Emily Ridout | Astro-Yoga, Mercury and Mental Energy, & Navigating Powerful Eclipse Cycles
Emily Ridout returns to help us retrospect on the powerful eclipse energy we felt at the end of May and the murky mental situation of Mercury going retrograde with the sun in Gemini. You'll also find out more about Emily's Astro-yoga classes and this knowledge might help you bend instead of break during turbulent times.
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In this episode
Core themes
Astro-Yoga and the Body's Sky Clock
Emily Ridout describes herself as an astro-yoga specialist who helps people pair their astrology chart with the energy body and the physical body. She says yoga, astrology and medicine have been linked for thousands of years, and that she teaches public classes timed to the stars as well as personal work with a birth chart. Chance says rooting astrology in movement helps people remember what a screen cannot, while Emily says easing toward a north node through the body can make a big life leap feel aligned instead of shocking.
Armoring, Rigidity and Suppleness
Chance brings in Wilhelm Reich's idea of character armoring, describing a personality that stiffens alongside the muscles, with that rigidity amounting to stuck energy and a filter between the body and the world. He argues that becoming supple and soft is the truest kind of strength, because what is flexible is harder to break than what is rigid, and that loosening up frees mental energy. Emily replies that her practices tend to bring each person what they need, loosening the rigid and strengthening the over-flexible.
Eclipse Season and Questioning Your Truth
Emily explains that lunar eclipses fall at full moons and solar eclipses at new moons, with eclipse season arriving about every six months when the sun nears the lunar nodes, which at recording sit in Gemini and Sagittarius. She says the energetic wave lasts roughly six months, though she asks listeners to take that with a grain of salt. Her main message is that we mistake our relative truth for the ultimate one, so she asks everyone to problematize their own truth, and Chance links this to Reich doubting his own certainty.
Enemies, Energy and Compassion
Emily says that agreeing to let someone be your enemy hands them a big portion of your energy, and she keeps reminding herself that the person or media corporation we fight is usually not the true enemy. Chance adds that dwelling on an enemy is a way of loving it, that letting go may reveal our own saboteur, and that real hurdles still sometimes demand boundaries. Emily balances this with Gemini's positive side, the blindfolded elephant parable, which she says opens us to compassion, and a workshop tale of a demon who hated Krishna until he saw only the divine.
Dragons, Treasure and the Leap North
Chance retells, as best he can from a Telegram friend, the myth of Rahu and Ketu, a demon who sipped the elixir of immortality before a god severed its head, while Emily says she sticks to the Shaivite tradition and sees the nodes as places we can get stuck or fear to go. Her retelling of Autobiography of a Yogi, where two young men travel without money and are provided for, leads her to ask what treasure your dragon should sit on. Chance pairs it with stepping off a cliff toward the north node.
Quotes
“Astrology, first and foremost, is a map that helps you navigate things more skillfully.”
“In terms of survival and in the deep truest aspect of strength, what is soft and supple and flexible becomes much harder to break than something rigid and tense.”
“What I would ask everyone is, can you problematize your truth no matter how closely you align with it or how right you think it is?”
“I don't think there are really that many flat out, fully evil people out there. There's just people that are very confused right now.”
“If you agree to let someone be your enemy, you've agreed to give them a big portion of your energy.”
“Gemini is polarity, but that's also how you generate charge.”
“Is there a way to articulate what is actually of value to you? Where is your treasure, essentially? What treasure do you want your dragon to sit on?”
“What's true and what exists in reality will always be in existence and always be part of reality.”
Emily Ridout is a folklorist and AstroYoga specialist who blends astrology, yoga, and tarot; she appeared on InnerVerse (multiple times) to discuss her book AstroYoga for an Aquarian Age.
See all Emily episodes→Kyle and Serena Denton are community herbalists creating wild-crafted and organic plant medicines out of Milwaukee since 2015. I have used their teas and tinctures on an almost daily basis for years now. Kyle is a great friend of InnerVerse and has appeared on the channel more times than I can count. These products work, not in the allopathic "pharma-medicine" way, but in a terrain-support, consciousness bolstering plant-teacher sort of way.
