Hi, I’m Tori Daw, the founder and Creative Director of Healistic Reserve, Lunar Bath Rituals. This business is a culmination of my own spiritual journey. The phrase “spiritual journey” has become such a buzzword over the last couple years. And I love it. I love that people are embracing their spirituality and incorporating it into their lives in a more intentional way. But I’m of the opinion that a spiritual journey also encompasses the road you took to get to the point where you acknowledge that you are on one. The trials, ups and downs, the lessons learned, the pain that brought you to your knees, were all part of your “spiritual journey.”
Like most people in the world, my life came to a screeching halt in March 2020 when the pandemic hit and we went into lockdown. And when I say “screeching”, I really mean screeching! Imagine the way Sonic the Hedgehog (where my elder-Millenial, SEGA Genesis-lovers at?) is running at full speed, legs spinning in a blur, and when an obstacle crosses his path, he suddenly needs to throw his feet straight out ahead of him to desperately avoid a crash and burn.
That was my life before the pandemic- moving so fast you can’t make out the individual steps and one small misstep could lead to a catastrophic trip-up that brings it all down. It was around the time my son was 15-months old in early-2019 that we started to realize he is on the Autism spectrum, and we are fortunate enough to have the ability for me to stay home with him. We quickly sought out professional help for his development, and our lives were quickly consumed by different therapies. My days were spent taking him from Occupational Therapy, to Speech therapy, to Early Intervention appointments and more, all while babysitting another toddler his age to help make ends meet.
While I was grateful for all the help we were getting and loved being my son’s safe person during his extreme emotional dysregulation, there was no time or space (or energy) left for my own needs amidst my Sonic-speed life. And in some ways, I preferred it that way. It allowed me to remain blissfully numb to the pain, bitterness, and guilt I was harboring. I knew I had unfulfilled dreams and neglected sorrows, but my jam-packed schedule and constant movement helped to drown out the whispers of my own needs.
Until it didn’t. Once the country was put into lockdown, all the clinics and offices closed and our schedule was abruptly quiet, the whispers of my needs became screams. I couldn’t ignore them anymore. The whimpers of my sorrows became wails. The simmer of my rage became an uncontainable boil. And the soreness of my grief around what I wanted for my life turned into an excruciating pain. My deep-dive into my self-healing journey was necessary, inevitable, and unavoidable.
So I turned to the most healing things I knew: spirituality and the bath.
A LIFELONG LOVE OF BATHS
Some of my earliest memories of feeling joyful are being in the bath. One of my favorite things to do in the bath was to lay on my back and swish my hair side-to-side, imagining I was a mermaid. I loved the feeling of the water flowing through my hair. In the water, I was somehow weightless and buoyant but also grounded and rooted at the same time. I loved the way I was immersed in the warm water like a blanket, and still free to move with ease.
When I was 15, my family even moved into a house that had three large jetted tubs- one of them being in my room! Whenever teen angst and pubescent emotions would get overwhelming, I would retreat to the bath. It was the place I knew I would be safe. It was always there for me to be alone, to wash away the stress of the moment, and relax my body.
This practice has followed me through every stage of my life. Any time I need a moment to pause the constant stream of thoughts and sensations of life, I know I can find solace in the sweet relief of a hot bath. So of course, when the world felt like it was falling apart in early-2020, it was in the bath that I found safety.
BATH PRODUCTS BY A BATH-LOVER
It probably doesn’t come as a surprise at this point that when I was a teen, making minimum-wage working part-time in retail, I began making my own bath products for friends and family for gift-giving holidays. I knew I could easily make cost-efficient large batches of sugar scrub and bath bombs around the holidays and package them into cute little jars with ribbon. “After all,” I thought, “what more could anyone ever want for the holidays other than a luxurious bath?”
My formula has seen many changes and pivots since that first phase of bath product making. And for a long time, it was just a side-passion of mine to create yummy, silky smooth bath products that were bath-lover-approved. It wasn’t until a friend of mine asked me to make them for her new boutique that I turned it into a business. Her boutique was open for a little over a year, and in that time, my products were a hit and made their appearance in a few different local boutiques and salons, too. But when her boutique closed, I closed up shop on my bath product hustle. I had no vision behind my bath products at the time. I enjoyed making them, but lacked the purpose for them to keep my drive going.
But when I realized I was not alone in a need for self-healing come 2020, I knew I found the purpose. It was so much more than just a nice bubble bath. It was bath ritual magic. It was profound self-healing. It’s the intention that is infused into the energetically aligned bath and ritual products that carries the power of the Lunar Bath Ritual. And this is what keeps me motivated and driven to share them with the world today.
THE MOON AND ITS PHASES
Like my love for baths, my love for the moon and following its cycle goes way back and runs deep. In my late-teens, I began my journey of learning about energetics, the moon, and witchcraft. While there remains a dark stigma around these subjects, what reading up on these things taught me was the truth of love in the Universe. I learned that everything is connected energetically. The energy that we put into the world will come back to us, and the energy that the world presents us is directly reflected within us.
I was fascinated and empowered to learn that the moon goes through a cycle that encompasses light and dark, yet its value remains the same throughout. This gave me the courage to approach my own life in the same regard- that no matter what energy or phase I am experiencing in my life, my worth is unwavering and inherent.
In a similar train of thought, if I could align my life with the phases and astrology of what energy the Moon was conducting, I could find ease and flow through the ups and downs of life. I would be able to put an end to my row against the tide, and allow myself to accept and experience the ride. This is what I decided to integrate into the baths, and have been forever changed since. I knew others would benefit from this approach as well, so this is where Healistic Reserve, Lunar Bath Rituals began to take true form.
WATER AND THE MOON, AN INTERPRETIVE DANCE
So why baths? There are plenty of different kinds of moon rituals out there, but what is it about a bath ritual that is so powerful?
The answer can be found in observing the connection between the moon and the ocean. As the moon leaps and twirls around the Earth, we see the ocean mimic this dance as the waves crescendo and fall, and the tides roll in and out. The moon’s gravitational pull on water is a prolific one. When having a moon ritual, imagine the power of honoring and aligning with this connection.
As human beings that are made primarily of water, immersing ourselves in our own small body of water such as the bath, the intentions that we bring into our lunar bath ritual become a beacon of our energy- a magnet for all the healing, manifesting, alignment and empowerment that we are calling in. We become so powerfully aligned with the energy of the moon that we begin to shine as brightly through the darkness as the Full Moon.
PRIORITIZING SELF HEALING
There is so much pain in our society. Pain in our own lives and immense pain in the collective. We see it in the ways the current structures are built on oppression and fear. If you spend a couple minutes reading headlines of trending news articles, it’s impossible to miss. All the inequity, the wars, the need for those in positions of power to feel a sense of control, they all lead back to pain and trauma. Whether it is societal, generational, personal, or even past-life, I would make the argument that trauma is behind every action that disempowers another person or people.
I envision a world where people are encouraged to prioritize their self healing, for the betterment of their lives and every life they touch. That is my, albeit lofty, mission behind the Healistic Reserve lunar bath rituals. They are an invitation to prioritize your self-healing by following the moon’s cycle, not your to-do list. They are a modality that bridges the gap between intuition and embodiment for healing on a body, mind, and spirit level. They are connection between your inner child, present self, and Higher Self.
Through journaling, guided meditations, oracle card readings, and Reiki energy healing, we learn how to tune back into our intuition. We honor our truths, relearn how to trust ourselves, and begin to move through life in a state of flow. Self healing doesn’t mean you never have bad days. It means you learn to accept the bad days as they are when they come. Self healing puts you into the energy of profound understanding and acceptance of yourself, and inherently more understanding and accepting of others. Self healing is the path to societal healing.
It was in my own lunar bath rituals that I found safety and healing for the pain within myself. Lunar bath rituals gave me guidance when I didn’t know where to go next. They gave me the opportunity to cleanse myself of the habits, energies, and beliefs that were holding me captive. They reintroduced me to myself and gave me the space to be bare and honest. It was in my own Lunar Bath Rituals that I was able to cultivate energetic alignment with my Higher Self, my healed self. And I knew it was going to be my contribution to the safety, healing, and raise of vibration of the collective consciousness.
To learn more about the Lunar Bath Ritual movement, visit www.HealisticReserve.com