Hello again, Full Moon, old friend

La Luna is potent right now, so here's some tips to take care

I was a weird kid. No really, I was. When I was 13, I was thrilled when I had a bike I could ride 15 minutes away to climb a huge banyan tree. When I was 17 and was able to drive alone my big excitement was being able to go to sunset and stay until the stars came out, then watching them slowly rotate down into the Gulf of Mexico.

These days at 44, I will get up long before dawn to watch a Full Moon set into the Gulf of Mexico like a second sun, stunning and subtle at the same time. Then I’ll come back for sunset and watch the stars wink into existence. It never fails to mesmerize me.

This is deep self care for me. It is also my spiritual practice. The peacefulness, the slosh of the waves, the song of the wind through the Australian Pines, the pop of breath of the dolphins, and the golden rays of sunlight illuminating the Skimmer birds working a shoreline. I can feel the thread and spark of life within all of us that connects us.

I came to the world of herbalism, traditional intuitive healing, indigenous wisdom practices, and dreamwork after 25 years in marine science and conservation work - years spent trying to understand how the natural world works but utterly missing the point entirely while science taught me to see myself separate from it.

But I followed that quirky teenager heart back to reconnect with the Earth from an entirely different place and now my eyes are open and I can see the cycles and rhythms and feel the relationships that were obscured by sample design and research protocols.

And every Full Moon brings these connections alive for me again, as it moves the waters of our planet and the waters within my body. Sometimes this means wild dreams surfacing some fears that need tending. Sometimes it means tears that I had been repressing. Sometimes it means breathing deeply and counting to 50 while my kids turn into wild animals. 🤪🐺

Photo: Kim Walker Stanberry

I have cultivated a set of simple, yet powerful tools for how to move with this expanded flow of emotion around these Full Moons.

Here are my favorites, simple and easy, yet powerfully restorative: