downstream ~ I had some tech glitches last month when I launched it so apologies for those who signed up!) It is up and running smoothly now… I created it to introduce you to my work. On Surrender is a collection of daily yoga nidras and movement meditations to support you in your daily flow, every day has a different theme and rhythm, the aim with wich I share my work is always the one to connect the daily seemingly mundane small tasks of life with the sacred elusive nature of being.

Last but not least the calendar for 1-1 Well sessions is open for booking for the month of March for online and in person sessions, the Well is for you if you feel you ned guidance on a specific theme in life or a physical ailment, we will look at what is going on through the lens of the body and her own energetic processes. This week I am sharing on IG a series of posts on Well sessions: their birth, significance and how they work practically. So stay tuned on that channel if you want to know more.

Love, Nalini x

Beauty's dancer

there was

a land.

where beauty danced

with the world

softening bulbs

two streams

life together

memories dance

fantasies fly

turning towards

vulnerability of longing

I will be sharing sporadic writing and painting on my new substack.

Dear ones,

I hope these words find you softly moving through the portal of the new year.

I have been quietly working on letting go the past season, the quiet has also been, I realise now, a need for creating space for listening to my body, the Earth body, the cries of the collective and to the silence that contains it all, witnessing the paradox of exsistence unfolding between our seeming, yet much much felt collective and personal polarities. I have found that often it is really our capacity to listen and simply be present with that makes a difference for healing to happen.

So at the moment I still feel quiet, listening, being.

As for my practice I am offering new ways to engage one-on-one with the Well sessions, please find more info below and on my website.

Much love, Nalini

1-1 WELL SESSION

Our bodies carry an intrinsic wisdom that much like an underwater river often flows parallel to our life’s unfolding as untapped potential. Nalini’s witnessing through presence and touch will support your own connection to this precious source of life force to support your unique path to wholeness, awareness and soul.

Work with me 1-1 online and in person.

June 2023

I am spending some early summer days walking in nature on the ridged coastline of Liguria, where rocky pine covered cliffs abruptly plunge into the crisp infinite seascapes. I have been exploring these places since childhood the smells and sounds and the movement my body does as I climb and walk here are as familiar as my breath. Liguria has a very soft earth body and the wild coastline shapeshifts constantly, yet in the past years I have felt within myself the weight and sorrow of the impermanence of these jewel like tiny beaches ever more. I feel my grief is a mirror of our renewed collective awareness of the impermanence the familiar landscapes that surround our daily lives face because of the anthropocene, because of our lifestyle, because of us humans. So each time I go to the beach and I see the fragile balance of the rocks hanging low on the water’s edge I wonder how much longer will I be allowed to come here before the land will wrap itself in her aloneness to find soothing respite from human presence, to find her own healing. How long until the narrow steep pathway to climb down here collapses for good. For now I thank her each time I see her faded rocks and emerald waters for her letting me lie on her and find my nourishment and rest.

love,

Nalini

May 2023

Dear friend,

I am in awe of the capacity humans have to create sustainable living communities that interact with nature on so many levels. I feel a lot of gratitude to be able to spend time in places like this tiny eco village in the Italian Appennine mountains, I am currently living in a terra cruda/cob house and creating in the self heating solar powered studio portrayed above, dedicating myself to creativity and living in beauty. And of course it makes me wonder about how to bring this awareness beyond this space in the work I share. Often I see that as humans we fail to consider how vital it is for us to be in constant exchange with a healthy environment and how well our whole system responds when we do. And how well the environment responds to this reciprocal living. As healthy environment I mean humans of course, but also non human species, nature, air, soil, food..

in love.

Nalini Ruha

Mystery of Belonging

dear lover,

I am writing to you from my new little cob-home in an Italian eco-village in the Appennine mountains, there is a sweet chilly breeze in the air as if the weather is undecided on wether to surge into spring or stay in the cozy stillness of winter. And what a winter it has been with a lot of darkness for many of us as waves of surrender invited us in the art of wintering deeper and deeper…

Some days ago I visited a friend, Monica Montebugnoli, a shaman local to the area of Pontremoli in Lunigiana, a very sacred territory that extends between the Appenine mountains just next to me all the way to the sea. I brought my camera to document some of her process in making sacred drums. She is a beautiful artist and works with the animals in such a sacred and tender way, I feel so blessed to know her and have made my drum with her.

I returned from my travels in Scandinavia with a series of new watercolours, I feel they are all about the process of meditation and the awakening of the subtle more nuanced perceptions that bloom with a deepening of the practice. They are for sale as some of you ahve been interested in buying some of my art you are welcome to contact me directly.

Finally I will be facilitating some gatherings live in Italy soon, when the dates are settled I will let you know.

joy,

nalini x

March 2023

Dear friend,

I have returned to Italy after a long month in my native Scandinavia where I spent a month with my teacher Pema in a time of meditation in stillness and work. I am still unpacking the gifts of this month long retreat, but I can share that it has been deeply healing and nurturing to meet the darkness of winter and her gifts and be surrounded by fellow travellers of the Soul path supporting one anothers deepening in surrender and dedication. I has become clearer for me that my commitment to the feminine path and her remembrance as the birthing within us of the Earth Soul is the medicine that this in many ways a broken world needs. I will start sharing more of my work in Italian as well and I feel the calling to do so and ground my roots in a land were the beauty of the feminine path is deeply misused and misunderstood.

The Earth Soul is waiting for us to hear Her calling, to make space for her to nestle in our bellies and bones, eating up the resistance from the inside and rebirth our lives anew. It is a birth as much as it is a remembrance and Her taste is sweet and wild.

Love,

Nalini

Imbolc blessings from Nari Village

Dear friend,

I am writing you from Nari Village, a beautiful sanctuary in Denmark where humans and non humans are weaving a beautiful small community. I am here for a little over a month, my intention is to learn, practice and witness the flow interbeing. I have only arrived since a few days and am already assimilating so much of my own resistances, longings and desires. It is both challenging and beautiful to learn when to surrender and when to kindly wait and make space for one’s own process to unfold in grace.

Much love,

Nalini