Full Moon Rituals for Emotional Processing

As we undergo the process of individuation, it is easy to lose sight of the reason why we are different and how there is unity in diversity. How do we tackle our shadows and disentangle the ego from personal purpose? By remembering that we serve distinct functions within the greater whole. Transcending the personal into the realm of the transpersonal does not need to end in us losing our footing. There are ways to ground the experience of our minds in the physical sensations of our bodies without forgoing the self-awareness of somatic and mental processes. Transcendence and embodiment feed each other in a constant loop; they are not separate.

At first glance, to be an individual and to be apart of the collective seem to be two concepts that are diametrically opposed.  Yet, when we look at the example of the puzzle we see how both the individual and collective are simply two POVs of one reality. In the puzzle, we have individual pieces that form the whole picture. From afar we do not see the grooves or notches of the individual pieces; yet, when we remove one piece from the whole, we become aware of the places where the puzzle pieces meet and the fact that the picture is made up of many pieces in the first place. This is evocative of the experience in mundane life, whereby the feeling of separation is often a prerequisite for the realization of the pervasive unity underlying individuality.

How to See Emotions From the POVs of the Individual and the Collective

Emotions are similar to the puzzle; on the collective level, human beings are united by their shared emotional experiences; we love, we feel pain, we laugh, we cry. On the personal level we experience the collective energetic signature of an emotion in a distinct shape, flavor, or note — which relates to the unique language and processing we use to experience emotion through the hardware of our bodies and the software of our minds. Our issue is not in the experience of the grooves and shapes of our emotions, but in our blind and total identification with them; in our forgetting of the greater tapestry of emotion that unites us with the collective at large in the living of the human experience. But how do we experience emotion on both an individual and collective level without causing a split in personality or a sterile detachment?

We start by allowing the feeling to exist as is. Then, we get curious. Through our curiosity we start to examine how we process our emotions. We enlarge our view of the emotion from the one piece to the many, and we do it piece by puzzle piece. We do this through association; through broadening how we process emotion with the use of language and sense. As the web of our emotional vocabulary and the experience of it in our physical, mental, and feeling bodies grows, so too does our subsequent awareness of our experience as a part of the whole.

To help jump-start this process, I’ve outlined 3 exercises I enjoy using to explore the depths of my own emotional processing. I appreciate using these during the full moon as sacred rituals that reconnect and honor the flow of change inherent in the passage of the lunar cycles. Full moons are times when the sensations of my feeling body are heightened and my imagination soars, making it an excellent time for this sort of work.

General Instructions for Exercises

You can do these exercises logically or poetically, in real-time or in theory. I enjoy closing my eyes and doing them in real-time, identifying the emotion I am feeling and using the exercises to dissect how I process said feeling.

You can write these down or say them aloud. Whatever works. These make excellent journaling prompts.

Whatever method you choose, be sure to infuse contemplation into the fun–do the exercise and consider the potential implications of your results. The operative word here is potential; it is best to sit with the implications without judgment. It’s natural to immediately jump to identification. When identification with the implications of the results happens, notice the stories you are weaving and choose to let them go. Contemplation can occur in a very direct and conscious way, as in via journaling or purposeful pondering after the completion of the exercise. Meaningful contemplation can also occur spontaneously. When it arrives, let it. Follow the thought down the rabbit hole. Don’t be surprised if the most profound insights occur randomly as you go about your daily life in the days following the exercise.

Exercise #1
The Language of Emotion

This exercise helps to create distance between the emotion and the awareness without defaulting to rejection or repression. Shifting the language of our emotional process is a powerful and easily-accessible tool that we can use in real time to rewire how we experience life and feeling-sensation. (In my own life, I have found a lot of benefit in using variation b as a tool for handling overwhelming emotion; saying “I have” a specific emotion versus “I am” a specific emotion grounds me when I am on an emotional rollercoaster.)

Example: calm.

1a. Pick 3 synonyms.

Don’t use a thesaurus. Use your mind; this will show you what you associate with the more direct or basic or foundational emotions. Use each attached to the I am. Note any difference in bodily or mental sensation. As in: I am calm (original statement) followed by my synonyms: I am serene; I am tranquil; I am still.

1b. Explore different verbs.

As in, instead of I am calm, say: I have calm, I see calm, I breathe calm, I witness calm, I taste calm, and so on. Note the differences in experience. What does each verb feel like?

1c. Explore different subjects.

Instead of I am, say she is, or he is, or we are, or they are, etc. Note the differences in experience. What does each subject feel like?

Exercise #2
The Sensory Experience of Emotion

This exercise helps us sensitize our awareness to the way we physically process emotion through the senses. It also sheds light on what experiences in the physical world evoke what emotions, revealing conditioning from the past that is impacting our present.

Pick an emotion and localize it in the body through the five senses.

For example:

What does calm look like?
Taste like?
Sound like?
Feel like?
Smell like?

You can be realistic or poetic, elementary or complex. As in:

For sight, you could associate a color, an environment, a specific place. Ex. Calm is the blue of Morocco.
For taste, you could associate a basic taste (like sweet or bitter), a specific food, a dish. Ex. Calm tastes like cool spring water.
For sound, you could associate a key or tone, a genre of music, a specific song or artist. Ex. Calm sounds like the gentle pitter-patter of raindrops on the roof of a tent.

And so on.

The world is your oyster. Get as specific or as general as you’d like so long as you stay in the integrity of how you experience that emotion through a sense in your body.

You can even play with combining the senses— Ex. Calm tastes like cool spring water on a balmy summer day in the tranquil forests of Switzerland. (Balmy summer day is touch and in the tranquil forests of Switzerland is sight).

Exercise #3
The Perspective of Emotion

This exercise helps to connect the personal to the transpersonal, the individual to the collective. It also brings to light the amount of judgment inherent in the processing of emotional experience and how that judgement can precolor a certain experience as positive or negative before it has even occurred. This has to do with conditioning in the realm of morality and can shed incredible insight on where we place value and pressure.

Pick an emotion and identify:

(1) when is the emotion a good experience?
(2) a bad experience?
(3) a neutral experience?
(4) a valuable experience?
(5) a waste of time?

For each, provide an example from your personal life and an example either from another’s life or made up by your imagination.