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An New Moon Practice To Help You See The Divine In The Everyday
I spent the last five days at a meditation retreat contemplating awareness and space, and one message kept coming loud and clear: Meaningful change begins in the body, not by escaping the body.
For eons, different spiritual traditions have considered the body the space of evils: unholy, dirty, and shameful. Something to want to tame and control.
Like it or not, most of us have been conditioned to think that our bodies are "not enough" in one way, shape, or form. Too big or too small. Too fat, too skinny, too smelly, too weird. The shame may be super in-your-face or more subtle and insidious. It could be thoughts about your belly being too big, your orgasm being too loud. In the end, so many of us end up censoring these parts of ourselves and perpetuating small bits of shame in the process.
As we look around planet Earth and find the environment is in a state of ruin, it's a reminder that our relationship to our own bodies mirrors our relationship to nature. We try to control nature by cutting things down, plowing and raising, controlling and subduing. We do the same with our bodies throughout this life.
Why this new moon is the perfect moment for an embodiment practice.
Taurus Season is an invitation to return the body to our earth as your sacred temple. Taurus is a strong Earth sign. The bull, steeped in the senses. In the body. In the here and now. One of my teachers used to remind me, "The thing about the body is that it can't be in the past or the future; it can only be in the now." Once you learn to truly be in your body, despite fear or shame, you will accidentally find yourself in the present moment too. It is essential to practice sitting in the present through meditation, but you also need to take your practice off the cushion and into the world.
And how do you do that? By breathing, dancing, singing, eating, making love! If you do all those things with awareness, each experience can become divine. If you seek magical moments only during meditation, you're losing out and missing the link between your body, the earth, and the heavens.
It's all here. Now.
So, to ring in this Taurus new moon, I suggest balancing transcendent, still practices with flowing, embodied ones. For example, if you are a yogi and meditator, you probably have a set of rules, control, timelines, and structure that you follow. Which is fabulous! But take this time as an opportunity to try practices that open you to your embodied flow.
How to return to the body for the Taurus New Moon.
Here are a few small rituals to try out to help you connect to your body this moon cycle. Choose one, or give them all a go over the two weeks between the new moon and the full one on May 18. (If you want to up the stakes, you can do any of these practices as if it were the last time you were ever going to get to do it!)
- Free dance for 20 minutes.
- Walk in nature with no phone.
- Practice belly breathing and allow emotions to flow up and out, without control.
- Feel love for 20 minutes by thinking of someone you love, and let it permeate through your body like nectar.
- Make love to yourself without an orgasm being the goal. Just allow feeling and sensation to flow through you.
- Eat food with no phone, eyes closed, and taste it like it's your last meal.
- Work with one sense at a time. Instead of eating and listening to music while doing something else, just focus on one thing and see how it feels.
Journaling prompts to think on afterward.
- Were you able to soften into the experience? Or was your mind busy with to-do lists the whole time?
- Did any feelings come up? Which ones? What did you do with them?
- What is the story you're holding around your body? Where did it come from?
- What is your relationship to your physical body like? How do you care for it?
- Where are you still holding shame?
- How can you commit to treating your body as a temple this moon cycle?
I have watched hundreds of women especially, though it applies to men too, get into their bodies, access the divine feminine (which everyone has), and experience an embodied spirituality by doing this sort of work. If you can commit to embodiment as part of your spiritual sacred practice—maybe by adding that to your mornings after meditation—I guarantee something will shift.
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What Is Meditation?
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What Breathwork Can Address
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How Plants Can Optimize Athletic Performance
What to Eat Before a Workout
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