Self-care Soup is a short column where Moriah Mylod and M. Perle talk about vibes in the ether and self-care strategies.
M. Perle: Aries season is a time when we think about our power. What it’s like, how we use it, where can it get us. We can misuse power, but let’s think about how we can…not do that. In my book rec of the month I cite an instant DIY classic: Sandhya Rani Jha’s Transforming Communities: How People Like You are Healing Their Neighborhoods. Power can mean saying, “I’m gonna just do it myself!” Mercury is in retrograde until the 15th (tomorrow!) which signals a time to reflect. After that, as SNAP! said in their seminal hit “I’ve Got the Power,” “Dinging like a cymbal, rhyme devil on the heavenly level/ Bang the bass, turn up the treble”! What if we do have the power?
Mercury Retrograde has made me revisit the role friends have had on my life path. I found myself on Instagram thinking about people who have passed through my life and felt an extreme tenderness. So I followed them. Reconsidering these formative times reveals how much others shape our lives. How many have passed through your life, shown you things about yourself, make you miss home, lead you to the home in yourself? Admit there are people around us who move us to feel, to act. Watch how you speak about others. Are you treating them harshly because of your own feelings of unworthiness?
Moriah M. Mylod: In honor of the season of change from Old Man Winter leading us slowly into the welcoming embrace of Maiden’s Spring, we can gently invite ourselves to celebrate these shifting seasonal changes within us! As the first Crocus of buds gently greeting us and Spring Showers pouring on us, we may find ourselves to be in place of acceptance, resistance or perhaps both. Change is inevitable- it’s not necessarily a good or bad thang…it just IS, right?! It’s about how we can muster up or discover the strength through these discomforts perhaps difficulties that change has brought to our door steps. It seems easy for some of us to recognize our weaknesses before our strengths when confronted with an opportunity for transformation and that’s OK…at least we recognize! So, in the light of Aries’ Power, let’s take a look at our personal strengths and hey our weaknesses too, but most of all give recognition to the heart of who we are in our strength of strengths which is our Archetypal Hero/Warrior in our life on a day to day basis. As a matter of fact, Carl G. Jung has proclaimed to us that “only one who has risked the fight with dragon and is not overcome by it wins the hoard—“the treasure hard to attain!”” (Collected Works of C.G. Jung 14 by Gerhard Alder, par. 746)
Recommended Reading
M. Perle: Sandhya Rani Jha, Transforming Communities: How People Like You Are Healing Their Neighborhoods
Moriah M. Mylod: Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, Chapter on Joy & Sorrow
Music to Get You Through
M. Perle: 2 Unlimited “No Limit”
Moriah M. Mylod: “Another Night” by Real McCoy (European Version Video Clip, 1993)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-y8CEZEProY
Meditation
M. Perle: Listen to 2 Unlimited. Close your eyes and think of jabbing and grabbing all the non-human obstacles standing in your way. Now sing Sonique “It Feels So Good” to yourself and wrap your arms around yourself (hug yourself!). It’s a short meditation because: it’s Aries season! You know we don’t have time for patiently mediating!
ART for Mind, Body & Spirit
Moriah M. Mylod: Invitation to go outdoors to create an Earth Mandala with a special intention. Mandala mean ‘Sacred Circle’ in Sanskrit’—it is indeed circular shape in form usually created from the center of the circle outward or vise versa. What will your reason be for creating today? What is it for? What do you need in your life right now? Think of something specific and begin picking natural objects that appear available and interesting to you (ex. flowers, leaves, sticks, stones, etcetera) thinking of line, shape, texture, and color, in mind. Once you’ve collected enough things, search the area for suiting place to set them down. Is it a dirt or rocky ground? GOOD! Feel free to crouch down to the ground or in a position that’s comfortable for you and begin placing those beauties down. Think of some patterns of how you wish to arrange them. It takes a lot of work constructing these, lots of thanks and gratitude to the trees for allowing us to pluck their leaves off or flower’s petals if we want to utilize them. Perhaps you quietly thank the Universe for your hands, your mind, your health, your happiness, your sadness, your pain and your experiences– to be able to make something beautiful out of something that wasn’t there before. Did you know you can do that? Make something beautiful out of “nothing”? How do you look at things?
