Tarot Practice and Mental Health: Tarot Tuesday

It’s been a while since I did something other than a reading for #tarottuesday (ahem, since my first-ever tarot blog post). But I’ve had a tarot-related thought poking at my mind over the past few days that’s been begging to be put to paper¹.

For me, there’s a clear link between the state of my mental health and my tarot practice: When I’m practicing tarot regularly, my mental health tends to be more stable. When I’m not practicing tarot as regularly, my mental health feels more like a rollercoaster – one with steep climbs and sudden drops and twirly loops. I’d even go so far as to say that when my mental health is loopy-twirly, I actively avoid doing tarot. 

In other words, there’s a clear link between tarot practice and mental health. It makes sense – tarot practice is a form of curiosity about my inner world. When my mental health is balanced, I’m more willing to reach for my deck, flip a few cards, reflect on some stuff. But when I’m out of sorts, the last thing I want to do is spend more time with my thoughts, so the decks stay firmly on the shelf. 

Here’s the kicker – even though I may want to sidestep sitting with my thoughts, there’s some small, wise part of my mind reminding me that perhaps this choice is driven by avoidance and fear rather than sound judgment. The ritual act of doing a tarot reading almost always gives me at least a tiny bit of grounding. There’s something soothing about the whole process that helps me slow right down: Choosing a deck, selecting a spread, sitting down with myself, laying out a cloth, shuffling the cards, drawing them one by one, interpreting their meanings… 

The past month has been more of a rollercoastery month for me, as life would have it. I could write a list of the stuff (don’t mind if I do, says my inner avid-list-maker):

• My partner and I recently uprooted, moving to a new home in a different area
• I’ve been going deep with my personal trauma work
• Then there’s the always-tumultuous situation of entrepreneurship, which dredges up old wounds around things like
  • hustle & grind culture,
  • achievement addiction,
  • income stability,
  • imposter syndrome (is my writing cringey? Do people want me as a coach after reading my posts? Is my reach wide enough for any of this to even matter?)

If I analogize my mind to a swift-running river full of thoughts (as has definitely been the case over this past month), tarot reading is like the riverbank. It’s sturdy, it’s quiet, and it provides a place for me to sit and watch the river go by. For me, the magic of tarot is in the intentionality – if I can recognize that I’m in the river, I can pull myself out of it and up onto the bank. Sure, it takes effort and energy – sometimes more than it feels like I can muster – but choosing tarot is choosing to step out of the rapids of my thoughts and into a mindful practice. 

This is a familiar metaphor for anyone who meditates: We can’t control our thoughts. They’re like water moving down the river, or clouds floating by in the sky, or cars zipping by on a freeway – whatever analogy floats your goat. 

We can’t control our thoughts, but we can change how we relate to them. Back to the rollercoaster analogy from earlier: I can’t very well get off of the rollercoaster midway through. But I can choose to recognize the relative safety of the ride, with its carefully-engineered design and daily safety checks, and instead focus on how dang cool it is to be having such an adrenaline-pumping experience².

A truth I come back to time and again is that we learn the same lessons over and over through repeated exposure. This isn’t a bad thing, but rather a sign of how we integrate information. Each time we’re exposed to the concept again, we have a chance to rise a teensy bit higher, understand it from a slightly more elevated vantage point, than the last time we encountered it. Anyone who’s done tarot with me has likely heard me talk about this concept as it relates to the number 8, which is all about cycles just like this. Tilt the number 8 on its side and you have the infinity symbol, ∞, which is a great reminder of this idea. This repeated exposure to the same lesson reinforces the concept until our brain is able to internalize it and notice it more instinctively. 

One of my cyclical lessons is the topic of this post: When I’m feeling out of sorts, I don’t do tarot – when doing tarot may very well be the antidote I need. I have run-ins with this lesson once every few months when my tarot practice has inevitably fallen off. I recognize it a bit sooner each time, am a little gentler with myself when I notice the slip, and so the cycle rises. So here I am, July 2022, making a pact to myself through this post to get back to the tarot readings I know are good for me³.

I like to remind myself that tarot practice doesn’t need to be a huge ordeal – even pulling a single card before I get out of bed in the morning has impact. It’s the act of doing it, committing to the thing that you know is good for you, even when your mind or body (or both) are trying to convince you to pass on it, that makes the difference. There’s a level of care for the self that comes when you tend to your garden in this way, by tuning in, listening to your needs, then responding to them.

It’s often a cascade for me from there, like watching dominoes neatly fall into an ordered line. It’s a single-card tarot reading first that helps me tune in to something throughout the day. Then I realize that hey, maybe a bowl of baked beans and some toast might feel like a better breakfast than two coffees and a cookie. And wouldn’t you know it, taking a bit of time to stretch on the floor while I watch TV at night helps my back to feel better the next morning? Next I add a two-minute meditation and breathing break between spats of work, which does wonders to help me notice when I’m trying to run into the stream of mental traffic.

It’s the little incremental things that build the foundation for a better relationship with myself, and even if I can only find the energy to do a small thing to tend to my needs now, that small thing is better than nothing at all.

xo,

Jodie

Footnotes

¹ Sure, this may be self-serving catharsis, but I figured at least one person could get value from it – hopefully I’m right!

² This isn’t the best analogy for me, a non-lover-of-coasters, but you get the point.

³ There are times where tarot or other introspective practices aren’t the right answer – some times that call for a more sensory felt approach, like going for a run, singing, painting, etc. You know your body best, so feel it out.