Woman, reWilded # 7 – A COVID Summer

The last of a 7 part series Woman, reWilded on reclaiming cycle wisdom, woman wisdom in summer season.

“When things fall apart, focus on that which does not change”
Sono Michetti

It’s our first Qigong session of 2022 and our instructor offers up these words as an antidote to a COVID summer. My first reaction is perplexed….everything is changing, the world is chaotic, explosive and unpredictable and our place in it tenuous. What does not change? 

Sono, with every Qigong class, is simply asking us to go beyond the obvious, to feel underneath the turbulent surface to access the abundance of chi that is always and already available to us. To look into the natural cyclical order of the Universe, the landscape of ocean, earth and sky – into the Tao – to find our unchanging essential beingness.

It’s not the summer I was expecting, more like a wintering of the soul. Languid beach holidays between Christmas and New Year; ease and flow in my body with warm humid days and nights, are replaced by La Nina. Rain and more rain. We hunker down at home on a holiday that feels like winter.

In the first weeks of January, we finally get a tiny sense of what it might have been like as a Melbournian during lockdown without the cold. The streets eerily quiet. Doors shut with CLOSED signs, no staff, no customers. I am thrown into existential anxiety as COVID has finally crossed the border and shown its real self. It arrives on our doorstep and runs through the family.

I understand now what freaks people out about getting sick. The clever little spike proteins on the surface of the virus – that form the “corona” or crown shape – make a bee line for our most vulnerable body bits: lungs, heart, brain, joints. For an aging population of baby boomers it’s full exposure; an awareness of the ways we haven’t taken care of ourselves and haven’t been cared for, rise up to the surface.

My minor brush with corona leaves my brain foggy and neurons tangled, my joints inflamed. The isolation, unvarying home routine and the illness itself feels like it’s shrunk my gray matter. And the preliminary studies confirm this. From brain imaging data, researchers compared people who had experienced COVID-19, even mild forms, with those that hadn’t, and found reduced thickness and volume of gray matter tissue in the frontal and temporal lobes. Individuals who had COVID-19 also showed a larger cognitive decline on several cognitive function tests. 

Summer Soul exhaustion

Fatigue, depression and brain fog, says Nature.com is part of the COVID territory. Astrocytes, pictured in the image, cool little cells that provide nutrients to neurons are under attack and my job is to take the pressure off my aging brain. “No thinking, no stress.” My inner doctor orders plus a refocus on supporting my brain, nervous and immune system with supplements and Indigo. 

COVID is a blessing for some and a terrible fatal illness for others. I bless the way it reminds me to rest and take these first few months of the year slowly. Not feeling guilty about lying in bed all day, afternoon siestas and long sleep ins. Ironically, It’s the existential malaise of our times, unrelenting debilitating fatigue that some including Matt Licata, psychotherapist and author, calls “soul exhaustion.”

“Perhaps now, more than ever, it is essential to find ways to rest our nervous systems, not only to manage traumatic stress and this core soul-level exhaustion and disorientation that many of us are experiencing, but to deepen our relationship with the earth and the natural world, with our hearts, and to reconnect with the sacredness of what it means to be a human being alive on the planet at this time.” 

Reading this, I am brought back by Sono’s words and my response: that which is unchanging…. IS our connection with nature and our fundamental embeddedness in the cycle of life. 

Summer in the Cosmic Life Cycle

The exhaustion of the last 2 years carries into 2022 and it’s not until the Chinese New Year on the first day of February when there’s a noticeable shift in energy. We have arrived into the Year of the Water Tiger. According to highly respected Feng Shui expert Raymond Lo this will bring much needed warmth, positive energy and dynamic confidence in the outside world. However, on the flip side, Tiger contains the elements of yang wood, yang fire and yang earth that can be unexpectedly explosive.  Water is considered a balancing, cooling, softening element that symbolises creativity and growth but also has its destructive side which we are about to discover.

In the menstrual cycle, high summer corresponds to ovulation. When a woman can be at her peak, exuding feminine energy; an expressive, creative time, optimistic, seductive, intoxicating and the season of giving to self and others. Summer is the Yang, fire, Via Positiva, masculine prime time of doing, being seen and reciprocating our flow that coincides with the full moon. 

Summer is also a great time to go green: fresh juices, salads, sprouts, lots of water. Estrogen levels are at their peak so it’s also a good time to support the liver, kidneys and other organs of detoxification and elimination to remove excess hormones from the system

The energy of inner summer can be addictive. I recognised in the past how easy it was to overshoot and burn out with egoic control of my to do list, especially in the hot summer months. This is particularly true for the astrological sign of Pisces that struggles more than others with addictions.

On a planetary scale, humans have spent way too long in the summer cycle, extracting more than we give back and we are all implicated. It is obvious now in this critical time of human evolution on an overheated planet  – we are in a health crisis, a climate crisis, an existential crisis – of our own doing and undoing.

A great relief from this summer is the upcoming planetary conjunction of Jupiter and Neptune in Pisces, a pivotal time on April 12 2022.  Neptune is the planetary ruler of Pisces that encourages ideas, intuition, spirituality, compassion and dreams to come forward. 

In Wellbeing Astrology’s report for 2022 the mutable, watery flow of Pisces slows down the pace of Jupiter and invites inward exploration. By taking our time and acting with the flow of nature, rather than forcing, Jupiter in Pisces can create an experience of abundance. We can feel more expansive with less as we align more and more with our essential beingness.  That which is unchanging.

“..to accept not knowing and remain continually open to exploring the multiplicitous ways we are interconnected across time and space with all beings, both human and non-human.” Wellbeing Astrology

Image credit: David Robertson, ICR/SPL

Astrocytes are star-shaped cells in the central nervous system that perform many functions, including providing nutrients to neurons.