Dear Homegrown Yogis,
“Mercury is most definitely in retrograde.” If you have been to one of my classes this past month, you have likely heard me say this – sometimes jokingly and sometimes most definitely not! A few times each year, Mercury moves in the opposite direction of the Earth. Whereas planets usually orbit from east to west around the sun, Mercury will at times orbit from west to east. When it does so, Mercury is in retrograde.
When Mercury is in retrograde, some people – including me!! – believe that bad things seem to keep happening… and keep happening. Whether it’s a misunderstanding with a friend, car trouble, health issues or simple bad luck, it seems to always happen when Mercury is in this unique pattern.
Mercury has been in retrograde since April 9 and just like past retrogrades, I have noticed a lot of chaos in my life. From hitting a curb that ripped off a huge panel of my car to a miscommunication that caused a near meltdown, I felt like it was bad thing after bad thing. Every time something else would happen, I would say “It’s Mercury in retrograde striking again.”
As I sat down this month to decide on a topic for my monthly letter, I realized that so many positive things have happened. We have had an incredible start to our teacher training program, I am having my first success at growing flowers and veggies, and Spring has sprung!! And yet I have noticed a great deal more chaos in my life. Why? Because I have been looking for it.
In yoga classes we talk a great deal about drishti, or focused gaze, in our practice. By intentionally setting our gaze in one place, we are choosing what to focus on and it strongly affects our experience of a pose. Don’t believe it? Come into tree pose. Set your drishti on a single point on the floor and take a few breaths. Now take your gaze up to the ceiling and choose a point there. It changes everything.
What we focus on matters. For the past month, I have known Mercury is in retrograde so I have been focusing on all the things that are going wrong. By doing so, my life seems to be really chaotic. By simply shifting my life’s drishti, however, I see something totally different. I see a month that has actually been pretty amazing. And from now on, I choose to see it that way.
With love,
Rachel