Practical Magic

A guide to changing your entire life, witch style.

When was the first time you saw a witch? Was it a Disney movie? Almost every villain out to destroy a Disney princess is a witch. The times we’re meant to villainize Elsa in her own movie is when she uses her powers.

We know of the Salem witch trials and we see the image of the green hag that eats children. The culture has defined witch for us, so we’ve never asked ourselves what the designation means.

At its core, a witch is someone who uses magic, no? Strip away the stereotypes and associations. Take away the awful branding. Any human who wields magic is a witch. What that means, then, is that anyone can be a witch. It’s merely about learning how to access magic.

Oooooh, baby, this is where things become delicious.

Photo by Mar Alfonso.

I started calling myself a witch last year. At first, it was a half-joke. A smirk-worthy branding choice. But the decision to name myself allowed me to remember.

Since I was a kid, I’ve always been able to stretch and fold my awareness. You know when you’re crossing the street, you have a different awareness than if you were lying in bed? Your awareness grows, sharpens, transforms.

Growing up without friends as an outcast made me keenly observant of not only my own awareness but also that of the living beings around me. (Animals come easier for me, but I’ve been tuning my communication with plants for the last half-decade.) What does this mean in everyday contexts? My antenna picks up on what everyone is thinking or feeling without having to speak to them or even look at them. Within minutes, in a class of 30 people—it gets muddy above that number—I can tell you who felt lonely, who was itching to speak but tried to hide it, who disagreed, who just wanted to be somewhere else. But I can do it while focusing most of my cognitive processing on the main event. Like speak entirely to one classmate the whole time while keeping myself aware of all the other members.

The more I train myself, the more I understand the mechanics of this. I am not generating the awareness. It’s already there. I am simply opening my channel. One shortcut I’ve developed is using movement to help my body open. I raise my cupped hands above my head and then guide them down across my torso then back out and up. Almost like I’m gathering energy from the environment into my body.

I tried this recently while directing my narrative film. Before an intense monologue about my father, that exercise allowed me to start crying on the first take within seconds.

My experience aligns with what scientists have theorized about consciousness. Our bodies don’t create it. It doesn’t live within our neurons. Dr. Pim van Lommel studied people who were brain-dead during near-death experiences who had verifiable experiences. Their brains didn’t need to be alive for them to be conscious. One of the people in Dr. Pim van Lommel’s studies had flatlined but could describe everything that occurred in that room while he was dead.

Almost every ancient civilization had some variation of the belief that our individual consciousness is an expression of a universal consciousness. In Zen Buddhism, we speak about death as continuation rather than an end. As Thich Nhat Hanh has so beautifully phrased it: “A cloud never dies.” In the Amazon, Indigenous medicine people who conduct ayahuasca ceremonies explain that the plant itself told the humans its properties.

There is consciousness all around us at all times. It’s where ideas, thoughts, stories come from. We are simply interacting with them constantly. And if we listen carefully, there is much magic to discover. Isn’t magic just anything people consider beyond reality?

Well… in our society, realism is quite boring. The threshold of magic isn’t too hard to reach. Recently, I’ve developed a practice called “Practical Magic” named after the cult favorite film starring Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock.

The core of the practice is to proactively change our reality by choosing what we believe to be true. Neuroscience reminds us that our default mode network and reticular activating system will find proof of anything we believe. Which begs the question: why not choose the best case scenario anyway? We are leveraging our brain’s wonderful ability to reinforce whatever story we’ve decided as true. Furthermore, our brain will identify new opportunities that we would have missed prior in order to prove to itself that our beliefs are factual. (This is also why so many arguments end up in both people trying to prove they’re right.)

At its core, what I’m describing is manifestation. The popularization of the term has branded it with vision boards that lead nowhere. But it’s actually a sophisticated collaboration between biology and consciousness. By choosing what we believe, we also open ourselves up to the very pathways that make our beliefs come true.

Now, stay with me: how might we apply that to parts of our lives that are assumed to be permanent. Can we change the parents we have? Can we change who we are fundamentally?

The answer is yes. We may not be able to physically exchange our parents for another set from Target, but we can change the story of our parents. The gag is…our story about our parents is exactly who they are anyway. Our reality is our subjective experience. My parents are not the same people that raised my brother. There are as many realities as there are people.

We can also change the story of who we are. Because those stories determine the limits of our lives.

When I started healing the story of my un-lovability, I was visited by my future self. (I believe all aliens are our future selves coming back to help us, but that’s a post for another day.) My future self gently reminded me of a memory that was totally unrelated to what was happening to me in the present. I saw myself as a little boy, on the playground of my elementary school, staring out onto the blacktop. I was alone because no one wanted to play with me. Everyone already had their cliques. Unbeknownst to me, that day had planted a seed inside me that said: You are unwanted. You will have to prove to these people that you are worthy of friendship.

What I did was ask that boy to release that story. It was something that he told himself, even though no one said that. People weren’t playing with him, but he didn’t need to make any judgments about himself. Because if anyone had the courage to make a new friend and approach him, they would see how delightful he is. How much he loved Britney Spears and whales. Together, we decided on a new story: that he is an incredible observer. He watches carefully and studies people with kind, precise eyes. It’s why he’s such a good storyteller and why people throughout his life tell him he’s a great listener.

That night generated potential energy to create a slow wave that continued long enough to influence the choices I made the next year: who I welcomed into my life, how I ate, how much confidence I had in a room. And those small choices add up to big choices, like who offers me a job, who decides to invest in my business.

Using my example, you can literally change who you are by changing the fundamental stories that build up your character. See them like building blocks that make up the whole person.

It takes a lot of courage and a lot of practice because it’s not just about thinking the thought and calling it a day. You know when you’re lying to yourself. You have to think, behave, and react as the person who does believe. You must be patient with yourself because it happens little by little. And one day you’re going to look back and realize the story has changed entirely.

Do you see why I call myself a witch now? We can practice magic every day, in big and small ways. It’s everywhere; we’re swimming in it. We’re floating on a gorgeous ass rock with more trees than stars in the Milky Way. We’re floating through dark space within a universe that expands constantly, new universes being born all the time. Get into the magic because that is literally why you’re here. You did not come here to be stressed about emails. You came here because you decided to flirt with having a body that can do miraculous things and still connect to consciousness.

You are a witch. Start acting like it.