I spent the first coupla decades of my life thinking that the moon phases affecting your life, here on this earthly plane, was the worst sort of fuzzy-headedness. That sort of tomfoolery qualified you to have your own kiln and a skirt made out of wheat. Now that I’m the one rockin’ the hemp poncho I guess I have a lot of free-range organic crow to eat.
The whole first half of this week it felt like I was dragging something heavy and recalcitrant behind me. You know when you’re trying to put a child to bed and they just go limp and also somehow shift their centre of gravity about 4′ below the floor, so they are impossible to lift and also squirmy? That’s what it felt like. Not being the brightest log on the Yuletide fire, I assumed that I was just incredibly lazy. I also suspected that my inability to get into a good bright yogic mood was indicative of a fatal error in my career choice. Dramatic much?
Wednesday night I spent basically breakdancing in bed, thrashing and sweaty. The wind was coming up, and the vata dosha was cranked all the way up to 11, and I still didn’t put 2 and 2 together. I was basically planning asana sequences from 2 to 4:30 am which, what? GO TO SLEEP, DUMMY. It wasn’t until I got in to teach and one of my students reminded me that it was the full moon that it all became clear.
I know I have hardcore empiricist friends whose eyebrows would probably go right up past their hairline reading this, but it’s incredibly comforting to find out there is some larger ground for the apparently random and whimsical energetic tides of life. When you start talking to your coworkers about the weird traffic or the fact that you broke 3 [three!] plates the night before or that your dog was acting strange and had separated all your sock-balls and the resident hippie informs you that Mercury is in retrograde, isn’t it reassuring? IT’S NOT YOU. IT’S THE COSMOS. It contextualizes things, and it absolves us from our usual burden of Total Individualism, wherein not only are you incredibly powerful but you’re also left holding the bag.
Plus, I know the plural of anecdote is not data but how many more months am I going to experience the following:
- heavy, dull sensation and cloudy mental state for days prior to full moon
Get out of my head!1!
- insomnia on full moon
- improved wellbeing subsequent to full moon
and still disregard the pattern? If it makes me look like a chump, so be it. I’m not lazy, it’s the moon! There, doesn’t that make you feel better?