The astrological year begins with Aries and ends with Pisces. Aries rules the head. Pisces rules the feet. From last year’s Aries New Moon until now, we’ve traveled through each region of the body in tune with the seasons. Pisces calls for the integration of all that we have embodied, sensed, and experienced in the past year. Its New Moon invites an important REST and REFLECTION period before the new year begins next month. We honor the feet by letting them rest.
The feet are often considered the soul of the body. They carry us from point A to point B all day long if we are lucky and healthy enough for this activity. They carry us toward our deepest desires and into our most tender feelings and our hardest passages.
At the Pisces New Moon, we can connect the dots from our feet to all we have felt throughout the body, and eventually back up to the head again. In this time of culmination, we can get intimate with all of ourselves. This brings me to a restorative shape for this New Moon, where we lay face down on the ground.
Resting Whale Pose
Find a comfortable position on a mat or carpet. If you have access to a bolster of some kind, you might place it where your pelvis meets your thighs. Place your arms under your head to see if that feels comfortable. Then you might have someone (or wiggle it on by yourself) place a blanket or extra pillow on your feet for warmth and weight. Allow your feet to relax however they fall, and find some intentional moments of connecting to your breath.
Using a bolster creates a spinal extension (a bit of a backbend), so if this is uncomfortable, try it without the prop. Instead you might just lay with your torso connected to the ground as you experiment with different stretches/connection moments through your feet (such as curling the toes under to the mat, or occasionally wiggling/rotating the feet).
I honestly don’t know that there is a specific name for this shape…but I call it Whale because my Pisces son has called it that before. And well, it is one of my favorite shapes to take for the Pisces season and Dark Moon times.
What you might imagine is that you are a wise and beautiful whale gliding along with the ebbs and flows of the waves. How big the waves are does not bother you. You are grounded in your being. You know and trust you’re a creature meant to ride the waves.
See if you can allow yourself to rest now. Thank your feet for how they’ve carried you through another year.
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