Hello and welcome to Embodied Astrology, a podcast and
learning community where we explore the growing edges of
astrology and its intersections with healing, arts, activism,
relationships, and personal growth.
My name is Renee Sills and this is your week ahead forecast.
The audio that you're about to listen to is from this week's
Somatic Space, A weekly virtual class that Ioffer every moon
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Thank you so much for being here.
For all of it before we begin today.
I wanted to make a couple of announcements about some
upcoming events happening at EA this coming weekend, May 17th.
We have a monthly Members only Astrological Strategy session
which is part of our Fire to Fire series.
Our Tourist season session explores the practicalities of
preparedness. We'll spend time working with
the astrology of the near future and discussing the ways we can
prepare materially, physically, informationally, and
relationally for what's to come. If you're interested in joining
us for this session, sign up for a membership.
If you're one of our members, check our Upcoming Events page.
The fourth Tuesday of every month, Aziz Bisons facilitates a
monthly series that explores Saturn and Neptune in Aries as a
beacon call for sustainability, community resilience and
collective power. This series strengthens and
evolves these practices and explores ways we can do so and
right relationship with land, ancestors and communities while
also countering intentional targeting by colonial forces.
On Tuesday, May 26th we have the next edition of this series
coming up that will be a planetary and elemental ritual
to dispel the evil eye with special guests Marwa Nasser
Metzler and Lina Moon. The Evil Eye, El I am in Arabic,
in Swana cultures and many others throughout the world, is
believed to be both projected onto someone and also received
through the eyes and can be the energy of envy or jealousy.
In this session we'll learn about the Saturn Neptune
conjunction in Aries and their relationship to the concept of
the evil eye through a Swana lens and as a malady as well as
its lesser known healing potentials.
If you'd like to learn more about this special session or
the series, check our show notes.
Coming up on June 13th, we have a special event called Queering
Astrology and Secret Third Things.
This is a live conversation and interview hosted by our
community Coordinator Alicia Mauji with myself, Renee Sills,
Alice Barkley Cat, and Blair Bogan.
We'll be reflecting on the inherent queerness of astrology,
how to blend astrology with other interest, skill sets and
methodologies as creative people, and the power and
potential of this technology when put in the hands of the
people. If you join us for our live
event, you'll also be able to ask your own questions and you
can always catch the recording if you can't attend live.
I want to also let you know that Embodied Astrology is
participating with the annual Missing Witches Reparations
Fundraiser. This fundraiser happens every
year and they are doing amazing work raising funds for Native
women's shelters throughout North America.
If you're interested in participating, all you have to
do is make a donation to your local Native women's shelter or
Indigenous LED organization and send your receipt into their
website. Your name will be entered to win
one of their many, many prizes, including an Embodied astrology,
A gift. Pack.
My final announcement is for those of you who are interested
in studying embodied astrology more deeply.
Your chart is a body. An Embodied Astrology
Practitioners program is beginning again.
We launched our Signature Practitioners training in 2024
with a 16 month cohort which is now blossomed into an emerging
practitioners collective. In 2026 we're offering our
second iteration of this life changing program as a 12 month
bi weekly course led by myself and Co taught with graduates
from our previous cohort. In this in depth program, you'll
learn to read, interpret and translate astrology symbolism
through multi sensory awareness, access and cultivate your
embodied intuition, and communicate with those whose
choice you read in ways that are meaningful, direct and relevant
to their lived experiences. You can find information for
everything I just mentioned in the show notes or at
embodiedastrology.com. In this season of tourist
season, which we're almost at the end of, this is our last
full week of tourist season. I've invited some homework, some
personal practice outside of this gathering in practice
space, and that homework has been to continue the work that
we've been doing in the space, a lot of which has been around the
immediacy of the sensing body. So over the course of this
season, we've worked with various practices.
The first week of tourist season, we tuned in with the
intelligence of the mouth and the tongue.
This is one of the places in the body that Taurus is said to
govern in medical astrology, and if you were there, you might
remember if you weren't there. What we did is we tuned in with
the immediacy of the oral response when we're met with
some kind of sensory input that we feel either attraction or
aversion towards. And you can even do it right
now. You can just like take a minute.
I see someone stretching their mouth right now.
That's perfect, right? Like stretch your mouth, lick
your lips, stretch your jaw, just bring some awareness into
your mouth and your face. And it doesn't have to be a
whole long hour and a half practice.
You could just do it for a minute and then use your
imagination and use the power of contrast inside your imagination
to call to mind something delicious.
Notice how your mouth and your tongue respond to delicious.
My mouth is watering even saying the word.
And then you can call to mind something disgusting and notice
what happens. It's fairly immediate.
I don't know if other people experience that.
The, the body, mind, it's a whole thing.
There's not a separation. So our our mouths, our Torian
parts, they're highly intelligent parts and they know
what's delicious and they also know what's disgusting.
And so in our first week of tourist season practice, we
tuned in with the mouth and the intelligence of the mouth.
And then we continued with delicious and disgusting as
prompts. And in the second week of
tourist season, we worked with a practice called Pratyahara.
And Pratyahara is the name of a practice that's included in the
8 limbed path of Ashtanga yoga. And it's, it's one practice that
is said to lead to enlightenment.
And so the this one thing that we can do, it's not the only
thing by the way, it's just one of the many practices is
withdraw our senses from the objects that they're sensing.
And so in our second week of tourist season practice, what we
did is we tuned in with the sense gates, the eyes, the nose,
the ears, the mouth, skin, and we practiced bringing a lot of
awareness into the place where environmental stimulation meets
the sense gates. And then we practiced tuning in
with the sense gates in an open, receptive way.
And one of the ways I've heard Pratyahara described is an open
field of awareness. So instead of our minds leaving
our bodies and our immediate experience and going towards the
objects that we're sensing, which is what our minds do, and
it's part of how we survive on Earth.
So for example, if I smell something and it's delicious, my
mind immediately has a preference.
It's like, oh, delicious. As soon as my mind decides it's
delicious, then there's a story. My mind is like cinnamon rolls,
right? And now I have my whole story
about cinnamon rolls, which I happen to love.
I don't know if anybody else feels that way.
They are my favorite baked to good.
Just to let you know that in case you ever want to please me,
I'll take a cinnamon roll. So my mind, I smell cinnamon
roll. My mind goes, yes, I like that.
That's my preference. Then immediately I have a story.
As soon as I have a preference, as soon as I have a story, I'm
involved. My eye feeling.
And as soon as my eye feeling is involved, then there's there's
this permanence, right? There's this sense of I exist.
I'm going to survive. I want things.
I'm going to possess that cinnamon roll.
If I have that cinnamon roll, I'm going to be satisfied.
And our minds do that immediately, right?
And I, if I smell something disgusting, it's the same thing,
right? Oh, don't like that.
Now I've got a whole story about what I don't like.
Now I want to get away from it. Now I'm judging whatever made
that story. Now I'm in the other ring.
So in the second week of tourist season, what we did is we worked
with Pratyahara and I remember that class.
At the end of it, there was this deep feeling of calm in the
class. Does anybody remember that to be
in the open field of awareness, to release our minds from
grasping at the objects of their perception, brings us into such
a deep state of receptivity. And receptivity is Venusian, and
Venus is the ruler of Taurus. And Venusian sensibility is all
about being able to receive the receiving gates of the body.
The sense gates of the body, the receptive intelligences of the
body are deeply relational. So Venus governs the signs
Taurus and Libra, right? And Taurus is an Earth sign.
It helps us to receive relationship with Earth, the
sounds and the smells and the textures and the environments
that we are part of. And Libra is an air sign.
It helps us to receive relationship with other
breathing beings. The give and the take of the
exchange. OK, so that's what we did in our
second tourist season practice. And then last week for our third
tourist season practice, we actually worked with a practice
suggested by Resma Menicum and his Vimbasi process.
And VIMBASSI is an acronym. And so he suggested that what we
do is we attune with the times that we're in.
And he said that the times that we're in are full of peril and
full of possibility, and none of us can know or control what will
happen, but we can be here with our best selves.
That's what we can do. And so we sat with that prompt
and we felt it through our sensing bodies and then we went
through the Vimbasi process. So we noticed the vibe, the
energy, we noticed the images, what was being conjured in our
minds and mental associations. Then we noticed the meaning
making that happened. What were the stories that we
were telling because of that and those first three, that's kind
of a breakdown in some ways of what happens with the pratyahara
practice, right? What we did the week before,
what's happening in the environment, then immediately
what's happening in the mind because there's there's not a
separation, right? Our minds are part of the body.
The body is part of the environment.
And then the B is the behavior. Who do we become?
So when we're telling ourselves stories that then we believe,
right? When the I feeling is online, I
exist and I'm smelling something delicious, then I'm going to
have a behavior. There will be actions I take,
decisions I make, words I speak, energy I exude.
I become somebody. When I smell Cinnabon, right?
Who do I become? I become very motivated, right?
Depending on how motivated I am, I may push somebody out of the
way to get to the front of the line.
I may try to cajole or convince my significant other to go buy
me a cinnamon roll. If I'm feeling insecure and down
on myself, I might say I can't have that right now.
You know, like, who do I become because of the stories that I'm
telling, the stories that I tell and the being that I become has
nothing to do with the existence of the cinnamon roll, you
understand? It has nothing to do with the
fact that I can smell it. So smelling and cinnamon roll
exist here. We are sensing bodies, objects
arising. But then in the relationship
between the sensing and the object, something happens.
We become our stories. Does that make sense?
And then after the B, then we have the A, which is affect,
right? We, we affect our environment.
We have an emotional affect. So when I smell cinnamon roll
and I'm so happy to smell cinnamon roll and I have become
enraptured, maybe I become very sensual, right?
And my affect entices my significant other to feed me the
cinnamon roll because they feel like something could happen
after, right? Oh, if Ren gets cinnamon roll,
then what? This is exciting.
That's my affect. Then there's sensations.
Sensations happen inside my body.
I smell cinnamon roll. My mouth waters, right?
I feel something gurgling in my tummy.
My whole body shifts in the direction of the cinnamon roll.
These are sensations. So the Vimbas are things that
are just happening. And then the I at the end of the
Vimbasi process is imagination. So if all these things are
happening and we can notice what's happening through the
material body, sensing, perceiving, relating, then
what's going to happen, right? The the I at the end is now
what's going to happen? So we can use our imaginations
to kind of predict what's going to happen if all of these things
are already happening. And then we can use our
discernment to decide, is that the thing that I want to happen?
And if it's not, then we can imagine otherwise.
And through the imagination of otherwise, then we can affect
the felt sense. So I did this practice with
myself earlier this week because I was noticing that I was
experiencing craving that actually was not good for me.
I don't know if anybody else has ever had that happen right where
you want something that is not that good for you or you're
wanting it in a way that's not that good for you.
And you're like, God, I'm being kind of obsessive.
I'm wanting something more than I actually need it.
I'm wanting something that I don't actually need.
Has anybody ever experienced that other than me?
OK, good. Phew.
So I did a Vimbasi process with myself and one of the things
that came forward for me was, you know, really how this
craving that I was experiencing was a longing to be connected
with something that I could actually produce for myself.
But in order for me to produce it for myself, it, it would
require some labor. So I wanted communion, right?
I, I'm like, oh, if I have this thing, then I'm going to feel so
expansive. It's going to feel so great.
And I'm going to feel this sense of communion, of being
satisfied, but it's temporary because I'm consuming something.
And so I had this realization of, OK, well, if I work with my
practices, if I actually cultivate this for myself, then
I can have it more consistently. And I don't need to extract from
that thing that I want so much. I don't need to have a kind of
codependent dysfunctional relationship with it, but that
requires me to do my own work, which is kind of harder.
And it's a little bit more of a drag than just like taking what
I want, right, and that codependent, more consumptive
relationship. So I had to get real with myself
about, OK, you know, can I do this work?
Because ultimately if I do the work, it's going to be more
sustainable, joyful and healthy for me in the long run.
I'm going to have more of what I want consistently.
But it's going to take a little longer and it's going to take my
labor. And I could just like have this
stand in right now and get a quick fix.
But then I'm going to want it again and again and again and
again. And I'm going to build a
relationship with that thing that ultimately is going to end
up being quite unsatisfying because that's what happens with
extractive consumption as we stop really appreciating what
we're taking in stops having an effect on us.
Has anybody else ever had that realization?
It can come up with addictions, right?
So like, oh, I really want to smoke some weed, right?
Has anyone ever experienced an addiction to a substance, right?
I really want to eat that food. I really want to have that
drink. You're like, oh, I feel so good
when I have it. And then you have it and maybe
it feels good the first time or five times or however many
times. But then at some point it
becomes kind of gross in your body.
It stops doing the thing that you want it to do.
What do we want when we want weed or wine or sweets, right?
We want a feeling of exaltation. We want to feel connected.
We want to feel softened. We want to feel opened up.
We want to feel loosened up. We can get those feelings for
ourselves without the substances, but it requires
labor. It happens for people all the
time. With other people.
I really want that person. I want them to want me.
I want their attention, right? I want their submission.
I want to submit to them. Oh, I want this dynamic.
And then we become very codependent with people.
We, we kind of extract from them and the relationship then gets
very distorted. We stopped, we stopped really
being in relationship with them. Often we stop being the person
that they would be attracted to because we're so focused on
extracting Does that. Has anybody else had that
experience? Have you observed it?
Have you ever seen a movie where that happens?
Good. I'm seeing some resonance in the
chat. I'm seeing some nods.
Yeah. OK.
Where's the line or where's the balance?
Well, that's the question. So that is the question.
And that's actually what we're going to work with today.
So the, the, the question that I have for you now is this is our
last full week of tourist season.
Next week we're going to have a little hybrid class because
we're moving from Taurus in a Gemini season.
This is our last full week of tourist season.
So I'm wondering, has anybody done the homework of tourist
season? And the tourist season homework
was to just be out there in the world noticing your senses and
noticing what you're attracted to or what you feel aversion
from and trying to stop your mind from telling you the story.
We're not getting into the mental story, we're just really
noticing the body. What am I attracted to?
What do I feel aversion from? What are, What are my sense
gates doing? What are my eyes doing?
What's my skin doing? What's my mouth doing?
Did anybody play around with that homework?
I'll share Great. And I guess I'll kind of add in
when I do it because, and this is kind of related to Taurus in
general and Taurus rules my 4th house.
And when I leave the house and like go somewhere, I'm really
becoming aware with Prachiyahara that I immediately leave my body
like the whole time I'm in relation with other people.
And so when I get home, usually what I would do is find comfort
in food and it would be so grounding and like coming back
to myself. And so I'm trying not to do
that, you know, because it was very like aggressive.
So what I try to do is come home and and the the sunscapes of my
ears are very comforting, but also can again, like Take Me Out
and get like irritated. So I guess what I'm noticing is
like the sense gates of my ears when I get like a, you know,
something that I can listen to without getting a narrative.
So like for me, it's the birds that really helps me come back
to myself in a way that's, you know, where I'm creating, like
AI don't know a comforting thing.
It's just like what we're supposed to do with like not
thinking about, you know, any sort of thing, but just
listening. So yeah, I found it really
helpful in that scenario. Thank you.
Thanks for sharing that. I just going to reflect back a
little bit what I'm hearing and let me know if this lands or
not. What I'm hearing is that
something's happening for you where you're able to discern
around a need and a desire and you're able to access
receptivity and satisfaction in a new way or a different way.
And and the habit that you have of maybe coming back to
yourself, which which we do through consuming, right?
We do through receiving, we do through accessing our sense
gates helps us come back into our body sometimes.
But that you have a maybe a more unconscious habit that has to do
with food that maybe isn't always totally receptive.
Like sometimes it's more. Actually extractive of the food.
It's like you're pulling something in.
It's maybe not what you want to eat.
It's maybe not how you want to be eating, or.
Something. And so you're starting to
practice receiving through your ears and, and through this
relationship that you're having with the birds and that that's
helping to satisfy something and that's doing something to your
nervous system, into your body and to your ability to be
present. Exactly.
Yeah. Yeah.
Cool. Thanks.
That's awesome that this practice is helping you
cultivate choice. And that's totally where we're
at, right? With this relationship between
Taurus, the season that we're in, and Gemini, the season that
we're going into. Because Gemini is all about
choices. Gemini's like there's all these
choices, right? I could have cinnamon rolls, I
could have cake, I could have tacos, I could have sushi.
You know, like what do I actually want?
And then if we're in our sensing intelligences, if we're actually
in our sensing inquiry and curiosity, that gives us the
ability to receive and perceive in ways that we're actually
hungry for, that are actually going to be satisfying rather.
Than just doing the thing that maybe is habitual or impulsive
and and may not be satisfying what we actually.
Want or need? Did anybody else do the homework
and want to share something? Yeah, I've been reading Dennis
Cooper novels, which, like, it's like novels that present like
these scenes of like, abusive desire and like sexual violence.
And I think usually when I read something like that, like I have
like an aversion before reading and I'm like, I don't know if I
want to go any further or something like that.
But instead like I'm kind of examining that like haunting
feeling that I get. And like when reading content
like that, like sticks with me, like where it's sticking like in
my body. Then like being able to map what
those like basic fears are that I'm feeling based on that.
Is it kind of a like, do I feel like it's something that like is
going to follow me and I won't be able to like get away from it
when I need to get away from it? Do I feel like it's going to
like stay in my mind? And it's like, why?
And like, what's the danger if it does?
And then kind of trying to track where not just kind of, I mean,
but also just like stories for stories sake versus kind of like
stories that like an artist is presenting to you supposedly for
a reason that aren't like involving like actual people.
And I think in the future, kind of tracking like where those
feelings come from and feeling how they like manifest and build
up in the body can like help ingest like difficult realities
as well as kind of like typical fictions.
Wow. Yeah, thank you.
I'm going to reflect back to and again, let me know if this
doesn't land. What I heard and what you shared
is really this connection between Taurus and Scorpio.
These are opposite signs, right? And so they're part of a
polarity that's totally part of each other.
So in our bodies, Taurus rules the sense gates, the sensing
body, and Scorpio rules the bowels and the genitals and the
reproductive system. And very deeply, our instincts
around desire and also fear and power and these kinds of things
and sensuality and sexuality live very deeply in the Taurus
Scorpio access. But so does fear and so does
power. And like that could include
power over or under, but also personal power and empowerment.
And in what you shared, I heard a refrain of the previous share,
which is that something's happening that's creating your
increased capacity to be in discernment and choice.
Also, we heard this in the previous share.
So it's a different way now, or you're describing it in slightly
a different way. In that discernment, there's
empowerment, there's your power, and there's something that's
happening there around a consciousness of how your power
might be unconsciously taken from you.
You might be left with a residue of a feeling of images that are
in your mind or an experience that maybe resonated in a
particular way. And you're you're now building
neural pathways and awareness in yourself that you have some
power over that experience. You have some choice there.
Does that resonate for you? Yeah, totally.
Creating choice and spaces where usually there's like a freeze
response. Yeah, really.
That's so powerful. And that's actually one of the
ways that somatic therapists, right and embodiment
practitioners. And this has been a huge thing
of Uranus and Taurus these last eight years or so since 2018.
A lot of embodiment practices are developing and evolving in
this language, is entering the zeitgeist in a huge way.
But these practices are ancient, they're timeless, and people
have always known that the ways that we heal and recover from
trauma and how we integrate it is to come back to the body and
come back to our sense of choice in the body.
We've done exercises in this class.
It's like where we focus the eyes or where we, you know, the
pratyahara practice where we notice what we're sensing coming
into The immediacy of the sensing body disrupts the trauma
pattern of dislocation. It disrupts the unconscious
patterning of what we do when we are struck by something that
might resonate with fear or create a sense of disempowerment
or something like that. So really powerful practices to
be in our bodies. They have huge implications.
I'll read this comment in the chat and then we'll continue.
So K is saying, I also worked with the sense gate of my ears.
I noticed a near constant aversion to advertisements.
The sounds, the energy, a vibration of coercion.
I feel an impulse to block it out, like stick my fingers in my
ears, and was particularly curious though of when I did
feel attracted to a certain message.
The mental narrative I worked with was what that said about me
and my susceptibility or my consumerist desire, or
narratives about the big evil corporations tugging strings.
I became curious about what my needs are and I found quiet or.
Calm sounds like wind and birds or Octavia Butler audiobooks
embodied astrology. Podcast, Awesome.
So in all of these shares, what we're hearing is an increased
capacity to discern and choose and that creates then increased
capacity to act in ways that are in alignment with our wants and
our needs. And I'm just going to say with
our well-being. And so here we are in the cusp
of Taurus and Gemini season. We're moving from a earth sign
season into an air sign season, from a resonance that's a very
much about the immediacy of the sensing body into a resonance
that's about relationality and exchange of information in the
mind. OK, so we're going to do a
practice today that is about being in the both.
And, and so someone asked in the comments like, what's the
balance? Right?
What, how, how do we balance this?
You know, when we feel our cravings and when we feel our
desires and when we notice what our impulses are, that can also
lead to a kind of neurotic overthinking, right?
So we we can like go really. Far.
You know, with these types of practices where we're like, oh,
this is all I'm sensing. This is all I'm sensing.
And you know that the Taurian receptivity to sensory
stimulation can go so far that it becomes a little immobilized.
There can be a way that we're so in our awareness of what we're
sensing that then it feels impossible to act.
So Taurus is deep earth energy. It's deep yin energy.
It's not active. It's it's deeply receiving.
We are active beings, right? We have to act.
We got to do things right. If I really want to get the
thing that I want, like I was talking about, it requires my
labor. We want beautiful food.
We want beautiful. Experiences we have to relate
with each other. We got to grow our gardens.
So that the acting or doing and the being and the receiving are
two sides of the same thing. We want to be able to do them
both at the same time. And doing that is very
challenging because we live in a culture that really doesn't.
Doesn't support our capacities to do that, so to be able to be
receptive and perceptive while also engaged.
A lot of ways is to push back against oppression, right?
Because oppressive systems teach us to expect what's overwhelming
and deadening and numbing to our senses.
And therefore they teach us to be extractive consumerists,
right? They they build and breed rape
culture. And they?
Program us to do in ways that are for their productivity,
right? So I'm.
Going to do I smell the cinnamon roll immediately I go into.
My. Craving.
And then I got to buy the cinnamon roll.
That's what Kay is. Sharing.
Right about these messages, right?
Consumers messages. So what do I actually really
want? How can I be in the discernment
of my sensing body, get to the root of my needs and desires and
wants? Then what do I want to do about
that? Sometimes it's about.
A passive consumption, but a lot of times really what I want to
do is build relationship I. Want to build a?
Sustainability. OK, so we're going to do a.
Practice, and any practice that I ever offer is always a
suggestion. So do what works for you.
Modify as you need. So the.
Invitation now is to share. What was that experience like?
Was it? Possible.
For you to be. In the.
Being in the sensing as you are also in the doing and the
moving. Well, I'm.
Feeling my heartbeat a lot, right?
Now. Because I guess today's the day
that I'm talking and I'm really happy about that.
I injured myself a couple of months ago actually in the
middle of my first performance of my one person show and my
body has. I think it's, I think.
It really was my hamstring and my knee affected, but of course
that affected my whole body. And at the beginning of the
healing process, I think I was able to be so still with the
healing because I was so scared. And it was like the stillness
was coming from a place of just pure fear and shock of what
happened to my body because I had never injured myself like
that ever. And so at the beginning, I was
able to go slow. But as the months have gone by,
I've been able to get back into yoga, get back into hiking and
walking and stretching and gaining mobility back.
And it's amazing how quickly I go back into rolling really
hard, walking really fast, trying to hike the tallest
mountain I can to prove to my body that it's healed, it's
healed right, it's healed 100% right.
And it's just not yet. But today, coming back to just
the simplicity of. Hovering my.
Hands over my body and I literally like shivered in the
front of my head, back of my back and over my right knee
because I'm like, I guess those are the parts of my body that
need the most help right now maybe.
And I felt it so viscerally and I just had this moment of like,
Oh my God, I am my own healer. And also a moment of excitement,
enjoying that, but also the moment of sadness and loss of
like, why? Why does it always take another
teacher helping me get there? Like, why does it always take a
class or a mentor or a teacher helping me slow down?
But I guess my natural speed is just to go really fast and
really hard. But today I'm just really
grateful to be reminded of the simplicity of like, I don't even
have to touch my body, so I'm feeling.
Really good. There's a powerful.
Testimony of the power of the mind that we just heard what I
heard and. Please let me know if this
doesn't resonate for you. What I heard was you.
Talking about the power of your mind in multiple different ways.
The power of the. Story of the mind The narrative
of the mind, The mind exerting and imposing itself on the body.
And then also the power. Of the mind when it's listening
and in relationship with the body.
Different types of power, and 1 is a very active power and 1 is
a much more receptive power. And that receptive?
Power that power with. It really allows.
For a healing and a well-being in the body and for the body to
be in its power. I also heard this question.
Why does it take someone else reminding me?
Anybody else feel that? Sometimes.
So it's why it's why. There are wisdom traditions, you
know. It's why there are. 1000 year
old. Traditions that keep saying the
same thing in different ways. Is we need to be reminded?
Again and again and again and again and again of what we
already know. We need to be reminded.
And remembered that word to remember, to come back of what
we already know again and again and again and again.
And that's what relationship does for us.
That's the power of relating, is to remember each other, to
remind each other. I've seen the comments.
I had to stay in the subtle movement to follow my senses.
When I started larger movements, my mind became more controlling.
Coming back to my subtle, fluid inner body allowed me to listen
to my senses more clearly and gently.
That's right, I. Also felt that the larger
movements are often ones that for me at least.
Feel. More habitual and untrained and
I and sometimes my mind gets excited about them and I'm like,
oh, I know that when I do this, I feel this kind of way and I've
done this movement a million times, so I'm going to do it
again. Right.
And then I'm like somewhere. Else but then when I go into my
body, my body's like, well, what if you do this other thing and
it's kind of weird and we don't really know what it is.
We're just going to follow it, you know?
And then I'm like, oh, I don't know what it is.
And so speed. Changes right temporality
changes time completely changes influence affect change.
Relationship. Changes when we're in the
sensing of something, in the interior, internal experience of
something. It's so nice and.
Quiet and calm. When my mind slows down, that's
what I feel, yeah. It feels very expansive.
Totally. If only this is.
Something that people in boardrooms would do before they
made international policy decisions.
What a world we would live in when we traveled to specific
parts of the body. I felt at ease all over and a
grounded, sensual feeling. Make it easy to be still.
When the invitation was more exploratory and to follow the
body, I immediately wanted to walk around and become more
expansive with my movements. Then my mind came in and started
saying make sure you stretch the tight parts.
Yes. And it took the fun exploration
away pretty quickly. So that's it.
That's this mental mapping that we do with ourselves all the
time. And we do it.
In these types of practices, but all the time.
So the first person that shared, they were talking about this
recovery from an injury, right? And then going back into
something the the mind's like, well, this is what you should do
the mind. Has its.
Story, right? And the mind story is usually on
some bullshit. It's not actually with the
immediacy of the experience of the life and the relationship
and the sensing. It's with whatever its ideas are
about whatever it thinks is good or bad, right?
The mind is really good at making binaries.
This is good, this is bad. I like that.
I don't like that. Then the I feeling gets.
Very strong. Then our egos involved and the
fun goes away pretty quickly. There's also capacity for.
Change with a group or multiple people practicing at once?
Yeah. Not only one person reminding,
but like the resonance of everyone who's practicing now
and who's ever practiced. Yes.
Yes, exactly that's. Why we have these spaces to
practice together? We need each other.
OK. And thanks everybody.
For your sharing. I'll take the last 10 minutes or
so just to offer a little bit about the astrology of this
week, OK? So take what works, leave the
rest and feel free to be in your sensing, moving body as I'm with
you with words. So we're in our last week of
Taurus season, and next week Gemini season will begin.
And this week there's this interesting mix of Earth and
water energies and fire and air energies.
So Taurus is an Earth energy. And yesterday the sun in Taurus
was sextile, Jupiter and Cancer, big water energy, and tomorrow
Mercury will make that aspect as well.
So a sextile. Is a.
Lending flowing influence, and Earth and water bring us down
and in. And then on Thursday there's a
triple conjunction of Mercury and the Sun and the asteroid
series. So when?
Mercury is conjunct. To the sun.
It's a special word. Kazemi, my favorite astrological
word, means to be in the heart of the sun, to be infused by
solar presence. And so Mercury is moving at its
fastest right now. It is not in its inferior
conjunction, it's superior conjunction.
It's moving direct and it's being.
Infused. By solar energy.
And this is the ability to think forward, to strategize, to have
an idea of where we want to go and what we're trying to do.
And Ceres is there. Ceres is also in the heart of
the Sun now. Some of you may.
Know Ceres as the grain goddess Demeter in Greek or Hellenic
myth, and there's a very famous story about her that has to do
with her daughter Persephone being abducted by Hades, the
Lord of the underworld. And then Ceres, the goddess of
grain who produces life on Earth, goes into mourning and
she's bereft at the loss of her daughter and when she finds out
that her daughter was abducted by her brother.
Nonetheless. Because the Greeks are fucking
intense myth, myth, myths, right?
Like they're always up to some crazy twisted shit.
So the brother abducts the daughter, his niece, but then
Ceres goes into mourning and and then she's pissed.
She's really angry about it. And So what she does.
In her morning and in her rage is she leaves the heavens and
she goes to earth, and she takes the form of an old woman.
She becomes very humble in her presentation, which is different
sometimes than other human forms the gods take, which are often
very beautiful or very strong or something like that.
She becomes very humble, that word humble.
Or humility is to be of the earth.
But then she's. Discovered.
So it it is discovered that she's this goddess, and it is
when she's discovered, she demands that a temple be built
to her. And then she retreats into her
temple, and she doesn't come out, and she stops growing grain
for human beings, which means that humans starve, but they
also stop making sacrifices to the gods.
So Ceres. Is an amazing kind of resonant
symbol to be feeling into in this time of mass labor strikes.
Right. And the politics of refusal that
we can enact when the products of our labor and the products of
our body and the ways that resources, including our bodily
resources are being extracted from, are being taken into the
underworld, right? They're being used and consumed
for death. So Ceres stops.
Growing green. And in that what she does is she
forces negotiation to happen. Zeus, the God of gods like is
brought to the bartering table and he's like, OK, you know, we
need our sacrifices. So he'd like, tells Hades to
give the daughter back. So when Persephone comes back,
she has become the queen of the underworld.
Actually, there's an empowerment that happens for her.
And there is an older story than the Greek myth of abduction
where Persephone actually hears the call of the dead.
And she asks her mother, what am I hearing?
And Siri says, those are the dead.
And she says, who cares for them?
And Siri says, well, I'm supposed to, but I'm so busy
with life that I can't really care for the dead.
And then Persephone goes, I'm going to do that.
And so she willingly descends into the underworld.
And then they become partners and collaborators in holding the
dual parts of life and death. So whatever myth you want to
think about, Persephone comes back empowered.
Actually, she comes back as the queen of the underworld.
And she's she splits her time between the world of the living
and the world of the dead. And she and her mother then
produce this rite of passage, the Alisonian Mysteries.
It was an actual mystery called in the Hellenic Greece.
It existed for over 1000 years and.
In those. Rites of passage.
We don't really know. What?
Happens because they were a deep mystery.
People were not allowed to speak about it and if they did, they
would be killed. But we know that.
Something happened in those mysteries, in those rights that
involved things being done, things being shown and things
being said that reminded the participants about the power of
death in the underworld, and in that remembering what happened
for them as a result was a profound sensitivity to life.
And so. The first person that.
Shared actually spoke to this. So you talked about getting this
injury and the injury was so bad that it really made you slow
down and get really sensitive to your life.
And that's what happens. When we experience trauma and
when we experience injury, when we experience big illness, when
we experience big loss, hopefully it's what's.
Happening. Now, as we're living through
deeply genocidal times, we're experiencing such profound
heartbreak, such outrageous atrocities, that I think one of
the Silver Linings of it is that many people are becoming a lot
more sensitized to how deeply life needs to be cared for.
So there's a. Triple conjunction Ceres,
Mercury in the Sun right before the new Moon and the new moon is
on Saturday. So we have a a new moon right at
the very last degrees of Taurus, and Uranus has just left Taurus.
It was there for eight years. This part of our charts has
undergone a profound. Awakening.
You might think about where is Taurus in your chart, what has
been happening there, and the Taurian sensibilities of your
body and your awareness with life.
And how your body? And your awareness with life
have also been informed by awareness of death, by awareness
of loss, by awareness of pain. And there might be something
that's happening in your consciousness right now that is
about caring for life, because you understand that life is not
permanent. There might be something that's.
Happening inside of consciousness right now, that's
about really making choices for what we truly want, because we
understand that when we make choices for just unconscious
consumption. That it leads.
To a residue and a build up of harm and stagnancy and dis ease
in the long run. And that might be part of what
we've experienced in these last eight years, I don't know.
So question. I've experienced that where
Taurus lives in my chart. So then the end of the.
Week or throughout the week? There's also fire and air.
We have Vista moving into Aries on Wednesday, Palaces and Aries,
two other goddess asteroids. Palace is sextile with Pluto and
Aquarius. Vista will be sextile with
Uranus in Gemini on Saturday, the day of the new moon.
Mars and Chiron are conjunct in Aries and then on Sunday Mercury
moves into Gemini and it forms an immediate conjunction with
Uranus and Venus in Gemini's sextile with Chiron.
So. We're coming out.
Of a phase, a long phase of the outer planets being an Earth and
water. And we're moving into a long
phase of the outer planets being an air and fire.
And there's a shift collectively, in my opinion, of
moving from a time when a lot of people are in the immediacy of
sensing and feeling and being really impacted into a time when
people are going to be very active and very quick and need
to take action and need to talk about things and change things.
Uranus. And Taurus.
As that influence really produced a kind of embodied
imagination and tangible sense of the possibilities of what can
happen when we are embodied. This world building feeling that
I think a lot of us who are involved in the somatic fields
have started to really deepen in what's possible.
When we're feeling what's possible when we're present.
This is a remembering of what we already know.
Now we're moving into a. Air and fire cycle the next 7 to
20 years or 18 years. Lots of air and fire in the
outer planets. And this is about recreation,
recreation, regeneration. What motivates us?
The. Responses in human beings right
now in our societies to extremism that we're seeing,
that we're part of, that we're experiencing, can produce an
intensity of polarization. One thing that's possible right
now is that people really want to do something else.
We want to feel something else, and part of how we're going to
create something else is maintaining our capacity to feel
as we do. If we lose our capacity to feel
and we just go into the doing, it's likely that we will
recreate the patterns that we are habituated by and the
patterns of the mind. So there's a challenge right now
to stay in our feeling as we also are doing and creating and
engaging together. And it's a strategy, you know,
of authoritarianism and supremacy to colonize and
control our imagination. It's a strategy to overwhelm us
with atrocities and make us think nothing else is possible.
But when we come together. And embodied astrology spaces.
And we feel what's possible, our imagination start to do
something else. And when people come together
in. All kinds of spaces and feel
what's possible. Imagination starts to do
something else. So part of our our work right
now is to stay in the sensing and the feeling, in the
receptivity and the perception of what's happening as we also
move into the doing and move into the speaking and move into
the acting. And it is a challenge because in
order to create change, we have to actually do shit.
We have to create new systems, we have to organize, we have to
have an actual strategy. We can't just complain about it.
So there is a challenge. For us to be in the doing now,
how do you want to change your life?
Could be personal. It doesn't have to be everything
out there for the collective all the time.
We're all part of the collective in the ways that we're changing
our personal lives. You want to change your life?
Somehow I know it. I don't know how you want to
change your life, but I know you're experiencing this
astrology, so what's the change that you want?
How do you stay in the? Feeling and the relationship of
the change as you also start to enact the change.
So I'll just end. With a a quote from the Meta
Suta, who even as a mother protects with her life her
child, her only child. So with a boundless heart,
should one cherish all living beings, radiating kindness over
the entire world, spreading upwards.
To the. Skies and downwards to the
depths, outwards and unbounded. This quality of.
Relationship that we practice when we're in the sensing and in
the receiving is the quality of change, and that's what
everybody was talking about in your shares.
When I slow down enough to actually feel something, I can
feel that something's changing already.
When I slow down enough to feel my knee and I stop imposing my
mind upon my knee, I stop harming my knee and my knee
tells me what it actually needs. When I stop imposing my.
Ideas of charity and help on whatever group or whatever
person I think needs charity and help.
And I slow down enough to actually be receptive to what
they're saying and what they're showing me.
They know what they already need.
Then we can be collaborative together, we can support each
other, we can assist each other. When I stop assuming I know
what's. Best for my child and I let my
child tell me right then my child gets to feel empowered,
then I. Get to feel.
Empowered in my responsiveness and not weak in the attempts I'm
making to control them, right? So I'll leave it there.
I hope any or all of that feels helpful for this week ahead.
It's quite a powerful week of astrology and you know, we're
living in violent and devastating times and it's not
about to change this week. And the the new moon that's
coming is conjunct the binary star Algol is known in across
many traditions of being a. Very.
Destructive kind. Of energy but destruction.
Can. Be life giving also when we are
allow ourselves to really feel the sensitivity that it produces
and to tune in with what our sensing, receiving bodies know
what they need to heal. So let's be in our.
Sensing, receiving, perceiving as we also are in the doing of
our lives this week. And hopefully see you next.
Week for our cuspy Taurus Gemini dance practice.