Category: Blog

Equinox & Aries Full Moon: Authentic Self in Relationship

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Aries Full Moon + Chiron Aries Point – September 24, 2018

#Me Too Chapter 2

On the eve of the Aries Full Moon, with Chiron exactly conjunct the Aries Point, another woman has come forward and accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault. This news came 24 hours after the fall equinox (spring equinox in the southern hemisphere).

The chart for the equinox gives us a picture of major energetic themes we will be working with in the coming three months. Two big themes that jump out at me from Saturday’s equinox chart are:

  • Major issues of assertiveness vs. compliance in relationships.
  • A society-wide reassessment of values (especially around money, sex and power).
Equinox: Sun enters Libra, Saturday, Sept. 22, 9:54 pm EDT, Washington, DC.

Equinox: Sun enters Libra, Saturday, Sept. 22, 9:54 pm EDT, Washington, DC.

Healing Relationship WoundS – Emergence of the Authentic Self

At the equinox and at Monday’s Full Moon, Chiron is just a sliver of a degree away from 0 Aries 00 — aka the Aries Point.

Astrologer Eric Francis often says that the Aries Point is where we experience the personal as political and the political as personal. Aries Point astrology focuses the collective consciousness on the archetypal themes shown by the planets involved.

The fall equinox is, by definition, the moment when the Sun enters Libra. The 2018 equinox chart features the Sun, Mercury and Ceres opposite Chiron and the Aries Point, all squaring Saturn in Capricorn. So, what is that picture showing us?

Sun, Mercury, Ceres in Libra Opposition the Aries Point

The Sun brings attention and energy to the Libran themes of relationship, harmony, balance and justice. Mercury in Libra activates communication in and about relationships, while Ceres emphasizes the need for a global rebalancing of relationships so that the scales are no longer tilted toward men (“she must have been asking for it”).

Chiron on the Aries Point

Chiron in Aries specifically activates the wound of “Who I am – my real self – is unacceptable.” People born with Chiron in Aries (roughly 1968-1977) share a common sense of feeling unwanted, of not being good enough, or of needing to fundamentally change who they are in order to be loved or accepted.

Chiron on the Aries Point at the moment of the equinox indicates we have reached a time when we as a society can no longer afford the suffering caused by patriarchal relationship paradigms based on power, fear, shame and control.

Chiron, the wounded healer, always heals through a process of expanding awareness. Chiron activations magnify the pain of a situation until we can no longer deny or ignore it. Chiron teaches us that we cannot heal what we cannot feel. Continue reading →

Mars Square Uranus: Accidents, Violence, and Shocking Insights?

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Mars-Uranus #3 Brings the Potential for Accidents but Also Enlightenment

Mars square Uranus heightens the potential for accidents and other violent eruptions of energy. Last weekend, with Uranus conjunct the Ascendant, a drunk driver killed my neighbor’s mailbox and knocked out power to our neighborhood. In this video: what you need to know about this volatile astrology and dates you can check to understand the archetypal meaning of this aspect for you in 2018.

In this video I also show you how the Moon triggers the potentials in an aspect pattern between other planets, and how the Ascendant for your local space plays into the daily energy flow.

The Mars-Uranus square culminates on Tuesday, September 18. This is the third and final exact square of Mars and Uranus in this series. The first square occurred on May 15-16 with Mars in the first degree of Aquarius and Uranus in the first degree of Taurus. The second square – with Mars retrograde – happened at the total lunar eclipse in Aquarius on July 27.

Mercury Retrograde Is Over (Now What?)

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Mercury Storms, Mars and Saturn Station, Pisces Full Moon – August 2018

Chaos birds - Painting by Hermits International, Vermont 2018.

Painting by Hermits International, Vermont 2018.

Not Quite Full Speed Ahead

Although the massive planetary retrograde energies that have colored the last few months are starting to shift, we aren’t out of the woods quite yet. Mars stations direct on August 27, just after the Pisces Full Moon on August 26.

While Mercury resuming direct motion should bring mental clarity, the energetic whirlpool doesn’t really clear until September 7 when Saturn, which has been retrograde since mid-April, also returns to direct motion. Here’s how to approach the next two weeks…

The Mercury Storm

Astrologers often refer to the three or four days surrounding the exact moment when Mercury stations retrograde or returns to direct motion “the Mercury storm.” These periods tend to produce the most concentrated negative effects associated with Mercury retrogrades: technical malfunctions, traffic snafus, garbled communication, and a general inability to think or communicate clearly.

This particular Mercury storm was off the chain! Mercury returned to direct motion on Sunday, August 19. I talked to my daughter on the phone on Monday evening.

“Dad, what’s going on in the skies that is making it IMPOSSIBLE for me to focus?!” she demanded. “Something must be happening in the astrology. I mean, I start on my homework –  then I get distracted. Then I go back to it. Then I get distracted. Then I go back to it – distracted again! I’m so frustrated.” Continue reading →

New Workshop: Touch Yourself In Ann Arbor!

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Don’t Let the Word “Yoga” Scare You

Come Home to Your True Self:  Saturday, July 7 – Purna Yoga Ann Arbor

This “workshop” is going to be really chill. And also really deep.

Seriously, if I were designing a workshop to include yoga, this is the kind of yoga I’d include. Oh, wait a minute. I did design this workshop! Sweet!

Ann Arbor Workshop - DK Brainard and Raisha Love - Purna Yoga, Music & Nature July 7 2018

And I designed it with my good friend Raisha Love, who is way more of a physical bad-ass at yoga poses and shit than I am. But who totally shares my sense of what yoga really means, and who is just as committed as I am to facilitating an incredibly safe and nurturing and delicious environment where you can feel supported in touching yourself.

(No, not in that way, you perv!)

What we’re talking about is setting up a sacred space where you can naturally-come into contact with the real you. The eternal, timeless consciousness within you, sometimes called the I AM presence or the essence, or essential Self.

We’re going to do some gentle yoga positions to get our hearts and minds and bodies relaxed and receptive. And then I’m going to play some mellow music while you relax just a little bit more deeply into a place where you feel so good. And while the music keeps on flowing, seemingly as if guided by unseen hands of light, I’m going to invite you to allow my voice to lead you into an even softer space within yourself where you can see so clearly who you really are. And where you can feel better and better as you’re now seeing this image of the real you so clearly you can actually feel the immense lightness of your eternal truth saying something like, “Wow! It’s all gonna be just fine. Because I’m me! I AM who I AM, and that’s all that I need to feel good and feeling good lights up my soul and my soul lights up the world around me and…”

You get the picture.

Next we’re going to choose an image from Raisha’ deck of soul cards to help us attune even more deeply with our essence self. Then we’re going to do a little walking meditation through the woods and down to the river.

We’ll come back up to the studio (probably noticing for the first time since we arrived a couple of hours ago how it sits on a carpet of green grass that stretches invitingly to the trees all ’round) and do a half hour of gentle restorative yoga.

And then we’ll close our time together by sharing how amazingly wonderful it felt to feel so nurtured and the sights, sounds, colors and feelings we discovered in our lives as we lounged in connection with our true selves.

The workshop runs from 1-4 pm on Saturday, July 7 at Purna Yoga Ann Arbor.  The studio is quite petite so if you want to join us, please call or email Raisha using the digits on the flyer above to reserve your spot.

You May Never Know

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The Lives We Touch When We Live True to Our Souls

So, I went to Minnesota last weekend. I love Minnesota in the summertime. The trees….the trees! (I’m a big tree-hugger, in case you didn’t know/hadn’t guessed.) The water. The energy of the land. Yummy.

Celebrating Cathryn Taylor’s life on the occasion of her 70th birthday.

I was invited by my friend and colleague, Cathryn Taylor, on the occasion of her 70th birthday celebration. Cathryn and I met through the Edge magazine, where I was the monthly astrology columnist for a few years. She is a true pioneer in the healing community, author of The Inner Child Workbook and several other books. She’s also a generous, kind, honest, funny, and curious soul.

So when Cathryn asked me to come and call in the directions for her celebration…well, how could I refuse?

My initial plan was to do what I usually do – let people know I’m going to be in town and schedule readings around the main event. But this was one of those trips where almost nothing went as planned. I hadn’t visited the Twin Cities since 2011 — when my organizational skills were worse than they are now. So when I looked up my Minnesota contacts, I only found a handful of names.

Cathryn booked me at a hotel near the airport for my return flight on Monday because we both thought the flight was departing at 8 a.m. When, in fact, it was really scheduled for 8 p.m. (And, true to form, didn’t leave until much later because of thunderstorms in the area.)

Anyway, there was a lot of driving back and forth, uncertainty about hotels, general low-level chaos, no clients, and…IT WAS A GREAT TRIP! Continue reading →

Can You Handle the Truth? – Sagittarius Full Moon May 29 2018

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Questioning the self-shaming inner voice

The Book of Spells - recognizing the self-shaming inner voices in the head are not yours!

One of the most valuable habits I’ve developed from the Book of Spells webinars is questioning the self-shaming inner voice statements I hear myself saying (or thinking).

Listen to these statements:

  • “I’m still beating myself up for that.”
  • “I wanted to play my guitar but I kept sabotaging myself.”
  • “Every time I get ready to ______, I just ‘should’ on myself. I stop myself in my tracks.”

Chances are you say the same or similar things – out loud or in your head – fairly often. But are these true statements?

Sagittarius tells us that if we know the truth, the truth will set us free.

The current 18-month period of eclipses in Leo-Aquarius aims to awaken us to our inner divinity. Since the nodes are the ‘trigger points’ for eclipses, the trine between today’s Sagittarius Full Moon and the North Node in Leo signals a creative opportunity to take another step in your own awakening. Continue reading →

My Journey from Identity to Essence

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Seeing through the false reality and embodying the Authentic Self

Journey from Identity to Essence - Embodying the Authentic Self

For most of my life, I believed I was a flawed, weak, neurotic self who had to work hard, be spiritual, and overcome my defects. Why? So that one day I would finally be good enough to have my dreams come true.

Then one day, in the process of reluctantly – yet again! – going into my body to clear some painful, stuck energy, I experienced a profound insight.

I actually saw my life from the point of view of my consciousness sitting inside my “flawed self.” From that perspective “my ideal Self” seemed like another person, somewhere off in the future.

DK Brainard - Feeling the feels. Photo by Julie Jaycox.

Feeling the feels. Photo by Julie Jaycox.

For so long I had searched for the the right spiritual formula. If I could just find the best form of meditation, overcome my addictions, harness my desires (or make enough money or have enough success?), I could finally become that self.

In an instant, I felt  the truth: my ideal Self is who I really am, who I always have been. The suffering, “not quite good enough” self? That’s just my identity.

I saw that my identity is an illusion, a shell I created in childhood to try to win love and approval and avoid pain and suffering. All my life, I had accepted my identity, my personality, as the real me.

When the Shell Starts to Crack Open

You probably already know that for many years I wrote weekly and monthly horoscope columns. They were read by thousands of people around the world. I had astrology and coaching clients on every continent but Antarctica.

I became far more successful as an astrologer than I ever could have imagined when I started out. But one day I woke up and realized I wasn’t happy. I was starting to fake it – I just didn’t feel the juice, the enthusiasm I used to any more. At the same time, my income was steadily shrinking. I drove myself to work harder, to try harder. But nothing seemed to work.

Finally, I admitted the frightening truth to myself: Continue reading →

Courageous Empaths: Apply Within

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This Could Be Your Missing Puzzle Piece

  • Are you an empath or sensitive?
  • Do you have a persistent dream of what your life is meant to be?
  • Have you been working on yourself for years and years but still feel like something is blocking you from your real life?
  • Are you constantly giving to other people but can’t seem to give to yourself?
  • Do you struggle to set healthy boundaries with others?
  • Do you often feel guilty when you do make time for yourself or spend money on yourself?
  • Do you feel overwhelmed and oppressed by what is going on in the world and wish you could make a real difference?

The time is now for those of us who are sensitive, empathic, creative and kind to stand for who we are and for the world we believe in.

We are called to reclaim our inner authority. This means learning to accept and honor our needs, not continually “working on ourselves” while we settle for scraps.

This means learning to trust and honor our desires rather than suppressing them to avoid conflict.

It means seeing through the stories we were given in childhood, such as that acting on our desires will hurt those who supposedly love us.

Most of the stories we have believed about ourselves and about the world are false. They are merely clever and convenient control mechanisms designed to enable other beings to suck your life energy and use it to further their agenda of misery and suffering for all.

Seeing ‘Reality’ for what it really is means seeing yourself for who you really are. Which is SO much more than who you were made to think you are.

The parasites are clever but their power over you is based on one thing and one thing only: your belief that their lies are actually your thoughts.

Connecting with likeminded people who are committed to seeing through the false ‘reality’ story is KEY. We need each other to help us stay awake.

We start a new six-week Book of Spells webinar on Sunday, March 25. We have six four places left in the group. Sign up here:

Register: The Book of Spells: Who Do You Think You Are?!

book of spells who do you think you are webinar

The Real You, Hiding in the Shadows

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Who you think you are is probably not who you really are…

by Safiya

I’ve been crocheting a lot lately. It’s like a meditation, the repetitive back and forth, seemingly never ending rows growing and forming, something taking shape from nothing. It’s a miracle to turn a ball of string into a piece of fabric, a fabric that is basically holes held together with knots of yarn.

I just made a curtain. I’m in love with it! I fall in love with everything I make. I can’t believe I’m able to do it and I fall in love so often that I’m overrun with stuff I’ve made.   This is the making of a great modern fairy tale:  the girl who fell in love with everything she makes and ends up surrounded by her handiwork and unable to leave her home, only to be rescued by a handsome prince who arrives on a white horse clutching  a pair of scissors to cut her out of her predicament.

Continue reading →

Why crafting our own narrative matters more now than ever

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Social media seduction

I talk about this in my most recent podcast, but this 13-minute Guardian interview is worth watching to understand how unscrupulous marketers are influencing us through Facebook harvesting and micro-targeting.

Whistleblower Christopher Wylie claims that Cambridge Analytica used apps developed by a Cambridge University professor that enjoyed “special permissions” from Facebook. Meaning that If one of your friends signed up for one of these apps, the app had permission to harvest data from all of your friends’ friends – including your status updates and even private messages.

I also found it fascinating that Cambridge Analytica employs teams of writers, designers, and other creatives to create entire blogs and websites to lend the appearance of legitimacy to what you are fed on Facebook. Entire fake histories written just for you!

Want to take back your story? Join us now for Who Do You Think You Are?! A mind-expanding exploration into the untapped resources of your multidimensional Self.