Hello and welcome to Psychic Teachers. I'm your host Deb Bowen.

And I'm Samantha Faye.

And we are just so happy that you are with us.

Sure Samantha, already this is a whirlwind year for me, is it for you?

Oh sure is. I'm finding time to catch my breath.

I know. And before we get started on everything else,

folks, thank you, thank you, thank you for bearing with us

as we are working out the technology of this recording thing.

Samantha, whatever, were we thinking to try this while Mercury was still in retrograde?

I don't know. We need to practice what we preach.

We not, but we're getting there. And we are just so happy that you are joining us whenever it is that you are doing so as you are listening to this podcast.

So thank you also very much for being with us.

As you know, we began each show with a meditation, a crystal, and an animal of the week.

So Samantha, where should we start there?

I'd like to start with the meditation if you don't mind.

Oh, that would be perfect. Thank you. Go right ahead.

Okay. So our topic for this show is practicing self-care through the gift of solitude.

So I thought I would do a meditation kind of based on that.

And I wanted to start by reading one of my favorite poems.

It was written, I believe, in the 12th century by a poet named Izumi Shikibu.

And it's from a book I turned to a lot for meditation. It's called The Enlightened Heart.

And it just has poetry, sacred poetry, from several different cultures from very, very, very long time ago.

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