Unfurl Into the New Year

Turning the page on the calendar and finding a new year, especially following the often excessive indulgences of the holidays, can be relieving. Perhaps resolutions are made, or maybe not. The new year, like the new moon, can be a powerful time to focus your intentions on what is important to bring into this new cycle. While many focus on what to do in the new year, here are some powerful ways of being to herald in 2019:

• Relate to your moon. Many of us are closely attuned to the moon, feeling and watching its’ waxing and waning through the cycles. According to Juliana McCarthy, author of The Stars Within You, our moon element “is the emotional backdrop for all that we do, ruling our instincts and vulnerability.” While you may be aware of your sun sign, it’s your moon that offers insight into how you relate to others and “how we receive and support others.” Spend time this year getting to know this part of yourself and you will become more intimately aware of your true nature.
• Pay attention to your tongue. Jan Chozen Bays, author of Mindful Eating on the Go, invites readers to ask “what is my tongue sensing or doing right now?” As a very active and busy part of our body that we often ignore, bringing awareness to the activity and sensation of your tongue is a way to bring more mindful awareness to eating, breathing, and even your awareness of your spiritual self. Bays writes, “we ignore it most of our lives, but when we bring attention to it, a new world, previously hidden, opens up to us, and gratitude for its untiring service naturally emerges.”
• Digest poetry. A good poem can simultaneously bring us deeper into our being, outside of ourselves, and force us to slow down, to line-by-line take in the experience of it. This poem by John O’Donohue is a perfect one to start the first day of the new year. It invites you to “unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning that is at one with your life’s desire.”

For a New Beginning

In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

Poem reprinted from Walking in Wonder by John O’Donohue with permission from Convergent, an imprint of Penguin Random House.