I hope you had a wonderful time while I was gone. My vacation in Hawaii was wonderful and relaxing. I enjoyed spending time with my little family, a close friend who is like a family, and the spirit of my deceased soul sister.

Unlike Geminis, Cancers don’t need many people to celebrate. Being cozy with a group of people who we call family, is all we need. Even though my sun is in Gemini, I have rising, Mercury and Venus in Cancer. I chose to celebrate my 50^th birthday in the Cancer way.

On my trip I started reading the book Esoteric Astrology by Alice A Bailey. This book initiated the type of astrology many of us practice today. Alice Bailey says that once we become aware of our soul and take control of our own path in life, our birth chart does not represent us anymore. We are liberated from it and can choose to be who we want to be. “It is the force flowing through the planets and not the force of the planets themselves which then governs and control.”

I can witness that people who have been working towards self-understanding for many years, are not so heavily influenced by the challenging aspects of their charts. They take the high roads and ride the waves of planetary influences rather than being challenged by them.

In my upcoming book, Planetary Balance, I explain how to work with the planetary forces so that we can use the power that flows through them rather than being controlled by them.

Every astrological sign is here to teach us a planetary lesson. Gemini season taught us to work with the airy qualities of Mercury: communication, contemplation, and sociability. Cancer is here to teach us the lessons of the moon.

The moon is considered a planet for astrological purposes. Among other things, the moon rules our emotions, intuition, and gut feelings.

My dear friend and yoga teacher, Vicky Tomsky, wrote this week that the gut is our second brain. I could not agree more. Just like the mind is the place where we process our thoughts, the gut is where we process our emotions.

The way in which we process our emotions has a strong influence on our ability to use our intuition and listen to our gut feelings.  

When we do not process our emotions well, meaning we are thinking of them, analyzing them, ignoring them, or repressing them, the emotions stay and accumulate in our gut.

In meditation practices, it is common to refer to thoughts as passing clouds, or as a layer of dust accumulated on a mirror.

Emotions are very much the same. When they are not processed all the way through, they form clouds and clutter in our gut. They therefore make it harder for us to hear what our gut tells us.

Our gut is connected with the universal forces. It knows what’s right. We are born with a strong connection to our gut feelings. Children sense the truth immediately; you can’t fool them. But as adults, we stop trusting our gut.

A wonderful woman I met for a reading this week, shared that she stopped trusting people after a bad relationship. Many of us go through this. I did. I was once married to a man who cheated on me and mistreated me. Years into my current marriage to a loving, loyal man, I was still afraid that he would cheat on me.

Our inability to trust others is rooted in a deeper layer of our inability to trust our intuition and gut feelings. I met a few people who strongly trusted their intuition. They lived with such an ease. There was no question or doubt. If something felt good, it was good, and if it did not, they walked away.

Both emotional processing and intuition are ruled by the moon’s energy. When we do not allow ourselves to connect with our emotions, we weaken our moon energy. We therefore also weaken our intuition.

To connect with our intuition and gut feelings and to know to skillfully use them, we need to clear the clutter around them. This can be done by processing our emotions.

Learning to process our emotions is a gradual process. Every time I work with my emotions, I find that even though I already allow myself to connect with my emotions and feel them, I still have a long way to go. I am still afraid of my fears, I still push away my frustrations, longings, and anxieties. Every time I notice myself repressing or ignoring my emotions, I take another step to stay with my emotions longer and deeper, to allow their full manifestation.

Cancer season and moon energy are here to teach us how to thrive as human beings with emotional bodies.

Some things we can do to strengthen our moon energy and renew our trust in self and others:

1. Whenever an emotion shows up, close your eyes, put your hands on your heart and check how the emotion manifests in your body. Allow yourself to stay with it as long as possible, without drifting to your mind.
2. Journal on emotions that you haven’t allowed yourself to feel fully. Try to reflect on how these repressed emotions influence your life today.
3. Do you have a hard time trusting people? Do you trust your intuition? Journal on your relationship with intuition, trust, and gut feelings. Try to remember how it was when you were a child and what has changed since then.
4. Left nostril breathing, or Chandra Bhedana, is a yogic practice that opens our energetic lunar channel. Preparation: bend your middle finger and index finger for Vishnu Mudra in your right hand. Use your thumb to close your right nostril. Take a deep inhale through the left nostril and a deep exhale through the left nostril. Exercise: inhale left, close your left nostril with your ring finger, open the right nostril and exhale through the right nostril. Repeat for 1 to 3 minutes.