Full Moon Lunar Eclipse in Pisces
The state of my country is in peril as I type this. I have a lot of anxiety about the things that are happening all over the world right now. There is never a time when I will tell you on any platform that you can just get rid of anxiety forever. I have no magic tricks for that.
However, as we arrive at this Full Moon Lunar Eclipse in my 8th house of Pisces, I do want to talk about how we can manage anxiety and other big emotions. Many of the most recommended ways to process emotions do not work long-term for people.
How many people do you know who have tried traditional talk therapy and came out saying it didn’t help that much? In my study and assessment I believe that is because it’s all top down in approach. They talk about mindset over a sense of bodily safety. It’s not one or, it’s both.
The root of every emotion is often the same. The body feels a threat before the mind registers the anxiety that threat brings. Instead of allowing the feeling to raise you up into your thinking brain, the first thing you should do is move your body.
Gentle stretches, shaking in place, psoas release techniques. You get to choose the movement you enjoy most. Dance if you’d like. But move your body in a loving, gentle way, to assert to the body you are safe in spite of the anxiety or big emotions rising up for you.
Without all the science and evidence I have personal experience that this works better than anything I’ve ever tried. Back around February of this year I began to implement this practice in my life. The amount of capacity I’ve built within as a result is incredible.
For decades I lived with a pit at the top of stomach, always braced for the impact of chaos. Well, I’m a Virgo Moon conjunct Saturn and North Node. My sense of safety demands order, perfection, and serving others. However, the highest octave of Virgo isn’t perfection, but discernment.
And that’s what is life changing about somatic movement. That pit in my gut has been gone now since May. We are well into September and it has shown no signs of coming back. In spite of me staying up to date on the news, and handling the struggle of financially catching up and keeping up with the raising costs of simply being alive.
There are situations I’m currently dealing with that prior to February would have spiraled me. But not today. I’m able to have a broader, more discerning view of things. I’ve built the capacity within to handle personal and collective chaos in much healthier ways.
As a Virgo Moon I spent a lot of my life trying to be perfect. To be what everyone thought I should be. To walk on eggshells and manage everyone else’s emotions. Somatic movement reminds me I can only manage mine.
You’re going to experience emotions for all of your life. So, the goal should never be to feel peace 100% of the time. It shouldn’t be to avoid anxiety, but to meet it where it is, in your body.
One of the reasons talk therapy alone doesn’t work is because you’re essentially just retelling the story without any safety measures for your body as you do. So, your body spikes as you tell the story, and you leave perhaps feeling temporary relief from “getting it out”, but long-term that sense of impending doom arises again and again.
So, you loop and spiral into the feeling, rather than moving it through. And what a better time to talk about this than now? We just had a New Moon at 0 Virgo, today we have this eclipse at 15 Pisces, and next we have another New Moon in Virgo at 29 degrees.
Pisces is the feeling, Virgo is what we do with it. If you start talk therapy or vent to friends it doesn’t really help the root of the issue. You’re recalling something while feeling dysregulated. The nervous system state isn’t regulated. Your prefrontal cortex is offline, which makes reasoning, learning, and reframing more difficult.
The retelling actives the same neural pathways or patterns that just reinforce the loop. This means there is a higher chance of re-triggering, and a minimal or temporary shift in your system.
So, you leave there understanding perhaps a bit more. Maybe the therapist offers you reframes that make sense. But because your body is not addressed, and was the root of the anxiety, you still feel the same. Knowledge isn’t wisdom until it’s applied consistently. Knowing something doesn’t equate to feeling different.
The reason something as simple as somatic movement, breath work, and grounding work before talking is simple. Your parasympathetic system becomes engaged. This sends safety cues to the body that it’s safe to talk about this in this moment.
Your prefrontal cortex is fully online, which makes the learning, reflection, and tools you’re given integrate. This creates new associations of safety while recalling events.
Which means there is a higher chance of true resolution because your body and mind both receive the “I’m safe” message.
So instead of “I understand but still feel the same” we now arrive at “I feel lighter, different, and can think and speak about this without looping into panic and overwhelm.”
The reason the pit that sat for decades in my gut is gone is because I have rewired my body, not just my brain. I don’t just feel better in a moment and then end up looping back into the pattern. I’ve actually spent months rewiring my system and how it processes stress, chaos, and emotions.
Interoception is our body’s ability to sense what is going on inside, our heart rate, tension in the gut, our breathing. When I was walking around with that pit in my gut it was a constant background alarm that prevented me from fully integrating the good stuff, too, like joy, peace, love.
I had done years of mindset work and made a lot of progress, but still felt stuck in certain loops. So instead of letting that spiral I began sitting with the sensation, moving intuitively, doing the psoas work. This taught my body that sensation is just sensation, there is not always danger.
When the stress hits, my body gears up to fight, flee, or freeze, often fawn. And if the cycle doesn’t complete the physical charge is stored in our muscles, fascia, and even our digestive system. So stretching, twisting, swaying, and shaking are primal ways to complete the cycle.
And the longer you do it the easier it gets. The less time it takes to regulate. Because each time you empty a bit more of the long-term stored stress until there isn’t anything left to trigger that reaction in you. Our brain creates shortcuts that says when this happens, do this.
So previously when overwhelm came, the gut pit was activated, my thoughts spiraled, and even though I’d learned to stop reacting outwardly, it would often take hours to regulate inwardly. Practicing somatic movement cuts that time down to 20 minutes or less.
Today when overwhelm strikes there is no pit to activate. I am just cued in that I’m experiencing something uncomfortable and need to move. I move and I yawn a lot while I do. Often to the point of tears rolling down my cheek. I just breathe, notice the thoughts that arise, let them go.
I’ve trained my body to feel safe in discomfort. Because I’ve been so consistent with this it’s like my nervous system updated that shortcut. So it becomes automatic to move and regulate, rather than spiral.
The science of it is that I have built neuroplasticity through safety. Every time I moved my body with care and love, it realized nothing awful was happening to me in this moment. I was able to lay down new neural pathways that associated with safety and release.
Now, for the past five months I’ve had more of a safety network than an alarm network. That pit is gone for good. Which means my body is no longer bracing for impact. Once I regulate my body, the brain calms with it. Then I can journal, reflect, and affirm from a centred space where it will land instead of spiral me into oblivion.
Talk therapy lives in the prefrontal cortex, which is the logical, thinking brain. But the overwhelm you feel over what you’re talking about? That lives in the limbic system and brainstem, which are responsible for survival responses to what we experience and feel. Not to logic at all.
This is why after you talk about it there is an immediate release, but you go right back to feeling the same. Because where the overwhelm lives isn’t going to answer to logic. This is why when we aren’t taught emotional intelligence we often overreact and get called crazy, out of control, etc.
Because the thinking, logical brain can know the truth, but the deeper areas of the brain where the overwhelm lives doesn’t understand it at all. It isn’t logical in the least. It’s only interested in survival and safety. So it only responds to physical movement, breath, posture, and muscle feedback.
Gentle, intentional movement teaches the reptilian part of our brains that we are safe in a way it actually understands. Besides, emotions are just energy in motion, right? So movement helps move that charged energy, so it isn’t just zipping back and forth taking up space.
Somatic movement bypasses overthinking. When you’re triggered and the prefrontal cortex goes offline, it’s like trying to reason with someone who has already left the room. It can actually reinforce the stress loop because you’re talking about and thinking about the trigger without any grounding or regulation before-hand.
Even venting to a friends and family can become emotional dumping here, and if they aren’t prepared to hold space, it just becomes someone else reaffirming your loop, rather than a genuine release. Gossip isn’t healing.
Movement interrupts the loop entirely by engaging motor neurons and proprioception (awareness of where your body is in space). That shifts brain activity away from spiraling thoughts. And this is science, not any spiritual fluff or astrology or anything like that. Just evidence based.
I remember when I first learned about the vagus nerve and every time I stretched and worked on it I would yawn. I still do that with somatic movement of any kind. But it’s because the vagus nerve is our safe or unsafe switch in a way.
Gentle, rhythmic movement (swaying, stretching, shaking) stimulates the vagus directly, turning off the fight/flight mode. Talking about a problem doesn’t always reach the vagus, but moving while feeling the emotion tells your body, “We’re moving, we’re not trapped — therefore we’re safe.”
Our explicit memory is related to facts, events, things we can describe. Talking helps here a lot. But with implicit memory the body holds onto patterns, reflexes, and emotional reactions. That’s where trauma lives.
So, again, that temporary relief you feel with talk therapy isn’t reaching the trauma at all. Movement reprograms our implicit patterns without us having to talk about it. It is cleaner, quicker, and works long-term.
Even really great therapies like DBT and EMDR can be short-lived. EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing), uses bilateral stimulation such as eye movement, tapping, or sounds that alternate left to right, as you retell the distressing events that make you feel bad.
This keeps part of your brain in the present while processing the past, so you don’t get fully hijacked by the memory. It can helps us file the memory into “this happened in the past” rather than “this is happening now”, as the body really doesn’t know the difference, neither does the brain.
EMDR is very effective for trauma without us having to tell the story in detail over and over. It works on both the mind and body through bilateral stimulation. But you still need nervous system capacity to even start processing trauma. So, EMDR can feel overwhelming for some.
DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy) combines mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotional regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness skills. It’s very skills-based — you learn tools to ride out intense emotions without acting impulsively.
Includes body-based elements (like grounding techniques), but it’s mostly cognitive + behavioral training. It’s great for people who feel “emotionally all over the place” or have trouble in relationships. it gives a clear structure and practical tools you can use daily.
But, it still leans heavily on top-down processing. Without calming the body first, the tools can feel impossible to access in the heat of the moment. So, in short EMDR can rewire how the brain stores the memory, and DBT teaches you how to respond differently to triggers.
But neither is fully effective at body level safety.
And wouldn’t you know this blood moon eclipse is opposing my Saturn, Moon, and North Node in Virgo. What I’ve learned is I don’t need the perfect morning routine, or bed time routine, or schedule. All I need is the awareness to notice when the overwhelm is threatening, and the 20 minutes alone to move my body and rewire it.
I heard an interesting theory the other day about us as human beings really being sort of like a computer. And the placements in the chart were telling us about core parts of our system. This comes from “The Code Fairy” on TikTok account. I hadn’t heard of her before that.
She says if astrology is the source code of the simulation we live in, then naturally the planets would describe different parts and functions of our computer system. Essentially she says we are computers, which I agree with to an extent. Science says we are reprogrammable.
She likens the body and outer casing as like the Macbook casing. It’s what makes everything look pretty. This is the rising sign. It can tell you how you’re meant to arrive, show up, and look to those around you.
Your Sun would be the core operating system. This provides a user interface for interaction, handles file management and storage, schedules tasks to allow multiple programs to run simultaneously, and protects the system through security measures or “ego”.
This is why I stand by the fact that ego isn’t bad. You don’t need an ego death. Your ego protects you, but sometimes misfires. That doesn’t mean we throw out the whole operating system, of which without a computer cannot even run. So this holds up.
The Sun is your ego, your lifeforce, your why. It underpins everything else. And this ties into the work I’ve been doing on inherited identities. Computers are programmed, as are we. The Sun or core operation system isn’t the first thing you identify with often enough.
It’s the base code of the operating system.
The Moon represents our emotions, how we feel safe and secure, what we need to fully thrive, and what happens we don’t have that. This is the RAM or memory of our computer. And Mercury, which rules thought, communication, and the mind, is our core processor.
It’s the CPU and it processes all the logic. Venus is the UX UI design. What do we value, what feels good, what looks good. Mars, who represents action and drive, and is the computer charger for the Macbook pro in comparison. It gives us the juice to move and do and produce output.
It powers us up.
That’s the extent of the video, so I’ll be sitting with this for a while and seeing what I think about Jupiter, Pluto, other outward planets, and how this can all tie into my future readings.
Which, if you’d like a reading I am open for that!
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