Flow | Crash
This month’s Third-Quarter Moon occurred yesterday at 18:39 (PDT), twenty-three days into Brown Lunation, 1221. By the time of today’s Yin yoga class, at 16:30 (PDT), the Moon will be well below my western horizon, at azimuth 317° 53′ 03″, having already set at 14:46 (PDT). Quarter Moons tend toward midday and midnight emergences and departures which of course is right in character with their simultaneous manifestations of both Yin & Yang. They display their half illuminated / half shaded visages, half during the day and half during the night. The third-quarter moon moniker derives from this Cardinal point of the cycle now being seventy-five percent complete, despite its fifty / fifty appearance.
The trigram of the Early Heaven Bagua representing the Last Quarter Moon is constructed of one solid Yang line between two broken Yin lines. Heaven restrained by Earth. This can be easily recognized as a powerful river contained by earthen banks. Of course, it’s the trickle that becomes the stream that becomes the river that carves the gorge while nonetheless remaining constrained. Yin and Yang all at once. Water!
Martial artist Bruce Lee once described how water easily conforms to its surroundings without losing its nature. It moves of its own accord, effortlessly going over, around, and beneath obstacles. Upsetting some, not immediately affecting others. It easily assumes the shape of the vessel, yet doesn’t become its container. He said, water can flow and water can crash … be like water.
As in all my Quarter Moon classes, you can expect folds, bends, and left / right twists paired in opposition. Effectively, a sequence of push / pull. Might this dynamic provide some odd meaning to what’s going on in your world about now? Come join a streaming Yin yoga class and find out!