Somatic Healing in Connection with the Moon

 

Wherever we are in the world, we share the same moon. We see it shifting and changing day by day. Whether or not we’re aware of it, we feel its light on the full moon, and its absence on the new. The moon has countless stories and legends about it from cultures all over the world. It is, after all, our closest celestial neighbour, and even though it is small, it is mighty enough to block the light of the sun from time to time, creating an eclipse. There is magic in the moon. That magic can help us heal.

  Healing must happen within the body. While we can do a lot of good work in talking about our problems and difficulties, there is a limit to how far we can take that unless we are also carrying that healing down into the nervous system, the flesh and bones, the heart and the blood. Our minds can dissociate, black out, or misremember, but our bodies hold memories in the flesh. There are so many ways to approach healing from a body-based perspective. Some of this is basic, like getting enough sleep and nutrition. Massage, acupuncture, cranio-sacral, and other somatic techniques therapy can help directly access the nervous system. There are excellent somatic therapists who can include the body in the therapeutic conversation. The moon can also help integrate healing into our everyday lives. In eras when we did not have access to electric light, the light of the moon meant a bit more. We could hunt or farm in the dark of the night on a full moon, while the new moon would have required us to stay home and sleep. There is evidence that some women menstruate in accordance with the moon, most commonly bleeding on the new moon and ovulating on the full. Ancient knowledge from around the world used the moon to count seasons, marking the beginning of a month by a new moon. The colonial Americans, for example, called the moon closest to the autumn equinox the Harvest Moon. Its bright light close to sunset would have allowed for a longer work day during the vital harvest season. The medieval English name for January’s moon was the Wolf Moon, acknowledging the hunting wolves who would howl during this cold, dark season. The Dakota Sioux called this same month the Moon of the Terrible, which resonates even today in the dark pit of January between festive celebrations and spring.     A cyclical way of being Following the seasonal year through the moons is one way to reconnect to your body all year round. In the seasons of the Frost Moon (the Cree name for November’s moon), the Cold Moon (the Celtic name for December’s moon), and the Quiet Moon (the Celtic name for January’s moon) in the northern hemisphere, we can feel our bodies are a little slower, a little quieter. The daylight hours are so short and the sunlight is so weak that it’s natural to turn our attention to sleeping, dreaming, wondering, introspecting, and planning. The darker seasons of the year can also remind us to connect with our ancestors and acknowledge our grief – which are not practices that tend to fit in very well with a capitalist system that wants us to be exactly as productive in the depths of January as the long, bright, hot days of July.When we begin to feel the light shifting in the early months of the year, such as in February (the time of the Budding Moon for the Chinese), it makes sense that we would feel a little bit of inspiration coming back, a little bit of energy to start to take action on our plans. Summertime is more extroverted: a time to be outside gathering the herbs and medicines of the natural world – these were called ‘wyrts’ in old Germanic languages, which inspired the Wiccans to call August’s moon the Wyrt Moon. If we can start to feel the natural shifts and changes in our mood and energy as the seasons change around us, we find a different way of being productive: a slower, more cyclical practice of creativity and self-care. What if we could dream and gestate when it’s cold and dark outside and start to take action in the spring and summer? What if, when the light begins to fall again, we could edit, integrate, learn our lessons, and then retreat back into the dream world for the next project? What if our practices could be bigger, annual, more seasonal dreamings? In my experience, understanding how the seasonal shifts affect my body has allowed me to work differently and more efficiently, not only in terms of my literal work projects but also in terms of the cycles of grief, joy, social experiences, and all kinds of other things. When I allow myself to be in alignment with the cycles of the moon, it helps me understand my body and my healing better. In our culture, there isn’t a lot of space for feeling our feelings. Grief, in particular, is often hidden and tucked away. In many older traditions, there would be a specific day each year that would be about remembering those who have passed over and experiencing and processing grief. Once upon a time, this was Halloween, then called Samhain, the Blood Harvest – the month of the Blood Moon in Wiccan and Neo-Pagan traditions. This was the last of three harvest festivals, when the animals would be slaughtered for the winter. Samhain could have been a time to acknowledge the need to take one life to sustain another. It may have been a time to think about and understand death, to bring death ceremonially into the world of the living. With the Western Halloween, we play at death, dressing our children up as ghosts and skeletons, but do not remember our dead with them, do not talk about what it means. In Mexico, the annual day of mourning is Dia De Los Muertos, the Day of the Dead, a day to honour the ancestors and imagine them walking among us. 1 and 2 November are All Saint’s Day and All Soul’s Day in the Catholic tradition. In China, the Hungry Ghost Moon falls around August, assumed to be a time when the ghosts of our ancestors show up hungry, and it is traditional to leave out food and other offerings for them. Grief is cyclic, not linear, and it’s normal for major grief to recur each year, especially seasonally or on certain anniversaries. There was always meant to be an annual day – or even a moon cycle – to acknowledge our losses. For many of us, that’s no longer woven into our culture. Even a single moon cycle can be a place to start to reclaim this ancient cyclical knowledge. The new moon, which connects seasonally with the winter solstice, is a time for dreaming and imagination, where we can feel a little more tired and a little more prone to sleep and rest. The waxing moon, which is connected to springtime, is when we feel our inspiration and activity rising: a time when we can start putting our ideas into action. The full moon, which connects with the summer solstice, can be a time of completion and harvest, looking at what we’ve accomplished and letting go of what’s not working. The waning moon, associated with autumn, is a time for integrating, reflecting and looking back. This would be the time to clean up loose ends, edit, reorganise, and rethink how we might want to move forward. When we return to the cycle of darkness, we can return to dreaming and feeling before starting the cycle all over again. Living seasonally and in relation to the moon is a powerful reclaiming of both inner knowing and ancient wisdom. It means reconnecting to something we already feel and have access to simply by paying attention. It means remembering ourselves as cyclical beings who have always lived by the sun and the moon. You don’t need much to start: simply look up and pay attention.   Check out our new Winter Issue 193 here. For more information about Julie and her work head on over to her website.