Is anyone feeling the intennnnnnse energy of mercury retrograde combined with the pisces new moon?
I am not one to usually one to pay too much attention to what sign the moon is in. I don’t do full moon or new moon rituals religiously. I know it’s a popular thing to do on instagram, but since I follow my own menstrual cycle, I don’t intentionally follow the moon’s cycle as well.
However, this one was verrry different and I’ve had some crazy serendipitous experiences lately that I feel called to share.
Let me just say, that 2020 felt like it was off to a really good start. As soon as it turned 2020, I felt a palpable shift. Good things are coming. Things were manifesting quickly. Rapid transition was happening and it truly felt like a new decade. Starting fresh. Starting new.
Thennnn, mercury retrograde happened last sunday and I didn’t notice much until the later part of last week. I was at work and just started noticing that some old thought patterns were starting to resurface. I started to feel really stuck in my job again, similar to the way I felt stuck in my job at the O’Neill and i had a a couple of bad days where I felt sad and depressed and like I didn’t know what I was doing with my life and that I was never meant to be an artist and was just going to be stuck at desk job for the rest of my life.
I know that I have done SO much work over the past two years to really recognize these thought patterns and have such a clearer direction of my life that i was honestly surprised I was having these thoughts/feelings resurface.
Then, something crazy serendipitous happened:
So, I’m part of Lacy Phillips Facebook group (if you don’t know Lacy’s work, check out her podcast here) and there’s a section for people who live in NYC that I’m a part of. Someone had posted a few weeks ago that they were holding a new moon cacao ceremony and I remember seeing the post, but honestly didn’t think much of it.
Then, on Friday at work, as I’m sitting there bored out of my mind, questioning my life’s purpose, and just feeling SO stuck in my head, I check my email and see that I have an email from Katie Daleabout.
Now, to explain a bit, Katie Daleabout is a blogger whom I’ve been following for years. She’s one of the first people I found on the internet back when I was searching for inspiration for my own blog and I was like wow, this girl is so inspiring, I want to create my own little corner of the internet just like she did and hence why this blog was born.
I’ve also been listening to her podcast for the past couple years and about a year ago, I listened to an interview she did with Maddie Corman and Kristin Hanggi. I wanted to listen to the episode because they were talking about Maddie’s one woman show that she was premiering in NYC called Accidentally Brave and Kristin had directed it.
At the time, I was still very in the process of writing my own one woman show and was obsessed with all things one woman shows and was trying to see and hear all that I could. You can actually check out Maddie’s show on Audible. I used my free credit to listen to this while in Bali and it WRECKED me. It is such a beautiful, show.
Anyways, that episode introduced me to my absolute soul sister, Kristin Hanggi. As soon as I heard Kristin speak and hear her talk about the intersectionality between creativity and spirituality (aka my life’s work) I was like who is this woman, I have to know her.
Since then, I’ve fallen in love with Kristin’s own podcast, the CREATE series that she does with Natalie Roy who is also a wise and beautiful soul and I just feel so connected to these two women. They have been true expanders and inspirations to me and sources of continued support as I navigate my own life as a creative and spiritual seeker.
I know in my soul that Kristin and I are destined to meet and/or work together one day. I know the manifestation is on it’s way, and I only even KNEW about her because of Katie’s podcast.
OKAY, now that you can see that I fully trust Katie and what she puts out, I immediately open up her newsletter and read through it and she has a little section of links of things that she likes, and one of them read “my friends are incredible healers, check them out here” which linked to an instagram page. So, I click on the page and the first photo I see stops me, because I’m like wait…I’ve seen this photo before.
It’s the exact same photo and invitation that was posted on the Lacy Phillip’s Facebook group and because the coincidence of that is just TOO weird, I sure did pay attention this time.
I see that it’s a new moon cacao ceremony being held in the Upper West Side the very next day and I knew instantly that I had to be there.
The ceremony was scheduled from 4-630 pm which worked perfectly because I was scheduled to work until 3:30 and then had a dinner I was supposed to go to at 6:15 and at first I was like shoot, I can’t make the ceremony because then I’d be like 45 minutes late to the dinner and I had already made that prior commitment.
But, something in my bones was telling me to make it work, so I emailed the dinner hosts and asked if I could be late and they said it would be fine.
Chakra Meditation
SO, that happens, and I’m all excited that I’m doing something for myself, and I get off work and head to Inscape, where I facilitate guided meditations.
One of the meditation sessions that night was going through each of our chakra centers and noticing the flow (or lack thereof) of energy.
I noticed that all of my chakras felt super flowing and buzzing with energy except my solar plexus chakra and throat chakra.
I also taught my yoga class earlier this week on the solar plexus chakra (which is all to do with self confidence and our sense of power & purpose) and felt like it was the worst yoga class I ever taught. So basically the opposite of how an open solar plexus is supposed to make us feel.
So, I’m noticing in this meditation that my solar plexus chakra appears to be completely blocked, and my throat chakra isn’t completely blocked, but definitely had just a slight and subtle energy to it.
Speaking my truth and sharing my voice is one of my soul’s missions in this lifetime and I know I’ve done a lot of work in the past year to continue to open that up. I can tell there is still more work to be done, but I know I am going in the right direction.
Anyways, so that happens, and the next day I wake up with a slight tickle in my throat which I have a strange feeling has something to do with all the energy I was moving during my chakra meditation the previous night.
So, I go to work again, and make sure I get off right at 3:30 so I can make it to the Upper West Side from Chelsea in time.
I arrive right on time and enter this beautiful little circle filled with candles and rose petals and 4 other women.
I’ve only ever attended women’s circles while I was in Bali and fell completely in love them and they largely inspired the creativity circle I am hosting on March 7th in NYC. Check it out here if you want to come 🙂
The two facilitators lead us through a cacao ceremony, a heart opening meditation, and a journaling prompt.
During this journaling prompt, I received the ENTIRE download of what my creativity circle was going to look like.
A little backstory on my creativity circle & my creative process
I’ve had the idea for months and it’s slowly been gaining momentum little by little. I knew I wanted to hold space for others, but I had no idea of what we would do or what it would look like. I even tried to come up with ideas during my yoga teacher training in India and titled it “The Modern Mermaid: Creativity Circle/Workshop” and the page was left blank the entire time…
I wanted to come up with exercises or journaling prompts or meditation exercises but I couldn’t really think of anything.
Instead of my fear of “not knowing what we will do” stop me from going forward with it, I booked the space for the creativity circle, announced it, and allowed myself to be open to the ideas and inspiration that were to come.
AND COME THEY DID. I now have a beautiful and clear picture of how I want the circle to be led and what kind of exercises we will do and I am so, so, so excited to hold this space for others. This is a true example of how I surrendered to the creative process and allowed it to come to me instead of me chasing it down trying to “think up” of ideas.
I also want to just take a moment to recognize how far I’ve come in my process. A few months ago, I would have never been able to jump into the unknown like that. I would have waited and waited and tried to come up with the perfect curriculum and would have never just paid for a space without having an idea of what we were going to do.
I think a HUGE lesson and some major healing I did during my 3 month solo trip was teaching me to trust and surrender.
To learn how to listen to the nudges and take action even when you don’t have the whole picture in front of you. The truth is, you don’t need the whole picture in front of you, you just need the next step.Â
Okay sorry this is so long winded, but there are so many parts to this story because everything just worked out so crazy perfect, it was no question that it was a divine moment to be at this ceremony.
ENERGY HEALING
So, after our journaling session and me receiving the entire download for my creativity circle, we started the energy healing portion of the ceremony.
One of the facilitators there was a trained energy healer and since it was such a small group, we turned it into a group healing energy session, so each person would lie on a massage table and we would gather around them, placing our hands on various parts of their energetic body and just hold space for that person while the facilitator did their work.
I don’t even know how much detail to go into next because it’s hard to describe what exactly happened, but all I can say is that the room was BUZZING with energy. We moved through some reallllly powerful shifts that evening. Each woman had something specific that they were manifesting/calling in, but it felt like the flow was blocked, and each woman one by one, through the support of everyone in the circle, was able to release that block and open themselves up to the vibrant, divine flow of the universe.
If you’ve read this far and you’re like okay ley ley, tone down the woo woo shit, but it was SO palpable that there’s really no other way to say it.
I felt such an insane amount of energy go through my body, and after my own time on the table, receiving the energy from others, I felt like I needed to sleep for like a year.
We were truly in the vortex. By the time we came out of the session, it was 8:30 pm and I had completely stood up everyone who was expecting me at dinner.
SPIRITUAL FLU
We were told to go rest at home that evening as energetic work can really shift and shake things up and its important to give your body the proper rest it needs, but of course, knowing me, I already had plans that evening to go out with a friend for her birthday and felt bad about standing her up too, so I went out, and the next morning woke up fulllyyy….sick.
I’m talking sore throat, deep chest cold, headache, and achey, weak body.
With the chakra meditation combined with the energy healing combined with the intensity of mercury retrograde and pisces new moon, I’m convinced that I’m going through a spiritual flu due to all of these energetic upgrades.
A spiritual flu is characterized as “an undetectable flu that happens when there is a fluctuation in chi (Life-energy) levels. This abrupt fluctuation can elevate chi levels, cleansing our bodies of harmful toxins that have accumulated in our spiritual bodies over the course of many years”.
It truly feels like I released a bunch of shit and now my body is processing all of it so that I can continue to shed old layers of (energetic) skin to make space for newer, more expanded, more connected ways of being in this life.
ON REST
Tonight was the first night I could actually rest and recover from this experience, so I’m doing that by completely turning my phone off (something I rarely do) and stretching my body, writing this post because it feels cathartic and helps me process everything, and helps me to SHARE all that is going on, and will now go drink lots of water and take a bath, giving myself the time and space to slow down and allow myself REST.
Also, more serendipitous things is that I read this post by my fave, Jordan Younger and it seems like I’m not the only one going through these crazy energetic upgrades. SOMETHING IS IN THE AIR, Y’ALL.
Have you been experiencing anything intense lately? Are you discovering more of your gifts? Are you being called to rest and restore to gear up for for more expansion?
CREATIVITY CIRCLE
If you’re looking for a place to be seen as a creative, uncover some of the creative blocks holding you back, and connect with yourself and others, then join me on March 7th in NYC from 6:30 to 8:30 pm.
Like I said in this post, I am so excited about what we will be doing. It will truly be a night of self care to nourish you and your inner artist.
Register early by venmo-ing $7 to @leah-vandoren.
Sending you all so so so much love!
Mermaid Musings 