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This week’s astrology nudges you to indulge your inner sovereignty
I require tons of time by myself. Solitude is where I recharge. Sometimes when my significant other is chatting away (if you know him, you know), I get cranky because he’s interrupting my deepest inner contemplations.
My finger is firmly pressing down on the introvert side of the scale. I enjoy people, but I choose to lightly pepper my socializing into vast expanses of solo time. My best cure-all is a heaping dose of solitude in the mountains. I hike alone, bike alone, ski alone, and sleep all by my lonesome. Autonomous and independent, I identify as a rad-wife, not a tradwife.
This week’s astrology is for us introverts. The planets are aligning for a week of introspection, reflection, and reconnection.
I’m already ready for a break. Following summer’s kick-off with the Food & Wine Classic, Aspen Summer Words conference, JAS June Experience and the Aspen Ideas Festival, this week brings a welcome respite. My agenda: reading, writing, hanging by the river, if not stuck indoors by the oppressive smoke.
Neptune joins Mercury in the retrograde reset. Retrogrades are custom-made for introverts like me. The blue planet at the edge of our solar system is internal by nature. It’s the planet of dreams, visions and spiritual connections. When it reverses course, it encourages us to go inside and listen to the whispers of our soul longings.
Venus enters Virgo as well. Virgo is the priestess archetype, introverted by design. She lives on the outskirts of the village and spends her time tracking the signs of the earth. She’s the one who reminded us that the solstice was coming and guided us through the ceremony to welcome in summer. Virgo is empowered and knows her sacred purpose, reconnecting us to the spiritual when we’re obsessing over our mundane lives.
Mercury is cazimi (in the heart of) the sun this week, too. When Mercury meets with the sun, it’s that little voice nudging us to pay attention.
These three significant alignments remind us to slow down, connect with our inner selves, and tune in.
The first thing I’m going to do is get still, get silent, and get into my body. Focusing on my breath helps me embody and guides me to drop in below my neck. Lately, I’ve been doing a practice I learned from Katherine McIntosh in the Somatics class at O2, where I call back my four energy bodies: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.
Then, I just listen.
What feels alive in my body? What emotions and sensations are present? What’s calling to me? I feel the yearnings and sense the awarenesses within my body. You might hear, taste, or even smell the messages. The most important and hardest part is to trust what you’re trying to communicate to yourself.
Your dream’s in there. It’s just more convenient and less work to ignore it. Maybe you’re so used to blowing off what you really want as fantasy that you’ve stopped dreaming altogether.
Start by getting honest with yourself. You don’t have to act yet. If you’re not enjoying your current life, then something better is calling to you. What would light you up? The first step is being truthful with yourself. Let go of the “how.”
Next, choose one tiny micro-action (and I do mean micro) that moves you forward, toward your dream.
I’ve been getting honest with myself about how much more I want to write. I didn’t even let myself go there for years. I didn’t have the confidence to entertain my genuine longings. My dream was suffocating under my limiting belief, “I’m not good enough.”
I began by writing for five minutes each day — that’s the kind of micro I mean. I’m now up to thirty, sometimes even more. I’m building my writing muscles up, going to the author gym each day — well, most days. The pressure to write every single day overwhelms me and makes me want to throw in the towel.
The key to micro-actions is that they need to feel ridiculously small, so tiny that you actually do them. If I had needed to start with one minute, I would have. One minute of writing would’ve added up to five or more minutes by the end of the week. That’s five minutes of writing I wasn’t doing before. Baby steps add up quickly. Before you know it, you’ll be living your rad-life.
Sheridan 💫
Moon Sisters Circle, Astrologer, Life Coach, and Creator of the Astrology In Real Life Method