New Moon in Aries

The Dark Moon calls us inwards. Into introspection and isolation. Turning within to contemplate our depths. It can be an edgy time at the best of times – a time for self-reflection and meeting with those aspects of ourselves that we find most challenging and usually like to keep hidden when we’re looking outside ourselves in social situations. It’s here that we meet what we’ve kept hidden – and we’ve kept it hidden for good reason, because it makes us feel uncomfortable.

This new moon, amidst social distancing and self-isolation, how will you meet with those parts of yourself that you prefer not to see?

Luna Rhythms Yoga can support you during this Aries New Moon:

The New Moon in Aries focuses the energetic awareness around the top of your head to the tip of your nose. Take a moment to breathe into this part of yourself, inhaling up to your crown and just noticing what’s there, how it’s feeling. Exhaling through your nose and noticing the sensation in your nostrils as you breathe. Perhaps continue the nadi shodhana pranayama practice that we started at the Equinox:

· Sit in a relaxed and upright position; place your left hand on your left thigh in chin mudra.

· Lightly place your middle and index fingers to the 3rd eye, the ‘Ajna doorway’ or use Vishnu mudra

· Place the tip of your ring finger lightly to the left nostril and the tip of your thumb lightly to your right nostril

· Gently close the right nostril and exhale through the left

· Inhale left

· Gently close the left nostril and exhale through the right

· Inhale right

· Breathe with an even ratio in each inhalation and exhalation

· Rest your awareness in the space between each breath

· Breathe with nadi shodhana for 2-3 minutes

Can you be present with this breath for two minutes? Can you breathe through both nostrils with full awareness of the movement in and out of your breath (vipassana), for ten? What’s arising in you? Continue breathing as you notice.

Afterwards, take time to ground yourself by placing your hands on the floor in front of you and taking the danda pranam asana, or full body prayer pose. Placing your hands together in a gesture of prayer and stretching them out in front of you, lengthening your spine and bringing your forehead to touch the ground (use a block to support yourself if necessary). This is a gesture of receptivity and release, a gesture of surrender. Breathe and be with this feeling for as long as is necessary for you.

What is coming up that needs to be released right now? What can you breathe with, deepen into? What can you let go more fully? Exhale with a deep sigh, as many times as you need to – and if the sigh turns into a sob, let it come and allow the tears to fall.

It is time to let it go.

All the feelings of shame, guilt, silence. All the anger, the rage, the terror. All of it. Whatever it is that you have suppressed for all this time. The Earth, the Moon, these changing times, and your own exhausted body, are calling you to let it all go.

Release. Breathe. Relax.

You don’t need to hold on to it any longer.

It’s time to let it go.

And when you feel ready to rise, do so with purpose, with clarity, with expectation for your own greatness (and with gentle nurturing for your own humanness).

Aries is calling you to action. To know that you are worthy of being here right now, exactly as you are. That you have a place and a purpose and that being small is not an option any more. You are righteous and indignant and you know what it is that you want, what it is that you are here to do – the gift that you are here to give the world.

That voice might be small and quiet, barely a whisper, but it is there.

So sink your awareness into your belly and really listen to it. Can you encourage it to grow stronger by sounding out the bija mantra RAM? Deepening into your solar plexus and feeling the vibration of the word there. Then breathing into what you feel, what you hear.

Finally, complete your practice by connecting with your ruby red Grounding Cord through your feet and/or through your sit-bones. Grounding into your root chakra and feeling your strong and deep connection with the beautiful Mother Earth.

You may like to take a notebook and journal with your experiences of this practice. Allow whatever comes to come, without judgement, and be the witness of what is arising within you.