Please Don’t Tell Me It’s Because Mercury Is In Retrograde

Please don’t tell me it’s because mercury is in retrograde.

Or that I need to ‘get out of my own way’.

Or that I need to ‘work on’ my worthiness or self love or money story or whatever it is.  

I know I am going to step on some toes here, but seriously, I am so sick of hearing these things!

People say this stuff all the time and it is incredibly unhelpful.

All of these imply that things are either outside of our control (in the stars) or straight forward (like we should just be able to do them).

Here’s the first one-  if you’re having communication breakdowns, astrology is not a reason for avoiding personal responsibility. Yes, sometimes shit happens and maybe it is because of the stars, maybe it’s because someone from an alternative universe is messing with us but whatever it is - we have to focus on the bit we can control.

Because another maybe is that we could learn to communicate better.

A yoga teacher friend of mine once didn’t get paid for 6 months and the studio manager laughed and told her it was because mercury in retrograde when she was doing the invoices. Another friend was told that her fighting with her boyfriend would naturally sort itself out when mercury realigned.

Seriously?! Massively unhelpful.

Then the other statements people toss about like they are insights or wisdom about what inner work people should do. Let’s have a little more compassion.

No one feels lousy about their worthiness out of laziness. No one feels awful about their body from choice.

It comes from deep conditioning that can be worked with, but takes either a long time or working with someone with the skills to guide deep transformation or sometimes both.

I work with communication, self love, worthiness, social and cultural conditioning and limiting beliefs.

Almost everyone (including me!) can get better at communicating and can learn to release unhelpful patterns. It’s amazing.

But it is only possible when we drop the excuses and practice deep compassion for ourselves and others.

What’s the big deal with sexual/erotic energy?

I had to smile yesterday when a women in my group asked me how to deal with ‘overwhelming sexual energy’. This is a great problem to have!!

Sexual energy isn’t complicated- it’s just energy, felt as being turned on.

Everyone can feel energy - it’s that tingling feeling you sometimes get in your fingers or toes, the butterflies in your chest, the waves of warmth when you feel love.

We all feel it but often, but often we aren’t aware that we can direct or use this energy consciously as we choose.  

So we tend to either feel a lack of it or an excess. It’s either wishing we had more turn on or feeling almost out of control when we are very turned on.

For me, I used to feel frustrated with myself when I didn’t feel a lot and then out of control when I did. It felt like pressure valve I had to release or I would go crazy. I had no idea I could move it through my body and turn it into a generalised, blissful glow that could last and feel amazing.

Here’s the thing - this energy is for you. It’s for you to fuel your life - your creativity, drive, inspiration, motivation.

It’s not a good or bad thing in itself, but you can make it have good or bad effects depending on how you relate to it and use it.

Our lifestyles these days are very bad for our sexual energy, terrible for women and actually radically bad for men as well. So if we want to maintain a healthy sexuality, we need to cultivate it consciously and here are some of the ways we can do that.

Firstly, recognising sexual energy is a thing worthy of cultivating, for ourselves and for our relationships.

Secondly, it’s often helpful to reframe our relationship with it. Energy ebbs and flows so if you don’t feel tons of it or you do feel tons of it - it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you!

When you recognise this - it gives you a powerful reframe. You get to choose what you do with this energy. You can cultivate and direct it. You can channel it as you wish and also, you get to enjoy it! This is vital life energy.

If you feel too much of it you don’t have to act on it. You can enjoy the feeling without having to release the pressure. You can practice grounding, ideally standing in bare feet on the ground or earth and imagining or feeling excess energy draining into the ground where it can be recycled. You can use your breath to cool down.

You can also learn to move it through your body and store it, which is super cool! I love teaching clients how to do this.

If you feel like you don’t have a lot of sexual/erotic energy and you want more you can cultivate it through things like awareness, breath, movement. Anything that gets you into nature helps, staying healthy and active and learning things for erotic self care and sexual mastery -  like Tantra and Tsoaist practices and jade egg - is a superb way to make staying sexually radiant and feeling vital and alive just a normal part of your life.

If you decide to explore this stuff, make sure to find someone with training that feels super safe to you and I promise, you will never look back!