eclipsing

Brightest Spring Round 1 - Planting Seeds in MYOGA SEASONS for Subscribers, Northern Hemisphere 2024

While I had this drafted nearly a week ago, I’ve been wending my way through the intensity of this astronomical week and, until now, been unable to speak to it. With Mercury in cazimi (such a great word) with the Sun as I write, we have a momentary bright spot within the inward gazing of Mercury Retrograde and the shadowlands of the eclipse.

Generally the New Moon is a good time to plant seeds, as they grow in the dark soil. This new moon was a full solar eclipse that became so popular there was threat of fuel shortages from people traveling to see it, and eclipse-viewing glasses selling out. US kids living along the eclipse path, with a chance to view it, were even given the day off school.

On 21 August 2017, while we were water-walking through Montana, we walked right through the eerily-lit eclipse that also swiped across the US, yet it had nowhere near the notoriety this one has gained. It’s been fascinating to watch the growing interest in, and awareness of, astronomical events in recent years.

Along with prayer-walking my way through the last eclipse ‘swiping right’ across the US, eclipses generally have been a bit of a theme for me. I starred in an Ithaca College student film called “Eclipse” when I was 22. Four years later, I timed my journey to India to view the last full solar eclipse of the last millenium at an observatory, although the monsoon rains clouded it over.

Eclipse, at its root means to leave, to abandon or forsake the usual place and fail to appear. I find this helpful in understanding the dynamics of what I felt in all those instances, but particularly this past week when it so closely stimulated my own birthchart.

Of course the song “Total Eclipse of the Heart” by Bonnie Tyler comes to mind, as this article indicates it has for a great many United Statesians this past week. Looking into it a little deeper, though, I find that she had originally intended it as a vampire ballad, about someone lying in darkness yet wanting love so badly. That actually helps make sense of the absurd imagery and choreography in the music video detailed in that link.

Vampirism and playing other forms of the ‘living dead’ has been another theme for me, since I starred in “Dracula” my senior year of highschool where I played the bitten. I then played the biter, a vampire, in 30 Days of Night, filmed years later in New Zealand. (Yes, I know I need to update my IMDB…) Here’s some somewhat gorey footage from that film with Danny Huston and all the other phenomenal physical actors who shapeshifted into vampires each night.

2006, Auckland, NZ with fellow vampires...

There was a spate of acting work where I was, oddly enough, cast as Vampires, Medea (x2), a Sphinx, an Orc, a Zombie, a Serial Killer and an all-purpose bad guy in Avatar. Go figure.

So the eclipsing for me is not just this week. I’m choosing an ancestral healing shift from past roles and lives where I carried and conveyed the demons, to now abandoning, forsaking and failing to appear in those forms (thank you eclipse definition).

Now I am focusing more fully on carrying the light.

Not everyone is into horror, or even the shadowlands. Some see eclipses as something more sacred than a spectacle. As this elder shares, the Diné avert their gaze and go inwards, into reverence and prayer, because this is a time of death and renewal. And it’s unseemly to stare at the dying.

For some tribes, eclipses are a sexual union between the spheres and, again, it’s poor manners to oggle. However, with all the porn and horror pervading our media, we forget that we can choose, from within our values, what is appropriate.

Averting the gaze is a cultural way that I struggled with when we were on the Missouri River Water Walk. I use my eyes to hear. On the walk, at the request of my elder, I had to learn to trust my ears, as they are, in order to avoid offending those whose gaze is less aggressive.

Another core walker from the Cheyenne River Sioux band of Lakota reinforced this awareness in me when she shared her recent role with the Rapid City police force, helping them learn cultural differences to aid in de-escalating violence. Non-Indigenous cops would take offence and misunderstand intentions when someone didn’t return their gaze, not realizing the Indigenous person was actually being polite by not looking directly into the eyes of the officer.

In my own eclipsing this season, I am aware of the more masculine nature of sight and the more feminine quality of receiving sound and insight.

Which finally leads me into our Northern Hemisphere Brightest Spring Season, based in the hips and pelvis. This is where we sow sacred marriage. Even before we engage intimately with anOther in this area, we can cultivate more conscious relating - left to right, feminine to masculine - within ourSelves.

Vrksasana/Tree with focus on roots, photo by Micahel Hobbs of hippyparents.com

This has been a particular area of wounding, and therefore focus, for me as I’ve been working for decades to dance between these poles energetically and relationally, and to untwist my pelvis physically. I may never be fully free of this dance in this lifetime, yet I feel far greater freedom and also deeper embodiment these days. The journey has brought me to feeling I have more fully “come home to mySelf”, which is a beautiful translation of Svadisthan. Another is “one’s own sweetness”.

We start Round 1 of Brightest Spring with a fantastic breathing practice featured in this blog post:

it IS rocket science & it IS brain surgery

Here's what Others have to say about this Round:

"Love trying new postures, will practice frogs."--Sarah

"Third time doing frogs over the last week, and today I really felt stronger...able to be a bit more stable and fluid. These are intense, but impactful I can see. I do love this portion of Brightest Spring. After a bit over two years focused mostly on Basics, I can really see how to enter into Seasons now, breaking them down and getting to know them slowly and with breadth. I am grateful for the foundation of Basics though. A day of feeling lots of gratitude for slow but genuine growth!!!"--Barbara

For the free subscribers, here’s another freely available video from MYOGA’s YouTube channel that will give you a taste (our sense here in Svadisthan!) of the fuller Seasons practice that’s beyond the paywall. Everyone wins!

And now for the fuller Sequencing Story:

After tuning in at the start with our cleansing pranayam and the Adi Mantra, we turn on the inner thighs. Which sounds super sexy, but is actually super rugged in its ability to apply precision to strengthening the upper thighs. This is an area that gets turned on if you’re an equestrian (or a dominatrix), but for the rest of us pedestrians it generally gets ignored! And since Svadisthan chakra is a powerhouse for our sexuality, we’re in the right hood...