‘Tis the Season for Embodiment

Welcome to December. A time for celebrating, cozying up, sipping warm tea, and feeling your emotions. It is ALWAYS the season to feel your emotions, but the times we are in now, call for it especially. There is so much happening astrologically as well as energetically this month . We have a very big and powerful super full moon on December 4. that is calling us to release what is no longer serving us, as well as open us up to receive a lot of cosmic downloads. We have a strong number of solar flares shooting bursts of plasma from the sun that the Earth (and all of us on the Earth) are receiving, all while in a time called “solar maximum”, which is a cyclical time that spans 1-2 years of the Sun’s 11 year cycle. It’s the frequency and magnitude of these flares that have scientists curious due to the sheer volume and strength of flares. This energy may have you feeling drained, experiencing physical pain such as joint pain and body aches, and even melancholy. Could these energies and plasma bursts be contributing to the upheaval in the world, and for us individually?

In short, this energy is calling for the really rusty, mucky, cagey, ragey, and most importantly, repressed emotions and feelings to come to the surface. Just as our world is purging now, it is so helpful for us to purge and release what is coming up. To allow yourself to sit through the temporary discomfort of the awarenesses, feelings, eruptions, or malaise.

Engaging in somatic practices such as tuning into your interoception, bouncing/shaking/dancing, energy tapping, paying attention to the physical environment, are all examples of embodied somatic practices. While therapy and other cognitive based strategies are important and helpful, embodied practices are equally (if not more-in my opinion) beneficial to practice. They fill in the gaps of cognitive loops and let us to truly feel and through a means of physical expression, and to move these feelings out through the body.

Additionally, we are learning more from science about how the body responds to words alone. Once you’ve seen it, felt it, danced it, journaled it, expressed in art,, and/or raged it out, you may consider asking this question: “How good can it get?*”. Gently tapping your heart, or thymus (high heart) and repeating (aloud or in your mind) phrases like “I am safe”, and “thank you” can actually lower markers such as blood pressure and inflammation in the body in just a couple of weeks, according to a recent Harvard study. In fact, there are several reputable sources such as Stanford, The Institute of HeartMath, and Harvard sited from Nisha Manek, MD, who are looking at the correlation between the mind and body for health purposes. Choose your words carefully; your body is listening.

Allow yourself to feel it all. Process through it. We can no longer disservice ourselves by holding it in—and no one else benefits from us “holding it together” all of the time, either.

*I credit Cynthia Sue Larson, UC Berkeley physicist, with her work in the quantum field, on accessing higher timelines through “Quantum Jumping”