learning to speak the language of our bodies
musings on what feels pressing during this million-year-long mars in gemini transit
hello! here with you now [my version of now, as in, the past] as the light of the moon brings our bodies to heightened, yet hazy, awareness of mars’ retrograde thru gemini [aka, the dec 7/8th full moon in gemini aka the midpoint of this transit that began in August and will last up until mid-Jan (the retrograde) and March (the gemini)]
it’s quite possible this transit has been shaking shit up in your life. from cuts on the hand to handing someone their ass on a platter to throwing ass on the dancefloor…this transit is a chaos magnet. if you’d like some consultation on how this is showing up in your chart and life, i’d love love love to give u a personal reading.
so a month or two ago [sigh, time], i participated on a panel with the others who make up a magnificent astro and cosmology collective, Sankofa Rising. six of us shared what this transit has brought to our attention. it was just back-to-back brilliance, and i left feeling immense gratitude for getting to cultivate community with these folks.
my topic of learning to speak the language of our bodies meshed perfectly with the range of themes and insights offered by my peers. i wanted to share a written transcription of my bb presentation to u guys, those who read the words i write, at this lunar accent. enjoy, or don’t. it’s up to you
What I feel Mars is, represents, reflects as a planet in our personal lives
is as a director
towards what we want,
what we need
what we love,
what lights our fire.
Mars cuts out what we DON’T want
for our protection,
and to make room for our will, our mission, our power.
Mars shows up to signal what your very spirit is encouraged by
and what repels your spirit into retreat
as well as what compels and repels your body.
As a nocturnal/personal planet,
Mars is really about the present moment,
about our somatic experience,
it’s visceral
Mars handles the notion of pain AND pleasure
as it’s an externalization of our lunar experience
a mode of asserting our inner worlds to the outer world
and a barrier of defense,
an alarm system.
There’s a lot to learn about ourselves when working with mars
and specifically with mars retrogrades
and especially a mars retrograde through gemini...
Gemini in the picture highlights
how we think about and conceive of our desires and repulsions,
how we experiment with pleasure and disgust
we’re experimenting
with what feels good to your body and what feels bad
and everything before, beyond and in between this limited understanding
of feeling.
we’re flipping through
(quickly when mars is direct, and more deliberately while mars retrogrades)
how we advocate for ourselves and others in all of these matters,
what we fight for, what we defend
that which gets us thinking, that which makes us angry
is precious information not to be skated over, but to be heard
i don’t believe that pain nor anger nor fear nor grief are meant to be ignored, dismissed, silenced
especially when it comes to the matter of healing
i hold these beliefs for many reasons,
but for the sake of focusing in on this transit,
because i believe in the mind-body synthesis so deeply,
i believe that these emotions are communicated to and through us,
all up and down this channel, so there’s no way to entirely suppress it.
a gemini mars is a mercury ruled mars
is a mars read through the lens of the mind
a mars that is conversational, that centers language
and i want to focus in here on the body’s language,
on the constant communication between the mind and the body
the manifestations of which are sometimes called our psychosomatic responses
the word carries several connotations, but it simply means relating to both the mind and body.
Doctors accept that what happens in the mind can affect how a person feels in their body,
enough to, in my experience, dismiss these physical symptoms through an attribution to mental health,
but they rarely take seriously that our mental health,
and the external events that trigger changes to it,
like discrimination, emotional traumas and prolonged stress,
can also have life-altering effects on organs beyond the brain.
i come into this knowing and subsequent sharing from the experience of having an extremely loud, verbose body
and yes, i do have a virgo moon,
so a mercury-ruled moon,
a very exacting moon that likes to let me know the very second something is Off
and it’s had many opportunities to do this announcing as
i also came into this knowing after an extreme oscillation of listening and repressing my body’s noise
my teachers throughout the years have been chronic illness:
heart disease, kidney disease, ulcers, migraines, chronic pain, chronic fatigue, CPTSD, anxiety, depression, and disordered eating
which are in many ways linked and in conversation with one another
and have been somewhat volatile in their teachings,
so i don’t come at this with a lackadaisical romanticization of somatic experience.
i have gone through lengthy periods of straight up hating being in my body
have wanted to extract myself from my body
on a number of occasions
and i sought out, in what can be called a gemini fashion perhaps,
or just being jupiterian(…)
a number of recreational and pharmaceutical means to quiet my physical pain and seek out any form of solace.
i have gone through periods of intense resentment of my body and its language
as all of the above teachers were once a collective, cacophonous constant feeling of generalized pain, exhaustion, overwhelm
and for a very long time it would be a rare experience to feel neutrally in my body,
let alone pleasure.
and i will make clear that it was primarily through surgery,
a Very Martian matter,
that i became rid of most of this physical pain,
and with that ease and empowerment
that came from not being in immense pain all the time,
i was able to start explicitly naming the remaining
nuanced sensations
isolating and categorizing and experimenting
locating the sources, emotional and physical,
and the way these matters were intertwined
to begin a process of unraveling--
beginning with awareness, that is
sitting with a sensation
from a place of acceptance, rather than resistance
experimenting with actions to address and/or soothe the sensation
attempting to silence it only if/when it becomes unbearable
or if the source is known and simply outside of my control
and even then, remaining available to be with something connected to the sensation
it’s easy to get angry at our bodies for not doing exactly what we want them to do when we want it.
easy to get frustrated with ourselves for being tired or out of it, for not being strong enough or able enough to get something done.
we live in a world where disabled people are often left to suffer and die,
so it’s extremely understandable
to want to ignore any abnormality
to wish away disability
to place the blame on our bodies for inflicting pain upon our disembodied, intangible self.
in a way, this is like mars channeling its power against the moon,
inflammation as
the body attacking itself,
corrupted self-preservation
but if we can shift our paradigm,
away from these capitalist expectations of what the body should be doing
and do our best to stop demanding certain things from our body,
we can move into a softer honoring of the mind-body connection
and begin honestly assessing, and appreciating, our capacity at a given moment
prioritizing people, dynamics, situations, professions, and the like
who/which also respect our body’s knowing, limits, capacities,
and the ebbs and flows to our abilities.
We can practice assuming,
in these especially difficult moments of being in the body
that our body has a deep well of wisdom
and that its ability to speak this wisdom through sensation
is a gift
we can begin to assume
that our body’s responses are for our protection,
and for our benefit,
at least in alerting us to do what we can
to protect ourselves,
even when it doesn’t feel “good”
in the spirit of gemini
it’s important to note that we are all different,
in ways we’ll never fully comprehend
but we still have much to learn from one another.
I’m speaking from my own history, but
we are both the best teachers and the best students
of our own somatic experience.
i suggest using this Mars retrograde through Gemini as an opportunity
to listen in to
and take even literal note of,
your body’s sensations,
including and perhaps especially, pain,
as it’s possible that pain is pronounced for good reason.
there’s a skill to be strengthened over time
that is talking your body through pain
not necessarily always for the purpose of assuaging it, but
always to understand it, to honor the message
and it’s quite possible
that there’s something in your environment triggering this response
as within, so without, but
where’s the center of the spiral?
if you’re anxious, overthinking,
assume there’s something mirroring that pace
in your body as well,
whether that be your circulatory system, your digestive system, your autoimmune system, your nervous system,
your breathing, your blood pressure, your inflammation,
something else is working in overdrive
or perhaps slowing, to compensate.
Somatic attention to your surroundings,
and attention to that somatic attention
is a two-fold process.
you can benefit from taking intentional time
considering any intense or note-worthy sensation,
and begin guessing, speculating, questioning
where
both internally and externally,
that sensation truly stems from.
Gemini in medical, or somatic, astrology
rules the lungs,
is responsible for the circulation of air in and out of the body,
for your shoulders, arms, hands, fingers too
so pay extra attention to these areas
to what’s tensing your shoulders
what you’re typing when your hands start cramping
to who you’re driven to touch
to who you shift away from when they try to touch you
to when your breath begins to get shallow
where you are as you’re hyperventilating
Mars is the planet that deals most with pain
because mars is reactive
says fuck that thing causing this reaction,
and demands that you cut that shit out,
move away from it,
or at the very least
get angry about it,
and when it comes to sickening and ultimately genocidal systemic injustice,
start a fucking revolution over it.
I have a cancer mars, and with it I’ve had such a difficult time internalizing and expressing
that my somatic experience requires an active Response,
external changes,
perhaps even Conflict.
I always wanted somebody else
to hear my cries for help and do something about it
to see how I was struggling and make it stop
to meet me with care and help me to slow down,
but our ableist conditioning,
the antiBlackness, the misogynoir,
the belief that someone who inhabits my body
is meant to struggle and suffer
meant that assistance was infrequent
understanding, uncommon
and so now i feel passionately about this
uphill journey of advocating for myself, for my body
this honoring of my limitations
going against the expectations of me,
sacrificing success under capitalism,
deciding to stop overextending myself
and putting the needs of others above my own.
Especially now,
during a pandemic
especially for those of us who are multiply marginalized,
i just want to impress how seriously i take this, as
even before the pandemic, i learned
in a really not cute way
that this world doesn’t give not half a fuck if i live
that much of this world would prefer that i die
and a lotta y’all are in my same boat
so we gotta support one another, watch over each other
in the best ways that we can
using all the knowledge that we have
to keep one another alive
to care for our bodies
our allies, not our adversaries
our greatest allies!
and we gotta start acting like it.
protecting them back.