You Are Protected with Michelle Cassandra Johnson

What if protecting your energy didn’t mean keeping the world out?

When I was training as a psychologist, I was taught to imagine a stop sign as people shared their stories with me. Later, in yoga circles, I was told to surround myself with white light.

Neither worked for me, and holding everything at bay took so much energy. What I’ve learned over the years is to let things in, to feel them, and then let them go.

So when Michelle Cassandra Johnson (she/her) described the practice of becoming a transparency, it made a whole lot of sense to me.

Michelle is an author, activist, spiritual teacher, racial equity educator and intuitive and shamanic healer, who has spent over 25 years working with communities and organisations. Her new book, You Are Protected, offers practical ways to tend to ourselves so we can keep showing up for others and for the world.

Michelle opens our conversation by casting a circle of protection, and from there we sit at her grandmother Dorothy’s kitchen table, where black coffee and a daily devotional became Michelle’s first lesson in ritual. We talk about what honeybees can teach us about rest, why the crone archetype knows exactly when to say no, and the many allies we can call on, from ancestors and animal energies to the elements that live within our own bodies.

When I first held this book in my hands, I wasn’t sure how much of it would be relevant to me. Then I found it threaded with things already in my life: chanting, rest, the elements on my altar, the herbal teas I make, the candles I light. I just hadn’t thought of them as protection before.

If you hold space for others, in a yoga class, a therapy room, your family or your community, I think you’ll find something here to take with you.

In this episode, we explore:

• A circle of protection to open, guided by Michelle from the introduction of You Are Protected
• Michelle’s grandmother Dorothy, and her daily ritual of remembering she was a divine being before going out into a world shaped by white supremacy
• The transparency practice: being fully present with someone’s story while letting it pass through you, and why our nervous systems aren’t designed to carry everything
• Rest as protection, and what honeybees teach us about contraction, longevity and sustaining our energy
• The protective allies in the book: archetypes, animal energies, saints and deities, energetic forms, the elements, ancestors and natural curios
• The crone archetype, discernment and the wisdom of saying no
• Simple ways to work with air, fire, water and earth for protection
• What Michelle is chanting right now, including her devotion to Durgā
• Remembering that we are worthy of protection and care
• How to use the book’s invocations, or write your own
• Whether protection comes from within us, from beyond us, or both
• Why openings and closings matter, from washing her hands between clients to watching a comedy after deep spiritual work
• A closing practice to imprint your own protective circle

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