Aquarius, Heartbreaks, + the responsibility of love
Valentine’s is around the corner and it has me thinking of how relevant it feels to be studying in a somatic attachment therapy course right now during the month of Valentine’s (which began right after Venus’s station direct!)
For a long time, it didn’t make sense to me that Valentine’s happens during Aquarius season; especially when I thought about the stereotypical qualities Aquarius is said to possess. Now I see several ways in which it fits, which is what I’ll share here… that aside, it does make sense that Black History Month happens during the sun’s travel through Aquarius. More in that in a minute.
Heartbreaks of Winter lead us back to Spring
Seasonally, Valentine’s happens during the late winter/early spring in the northern hemisphere (depending on which calendar you use). The qi of the environment begins to move in the direction of more sunlight and movement. Valentine’s Day invites us to cozy up and get intimate when we need that warmth from another person. Any heartbreaks of winter lead the qi back toward spring’s love and fertility. Though the last sign before the equinox/zodiacal new year, the weeks around the Sun’s ingress into Pisces is often the entry point for spring from the lunar month calendar. If Aquarian Valentine love leads to a conception of sorts, Pisces is the spiralic water/wind formation that we call an embryo, and Aries is the birth event, bursting with light and new life force.
The Sun’s antithesis and Saturnian discipline
From the Chinese cosmology perspective, the Kidney and water element is still dominant at this time. The Zhi spirit which is housed in the Kidney requires us to maintain routine as self care and survival. The word survival conjures some strong imagery but the simplest most routine things determine our survival and if we notice that discipline (a Saturn keyword) is really one in the same with our survival, we that we can relax into our habits that sustain us. Eating breakfast and meals every few hours while awake is a discipline. Drinking fluids and elimination are natural somatic disciplines. Bathing and other hygiene practices, also discipline.
The Sun in Aquarius is in detriment and we can see this in its relationship to the amount of life force the Sun has here…much less than when the Sun is in Leo when there is exuberance of yang and lush vegetation. Aquarius is about conservation of energy, like Capricorn, while maintaining a steady circulation of energy. There’s more hibernation and parasympathetic activity during Sol’s transit in this part of the sky, but there’s also a wired quality that gives Aquarius a rep for being an insomniac because of the frequency of the Zhi getting kicked out of and next to the body, resulting from/in sleep disorders. Finding the right ratio of stimulation to just *being* can be tricky for Aquarius. Aquarius has plenty to share about what’s going on in their busy, entertained mind!
Discipline doesn’t have to require so much effort to be what it is… survival, thriving, continuity. Routine is what builds discipline and a strong Zhi spirit (the will to survive). It’s why we encourage parents to give children routine. Without this routine and continuity the Zhi spirit gets knocked out of the body which us often linked to trauma involving fear/shock.
Attachment ruptures and the universality of heartbreak
Peter Levine, founder of Somatic Experiencing teaches that developmental trauma is shock trauma. That means babies, young children, adolescents and teens that experience deep attachment ruptures with their primary caregivers or attachment figures require conscientious repair and reconnection with them in order to move forward without trauma stuck in the nervous system. Trauma happens in so many ways, but it is not in the event. It is what happens when a body/nervous system/ spirit is overwhelmed and feels unable to spring back from something frightening or threatening. Attachment trauma is fundamentally intergenerational trauma and often it is also shock trauma. What’s a love story without some heartbreak?… it’s what Pisces would ask. It’s such a universal human experience. Not because life is about darkness. It’s about relationship. There’s no yang without yin. The one became the two, the two became three, the three became ten thousand things.
Our relational habits are formed by our attachment stance/style/ and strategies, and much of this is Zhi territory (along with Po). Extensive research, though l always consider limitations in who isn’t included in research, shows that over half of the population is securely attached but around forty something percent is insecurely attached. That’s a big gap. It’s telling. While attachment theory is a very western colonial lens to gauge relational stances through, it goes with everything else that America is standardized to. They pair. The American people and attachment theory get one another because we’ve been cut off from our ancestors.
Some of them migrated here and it took some courage and perhaps some mixed judgement and values. Others came here by force of enslavement. Tell me these choices didn’t create major trauma in our bloodlines. We’re still trying to make repairs today.
Dancing to the Aquarian drumbeat in America
Aquarius is known as an exile and outcast. It’s a domineering sign. The fixed star Altair, α Aquilae, at 1 Aquarius happens to reflect the US. Jamie Partridge of Astrology King says, “In mundane astrology Aquila rules the U.S.A., space exploration, bombs and missiles.” Makes sense. Partridge also says, “It’s is a Mars-Jupiter type as one would expect for the star whose name means Eagle.” The US was built on the idea of domination which many black and brown skinned humans have suffered because of. They have been oppressed. And Black and indigenous people are also reflected by Aquarian symbolism. Not from a trauma context. We know the history. We see this in the unique cultures that greatly influence the melting pot of culture and arts that comes from and out of America and its original land stewards, thanks to them.
The radical joy and love that Black people have claimed for their communities still healing is also a reflection from the territory of Aquarius. Taken from this context, it reflects those dancing to their own drum beat. Literally. Look at the music that has been born in the US from Black culture. The rhymes might be Gemini in nature, but the bass and the lyrical stories— that’s Aquarian. And it’s medicine in its own right.
Aquarius travels long distances and winters through harsh environments. It does what it must to survive. Sometimes that gets Aquarius a reputation for being cold, avoidant, and unfeeling. I say many of us are well contained and need help unpacking excessive compartmentalization because of intergenerational trauma. All of the movements we’re mobilizing today didn’t just begin in the twenty first century, nor did that collective trauma start recently. At the root of all this is deep attachment ruptures and fear. There are layers and layers of disorganized and unaddressed emotions that exist as intergenerational trauma and it has a lot to do with the way we relate, love, and partner up (or avoid these actions). Responsibility is what is needed to mend ruptures and demonstrate real love and support. Response-ability is what we aim to heal and cultivate through relational medicine in Chinese healing arts. Love has a hard time surviving when there’s no safety.
Top brain access: Aquarius’s playground
Valentine’s Day isn’t just about romantic love but about friendship. To be a true friend, love, and co-conspirer you must claim responsibility for your relational habits and know when you need to heal something which you’ve inherited, including unlearning biases that have been passed down and integrated into your body memories, your DNA/earliest preverbal experiences (which were passed down to your parents). Our attachment issues aren’t the faults of our parents or theirs. But they are our responsibilities. Poor choices and lack of judgement is linked to physiological factors (not an excuse for racism) influenced by trauma, memorable imprints, and the fact that most decisions are emotional, no matter how conscious, educated, and intellectual/rational we think we are. the difference in that being a celebrated or feared is whether one’s emotional decisions are rooted in security or stuck in a ghosty loop. The former is how we’re actually able to access the brain’s cortices where language and our cultivated intellectual skills can help articulate exactly what we want, need, and seek to do with our choices. How does it feel to make decisions from a place of support and safety versus a place of threat and anxiety? Joy and play are human rights, and they’re no less important to adults. Aquarius is all about being moved for the collective rights of humanity. This is the playground which Aquarius rejoices in!
To feel connection and love requires resonance (mirroring)— hello, Venus. Venus still being in the post shadow period of its retrograde and in Saturn’s domain reminds us that showing up for a friend or partner on Valentine’s Day can mean being willing to rework attachment dynamics knowing that it takes tiiiime (Saturn) and consistency and perseverance. The somatic experience of your relationships to others and self matter. Having someone to co-regulate with (inching therapists) can take you a long way. Aquarius treasures its alone time and having social distance, and yet it knows that nothing can replace the support and warmth of human contact.
The heart of Aquarius
In the body this feels like re-centering and the integrity of sound structural alignment from the ground up. Somatically, co-regulation found in secure relationships also might feel like the resolution of or recovery from cardiovascular injury (heart break manifested viscerally). Valentine’s is a holiday that reminds Aquarius to find their joy the way Leo naturally rests in this stimulating emotion. It doesn’t have to be outwardly emoted to be valid. Aquarius being in detriment doesn’t mean it’s heart has shriveled up and died or frozen over. It means it requires coming back into and finding community to live for. Without this, much of life is meaningless. It’s our relationships that offer reflection of what we are and why we’re here. That’s what gives us a legacy when we’re gone.
Physically, co-regulation encourages the Heart Shen (spirit) to shine through the face. Fun weird fact: Chinese medicine points out that physiologically, the tongue is a manifestation of the Heart (which governs all the other Shen/spirits associated with the other organs). When we kiss with tongue we’re experiencing intimacy and it’s this proximity of spirit that shows us this.
Getting the blood pumping and keeping the heart’s rhythm healthy is what music and love bring to this sign. This all happens through the social engagement system (polyvagal theory teaches* that ventral vagal tone/social engagement system is what keeps the heart at a steady pace).
Attachment stuff doesn’t heal over night. It requires commitment. And to heal, you have to feel. All the feels. Slowly. Little bit by bit. Just like the buds and sprouts that push their way up through the bare nubby branches and packed soil after winter. Spring is near.
*New research suggests ventral vagal tone does not regulate or influence heart rate the way previous theories believed. Polyvagal theory is an ongoing scientific working, and yet the indigenous medicine from China still suggests what science is trying to verify through metrics, labs, and statistics. There’s room for much curiosity here.