The community Well: Lunar New Year 2025 edition
Happy Lunar New Year! I am a few days late, but please forgive me: I have been wrestling with monster programs that no longer want to work with me. As a result I have created this Community Well newsletter on a new platform. I wholly support this platform as I have worked with it for several years since the creation of my author page www.susanperry.info. So I hope you will choose to continue your FREE subscription to this old newsletter despite its new trappings. I have spent much time exporting and importing email addresses so that this could happen. I hope I have not missed anyone!
I should say for those of you who enjoy my writing I am still writing and posting to my substack account perry@substack.com which is also linked to my webpage. So for those of you who are interested you are invited to subscribe to that resource - it is FREE. I have tried not to subscribe you to that in these imports for The Community Well. But if that has happened, I do apologise and hope you enjoy it as the universe has found fit to add you. I write almost daily. So if that sounds appealing, please come see me there.
And so now that I have excused myself for being a bit late, and any lapses in moving large numbers of emails, and explained why there is all this turmoil, let's get to it!
The Year of the Snake
Year of the snake began on January 29 , at the end of the Year of the Dragon. The snake follows the dragon in this Chinese zodiac and they are linked as well by both having a serpent like nature although the snake, being an earth creature, is said to inhabit a darker realm. These astrological creatures are assigned to years, twelve years of creatures but the dragon is the only assignment that doesn’t fit neatly into the community of common creatures such as snake, rooster, rat, dog, ox, tiger, monkey, horse, rabbit, sheep, and pig. Unlike Western astrology, the Eastern system that leads the lunar calendar is based on the year of your birth. After years of curious interest in this system, I’ve come to appreciate the insights of viewing life from this way of looking at the world. It is surprisingly useful.
Let’s look at the snake, for some the snake is the least attractive of the creatures as many people are afraid of snakes. But the snake has some wonderful properties as snakes are said to be deep thinkers of the Chinese cycle. Snake people are born with an inner wisdom, they move gracefully and enjoy the quiet of life. Snake people enjoy books, art, and music and often they don’t communicate well with others. Snake people may be theologians, philosophers, wily financiers, or political wizards.
For the year of the Snake -2025 - however, the prospect may not be as wonderful as some of the people born with that sign. The snake person likes to resolve his problems, but will declare war if the resolution doesn’t go his way. Already this sounds very much like our new political leader who is well known for his short sighted short tempered outlook on issues. And so this projection for the year of the snake is not surprising news.
But this also will be a year for reflection. A year to think before acting. The good news is that this year will be a lively time which might include a time for romance. Also this will be a good year for the arts as the arts help us to relax and enjoy life in the face of disappointments. In brief, 2025 will be a year for decisions, and a time to step cautiously as well as a time to enjoy and maybe invest in the arts!
As humans we have several snaky aspects which we do not like to see and which we keep hidden. Our tongue is very much like a snake in the fluid way it moves and most of us were taught to keep our tongue hidden lest we make manifest our darker feelings for others. Our brain and our guts also have a physical nature much like a snake, all wound around itself. But probably the most important part of us that is like a snake is our spine; key to our health. As an old Yoga teacher says, youth can be kept so long as we keep our spine flexible. To be sure our spine moves in quite a surprising number of ways. But as we get lazy and stiff, things don’t work so well. And so although we may not like to acknowledge our serpent like side, we must know that these parts of us are important for they bring us our well being and life.
This year has brought an unequalled awareness to the fact that we may have to adapt to some differences in how we find comfort in our lives. The world is not the same place it used to be, and the sooner we recognize these changes the better able we’ll be to cope. For it is in learning how to cope that we will be able to find a comfortable life.
For instance, I never had a go bag before, but now I do. I was raised to be ready to go by having shoes nearby in case I'd need to spring out of bed and go outside. (I was also told always to wear nice undies in case I ended up in a hospital.) But never a go bag. I have written about go bags more fully in my substack postings.
By putting together a go bag there was a newfound comfort to facing some of the bleaker realities of the world. It brought a new comfort to me to prepare a go bag. A go bag is a new way to view the world, but it isn’t all negative. Just as to an expecting mother, an "it's time" bag is novel the first time around because the world is about to change in huge ways, but it's a very positive change. Still, It is the problem of embracing change: so difficult but so necessary. And to be curious about why this is necessary is to begin to learn more about how the world works for it is not a static place. Just like the case I made about our serpent like properties, change is necessary for life and will aid our health.
I have long been wondering about the causes of winds as it is the winds that made - perhaps with human help - the terrific fire storms that recently ravaged the Los Angeles area where I live. I personally have not suffered loss but I’ve suffered the sights of seeing what others have been put through and have tried to help them from a distance by contribution. We are becoming accustomed to seeing disasters and the attendant support groups with their wonderful outreach like that of the World Kitchen. It is an important trend for the changes we would face in a war and just in the many upheavals that may lay in store for us in a changing world. What a unifying enterprise it is to join in to help; it is the recognition that we are all in this together; it requires a warrior’s soul.
The Highs and Lows shown on the weather map help us to understand the changing nature of our local climate. Lows we usually associate with clouds and rain and cooler temperatures, and Highs we associate with the opposite: warmth and less precipitation.
Lows are known by their counterclockwise movement. Lows are so-called because their air pressure is low: low pressure means that the particulate nature of the air is not held together so tightly. We can imagine that as the air becomes heavy with precipitation, the atmosphere of particulates begins to contract in the overcrowding and relief to this overabundance is made by letting loose the extra precipitation as it falls as raindrops. It’s like making orange juice with very juicy oranges: the fullness of the orange explodes in juice when given a little contraction.
I have often been amazed watching the different behavior of clouds on either side of a mountain range. On one side, when the atmosphere is characterized by a low, the cloud system cannot pass over to the other side of the mountain range because it is held down by the heaviness of its precipitation and so it cannot manage the lift required. Often the existence of the mountain range gives it cause to drop its load so that the clouds release their charge and as the air lifts it can move up and over the mountain range. The other side of the mountains typically shows that lack of precipitation as they get the short end of the stick with dry clouds passing overhead.
Highs are the opposite: their clockwise movement holds the particulate matter together in a tight spiral form as the air pressure is high. There is little precipitation, and so few clouds form in this light and lifting air pressure. The atmosphere enjoys warmth in its air expansion.
The movement of air accompanies the clockwise or counterclockwise nature of Highs and Lows and with the movement of the Earth itself even more action is introduced into the already moving system of spirals. So given a Low with condensed air and heavy precipitation, clouds begin to form and ultimately will begin to lose their load and in this way produce storms. Moreover, when the two spirals are in close proximity to one another, rough winds begin to occur like the Santa Anas of this month. But when the clouds lose their load some buoyancy is created and by this very change high pressure returns, a kind of tightness to the system that squeezes out precipitation and so produces higher temperatures, warmth, and dryness.
The Aikido founder taught Aikido in terms of these opposite spirallic movements. He saw these properties - contraction and expansion - in terms of human movements of protection as well as integral movements of Nature. Even apart from Aikido practice, sensitive people will feel them at work in their own bodily system by noticing their skin’s dryness in hot climates and perhaps an energetic edginess during windy times.
We are all in this together which must now be seen as a statement about, not just humans, but all life including the life of our atmosphere.
There is a certain comfort in this but to find it one has to loosen their grip on the many material things that we think are essential to living well. Material things have a certain power over us, probably because we are ourselves partly material. But in this year of the Snake it behooves us to increase our familiarity with those other parts of us that need movement; this will bring health. And precisely because they are energetic, by adding some moisture they can loosen up the denser parts.
Tightness is not always a good thing to pursue. When I go to the gym I see extreme tightness everywhere. Sometimes it looks good, especially when a person with a nicely toned body has good movement. But that is not the rule in a gym. What I often see is such extreme tightness that the body becomes a little distorted in ways that prevent a natural movement. I would imagine that the inner climate of these people feels much the same.
In the end it is balance that serves us best. Going back to the Snake we can understand that if the snake is too tight or too loose it will not be able to move well, it takes both systems working together to produce movement. It works that way in a snake, and looking at the weather system as a whole it works that way with the highs and lows. Where the two systems collide it causes a temporary shift in unsettled air. This is true as we look at these things as a microcosm or a macrocosm. It's time to find our place in this moving system.
Happy New Year.
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