Readers Respond: Pluto in Capricorn

Editor’s Note: the following is a response from a reader to my post this morning. If you’d like to share your feelings on how Pluto in Capricorn is affecting you, email me at editorial (at) planetwaves.net. –RA

Hey Planetwaves,

Pluto’s shift into Capricorn opposes my Saturn at 0 Cancer. The first ingress last January coincided with me having an acupuncture treatment early in the day and going to a yoga class in the evening. It was pretty smooth all around and I just worked really hard on basic exercises to transform my physical/emotional structure with Asian healing technology. My Saturn is in my 9th house so there ya go.

This time came after I had been practicing Chinese martial arts, the internal kind like Taiji Chuan, and Baguazhang Kungfu as well as some Wushu Kungfu daily for a few months. The core of these practices is Qigong which are exercises that raise awareness of the flow of energy that the Chinese call Qi, the Hindus call Prana and we don’t have any equivalent word for at all. Using these exercises I’ve managed to heal my own back when my sacrum moved into a painful position. That was something that would occur every 2 years or so ever since I was a teenager.

Being currently in practice with Chinese martial arts when it happened (plus all the work my acupuncturist has done and all I learned from my yoga teacher about changing my posture) I was able to sense what was going on and cooperate with the pain to guide my muscles into a less tense, less painful, and overall more resilient arrangement.

The regular practice has resulted in massive shifts in my emotional structure as manifest in how I hold emotions in my body. I’ve even come to realize that a lot of the tension I feel resulting in emotional responses is stuff I inherited. Doing things like the Cloud Hands movements in Taiji it was as though I could feel (and sometimes see) all of the ancestors that informed my physical structure.

I realized that using these Chinese techniques was new information to the system and that through my work I’m ending emotional conflicts with the world that in some cases go back to WWII and the Great Depression, in some cases back to Catholic Europe, in some cases who knows how far this stuff goes back. It’s been a long time since I had ancestors who knew of churches that didn’t have nasty pews to smash your knees if you try to dance for example.

The difference between the first ingress and this one seems to be that there’s a lot more pain involved in this one, and a lot deeper healing. Since the ingress a sticky, hot, tight wad of yuck on my stomach meridian in my face flared up and became mind numbingly painful. I have medical insurance through school, but I can’t easily see a doctor unless classes are on so it’s been part of my Qigong boot camp this weekend. Sure enough with some Qigong practiced outside near trees (it’s always better when you practice near thriving plant life) I was able to follow the pain again as I did with my back and listen to its needs.

It was in fact a trauma I locked out by clamping the muscles down in my head the last time I saw a dentist. I was able to breathe and let the pain scream itself out, whereupon it migrated down my jaw and made the tooth that was filled in that dentist encounter scream. Now it’s in some throat muscles and has moved away from the tooth, no longer screaming, just angry and tight.

As a result of working with the pain rather than clobbering it with ibuprofen as would have been my old way of doing it I’m discovering all sorts of things in my face and neck that are frozen facial expressions all stacked up on top of one another and adding up to my default facial expression. The pain raising awareness in my facial muscles also results in me learning to first indulge fully these scowls, grimaces, monster faces, and then they relax. My eyes are soft and sparkly for the first time since I was a child. The scowl is mostly gone. I remember an Aikido teacher telling me about softening one’s gaze a long time ago. Now I see what he means.

groove on,

g