5:10pm, Sunday.  It’s nighttime already.  Dusk is done.  Done at 4:30, maybe, if that.  I’ve come to appreciate this time of year way more recently, upon beginning a meditation practice almost a year ago.  yes, i said it.  I am a certified yoga teacher and didn’t have a regular practice till one year ago.  (Cue yoga police!)   I do now, and I sought one because I was ready to go deeper inside my sadhana, my heart, and my Self.  I was ready to go into the dark.

I remember years ago Amy taught a class around this time, and admitted to not liking the dark days of winter too much.  She then offered her own work of yoga in finding the light in the dark, ie, she got creative with her inward time.  She prompted the students to each come up with something they liked about the darker days and longer nights, and share it out loud.  People said things like baking, reading, watching movies, knitting, cuddling with the kids/pooch/kitty/sweetie, etc.  I’ll never forget this because it offered me a chance to actually seek something different out of what i didn’t really like, as I’ve also been a winter-hater.  In a sense, it taught me to do some yoga, and find an expansion where I felt a contraction.

Tuesday marks the Solstice for us, the beginning of winter, when the earth will be at its lowest point below the sun before it begins its upward turn again.  The Solstice is almost like time standing still for a brief moment, and we’ll be heralded into the greatest amount of dark for the year.  We’ll have the longest night, literally.  Part of the natural cycle, 2010’s annual cropped-day will occur on a full moon.  Wait, it gets better- It’s also a lunar eclipse!  Holy cow, it’s gonna be dark.

This is a rare alignment, and one that hasn’t happened in over 400 years.  Full Moon’s bring additional energetic alignments that enhance whatever is going on at that time. Astrologers call eclipses ‘portals’, and often describe them paradoxically being about absorbing what you’re ready to shed, and renewing your sense of purpose.  So everything this week is being pushed a little bit…more.  This alignment is a perfect Tantric paradox, and it’s a chance to align to both creation and dissolution, to renewal and letting go.

Our extra darkness can be a gateway, and I plan on using it as one.  Over the next week I encourage asana, to move any of the stuck energy in your body and jostle up what you are longing to shed.  And I encourage meditation, to open that inner portal for dissolution to happen, and expand in the dark.
After all, everything germinates and grows in the dark.  In the days that follow the Solstice/full moon/eclipse, it will be super dark.  Little bits of light will slowly and progressively increase and reappear, but there’s no rush.  I like the dark now.

fyi, many of you ask about my favorite astrologers, and my current fav is on maternity leave!  Happy New Motherhood Divine Harmony.

(that picture is what our eclipse would look like, were we standing on the moon’s surface.  our view, if lucky enough to catch it, will be of a the moon as a red glowing ball.  Not bad.)