How I Live With The Moon Cycle Without Being All “Woo-Woo”
Photo by Anderson Rian on Unsplash
As I learn more about the moon cycles and my own cycles, I’ve shifted the speed of my life. My energy tends to run like this:
When the moon is waxing, growing from new to full, I speed up. My energy and capacity to get shit done increases.
When the moon is waning, shrinking from full to new, my energy slows down. Things feel slower, quieter. I get overwhelmed easily and need more reassurance.
Daily, my energy may be all over the place. I could feel really energized or very tired, my emotions run the gamut, and external events affect me, but overall, this two weeks on / two weeks off structure is a way to honor my energetic want to be out in the world doing and exploring, while also supporting my body so I don’t burn out.
To take advantage of this cycle, I do a big brain dump during the waning period, when my anxiety starts to get at me about not doing enough, about needing more rest. I write down everything I am thinking, worrying, caring about. Anything that I want to get done. And then I kind of sit on my hands until after the new moon, at the waxing crescent time, and start in on my list.
If I’m working on a digital list, as I complete things, I may move them to the end of the list under the title “Finished”. If I’m working in a bullet journal, I will go back thru and rewrite a “Finished” list of all I did. Then, when I am feeling super blah and unproductive during the waning cycle I can look back over my “Finished” list and see all I did do, and this supports the fact that it’s now time to rest.
Let me be clear that this isn’t a way to get more done, but instead a way to honor a rhythm that currently works for me. This is not a means to an end, but a way of learning to slow down half of the time. It’s definitely a way to divest from capitalism. The framework of resting, gathering resources, planning and being internal, followed by a period of time where I am executing, doing, pivoting, and being external, gives space to both sides of the process.
This framework can be applied to the larger cycle of my energy across the seasons. I have quiet energy in the winter, fun energy in the spring, big energy in the summer, really creative, inward energy in the fall. I am definitely affected by the climate where I live (my turning inward and need for rest in the fall conflicts with the endless summer of Southern California), and the seasonal cycle isn’t as obvious because it takes a full year with lots of variables in between, but just as with the moon cycle, it allows me to give myself some space and grace when it comes to resting.
As this is published, the moon will be just past full. This is a perfect time to start slowing down, relaxing into all that I’ve lived through the past two weeks. Perfect timing for finishing up work yesterday and packing to leave for our holiday vacation this afternoon.
If you’d like to try this, check out the moon phases on this calendar. If you’d like to explore your own cyclical patterns, ways to work within your own cycles, or how to implement this “two weeks on, two weeks off” process for yourself, you can book an intro call with me.