ADAPTING
Adaptation is a quality that can be found in the mutable signs, including Sagittarius, whose season we are in. Learning how to adapt and adjust to the one unending change we call life - we can learn a lot from the mutable signs about how to do this. Sagittarius adjusts by finding the new inspiration - the adventure or philosophical outlook that can be the guide to accepting change. Its opposite Gemini, adapts by being curious about the other option, looks at it the situation from all sides, endlessly changeable. Pisces and Virgo, the other opposites, also mutable signs, find other ways of adapting. Pisces spreads out, resisting nothing, feeling wave after wave of life pass through. Virgo adapts through analysis and humility - through being of service and being practical. Of course every human, regardless of their astrological makeup, has to adapt to life repeatedly, but adaptation comes more readily to the mutable signs than others. This can be a problem for people with lots of mutable energy - they can struggle knowing when and how to stay with something, to resist changing form. But I include this quality of adaptation here because it’s a good time to practice our adaptation skills, whatever our charts might look like!
This time of year can be challenging for so many people, a time where a sense of obligation or expectation to connect through the holidays can actually lead to more pronounced feelings of isolation. What adaptations can you include right now that can help you through this time? What can you practice acceptance around that might bring you more ease? What can you experiment with changing your perspective on, that will help you feel less resistance to whatever is happening in your life?
Most of us frequently live with this illusion that our lives are static, some kind of fixed and ongoing experience of consciousness and events, and then different things, outside circumstances then interrupt our story of what we think we want, or a specific plan. It can feel like a disruption, but what feels like disruptions are actually places where we are shown we had an expectation of how something would go, or should go. This is a big part of how the learning takes place on planet earth. So the more adaptable we are, and that especially means the more compassion we can hold for ourselves in the places where we don’t think we’re adaptable, the more peace we experience. Reflect on your own relationship with adaptation this week, and how your practice of it might help you through this month.
ARIES | March 21-April 19
Question - How often do you look back into your past, consciously?
Meditation - the spiral of time
Assignment - Spend time looking backwards this week. Into the recent past, the past month, the past six months, the past year. What has been happening in your life? How has that affected you? How do you feel right now, in your body, and how is that influenced by what has been happening in your life in the recent past? Write about it. Encourage yourself to linger on remembering things that have happened longer than your tendency, and see what you discover. Hopefully this can help you register how much movement occurs all the time, and be gentler on yourself.
TAURUS | April 20-May 20
Question - What are you sick and tired of?
Meditation - purging
Assignment - What area of your life needs more space? How can you help create that space by getting rid of things / habitual thoughts / energy drains? This could be psychically, inside, or it could be physically, in your environment, but give yourself room to carve out new space for new energy. Let yourself feel the things you are ‘over’, and create enough time and space in your week to actually begin to make it happen to let them go.
GEMINI | May 21-June 20
Question - What might you be missing on the ground itself?
Meditation - steady heart
Assignment - Give yourself permission to focus on the smaller things, the unglamorous things, the daily things. Attending to life itself. Reframing this attention as sacred, as essential to your wellbeing. What is moving much slower than you and so you can’t see? What might come into your view if you looked down, all the way to your feet, to the ground, to the earth itself outside? Let yourself practice this week, not through effort but through release.
CANCER | June 21-July 22
Question - What do you miss because you don’t give yourself permission to perceive it?
Meditation - believing in the unseen
Assignment - Because you’re often such a good mimic, you can struggle to even notice when you are ignoring some valuable information your intuition is offering you. You can sort of absorb whatever energy is around you, and conflate it with your own. This is why it’s so essential that you find a way to relax and/or retreat, reconnect to the most basic part of yourself this week. However this happens is great, but you need to make it a priority. The more you do this, the more you will be able to perceive what is needed to nourish yourself and your life fully.
LEO | July 23-August 22
Question - What is most alive in you right now?
Meditation - the most vibrant part of the plant
Assignment - There’s a dolphin trainer who described her philosophy of training that was basically: reward the best behavior and ignore anything else. What if you did this with yourself? Just return, over and over, to your possibility, your beauty, your aliveness? What would that shift in your life? What does that idea bring up about stories you have from the past about how much you need to focus on your bad qualities in order to be ‘good’? What if you didn’t have to struggle and you could still be everything you wanted to be? This is worth contemplating, especially where you have resistance to it.
VIRGO | August 23-September 22
Question - When and where do you need to refuse?
Meditation - being unwilling
Assignment - Write down the places where you might benefit from refusing to do something, or adapt, in some way. Explore the ways you might be adapting newly to not adapt! What might you be doing that’s too detail-oriented, that’s actually not the best use of your time? That’s draining your energy in some important way? You can tend to want to be helpful or ‘practical’ in a way that’s actually not sustainable when you look at the whole picture of your life. Look at this this week, see what you notice, what it might be nourishing to change.
LIBRA | September 23-October 23
Question - What foods really nourish you?
Meditation - your body as vehicle for pleasure
Assignment - How often do you eat based on what feels really good to your body? How often do you pay attention to that? What do you notice in your body when you connect your own pleasure to nourishment? Move your attention from your mind space up above your head, and down into your body this week. Just with gentle intention, not a lot of effort. And ask your body questions about what it needs, what it likes, how it is feeling in the moment. This is so simple and obvious, but almost always underrated. Give yourself this. Give yourself the nourishment of pleasure.
SCORPIO | October 23-November 21
Question - What voices in your head do you listen to most?
Meditation - listening as power
Assignment - They key at this time for you is not trying to get anything to go away. Not trying to extreme your way out of anything. To just listen to what is present. There’s listening as hearing, and then there is listening as obeying or taking without question. We do this all the time with the different voices in our minds - believe what we are told immediately. For example, my body looks horrible. We often believe this immediately. Or, I didn’t get enough done today. The self-critical thoughts we usually believe most easily. So use your investigative powers, and your ability to see through bullshit, to listen to it all, but question it all too. Don’t let societal rules and your own strict code drag you into exhaustion and overwhelm at this time. Give yourself even the slightest breaks by giving more stage to the self-forgiving, loving thoughts.
SAGITTARIUS | November 22-December 21
Question - What do you want to carry over from the past year to this new one?
Meditation - continuity
Assignment - Spend time reflecting on this past year of your life! What has even happened?! What do you love about what happened? What do you want to take with you as you move into a new year of your life? Write about these things. Tell people in your life, so that you will have reminders in various forms around you, about what you want to continue. Use your adaptability to build continuity instead of throwing it into new temporary projects that fizzle out after the first excitement. One way to begin to build continuity is to spend time reflecting, and name ways you’ll carry what you learned with you into this unfolding present of the coming year.
CAPRICORN | December 22-January 19
Question - What are you open to now that you used to be closed to?
Meditation - the movement of the sky
Assignment - Reflect on what you used to be afraid of, or closed to, because it seemed too weird or overwhelming or scary, etc. Learn more about your own process by asking yourself about how you came to accept it, or open to it? Was it a spiritual concept or a person or an activity or a way of being? Who introduced you to this? How has it changed your life? What ways can you apply that spirit of openness and experimentation in whatever areas of your life feel challenging now? Imagine your future self no longer afraid of or closed to whatever new thing feels needed. Bask in this future self long enough so that you can start to inhabit them.
AQUARIUS | January 20 to February 18
Question - What media connects you to your own life, and what disconnects you?
Meditation - aural and visual influence
Assignment - Reflect on your media consumption this week. That could be news, social media, tv, music, texts, billboards, podcasts, etc etc. Especially during this time of holiday for so many - what influences leave you disconnected, and what helps nourish connections in your life? Be selective, and more choosey than usual perhaps, during this time. Recollect your own qi, through not giving it away to draining influences that you can manage through your own choice.
PISCES | February 19 to March 20
Question - What’s happening at the back of your heart?
Meditation - the body as messenger
Assignment - Breathe into the back of your heart. Over and over again. Let your ribs expand, not through effort, but through allowing. Ask someone to touch this part of your body. Just a simple hand is very helpful. To bring your awareness back to healing it yourself. Just with intention. Whatever energy you have given away prematurely, or in excess, you can reclaim with this simple gesture. Breathe into this part of your body, and renew yourself right now. Do this as many times as needed this week and beyond.