Mercury Retrograde December 29, 2022 at 4:31 am, to January 18, 2023, 8:12 am.
When Mercury goes retrograde, you can expect communication, travel, and technology to go haywire, and this is mostly impart because of the human on the other end. But fear not, there is a way to reverse the reverse.
Much like the Moon causes the mind to fluctuate with its movement, Mercury affects our bodies' Respiratory systems and the Central Nervous System (CNS).
The Central Nervous System is the body's processing center. The brain controls most of the body's functions, including awareness, movement, thinking, speech, and the five senses of seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, and smelling. So more often than not, Mercury's directional change is misunderstood because it causes a reverse in parts of the human body. An example would be those that are right-brained thinkers and now suddenly left-brain thinkers, leaving them feeling extremely out of sorts and vice versa. When you are not used to operating in a particular way, there are bound to be errors in thinking, judgment, communication, and sometimes daily tasks, which we conveniently blame on Mercury retrograde.
This particular Mercury Retrograde occurs in Sagittarius, a mutable fire sign that controls the Autonomic Nervous System, which stems from the Central Nervous System.
The Autonomic Nervous System is the part of the Central Nervous System that supplies the internal organs, including the blood vessels, stomach, intestine, liver, kidneys, bladder, genitals, lungs, pupils, heart, sweat, salivary, and digestive glands.
The autonomic nervous system has two main divisions:
Sympathetic
Parasympathetic
More commonly known as your fight or flight response, the autonomic nervous system receives information about the body and external environment. It then responds by stimulating body processes through the sympathetic or inhibiting them through the parasympathetic division.
Many organs are controlled primarily by either the sympathetic or the parasympathetic. The two divisions have opposite effects on the same organ. For example, the sympathetic increases blood pressure, and the parasympathetic decreases it. The two work together to ensure that the body responds appropriately to different situations.
Yogic traditions refer to sympathetic and parasympathetic as Ida & Pingala Nadi's, Shiva/Shakti, Sun/Moon, Male/Female, and Rest/Digest qualities of the body.
Ida & Pingala are related to the left and right nostrils. Pingala (sympathetic) relates to the right nostril and crosses over to connect with the left brain. Ida (parasympathetic) relates to the left nostril and crosses over to connect with the right brain. In our daily lives, your body automatically switches breathing patterns every 75-90 minutes, from breathing in through the right to breathing in from the left. The body is designed to be in balance, however, we get caught up in our modern world of doing and forget how to be or vice versa, leaving us dominant on one side or the other.
Thankfully the Gods know us better than we know ourselves and have put safeguards in place like planetary shifts and changes to shake us out of our habitual patterns.
One of my mentors always stated, "if you want to change your physical, mental, and emotional state, change your breath." Your breath is the gateway to health, and Mercury controls the Respiratory system. Learning to control your breath properly increases vitality, soothes the nervous system, and stills the mind.
So during this Mercury retrograde, when delays happen, and you can't get the words out, or things go haywire, and you are about to pull your hair out, take a few deep breaths or try alternate nostril breathing and reverse the reverse. This will allow you to naturally balance your Central Nervous and Autonomic Nervous Systems, leaving you in control of whether Mercury is retrograde or not.
Travel safely
