Retrograde Thrival Guide

Retrograde periods ask us to turn inward. Like leaves on a tree, they offer a natural descent into the deepest parts of our different landscapes. Each retrograde has a different flavor as there's the planet, the sign, and how it's unfolding within and without. 

They are an integral and rich part of Nature––of human nature. How overwhelming and tiresome would life be without periods of release, rest, and digestion? Wispy roots beg for depth and fortification. An overactive mind yearns for amended soil. Death is the compost for a life of devotion.

Wherever and however you are being met in this moment—I welcome you to pause and notice the bottoms of your feet and their endless conversation with the deepest parts of the Earth. Notice the Crown of your head and its intimate collaboration with the most subtle parts of the Cosmos. Take a gentle and deep breath, and move forward leisurely.

1. do one thing at a time (sometimes)

We, as humans, are forgetting how to mono-task. The simple and holy act of doing one thing at a time.

There was a time, not long ago when all we had was mono-tasking. There were fewer things to reach for as filler or buffer inputs. We were, in essence, forced to be with ourselves. 

I’ve encountered several studies that all say the same thing—we don’t actually know how to multitask. We, of course, can ‘do it,' but there is always some sort of loss involved. Be it quality of focus, breath, or outcome.

If you are busy, full, and generally overwhelmed with what’s on your plate, and the idea of doing one thing at a time sounds impossible—start by trying just one thing a day at a time.

When you do the dishes, try just doing the dishes. No podcasts, videos, or audiobooks.
When you sit down to watch something, try just watching the thing. No scrolling, checking email, or flipping through different apps.
When you drive somewhere, try just focusing on driving. No music, texting, or phone calls.

You may feel your brain-body-nervous system going through a natural detox period.

Trust me when I say this is temporary, and you will find yourself on the other side, in the oasis of mono-tasking. Where breath reaches deeper into the caverns of the body, focus arrives and recedes naturally like ocean waves, and presence imbues reality like the stars in the night sky.

2. space-first

This is one of my favorite Zen teachings. Like anything that lives in the garden of the real—you can spend an entire lifetime exploring it and only scratch the surface.

From innumerable places, we are taught to fill first.

Silence in conversation makes many uncomfortable. Filler words rush in. 

An empty space in a room opens up, and we immediately begin looking or shopping for what to put there. 

Going from elementary school to middle school to high school to college directly into a job is considered normal. Most ‘gap years’ are immediately filled with travel, internships, jobs, and more of the like.

Filling is not wrong.

Space-first is simply the notion that before filling—take, nay—revel in the space. Sit in the space. Listen in the space.

True emptiness is fertile. It is the place from which natural will arises. In other words, what wants to and is already arising next, free of force.

3. release shoulds

Two of my teachers teach that shoulds never arise from your authentic energies and are often stuck in your third energy center. Should’s are often energies that drive our actions or will in motion.

Should’s are funny because they can tell us to do things that are objectively good for us. Yet when the action is driven by other people's pain and fear, we don’t reap the objectively good benefits.

A woman is filled with should’s in her third around food and ends up orthorexic and miserable. She eats very healthily yet is mired in fear. This affects her health, overriding many of the benefits that come from nutrient-dense food. 

Sometimes releasing should’s means letting yourself enjoy a bowl of ice cream or watching an absurd show. If you pair this with guidelines 1 and 2 and create the space to be present with the one thing you are letting yourself do or have—you might actually enjoy it. And along the way, experience how everything can be a form of nourishment if we let it.

Retrograde periods resemble compost piles and dark moons. A time when your body might ask for things that, for many, kick up a bounty of shoulds.

Try spending 10 minutes every day imagining the energies of any should’s in your belly, breaking up and releasing down a grounding stream of energy from your Root. 

Then ask, what’s here now?

4. cultivate delight

What’s a thing that the small, still voice within you is delighted by that you, perhaps, never have or don’t often create the time for? 

Baking a pie 
Swimming naked 
Going to that class 
Growing something 

One of my favorite ways to do this during this time of year is to intentionally interrupt my work task list by leisurely making a bouquet and then showering it with adoration in the form of a photoshoot.

No form of delight is too big or too small. Sometimes we imagine something to be so big that we get overwhelmed and never start.

You don’t have to grow an entire garden right now—but perhaps you can easily set up 3 pots of herbs.

Delight births beauty. Beauty feeds Life in subtle and profound ways. 

This is your sign to try that thing.

5. tend the ordinary

Just like we’ve lost the art of monotasking, we’ve also progressed away from intentional tending.

We live in a time of more, faster, better, like, swipe, bigger, manifest this, that, and those.

An antidote to the immense imbalance this can cause in our inner and outer landscapes is tending the ordinary. Taking great, loving care of what is. Being a good steward of what we have. That which we have been entrusted with. 

Do you want a bigger house? Love your current one as if it’s already enough until it is enough. Create space to experience bigness now. When you awake, sing praises of gratitude to your closets and bathrooms. 

Do you not like the place you live? Try introducing yourself. “I am willing to be in relationship with you, place.” Treat the land, the town, the city as a new person in your life with whom you have been assigned to be in relationship to. 

Do you want more money? Practice first being safe and then being nourished by the money flowing through your life now. Steward the money that's here as if it is a land flowing with milk and honey. 

You don't have to like something to have intimacy with it. 

6. engage the subtle

I find it even easier to access the living wisdom of the subtle during retrograde periods, allowing me to move even deeper into the already-happening metabolization process.

The subtle is a never-ending fractal. What was once subtle will begin to feel dense––and within that, a realm of new layers of subtlety will open up. This deepening is an eternal dance. 

Spend time each day gazing upon a flower, plant, or tree. Notice the way it interacts with the elements. Say hello to all the beings that are a part of it. Pretend that you are gazing into an entire Universe––until it becomes real.  

Drink tea under the moonlight in silence and listen to Nature's chiming and chirping choruses. Snorkel through these oceans of presence and discover that silence is wildly alive. 

Roll out your yoga mat and stretch by slowly attuning to each mountain and crevasse of your body, noticing tension, and then listening to how it would like to be moved.

Begin working with a flower essence, beloved gatekeepers of the subtle realms.

Try Wild Rose, Oriental Poppy, or Wild Daisy. 

7. life is cleaning

Doing everything in an extreme way is not natural. Often things that involve purification can take on this energy, of all of it must be done now. Usually, when that’s occurring, we’re back to being driven by shoulds, pain, or fear.

The interesting thing about purification is that it is a natural byproduct of being nourished and resourced. Try Apple Blossom for support. 

A healthy system knows how to flow. Flow is like a river—calm yet alert, moving in natural patterns of both quickness and slowness, gently carried by oceanic strength. 

If you play with any of the practices mentioned above—this final one will arise as a natural byproduct. As you become more attuned, you don’t have to look for what to clean, empty, or archive—it will tell you.

I often contemplate how most of life is cleaning. Most of ceremony is setting up and taking down. Most practice is clearing, clearing, clearing—and recalling what lives there naturally. We revere mountaintop moments, but most of our days are spent tending the ordinary. Most of life is cleaning. 

Retrograde windows offer an extra boost of nutrients in listening to and hearing what is asking to be cleaned, purified, and transformed.

Recently during my morning practice, I heard my jewelry. I have a decent earring collection and wear only a quarter of them regularly. The unworn jewelry is now taking on new life in the hands of friends, neighbors, and my fairy goddaughter.

Rather than shoulding on yourself to deep clean your entire house, simply go back to the beginning and pause, create space, and listen. The leaves ready to release and the fruits ripe to be digested will speak to you.