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How to Keep Your Feet on the Ground and Head in the Stars

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Sometimes splurging on a massage or a really great pair of (running) shoes or an exotic foam roller is tough. Not because shopping is a competitive sport—but because you’re a conscious consumer and you shouldn’t need stuff. The work of justifying your purchase to yourself spirals into a mini-identity crisis—something “Sex and the City’s” Carrie Bradshaw can sort out in an hour, but that leaves most of us exhausted.

Ruby Warrington, author of “Material Girl, Mystical World” (Harper One, 2017) and creator of The Numinous, has a different take on that purchase. Looking fresh in a pink jacket and perched on the black velvet sofa in her art-filled New York apartment, the former features editor for the U.K. “Sunday Times” says, “I am a material being. That doesn’t mean that I’m not also a spiritual and mystical being.”

Far from being a hedonist, Warrington has found that many mystical practices can help us feel great in our bodies—the physical, material experience we are having—and more aligned with the parts of ourselves (the numinous) that we can’t see. So just as Warrington describes mystical practices as a “missing piece in the wellness puzzle,” she places equal importance on physical well-being: “Anything that keeps me feeling optimally healthy will help me to tune into my intuition because that’s when I can really feel what my body is telling me.”

Astrology as tool

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Warrington’s primary mystical tool of choice is astrology, not as a window into our fate but as a means of understanding we are all different—and accepting that fact. “An astrologer once described astrology as a tool for radical forgiveness, which is not the same as saying, ‘Oh, Mercury was in retrograde. I lost your email,’ but for understanding how very multifaceted human beings are … and having compassion if people are not showing up as we would like them to be.” she explains. “They’re actually just showing up as themselves. It’s on us to try to accept them for who they are.”

Naturally, we asked Warrington how she personally achieves balance between the material and spiritual and taps her intuition. “Maybe you were thinking I was going to say, ‘My meditation.’ Or ‘These crystals.’ No: It’s a very practical boundary I set around what enters my consciousness on a daily basis,” she says. That line of defense? “Having really strict [rules] around my use of social media and email.”

Here are the elements of Warrington’s morning routine—so that you can make them your own.

Photo credit: Mark Kuroda, kurodastudios.com; Brooke Cagle, Unsplash; Joanna Kosinska, Unsplash; Brooke Lark, Unsplash; Lonely Planet, Unsplash
Hair & make-up: Ava Roston