Practices for Inner Alignment
The Practices we work with
Discover practical tools that reconnect you with your energy, your perception, and the present moment.
Introduction
At the School of Present Time, we work with a variety of practices — Toltec Movements, recapitulation exercises, silence practices, astrocartomancy, the Toltec calendar, astrology, Tarot cards, music, sounds, conscious reconnection with nature and the elements, the medecine cards...
Though diverse in form, they share a common purpose: to restore awareness, recover energy, and deepen our capacity to be fully present. Each practice offers a different doorway — through the body, perception, time, or the natural world — guiding us back to clarity, alignment, and conscious living.
Together, they support a simple yet profound aim: to inhabit the present moment with greater vitality and understanding.
Movements and recapitulation practices
The Toltec Movements, as presented by Carlos Castaneda, are a series of precise physical gestures designed to awaken and redistribute energy within the body. Rooted in the teachings of ancient seers of Mexico, these movements aim to revitalize the practitioner, increase awareness, and restore energetic balance.
Through breath, attention, and deliberate motion, the movements help release stagnation, recover dispersed energy, and strengthen the connection between body and perception. They are not exercises in the conventional sense, but practices for cultivating vitality, presence, and clarity.
Recapitulation is a practice of consciously reviewing the events of one’s life in order to reclaim energy and clear the past. Through systematic remembering — supported by breath and focused attention — we revisit significant experiences and release the emotional residue that keeps us bound to old patterns.
This process is often described as “emptying the warehouse”: clearing stored impressions, unresolved emotions, and lingering attachments. By doing so, we create inner space — space for clarity, presence, and a deeper connection to Spirit.
Recapitulation is not just about reliving the past, but about freeing ourselves from it, so that energy once trapped in memory becomes available for conscious living.
The BOOK OF TIME
ASTROCARTOMANCY
Astrocartomancy is an ancient system of knowledge that was transmitted and later expressed during the Renaissance in the form of playing cards. Based on our date of birth, it reveals the energetic patterns that shape our life path and allows us to follow the cycles influencing us over time.
Built upon a symbolic calendar of four suits — Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, and Spades — it reflects the four seasons and four fundamental dimensions of human experience.
Hearts relate to feelings, love, relationships, and emotional life.
Clubs represent knowledge, learning, and understanding.
Diamonds correspond to values, resources, and the material world.
Spades symbolize will, wisdom, transformation, obstacles, and the later stages of life.
Astrocartomancy offers a structured way to observe the energies unfolding in our lives, helping us navigate time with greater awareness and insight.
TIme as energy
TONALPOHUALLI
For the ancient Toltecs — a word meaning men and women of knowledge — time was not merely a sequence of days, but a living field of energy. Thousands of years ago, across a vast territory of Central America, they developed a precise and sophisticated system to map this energetic movement of time.
Their understanding integrated multiple cycles: the 365-day solar calendar of the Earth, the 584-day cycle of Venus, and the sacred 260-day calendar linked to human consciousness and destiny. Together, these calendars reflected the rhythms of nature, the heavens, and the human being.
The Toltec calendar is therefore not simply a way to measure time, but a way to understand the energies that shape life — an invitation to move in harmony with the greater cycles of existence.
A Living Map of Time and Consciousness
ASTROLOGY
Western astrology is a symbolic science thousands of years old, rooted in the observation of planetary cycles and their correspondence with human experience. At the School of Present Time, astrology is approached not as superstition, but as a language of awareness — a map that helps us read the movement of time within and around us.
By studying the cycles of the planets, we learn to recognize rhythms of growth, challenge, initiation, and completion. The ancient symbols — planets, signs, and aspects — reveal archetypal forces shaping our perception and behavior. The twelve houses describe the fields of life where these forces unfold: relationships, vocation, creativity, inner development, and more.
Our birth chart becomes a mirror of potential — a dynamic mandala that reflects both our structure and our freedom. Rather than defining who we are, it offers a framework for conscious evolution.
In this way, Western astrology becomes a practice of presence: learning to align with cycles, to understand timing, and to participate more lucidly in the unfolding of our own destiny.
A Renaissance Mirror of Consciousness
TAROT CARDS
The Marseille Tarot emerged during the Renaissance in Europe, a period of profound rediscovery of ancient wisdom. Thinkers such as Marsilio Ficino helped revive Hermetic, Platonic, and symbolic traditions that shaped the spiritual atmosphere in which the Tarot flourished.
Composed of 78 cards — including the 22 Major Arcana — the Marseille Tarot is more than a deck of images. It is a symbolic map of human experience. The Major Arcana represent universal stages of transformation: innocence, choice, power, crisis, renewal, and awakening. The remaining cards ground these forces into the realities of everyday life.
At the School of Present Time, the Tarot is approached as a guide rather than a tool of prediction. Each card acts as a mirror, revealing hidden dynamics, inner movements, and possibilities for growth. The richness of its symbols — gestures, colors, numbers, archetypal figures — echoes traditions far older than the Renaissance, reaching back into ancient myth, sacred geometry, and esoteric philosophy.
To contemplate the Tarot is to enter into dialogue with time, symbol, and consciousness itself — a practice of presence through image and meaning.
A Mirror of the Animal Spirits
THE MEDECINE CARDS
The Medicine Cards offer a symbolic path to explore our inner world through our connection with the animal kingdom. Inspired by Native American wisdom traditions and presented by Jamie Sams and David Carson, this system invites us to rediscover the living intelligence present in nature.
Each animal embodies a specific quality of consciousness — courage, patience, adaptability, vision, transformation. By contemplating these archetypes, we begin to recognize these same forces within ourselves. The cards do not predict; they reveal. They serve as guides, helping us to perceive hidden dynamics, restore balance, and reconnect with instinctive knowledge.
At the School of Present Time, the Medicine Cards are approached as a practice of awareness. They open a dialogue between the human and the wild, between the rational mind and the deeper currents of intuition. Rooted in Native American traditions and echoing ancient Toltec teachings, they remind us that wisdom is not abstract — it is embodied, alive, and present in all forms of life.
Through the animals, we learn to listen again — to the Earth and to ourselves.
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