Following the Moon ~ Woohoo or Common Sense?

Yoga, the Moon & Me: One yogi's musings on travel, spirituality, the moon and life!

Podcast ~ Episode 3

Following the Moon ~ Woohoo or Common Sense?

I consider myself a woman that wears many hats. I think most women do to be honest. I am a yoga instructor, but I am very much a business owner..yoga being my business. Many moons ago, I was a corporate girl…but that wasn’t quite the right fit for me…so here I am an entrepreneurial yogi!!

Funny enough, when I was taking the yoga teacher training course, over a decade ago, I had no intention to teach, I just wanted something for myself. Well…little did I know that it was going to change my world forever in so so many ways!

Yoga for me was like the gateway drug. It opened up doors for me that I never knew existed. I remember one weekend at school, our focus was Adjunct Therapies. Wait what? There is more than just yoga??? It was a transformational weekend. We learned about Thai Yoga Massage, Body Talk, Reiki…it was just so interesting. My mind was definitely getting a workout. Since taking that course 12 years ago I have never stopped learning. I have taken courses in Reiki, Holistic Hypnosis, Tarot and Oracle Card Reading but my latest fascination (like the last two years) is the MOON, the moon cycles and the moon phases. Some refer to the moon as it and some refer to her as she…considered the feminine energy aspect in yoga.

So, for a few years now I have been learning about and following the moon and its phases. Well I guess as a kid growing up in rural Ontario, I have always followed the moon because what else was there to do? No computers, no cell phones…no cable.. So I actually did spend quite a bit of time moon and star gazing.

I find that the more I learn about the moon and how it affects us, the more I feel like I am unraveling some huge pandora’s box-like secret that I want everyone to know about.

The funny thing is that this information isn’t new, it’s really quite OLD….We’ve just forgotten. Many people lived by the moon cycles long before clocks and our 12 month Gregorian calendar arrived on the scene (1500’s). So this is actually like a remembering, not a “learning something new.”

What also kills me, is that people think I’m all woohoo because I study the moon. I want to say…go ask a farmer from the 1800’s how they decided to plant their fields or when to harvest…they followed the moon cycles. So I am only as woohoo as our ancestors!!

Yesterday, September 25th was a New Moon…so I thought this would be a perfect time to dive into our moon conversations.

Maybe it’s best to do a quick review of the Moon Phases before we do our New Moon deep dive….

There are 8 phases in a moon cycle. A full moon cycle takes 28 or 29 days depending on who you ask.

1. The New Moon is where we are at now…darkness. The moon isn’t visible. This is a time of reflection. Here we start to think about goals we wish to achieve in this moon cycle. We plant the seeds for our manifestations to come!

(This is my favourite time. I was actually born under a new moon. If you want to find out which month you were born in, just check the show notes for this podcast to find the link to a really cool moon/birth calculator.)

https://astrostyle.com/cosmic-calculators/moon-phase/

2. The Waxing Crescent Moon is the next phase. Here we start to see a sliver of light. Not only is the moon growing but our energy is starting to build as well.

Here we start to put together a game plan and get to work on making

our goals and manifestations a reality.

3. The First Quarter Moon is when the moon is exactly half. So you might be saying to yourself if the moon is half then why are we calling it a quarter? When half of the Moon's disc is illuminated, we call it the first quarter moon. This name comes from the fact that the Moon is now one-quarter of the way through the lunar month.

This is Ross Gellar’s phase…also known as the pivot point!! Here we take a look at what we have set our sights on and worked towards so far. Do we still feel aligned with this goal? Are our efforts working or do we need to change directions a little bit? Pivot if you need to my friend!!

4. The Waxing Gibbous Moon is the phase right before the full moon. Poor thing… it kinda feels like being the middle child. No one really pays attention to it…at this point we are looking forward to getting crazy with the full moon vibes!!

This phase we continue to work towards our intentions and pull out the final stops of making things happen. Here our energy is really building along with the growing moon! You may find that you need less sleep here. You’ll be all fired up.

5. The Full Moon ~ this is the phase that we are most familiar with of course because it is that blaring light in the sky once a month. So beautiful and magical. This moon is where all of the superstitions come from. Weird stuff happens on the full moon…this is where the word lunatic comes from (lunar…lunatic). Here’s a secret…our energy is heightened on the full moon but it never makes someone do something that isn’t already inside their psyche. So if you find yourself dancing naked on the full moon well that means, you can’t really blame the moon, it is something that you always want to do, you just may be lacking the courage to do so during the other phases.

The next 3 phases very much mirror the waxing phases. But rather than the moon building and growing, it is receding. It is called the “waning” phase…the waning gibbous right after the full moon, then the last quarter moon which is actually the other half and finally the waning crescent where the moon heads back to darkness.

In this time, we reflect on what worked, what didn’t, we forgive, we release, we let go and we REST!! Just as the moon’s light recedes so too will your energy.

Okay that was a down and dirty Coles notes on the moon phases…

But I really want to talk about the NEW MOON since that is where we are at AND as mentioned this is my time!

Oftentimes, the moon you were born in tends to resonate most with you.

The new moon is the first phase in the moon cycle and it happens every 29 days or so. I love this time because it feels so hopeful! Well it’s a little bit dark to be honest as the moon is invisible to us for about 3 days but there is the hope that, the moon will begin to grow again. And when the moon begins to show itself again, our energy begins to build as well.

This darkness actually highlights the ending of the previous cycle where rest is encouraged. It is the perfect time for self reflection…look at what worked in the last moon cycle and clear out any old energy that isn’t advantageous to you. Take the time to think about what you learned last time around and then begin the reset. Just like our time of looking within during the winter solstice, the darkness of the new moon offers us that reflection time every single month…no matter if it’s December or July. Take th...