2023
YEAR OF THE YIN WATER RABBIT
Welcome to the Year of the Yin Water Rabbit!
Read below to learn:
YEAR OF THE YIN WATER RABBIT
Welcome to the Year of the Yin Water Rabbit!
Read below to learn:
- the overall energy of this year
- the keys to navigating this year with success
- the musical notes or vibrations sounding through the star alignments this year
- summary of energies of the past years (since we opened in 2010)
2023 Yin Water Rabbit
Chinese Astrology Technicals: This is the 40th year of the 60-year cycle in the Chinese Calendar. Deficient Fire Master with guest Metal (Heaven/Upper) ruling the overall and first half of the year and Fire (Earth/Lower) ruling the second half. The Yin Water Rabbit
Last year was a Yang Water Tiger year. It brought a great deal of power, movement and force. This year is a healing year, where we all have the opportunity to go inward and tend to our wounds. We do not feel sorry for ourselves, but rather feel empowered in the strength it takes to create space for self-healing. We regenerate and renew and come back stronger than ever. Keeping with this intention will align us with the yearly energy. This is a yin year. Yin water, which is like soft dew on a plant before the sun rises. Reflective, nutritive, medicinal, cooling. It goes hand in hand with clouds and rain as well, as this can be an analogy for our emotional expressions. The day can be bright and sunny and all the sudden a cloud comes in to the picture and blocks out our sun and we feel disconnected, but the cloud drifts by eventually and all of the sudden we are back into clarity. Similarly, storms roll through often bringing fright, but the transformative power of these storms can bring great change and opportunity for evolution. This is also a Rabbit year. The rabbit is concerned about future generations. It doesn’t take giant leaps, but rather a succession of small hops, reminding us to approach things step-by-step. This is a year where we have complete permission to slow down and focus on the strategies we are employing in our lives. Assess whether they are achieving the results we want and make revisions and course corrections as needed. Next year 2024 is another yang year--Yang Wood like strong new tree growth. It is also a Dragon year, so there will again be the opportunity for powerful movement. This is all the more reason for us to continue to rest and heal during this year now. Hex 37 "Family"
The hexagram reading I received for the hidden key to success in 2023 is actually also the same hexagram that is often used to represent 2023, Hexagram 37 Jia Ren “Family.” This kind of synchronicity happens regularly with Yijing consultations. The image of the hexagram is wind over fire. The idea here is that a fire creates upward movement and energetic manifestation. It is a hexagram about strengthening our inner resolve and our inner light to naturally affect our external realities. This manifests in our approach to life as attending to our inner worlds to create impactful outer worlds. The text says to have “substance in our words and duration in our way of life.” A family is a beautiful image of the importance of tending to our inner world to have greater effect on the harmony in our outer worlds. In a family, if we are too focused on our work life or external relationships, the family dynamic suffers and often crumbles. Family challenges us to do our inner work--to cultivate our patience, positivity, understanding, resolve, consistency and love. If a healthy balance is achieved and there is focus on our inner world and on the healthy relationship dynamics in a family then the family will thrive and external life accomplishments come naturally. In a similar manner, each individual human being is their own family. We have many voices inside of us vying for our attention and asking to be in control. When we focus solely on our external lives, we do so by taking time and attention away from our internal lives. The family of one’s self must be attended to. Separate the voices. Is there a voice that tells you to eat chocolate? Or a voice that tells you that you are tired? That you should exercise? That you shouldn’t exercise? That you don’t have enough fun? That you aren’t serious enough? What is the state of peace and harmony in your own head’s family? Are there a lot of voices yelling and arguing or are they all being attended to. Attending to these voices doesn’t just mean giving in to their ever fluctuating whims, but instead it means identifying them and what they are truly after (protection, feeling accepted, feeling loved, etc) and then transferring their conversation to our higher level thinking. So if a voice says you need to binge eat chocolate, you need to identify the voice and engage it in a higher dialogue. “Hello, I know this is my self-love voice talking and I haven’t been doing a good job of creating space in my life for fun. I’ve been running around way too much and working all the time. I hear you. Chocolate doesn’t fit in with my health goals right now, but I tell you what I will do: Instead of working tonight, I’m going to watch a hilarious movie. And tomorrow I’m going to make sure to spend at least a half an hour doing something fun.” This is an example of one method of working with our inner family. We are creating peace by listening and engaging, but at the same time we are not giving in to actions that counter our higher goals and vision for our lives. Climate & Health Fire is deficient, so brightness will be dimmed. Life energy will not spread as much, but there will be an expansion of storage energy (water). Think more about hibernation or hidden growth patterns and less about external blossoming. Short summer with the year having overall cool and cold energies. Things will still grow, but the fruits may be smaller and they may not produce as long. Pain in the blood vessels. Dizziness, sadness, forgetfulness. Cold in the heart, constriction of the vessels. Counteract this using helpful flavors of bitter and salty. But also important to align with the contracting and inward energy of the year so as to not overextend yourself. Pull back, withdraw, rest, integrate. Come up with new plans hidden away from others. Perfect your strategies and increase your wisdom. Next year will be a perfect year to move forward and reinsert yourself into the external world, but this year isn’t so supportive of a big outward push. The body will give feedback if you are getting overextended. Listen to it. Continue your internal practices of meditation and qigong and yoga. Cultivate regular eating and sleeping patterns. Cultivate love and compassion for yourself and others. Emerge next year refreshed and strong. Musical Notes When the ancient Chinese scholars talked about the night sky and the stellar Heavens, they used a completely different language then when talking about the physical body or the earth. They described the stellar movements using musical language, which is essentially talking about the vibrations resonating from different alignments. Here are the notes as they vibrate through 2023: Overall Root Note: G- Spring Feb 4th: Host: E Guest: G- Summer Apr 18: Host: G Guest: C+ Late Summer Jun 30: Host: C Guest: D- Fall Sep 11: Host: D Guest: A+ Winter Nov 23: Host: A Guest: E+ *the +/- signs indicate whether the particular note is dominating or submissive (For scholar physicians, the cycle is Lesser Zhi; Greater Gong; Lesser Shang; Greater Yu; Greater Jue) |
Overview
This is a softer year than 2022 and should bring some reflective, introspective energies with it. A big, big year for doing work on deep emotional patterns, traumas, addictions and the like---You will be challenged and you WILL have success in these areas this year IF you pay attention to the keys! The key is hidden in Hexagram 37 of the Yijing (I Ching): Jia Ren "Family". Unlock the power of this year to transform deep emotional patterns by diving deep into the wisdom of this hexagram as well as aligning your space with the year’s feng shui and following along with the energetic patterns of the year. The Key
Now back to what I alluded to previously where the key to navigating this year’s evolutionary opportunity lies in Hexagram 37 “The Family.” This is one of the 64 hexagrams of the Yijing. A little background on this. The Yijing is an ancient Chinese wisdom text (circe 1100BCE) that uses symbolic language developed from observing nature, going into the unknown spiritual realms and bringing back information and translating it into symbols. It was developed and used by sages, shamans and rulers. Yijing literally means the “Book of Change.” The “change” it discusses and details is the constant change that occurs in our lives and in the world around us. There are patterns underlying those changes that repeat and if we can tap into the wisdom of those patterns then we can find successful ways to navigate challenges and opportunities. It is not about fortune telling, but more looked at as a “living text” that grows and changes with us as we grow and change in our wisdom and understanding. It serves as a teacher, guiding us toward greater autonomy in our own lives. It enlightens us to truth and insights and informs us about the very nature of reality. The Yijing consists of 64 hexagrams which are 6-line combinations of zeros and ones, like a binary code. This means the entire text has 384 lines (64x6) and each line has the possibility to change in a reading, which changes the interpretation, so all-in-all there 4096 different possibilities of change detailed symbolically in the Yijing. Each hexagram represents a time period and correlates to possible life situations. They are universal, archetypal symbols that lend understanding to the essence of a time and situation. As each situation in our lives unfolds systematically over time, so does the hexagram of the Yijing unfold line-by-line. Evolution of Consciousness
Going deeper into this hexagram we find a description of an evolution of consciousness that is underway. According to Richard Rudd, who is the author of The Gene Keys, “Those who thrust themselves to the top of the hierarchy through brute strength and subversion are losing their power and those who hold a vision of synthesis based on self-transcendence are gaining more power. In this way the world is transforming.“ This is congruent with the idea that God is falling to earth, where there is a spiritual momentum to bring the concept of God out of the realm of “worship the other” and more into the realm of God is alive inside us. We are the embodiment of God and of the oneness and love which we seek. This illustrates the natural mental process of realization that what we perceive as a weakness in ourselves is really not a weakness at all. We are not weaker than those who seek to subvert through brute strength, but rather we must search out the acceptance in ourselves of our strength. The oneness of human kind and the oneness of all life. The acceptance of equality. Living from the heart as a family of human kind. Unconditional love comes from the heart and not the mind. This is slowly forging a new social paradigm. The idea of family not as a small separated phenomenon, but rather expanding into a collective expression for all humanity. Tenderness is the force that will lead us. Not weakness, but cultivated tenderness that comes from living from our hearts. Previous years
2010 Geng Yin (Dominating Metal) – cut out things we don’t need, harvest what we can, let go 2011 Xin Mao (Deficient Water) – reflection/introspection and also faced with a mirror 2012 Ren Chen (Dominating Wood) – strong rushing energy of change, breaking through restrictions 2013 Gui Si (Deficient Fire) – idea phase, new light, sparks of life and the beginnings of transformation 2014 Jia Wu (Dominating Earth) – start building a foundation, structures and containers 2015 Yi Wei (Deficient Metal) – refine the gold out of this foundation, what is most essential to take with you 2016 Bing Shen (Dominating Water) – the Unconscious comes in, introducing some of the missing pieces in our awareness, things we have been neglecting or denying flood into the consciousness. 2017 DingYou (Deficient Wood) – direction and growth begin again, but more focused on the instinctual and animal aspects of life. Harvest what you can that is great about your viewpoints and let go of all the stuff that is blocking your ability to connect with others. 2018 WuXu (Dominating Fire) – lifting us up to a higher state of being. It is about spiritual progress, transformation. Connecting with a calling. 2019 JiHai (Deficient Earth) – we start having the wind in our sails to put things into action as the wood energy is unchecked, but remember not to get too swept away by the momentum and forget to build yourself a strong enough boat. Focus on strengthening your container: your physical body and digestion 2020 GengZi (Dominating Metal) – Make the things that seem small the focus of your intention instead of pushing a great deal out into the world. There will likely be a lot of change happening, so we need to set our intention now to practice our 2 virtues for the year: ritual politeness and honesty and uprightness. If we set our sights on these virtues this year, it will carry us through difficult situations and keep us from getting stuck. 2021 XinChou (Deficient Water) – Earth energy is very strong and overcontrols the Water. Worry, doubt and fear try to stomp out our light and bring us to a halt, but we need to focus on stoking the fires of our own inspirations and our compassion and connection with others. If we submit to the heaviness, it will bring suffering and lack of movement. If, however, we can self-generate our own light and love, not allowing worry, doubt and fear to take hold, it will make the whole cycle turn. We will see those afflictions replaced by a deep Trust in the ways of the Universe. 2022 RenYin (Dominating Wood) - Strong energy and big movement. Steady your ship and hold on to ride the waves. The tiger is on the prowl, so we must be mindful of our conduct and act respectfully. If we allow ourselves to get too swept away and out of control, the tiger may bite us. 2023 GuiMao (Deficient Fire) - A healing year to attend to our wounds. Go inward to follow the reflective and introspective energies and take time to work on deep emotional patterns, traumas, addictions and the like. Regenerate and renew to come back stronger than ever and expand your capacity for unconditional love. |