How to Discern Anxiety From Intuition at the New Moon

Every month, the new moon initiates the 29.5-day lunar cycle, offering an opportunity for us to inquire into our emotions and build our intuitive capacity.

Think of your body as a precious resource, and your spirit as an intuitive messenger. By attending to your internal compass during the new moon, you gain capacity to discern what is worthy of your precious energy reserves, and what is not. With greater ease, your intuitive process expands through the review and release of anything that is not helpful, both physically and energetically.

When we track our current life process at the new moon, we are more likely to recognize when and where anxiety is ruling our lives. We start to understand what limits our potential for joy, peace, and abundance. We develop personal tools and learn to trust the process.

The new moon is a time of rebirth and renewal, and a time for gathering the wisdom required to embark upon a new cycle of the moon. It also offers a monthly opportunity for purification, especially when we can learn how to regulate our nervous systems by transmuting anxiety.

How Do I Know When Anxiety and Fear Are Running My Life?

Anxiety and intuition are completely different physical and mental states, even if they often feel similar, and recognition between these opposing energies will radically alter your life for the better. Anxiety screams, rattles, repeats, sweats, and spins inside the mind. It comes with a racing heart and a deregulated nervous system. Fear and anxiety cloud the intuitive process. What is often read as an “intuitive message” is actually a “stress flash.”

Anxiety and fear will rule your life and your decision-making process if you do not call them out for what they are. Even as you are reading this, get a sense of any kind of anxiety or fear that is currently present in your mind or body. Once you get a feel for what anxiety looks, feels, and sounds like, you are already on the path toward greater freedom and lasting transformation.

How Can I Learn to Trust My Intuition?

Intuition feels calm, mindful, and not overly emotional. Accurate intuition doesn’t come with an emotional reaction, nor does it provoke more fear or doubt in one’s life. Rather, it will feel curious, sometimes surprising, and reassuring. Your true intuition will feel good.

Trusting your intuition requires steady self-awareness. Consciously observing the new moon each month, along with developing daily contemplative practices, can be an anchor for learning to trust your intuition. Regulating the nervous system by spending time in nature, practicing breathwork and meditation, moving your body, and engaging in creative pursuits generates a state where we can receive intuitive flashes more clearly.

How the New Moon Helps Us Trade Anxiety for Intuition

By observing how the moon’s rhythm affects us personally, we begin to deepen our awareness of how everything is interconnected. What our mind speaks, our body receives. The emotions we either repress or express affect us and those around us. Tracking the moon connects us to greater patterns in the cosmos.

During the new moon, observe the subtle energy within you. Pay attention to clear yes and no responses within your body when they arise—this is your intuition speaking to you. Observe any mental chatter that accompanies this process. Intuition will often feel like a distilled moment of clarity without the inner critic showing up.

Some of us receive intuitive insights through an image in the mind’s eye. Others receive intuitive clarity through scent or sound, during time spent in nature or performing daily chores, or while engaging in wisdom practices, such as mindful movement, meditation, and breathwork. You are more likely to receive intuitive messages if you are calm and well-rested.

To hear the whispers of intuitive counsel, we must recognize when the voice of fear makes its way into our consciousness. In this precise moment of awareness, we can name, accept, and honor fear as a teacher and ground ourselves in the present moment. Pay attention to the glimmers of inspiration and positive frequencies ready to come through you. When lower vibrations or thoughts come in, simply release them with a deep exhale.

By committing to small daily acts of mindfulness and by living in harmony with the moon’s cycle, we have a greater chance of understanding the messages from our intuition. A life of reclaiming our true essence, deeply connected to self and to the universe at large, bears a sweetness that is both wildly satisfying and radically transformative.

A Ritual to Invoke Intuition and Connect with the New Moon

1. To prepare, light a candle of your choosing.

2. Take a warm bath, or practice light stretching or restorative yoga to relax the body.

3. Sit comfortably in a quiet, meditative space for 2-5 minutes.

4. In this meditative state, envision yourself connected to the elements in each of the following ways in order to clear imbalances in your emotional body and become more present in your physical body:

Connect to Earth to ground yourself and release fear.
Connect to Water to release emotional imbalance and feel in-flow.
Connect to Fire to transform and release the ego.
Connect to Air to purify yourself and release armor around the heart.
Connect to Ether to honor spiritual integration, and to release attachments and illusions.

5. After connecting to the elements, visualize that you are wearing many layers, each one representing recurring negative thoughts or roles that you no longer wish to play. Allow these layers to fall away one at a time.

Ask yourself: What is ready to be cleansed, shed, or redirected within you? Get clear on what you would like to release.

6. Rub your hands together vigorously to create heat, then place them on your lower abdomen. Visualize what you are pulling out of your energy body as you pull your hands away from your body. As you reach your hands to the sky, give a powerful exhale out of the mouth in a “sshhh” sound. This practice helps to release lower frequencies from the body. Repeat as many times as needed.

7. Returning back to a comfortable seated position, enter a state of spaciousness and gratitude, and call forward what seeds, virtues, or support you are ready to invite into your life.

8. Listen for any intuitive whispers. Gently return to normal consciousness and journal about them. Remember that the internal messages received do not need to be literal or based on productivity.

New Moon Elemental Affirmations

As I connect to the Earth, I release _______
As I connect to Water, I invite in_______
As I connect to Fire, I transform_______
As I connect to Air, I awaken to________
As I connect to Ether, I honor ________

Learn how to strengthen your intuition by following the entire moon cycle.