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Happy Healthy YOU

Kelly Spencer - Happy Healthy YOU

A wellness column by Kelly Spencer: writer, life coach, yoga & meditation teacher, holistic healer and a mindful life enthusiast!

The moon holds a mystical place in the history of human culture. The lunar cycle offers us a full moon to light up the sky, every 28 days. It also brings the century old tales of howling werewolves and induced lunacy and contemplations of what it’s made of. (As a child I was told it was cheese!)

The Farmer’s Almanac uses the moon cycle for suggestions of the best days to plant below ground plants, above ground plants, for setting eggs, for fishing, and so on. They call the February full moon the Snow Moon. Hunting becomes very difficult this month, and so some Native American tribes called this moon the Hunger Moon.

“The ocean on the side of Earth facing the moon gets pulled toward the moon more than does the center of the planet. This creates a high tide. On the other side of the Earth, another high tide occurs, because the center of Earth is being pulled toward the moon more than is the ocean on the far side. The result essentially pulls the planet away from the ocean (a negative force that effectively lifts the ocean away from the planet),” says Imaginova's editorial director Robert Roy Britt.

The word “lunatic” is termed to someone that is either clinically insane or just acting really crazy. The root of this word is luna, which means moon. That's because lunatic originally meant someone who went crazy with every phase of the moon, kind of like a werewolf.

While most people don’t believe in moon-induced insanity, it is often used as a slang term, used mainly in exaggerations, for anyone who seems wild and out of control. But does it not make sense that we would feel the effects of the full moon? If the ocean is pulled to high tide and shifted and moved by the energy of the full moon, and we are made of 75 per cent water, would we not be pulled, shifted and moved as well?

"...Spooky effects have been ascribed to the phases of the moon... but when the statistics are redone properly, the correlation with lunar phase always evaporates... Yet many sensible people – including police officers and emergency room staff—continue to believe otherwise." – author Steven Strogatz.

There has been very little scientific evidence proving that the full moon can cause us to get over-emotional, crazy, increase accidents, affect fertility and so forth, yet as a nurse we often talked about the wild nights at the hospital when the moon is full.

Do we imagine or anticipate these effects due to media portrayal, scary movies or ancient myths? One study by Dr Silvia Frey, of the University of Basel in Switzerland, confirms one shift we experience during the full moon is that we may tend to toss and turn more while trying to sleep. Dr. Frey’s research claims that we have an internal biological clock hardwired into our genes which means we sleep less when the moon is full. We take longer to nod off, and when we finally do get to sleep, it is lighter.

The study suggests that it has nothing to do with the moon’s glow, or even its gravitational pull but rather our inner caveman.

“Originally, centuries ago it would have made sense if you didn’t sleep as much during a full moon when there was a lot of light and a higher risk of being predated. In our ancient ancestors, it suggests this behavior would have been a protective feature,” states the findings published in the journal Current Biology.

Mystics say that we can harness the energy of the full moon. Since the full moon pours down a tremendous amount of energy, we should try to keep in a calm state of mind to receive a positive effect. Remembering that whatever is going on in your body, mind and spirit will be amplified. Meditation, journaling, making gratitude lists, engaging in acts of kindness or charity can assist us to stay in a positive place and feel minimal affects of the 'lunar-cy.'

So what do you think? Are you shifted and pulled during the fullness of the Big Cheese in the sky? Do you sleep less? Do you feel more emotional from the Man in the Moon? Or does it fall under the categories of black cats, Friday the 13th and other superstitions?

Whatever the case, the Snow Moon is full tonight, so enjoy its magnitude and brilliance.

(If you would like to see an article on a specific topic, please email kelly@indigolounge.ca)

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