Full Moon in Virgo: The Power of Discernment

full moon in Virgo
discern what you are feeling
specifics wield power

A full moon is a peak moment, a culmination of something. It magnifies a facet of our experience, illuminating a tension or polarity that is laying in shadow.

A full moon is also a time of release: letting go of what doesn’t serve us as we continue to work toward our goals and dreams.

At the full moon, the moon and sun are in opposition, sitting across from each other in the sky.

Virgo and Pisces

This full moon is placed in the sign of Virgo, which is the opposing sign to Pisces, where the sun is wrapping up its tour. Also in Pisces are Jupiter, Neptune, and Mercury.

Pisces is a water sign that is known for having no boundaries. It’s dreamy and ethereal. It speaks to the idea of oneness; it is part of everything and belongs to no one.

Virgo is an earth sign that likes to classify and categorize, discern and make distinctions.

Pisces is big picture, while Virgo loves the details.

When taken to their extremes, Pisces is overwhelm and Virgo is perfectionism.

This is the polarity we are working with at this full moon.

One way this plays out is in dealing with emotional overwhelm.

A Path Out of Emotional Overwhelm

Pisces, as a water sign, speaks to emotions. As an earth sign, Virgo is grounded.

When we get flooded with emotions, one of the things that helps us find our ground is being able to discern the specifics of what we are feeling.

• what is the specific emotion I’m feeling
• how it is manifesting in my physical body
• when did it start
• what was I doing, or what action precipitated this flood

Through my coaching work and my own inner work practice, I have found that highly intelligent people often escape feeling our emotions by abstracting and generalizing.

I know this pattern intimately.

We do the research, we study, and we have learned so much. But that intellectual understanding often gets in the way of naming and feeling the specifics.

Instead we pathologize with labels like anxiety, overwhelm, imposter syndrome.

All of these are code words for fear.

As I often say to my clients, fear loves to hide in generalities.

Name It to Tame It

Discerning the specifics is where the opportunity for healing lies.

This full moon is asking us to get specific, to name what we are feeling and how it is showing up.

When we start to get specific we can see the patterns that lie beneath our experience. And in seeing those patterns we have an opportunity to transmute them.

Awareness is the first step to change.

One of the paradoxes revealed in this polarity is that the more specific we can be in naming our emotions, the more we connect to the universal experience.

Approach With Compassion

This work isn’t easy. It requires that we create space for ourselves to be in our experience and see what is happening.

This work cannot be done in a place of reaction; we can’t parse out the flood when we are in the flood. It takes practice to bring our nervous systems back online after we get triggered.

So approach this with self compassion. This is a life-long journey.

Journaling Prompts

Some prompts to help you work with these themes:

• How can you get specific enough to heal the emotional floods without getting lost in the details?
• How do you stay connected to the oneness of all beings while also preserving your energetic boundaries?
• How do you hold space to parse through the details of your experience?

Full moon blessings.