FULL MOON - High Tide, Share
20th August, 4:25 a.m., Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Sidereal Zodiac: Dhanistha Nakshatra in Aquarius (Libra Pada)
CELEBRATE and express appreciation for all that we have.
WANING
Share, give back, contribute abundance.
Empty and release and let go.
Then RETREAT to restore and re-energise at New Moon.
Featured photo by Lani Worth - "August Plum Blossom"
MAKING IT EASIER FOR PARENTS
Southern Hemisphere Season: Transitioning Winter into Spring
Dosha: Vata-Kapha
Seasonal qualities: Cold-warm, dry-moist, light-heavy
Predominant Tastes: Bitter-astringent
Balance with opposites: More pungent, sour, light sweet and salty.
Balance your individual metabolic type within the seasonal qualities and energies. Note that transition times between seasons requires attention and diligence to dynamically balance observable qualities with opposites. It is good to stay close to our body, listen, feel, and pay close attention to what it is showing us, and what we are thinking and feeling. Then take necessary action for personal balance and well-being.
Food suggestions: Light, easy-to-digest food that is adequately warm and moist to prevent dryness. Vegetarian food comes into its own at this time. Soups and stir fries are good. Rice Biryani dishes with almonds or pistachios. Dhal with chappatis. Pasta with basil and pistachio pesto. Stewed apple with a teaspoon of ghee.
OBSERVING NATURE, CHOOSING BALANCE
A MOTHER'S REFLECTIONS
Understanding My Own Feeling Nature & Perspective on Life
Understanding "How" I Feel
It is worthwhile understanding our own "feeling" nature - the way we receive life around us.
We don't often consider our half of an interaction, and the power of our own perspective. When we are in our feelings and experiencing many thoughts and emotions about another person or experience, it is hard to be clear and truthful about the part we have played in the creation of it or how and why it is affecting us, particularly when things aren't going so well.
Each person is affected by life uniquely according to our genetic patterns and capacities. Within families, it is kind and helpful to acknowledge these differences and support self-care and emotional well-being.
I have found the compassion of Jyotish to be profoundly helpful in this regard as a family member, wife, and especially as a mother. While I don't agree with prediction or using it to abdicate our self-responsibility and power of choice, Jyotish has been a practical tool for my deep self-awareness and personal leadership, and to become a more compassionate person. Life can be very mentally noisy and at the very least, Jyotish narrows down the field and helps us hone in and consider our self and how we are using our individual nature to experience our life. I guess it isn't about the tool, it is what we use it for that counts. It is important to recognise that we are always in charge of what we do.
Why it is Important
How we feel has a powerful impact on our chemistry.
Our capacity for feeling is our core receptor for life around us. This ability for feeling, memory, and imagination gives rise to a river of emotion and thought which alters and permeates our chemistry via the networks of our body.
The more sensitive our feeling nature, the stronger the flood of chemistry. It is very real how our feeling gives rise to cellular impact and affects our state of health.
Negative feeling can be more toxic to our body and being than any substance we might ingest. If we hold onto negative feeling regularly, we steadily undermine our well-being from within. I have also found that not feeling able to express our big joys can also be detrimental. Sharing our feeling with other people seems key to health.
Self-awareness to notice "how" we feel and think and then take appropriate action, is valuable for our self-care.
How Jyotish Can Help
One important gift of Jyotish (Sidereal Vedic Astrology) is its focus on the Moon which is representative of our mind in terms of feeling, memory, imagination, and how we psychologically "receive" life. Our Moon sign and its Nakshatra (Lunar Zodiac Sign) and Pada, and Tithi (phase of waxing or waning Moon) get very specific about our psychological nature. It is amazing how accurate Jyotish is in terms of its reflection of our individual patterns, tendencies, and behaviours. However, we need to remain diligent not to become enamored with the tool, or identify with or attach our self to our embodied archetypal nature. It is important to keep distance and be identified with Life as a life, and use our capacitiy to be aware of ourselves and what we do as our prime gift of being human nature.
It is profoundly healing to understand our own "feeling" nature objectively, free from opinion, and consider the different feeling natures of other people that we interact with. This truth and understanding helps us be kinder to ourselves and others, supporting us in practical ways to do what we each find nourishing, and accept that this is different for each of us; different natures of people requiring different things in order to feel well and happy. This use of Jyotish for self-awareness and self-care is particularly valuable within family relationships, especially between parents and their children. I have certainly found this to be the case as a devoted mother of three children.
If you are a mother, I encourage you to become self-nourished by understanding your Moon, Nakshatra and Pada, and Tithi nature. Consider, reflect, and feel what you need to be nourished, then take action to do what you need in simple, daily ways of being such as with food, drink, movement, rest, and meaningful activity. It is unkind and unrealistic to expect our parents and especially our mother to have provided us very specific emotional nourishment. Our parents are individual lives with their own nature and life-experience, as are we. Because we are alive, we are loved - life cannot happen without life, light, and love on some level. It is Life-force and Mother Earth/Nature that we can look to for unwavering energy and sustenance. And we can choose to be a loving force in the life within and around us. Filling life with light and love is very important at the moment in our World!
It is also worth considering the Moon sign of your life-partner and your child(ren). Knowing a Moon nature can help you make sense of what each person in your family might need to feel nourished. At the very least, it is a beginning for greater understanding and kindness to self and others. It is true that we don't need Jyotish or Ayurveda to notice these things but they remind and support us to pay attention without judgement and notice natural qualities, energies, expressions, and roles of different forms of nature, including our human nature. After practising for a while, you will begin to notice natural patterns quite easily and respond from truth and understanding rather than opinion, judgement, and criticism.
Knowing My Nature
It is always important to keep life in context and remember our wholeness, while understanding our feeling nature in terms of one of these archetypal expressions. You might recognise yourself in the descriptions. It becomes easy to appreciate the profound impact our feeling nature has on our experience of life. You might even begin to make sense of your birth family's relationship dynamics.
Moon in ...
ARIES (Cardinal Fire, Expressive nature of Mars)Aries is individual willpower and courage. An Aries Moon feels life from an individual perspective. Aries is built for physical stimulation and activity.Aries is the ram!Nakshatras (Ashwini, Bharani, Krittika)
TAURUS (Fixed Earth, Introspective nature of Venus)Taurus Moon is tactile and sensory and wants stability. It is immovable until it chooses to change.Taurus is the bull!Nakshatras (Krittika, Rohini, Mrigashira)
GEMINI (Mutable Air, Expressive nature of Mercury)Gemini is intellect, communication, neutrality. A Gemini Moon wants a sociable life. It appreciates many points of view and needs to communicate.Gemini are the Male/Female twins.Nakshatras (Mrigashira, Ardra, Punarvasu)
CANCER (Cardinal Water, Introspective nature of the Moon)Cancer takes action upon feeling. A Cancer Moon is all about mother, home, family, lineage, creativity, and compassion in action. Stability and security are important.Cancer is the crab!Nakshatras (Punarvasu, Pushya, Aslesha)
LEO (Fixed Fire, Expressive nature of the Sun)Leo is vitality, self-assurance, soul light. A Leo Moon needs to express itself. Self-recognition is important. Leadership with responsibility and being steadfast and reliable are natural.Leo is the lion!Nakshatras (Magha, Purva Phalguni, Uttara Phalguni)
VIRGO (Mutable Earth, Introspective nature of Mercury)Virgo is sacred work and tending to details. A Virgo Moon feels nourished by tending to details and being organised and effiicient. It feels the weight of the world through acute attention and awareness of details.Virgo is the maiden!Nakshatras (Uttara Phalguni, Hasta, Chitra)
LIBRA (Cardinal Air, Expressive nature of Venus)Libra is balanced relationship and exchange. A Libra Moon wants harmony in relationship. It seeks balance and fairness and likes to exchange ideas, be diplomatic, and trade.Libra is the scales!Nakshatras (Chitra, Swati, Vishakha)
SCORPIO (Fixed Water, Introspective nature of Mars)Scorpio is transforming and stabilising feeling. A Scorpio Moon feels life intensely. It wants to transform and stabilise emotion and is highly sensitive and self-protective.Scorpio is the scorpion!Nakshatras (Vishakha, Anuradha, Jyeshta)
SAGITTARIUS (Mutable Fire, Expressive nature of Jupiter)Sagittarius is seeking truth and meaning. A Sagittarius Moon is friendly and gregarious and likes adventure in order to expand its horizons. It is friendly to all.Sagittarius is the centaur!Nakshatras (Mula, Purva Ashadha, Uttara Ashadha)
CAPRICORN (Cardinal Earth, Introspective nature of Saturn)Capricorn is creating legacy, engineering "light", discipleship, long-term effort toward a goal. A Capricorn Moon is serious, hard-working, dedicated, and often ambitious.Capricorn is the sea-goat!Nakshatras (Uttara Ashadha, (Abhijit), Shravana, Dhanishta)
AQUARIUS (Fixed Air, Expressive nature of Saturn)Aquarius is appreciating the collective. An Aquarian Moon is innovative and thinks outside the square. They have a heart for the collective and often see what needs to change.Aquarius is the water-bearer!Nakshatras (Dhanishta, Shatabhishak, Purva Bhadrapada)
PISCES (Mutable Water, Introspective nature of Jupiter)Pisces has a heart for life and nature on Earth. A Pisces Moon looks upon life from a big/deep perspective. They are sensitive and want to be of service in some way. They are sometimes called "the sacred heart of humanity".Pisces is the two fish!Nakshatras (Purva Bhadrapada, Uttara Bhadrapada, Revati)
THE 27/(28) Nakshatras and their padas or quarters are very accurate observations of our very specific patterns of human nature and psychology.
Nourishing Diversity within the Wholeness of Family
Yoga, Ayurveda, and Jyotish encourage us to remember our wholeness, and that we are part of the wholeness of life and nature on Earth.
It is healing to keep our self in context, understand our own feeling nature, and be self-responsible to choose life experience that we find nourishing and meaningful, and support others to do the same.
A Family Mandala
I encourage you to do a visual exercise and create a family mandala that is divided into sections that represent each member of your family. You can choose to colour each section with different colours that are meaningful to you in terms of each family member's feeling nature or Moon sign. For example, you might choose red or orange for Fire sign individuals or blue for Water sign natures. This might help you appreciate each person's feeling nature objectively and be more understanding and constructive in relationship.
The Yogi and Mystic, Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, suggests two truths that we can use as mantras for emotional resilience:
'What someone else thinks of me is none of my business. It is what I think of myself that counts.'
'I decide what happens within me. I decide how I feel. Happy or sad, I decide.'
Appreciating our Moon nature and living our life from within, is a great boon. We take the pressure off ourselves to seek acceptance from other people and society or feel at pains when others don't notice how we feel or what we need. In truth, we are each responsible for our own inner well-being, and with deeper self-awareness we can choose to do what we find nourishing.
When we practise direct awareness and presence with each other we go a long way towards kindness and equanimity. Self-awareness and self-care are the best assurances for inner harmony and emotional resilience.
There will always be challenge in life but we can reflect on who we are, responding to life, and how we can be well and strong from within ourselves. And Jyotish provides a personal "map" and a framework of natural laws and universal principles to observe ourselves and what we choose.
The first healing for our mind is to remember that we are a life, much more than our mind. We are a person having a feeling or thought, we are not it and it is not us. And our body is our life-long instrument for living. We needn't become identified with our nature but appreciate, care for, and use it to care for life. We can view our own life-time as our precious, creative opportunity to experience the World for a while. And we can be self-aware to choose personal balance.
As my teacher, Dr. David Frawley says, 'There is always a lot that we can do.'
More Resources
If you would like to deepen your self-awareness and understand your feeling nature in terms of the Nakshatras, you are welcome to book into my course.
It is a useful exercise to recognise all of our capacities in terms of the nakshatras. This provides more clarity for a personal life of meaning and purpose.
With kindness,
Didileia Worth
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