Love My Body So Hard... Love Her So Soft
the body part ii… if you missed part i, you can read it here. I wrote part i with the Moon in Virgo and now we have two upcoming eclipses in October, both ruled by Venus, with Venus (the planet of how we love, including ourselves) just moving into Virgo, the sign so associated with the routines, habits, structures, rituals and day to day actions that serve our (w)holistic health, including our relationship to our “issues” and our body. This includes the ways in which we purify our physical body (+ our emotions, thought loops and default settings, which have such a great impact on the manifestation of our physical experience in our bodies).
It’s a Sunday and I’ve been up since around 3:30am. My bestie, who I’ve been staying with in Los Angeles for a bit, has cranky smoke alarms that keep going off in the middle of the night, and once my nervous system is startled awake, there seems to be no going back. I’ve used my time in the dark to put together a cleanse for myself (blue blockers on as the sun is not yet up). I am a total advocate for seasonal cleansing in a world where we are inundated with toxins, chemicals… and stress. There are so many options to do it in alignment with the season you’re in, and we’re in, as these Eclipses do love space making. The Spring module is a great, gentle, choose your own adventure, whole foods, (w)holistic bodymindspirit vibe, or maybe your body needs a functional medicine detox, or GAPS, a parasite cleanse (great around full moons), a breathwork journey, or something of the liquid variety depending on what you got going on (and what feels manageable). Whatever it may be, our bodies, as well as our mental + emotional capacity will thank us.
As I was deciding what I wanted to do for myself this Autumn (still quite warm here in La La Land), I was making notes in my phone and I typed at the top, “I just want to love my body so hard”. And as I went to put my phone down, I laughed at myself a bit and thought, “or so soft”. I can go hard with most things. I’ve always been more comfortable in my masculine, in doing, in action, in boots and jeans, in “fixing”, in for lack of a better phrase “going hard”. A term so perfectly, and hilariously, elaborated on in Cameron Esposito’s recent comedy show, highly recommend. It’s less easy for me to be in receptivity, in softness, in gentleness. I have in my past, been more apt to try to force my body to do what I wanted than to gently nudge, coax, invite, dialogue with, love up on her. I have been frustrated with her more than I’ve been in awe of her magic. I saw a reel this week by the incomparable Julie Civeillo Polier that’s been rolling around in my head, in my heart, which was about how we greet our bodies, “the way we relate to the issue IS the issue”. It landed in just the right way at just the right moment as Virgo can put us in the space of approaching ourselves as ‘something to fix’.
Healing is a spiral. We circle back and we peel back another layer. Some nugget of wisdom lands in Kairos Divine timing and touches a deeper level of the conscious and subconscious landscape. Because if I’m totally honest with myself (and you dear reader, b/c my channel to my throat originates in my G/Self); softening has been, and still is, one of my most needed teachings. Softening my shoulders from my ears. Softening the ways in which my body froze braced after experiencing trauma. Softening into support as a balance to how much I, myself, hold space… input with output. Softening into energetic flow rather than erecting stronger boundaries. Softening into magnetism + receptivity over willpower. Softening into trust, into ease, into magic. I know based on all of my client experience that I’m not the only one who could “go a little softer”, who could ‘try a little tenderness’.
Some ways we can all steward softness | A list:
take inventory of the ways you are being hard with yourself.
quiet your inner critic with loving self talk
honor and nourish your temple from a place of devotion + affection.
support your unique Design.
let nature inspire you.
earthing, feeling held and supported by the Earth + waters of the Earth.
mindfully softening where you’re holding throughout the day, while driving, doing the dishes, having difficult conversations, even orgasming. We tend as humans to default to tension, to holding, to clenched.
soften your jaw right now.
processing healthy aggression as space making
“stop armoring your heart”, Pema Chödron
non-linear movement, melt into your feels and move them through your body
explore the asteroid Goddesses in your chart.
lean in to the high vibrations of your Earth gates.
ask yourself in each situation, “how might I be softer here?”
notice the ways in your world you can tend to softness over harshness with textiles, lighting, cozy comfy to all of your senses.
release what you’re holding, trapped emotions, rigid ideas + POVs, comparison, limiting beliefs.
and speaking of senses, soften your eyeballs, open up your vision to a wider softer lens, soften your ears around the sounds you hear, soften your breath deep into your belly, deeper.
love yourself (less in the instagrammable soundbite way and more in the depths of your bones, love up on yourself, adore you.
be willing to be vulnerable, have a good cry.
gentle touch, self massage, abhyanga, anoint yourself
progressive muscle relaxation, yoga Nidra.
lean in to and honor Venus in your chart, into your houses where Venus rules and you naturally align with pleasure + the Moon (what you uniquely need, how you feel nourished).
don’t take it all so seriously.
bring mindfulness and observation, but not by being hard on yourself for being hard with yourself. Remember that this is part of the paradigm shift that is beginning - from an overabundance of masculine, doing, force, linear, goal oriented, homogenized hustle culture to a deeper and more profound balance of the masculine and feminine in us all.
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