Yin Water Rabbit Lunar Year: The path from fear to connection

In this episode, I share some reflections on this new lunar year, the Yin Water Rabbit year, along with a prompt for working with the emotion of Fear and the practice of Connection. Every emotion has something to teach us, and every emotion exists to guide us. So maybe this year isn’t about drowning in fear, but somehow learning how to respond to it?  Here are some reflections on what we can learn from: the Rabbit, Yin energy, and the element of Water this year.

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Transcript

Hey everyone! Welcome back to the podcast :) Happy 2023, happy lunar new year, and happy Pisces season!

For this episode, I wanted to share some reflections on this new lunar year, along with a prompt for working with the emotion of Fear and the practice of Connection. 

So we are now about one month in to a new lunar year, a Yin Water Rabbit year! And – as someone born in a Rabbit year myself -- I wanted to learn more about what this year was all about. 

In recent years, I started to do this thing where at the start of every new season or new lunar year I would refer to a holistic Chinese framework called the Five Element Theory for understanding elemental cycles of life and transformation. In this framework, every element is associated with a season, an organ, cardinal direction, color, and emotion. 

 This year, I was reminded that the element of Water is associated with the emotion of Fear. And I have say, when I read this, I was NOT ok! LOL I was like “Why does it have to be FEAR? Can we please get a break from feeling terrified for like five seconds? Ahhh!” 

 But-- I’m also trying really hard to remember that every emotion has something to teach us, and that every emotion exists to guide us. So maybe this year isn’t about drowning in fear, but somehow learning how to respond to it? 

 This episode I’m going to share some reflections on what we can learn from: the Rabbit, Yin energy, and the element of Water.

1.              RABBIT 

 According to Chinese-American artist and mystic, missTANGQ at Tiger Eye Astrology, this Rabbit year invites us to focus on Connection on a small scale, by nourishing local communities, and building intimacy and support in relationships. It’s a time for rest, recovery, and reflection; a time for cultivating emotional and spiritual medicine and support.

 You know, rabbits have an image of being soft and fuzzy… they’re definitely sensitive and they’re constantly being preyed upon. And yet they are also very resilient! They adapt brilliantly to danger by burrowing unseen tunnels and networks underground, and they know how to look for food all year round, sometimes having to make the most of what they have when no plants are available by eating dry branches or even their own poops!

 In Chinese astrology, Rabbits are a lucky sign. In the Chinese zodiac origin story, the Rabbit was actually helped by the Dragon, emphasizing the value of receiving support and being given a second chance. The Rabbit also demonstrates a patience with tending to the more everyday forms of care, in preparation for powerful transformation in the coming Dragon year. Rabbits are primed to practice forgiveness and to live peacefully, focusing on being gentle with ourselves instead of hustling all the time.

 When I think of Fear in relation to Rabbits, the first thing I imagine is the look rabbits have when they’re out of their burrows, as they search for food while also being aware of predators and danger. There’s that tentative way they explore, and then their long ears go up in the air and they may seem scared--but I wonder: is it more so that they’re just keenly listening?

2.              YIN

When I reflect on Fear, I am reminded that Fear is the basis for oppression. 

For one, Fear, in the form of Terror, is intentionally and systemically used as a strategy to perpetuate colonialism, capitalism, and hetero-patriarchy. Secondly, oppression is often borne out of a reaction to Fear. I have a theory that European colonization developed as a dysregulated reaction to the trauma of disconnection.

 Sylvia Federrici, a feminist sociologist, wrote in her book Caliban and The Witch about how early Capitalism in Europe followed The Plague which was devastating and traumatic on individual and collective levels. There was a huge unrepaired rupture in the relationship people had to death, natural life cycles, the land, and interdependence. 

 This wound was deepened through the establishment of what were called “enclosures” and the concept of land as property. This led to policies and institutions based on a distrust and fear of the natural world, the human body, as well as the fear of the feminine, and anyone deemed as “other”. This fear of the unknown and the so-called “irrational” led to an increased sense of alienation from the land and the body as sacred, and rather materials and objects to be dissected, examined, and controlled. 

 More recently, somatic abolitionist Resmaa Menakem wrote about how the collective trauma response to the brutality and terror in Europe was carried over to North America through settler colonialism and slavery. The violence of these trauma responses can be seen in racial profiling, police brutality, the prison industrial complex, anti-abortion movements, and transphobic policies, among many others. 

 This violent response to Fear has also impacted us as individuals in the form of self-criticism, self-punishment; being in constant survival mode and focusing on scarcity; and in this process, losing of sense of self, or feeling a disconnection from our community or ancestry.

 These oppressive systems all stem from a reaction to a fear of the unknown with an urgency to control, to create an illusion of ‘safety’. There is an overemphasis on: immediate action, and endless expansion and consumption that has created a deep collective imbalance.

 The Yin-Yang  concept of balance illustrates two opposite but complimentary aspects. Yin represents a receptive energy that emphasizes stillness, contemplation, softness, quiet, and rest. Yang represents an action-oriented energy that emphasizes movement, growth, and expansion. 

 According to the Yin-Yang concept, systemic oppression is an over-expression of Yang energy. When one aspect is over-expressed, there is an imbalance and the life giving qualities of both Yin and Yang are compromised. The Yang energy’s potential for change, movement, and growth has turned poison without its complimentary counterpart Yin. 

 As a Yin year, the Water Rabbit year invites us to focus on Yin ways of being that are so needed right now. The Yin energy of this year invites to divest our energy and resources from systems that rely on Fear-driven control, endless expansion and profits, and the destruction of the planet; as well as divest from the violent ways we treat ourselves and each other through constant criticism, punishment, isolation, and disconnection.

3.              WATER

 In Traditional Chinese Medicine, Fear is the emotion associated with the element of Water.

 Water is also associated with our kidneys which hold our genetics and intergenerational knowledge. Water is also associated with the color Black, representing the deepest essence of life and the source of all being. One of my teachers Chilán Mustain describes Water season (which is Winter) as representing the pause between the exhale of autumn and the inhale of spring. Water represents the moment after we let go or die, and the moment before we are ready to come alive again. In this same way, Water can also be thought as the dreamstate, somewhere between falling asleep and waking up again, the place we rest into and also imagine new ways of being. 

 If Fear exists in a realm of possibility, is there not also the possibility for connection, a liminal space of belonging? When I consider Water in this way I imagine the womb environment, a watery container of protection, nourishment, and connection. What if we can hold our Fear with the compassion of a womb? Would we be able to allow Fear to prompt us to lean into connection rather than react to it as a trigger for violence?

 One of the most primal survival responses to fear is vocalizing or calling out for help. This survival strategy is called “Attach Cry”, and its purpose is to seek assistance and safety in social connection. When we intentionally seek and find connection, it can be a return to collectivity, and a coming home to a sense of inherent belonging, power, and worth. 

 This year’s Yin Water Rabbit energy offers support for seeking connection with others, ourselves, and the earth. Here are some examples of ways we may expand our “window of tolerance” or “window of awareness” for BOTH holding space to observe our fear, AND find our path to safe connection again:

 Connection with others:

-       Feed and deepen your trusted relationships

-       Reach out to practice asking for help and practice receiving that care and support, lean into the web of interdependence

-       Share your dreams and desires with others, chill in the fertile void, embrace the non-linear, mind map, collage

 Connection with yourself:

-       Tend to the tension in your body with joy, pleasure, softening: touch, sing, stretching, massage, soaking or floating in water

-       Pause, take breaks, practice your boundaries, burrow, find your inner sanctuary

-       Practice self-forgiveness and compassion for being a multidimensional human creature and not an breakable robot or perfect final product to be consumed

Connection with the earth:

 -       Listen closely to the earth, notice the stillness and patience in nature, connect with water, or bodies of water

-       Stay hydrated and nourished if you can

-       Imagine and vision collective liberation as imminent and life giving

My prompt for you this episode is: 

What is your path from fear to connection? 

What does your fear tell you about what you need to feel supported? 

What would practicing more peace and recovery look like for you?

As I record this, looking out my window into the sky, I am alone, and yet I’m also reaching out to you… I’m imagining the way water flows towards the ocean, and I think my spell for dissolving fear this year will be to keep sending ripples out through this podcast, my social media, and newsletters which I know continue to stir up a lot of fear for me. But I want to remember that Fear is ok to feel, and that actually, we can follow its path and let it guide us back to life-affirming connection.

 I am so glad that you are here, on this earth, and that you chose to listen to the podcast today. I’m wishing you a beautiful year ahead, and may we let our fears carry us to the shores of connection, this year — and always :-)