Charge Up Your Inner Battery Pack- It’s Summer Solstice
/One week a year the sun burns slow, long and hard, climaxing in orgasmic radiance as it grazes the skin of earth in the northern hemisphere.
Celebrate this week as holy.
What a build up to reach this point! While there’s still plenty of work to do in the garden, it’s time to let your hair down and let the swollen holy waters of river, lake and ocean purify your sins.
After the storms of winter and planting seeds of intention in spring, we’re finally beginning to see the fruits! Soon enough, the intensity of the sun will crisp flowers and leaves- a death sentence. Though it seems like a distant dream, the brisk sweetness of fall is close and winter comes too soon.
In the meantime- life’s short- let’s party!
The cosmic symphony of of the year is reaching a crescendo. Fruit is ripening, sweat is dripping and life is full.
My sweaty body outline after a Solstice Yoga-Trance Dance Practice
In fall, we harvest then let go, in winter, we rest, in spring, we create and manifest, in Summer WE CELEBRATE!
When the fire burns hot we replenish by dipping in and drinking healing waters, eating watermelon, mint, cucumber and fresh juice.
But our body-mind also demands we recharge and recalibrate
with joy, celebration, pleasure and play.
When in balance, as children of the sun, we model the same life-giving joie de vivre as the fire element - generosity, joy, courage, connectedness, confidence, enthusiasm, creative potency and the power of persistence.
Use the inextinguishable energy of the sun to regenerate your inner battery pack and reclaim these qualities as your original wild nature that culture and work may have disciplined out of you.
Summer solstice is time to reclaim our primal intelligence, shine bright, be bold, play.
Open your sails, set the compass to your own true north and take off.
Don’t apologize for who you are or where you’re at.
The Full Moon as Monthly Solstice
One day each month the moon swells in her pregnant golden luminance. If the year’s cycle were layered on top of the month’s cycle, the full moon would be our monthly summer solstice.
Celebrate this night as holy.
Your body temple is begging to be danced.
The Mother/Father Archetype
If the human life cycle were layered onto the year’s cycle, summer carries the archetype/developmental phase of the Mother and the Father. As the peak of solar energy in the year, solstice is the most yang or masculine time in nature’s rhythmic cycle. Father’s day was named on solstice for this reason.
Our inner father and mother are the parts of ourselves that are willing to risk anything to protect the future. This is the part of us that is committed to doing the work, whether it’s raising a child, writing a book, fighting for a cause or any way that we commit our life force for a higher purpose. At this developmental stage, which may or may not involve children, passion meets compassion and the lie of independence becomes clear as we invest our hearts into interdependence, understanding ourselves as part of a larger whole.
You can plant seeds in one day but the garden takes constant tending. When the daily weeding is undertaken with presence and a vision of the beautiful abundance to come, work can be a joy.
We are at a great turning point in history. Previously, we’ve lived in a culture of stunted development where many people do not progress past the adolescent stage and may never cultivating this sense of purpose and interdependence. By becoming more intimate with nature’s cycles we see our potential mirrored back at us. This is a time to ask the following questions to connect with your inner Father = Mother:
What do I love so much that I’m willing to die for it?
What both brings me joy + makes the world a better place?
Our Inner Solar Panel
Our benevolent star is only one of 300 billion stars of the Milky Way galaxy. The sun’s radiance produces 6,000 times the amount of energy used by all humans. It would take only .001 percent of its energy to power the world’s current daily energy needs.
Art by annelie Solis
Why haven’t we dropped everything to invest in this magical regenerative source?
Instead of looking outward and blaming our culture, we can breathe our power and responsibility back inward, acknowledging that each of us is a microcosm for the external macrocosm.
How sustainably are you managing your energy?
Are you regularly refueling your wellness bank account or are you spending carelessly as if there was no tomorrow, burning the candle at both ends?
Moving meditation and re-connecting with our animal nature in our ancestral home of the great outdoors supports us to remember the organic, sacred current within.
Whether we like it or not our bodies and lives are regulated by the natural forces around us and the cycles of earth and cosmos.
Your body-mind is a solar panel powered by the sun,
Your body-mind is a water wheel powered by the wild waters,
Your body-mind is wind turbine powered by deep breath and song,
Your body-mind is an endless crystal cave waiting to be discovered.
Traditional Summer Solstice Ritual suggestions:
Stay outside from dawn until dusk
Place a bowl of water in sun to be recharged by the fire element, imagine a goal you’d like to achieve, then drink the fortitude and passion of the sun into your body to fuel the fire of your vision and strengthen your power to manifest
Dance!
Create a gratitude list and add to it each day
Sunbathe + Moonbathe to keep your inner body in balance
Dive into a fresh body of water!
Sun Flower Art by Bahman Farzad
