Hello you,
It’s the New Moon in Virgo and that means it’s time for this month’s edition of Embodying the Tarot. Don’t tell the other cards but today we’re hanging out with one of my faves – the Strength card.
Become a paid subscriber to join me for a live breathwork session and dive deeper into how you can work with the archetype of Strength this month. This is the most accessible way to work with me, and it also means you get to join an absolutely magical bunch of folks in practice.
8.
Strength
You’re standing face to face with a lion. You’ve heard of their existence, of course. Seen pictures and videos. Perhaps watched one pace a cage, captured and tamed. But you’ve never know a lion like this. Never met one so close. Never been so unprotected, so vulnerable. Until this moment you hadn’t realised the sheer size of them. Paws, claws, shining sharp teeth. You hadn’t reckoned for the musky animal smell of them, or the muscular power moving beneath their teddy bear fur.
You reach out your hand.
You wait.
The thrumming tension of being so close to wildness ripples through you but still you reach out. Waiting, opening, moving towards it even as large parts of you scream to run. The lion’s giant padding feet step softly closer. You hold its gaze as it steps closer still. Close enough for you to feel the softness of its mane as it leans into you, feel its breath panting as it opens its mouth.
The sandpaper of the lion’s tongue passes beneath your fingertips. The sharpness of its fangs press against your delicate skin. This beast could rip you to shreds. You know it. You can feel the power of it, so close, and yet its presence no longer feels like a threat. You’ve been holding your hand out patiently for long enough to know that it won’t.
Meet Strength
The Strength card wants you to befriend the wild things that frighten you.
Of course, it’s probably not really a lion that’s scaring the crap out of you on a regular basis. That’s just how metaphors work. Chances are that that the wild things that scare you live within. That you’re being invited to turn towards the places of pain, fear, anger, bitterness or grief in your life, and to meet them with boundless love and compassion.
This is different to lion taming. There are no whips or chairs required, just tenderness. You’re not trying to force the wild in you into submission. To ‘fix’ it or chain it up. Instead, the Strength card lays out a different path.
It’s a path where the wild, sharp-toothed parts of you get to exist and be loved, even if they remain forever feral, and where the wise parts of you can hold that wildness with love. It’s vulnerable and a little exhilarating to face up to all of you. It’s deeply healing to listen and care for what needs attention, so that you can learn what those wild parts have to say and hold them tenderly, rather than pushing it away out of fear or shame.
It’s no small feat to meet our internal beasties head on. It takes courage and grit to extend your hand to something that you’re not sure won’t devour you whole. Perseverance to keep showing up, and staying curious, no matter if you’re just inching a teeny bit closer each time you try. But it pays off. As you get to know the lions (and tigers and bears) that exist in the shadows of your mind, you might start to find that they’re not as scary as first imagined.
What wild beastie in you yearns to be held? Listened to? Cared for?
Embodying Strength
Holding the Charge
From an embodied perspective, the Strength card can be the work of learning to hold yourself. To stay grounded in the face of intense emotion. To hold the charge as some big feeling rises from the darkness gnashing its teeth. The most simple practice that I know for that is one of touch.
In those moments when you find yourself face to face with big emotion, bring your hands onto your body. Somewhere that feels comforting, maybe a hand over your heart, or your belly, or pressing into the curve where your neck becomes your shoulder.
Notice the sensation of the touch. The temperature, the pressure. Maybe you want to keep your hand steady and still, maybe you want to gently tap or stroke.
Take a slow breath. You’re here. You’re here. You’re here. The lion might be roaring but there are other parts here too. Your feet on the floor, your breath moving in your lungs, the part that witnesses it all. The lion might be roaring but you can stay here and offer it love, even if it’s just for a moment longer than last time.
An invitation to practice
Want to join me to breathe with the Strength card and work through some of this together? All paid subscribers are welcome and there will, of course, be a replay for those who can’t make it live.
Breathwork with Strength – 7pm UK time, Sunday October 1st