Yang Fire Horse Year: Healing The Shen-Heart, Personal Power

Today's episode is about the year of the young fire horse.

As you can probably tell,

My nose is quite congested and I hope that this isn't upsetting to your ears.

Firstly,

I want to start by clarifying the difference between the new lunar year and the astrological new year.

They are often used interchangeably,

And indeed,

Their dates are really close to one another.

Of course,

There are two reasons to celebrate this time of the year,

Because it is the beginning of two very important energetic calendar energies,

Which are coupled with the celebrations of the start of the spring.

The new lunar year begins on the second new moon after the winter solstice,

So the December solstice.

This year,

It falls on February 17.

Interestingly,

This year,

This new moon,

Is also the beginning of the first eclipse season of the year,

So we have a solar eclipse on the first day of the new lunar year.

Then,

The new zodiac or astrological new year begins on the day when the sun has a celestial longitude of 315 degrees,

And it also marks the beginning of the spring,

That is,

The early,

Immediate,

Early spring.

This new year energy lasts for the whole solar term,

So this year in the Gregorian calendar,

It begins on February 4 and ends on February 18.

This astrological new year is the year of the young fire horse.

In Chinese astrology,

Each year has a polarity,

Yin or yang,

Has an element,

There are 5,

And a zodiac sign,

Of which there are 12.

Chinese astrology is immensely complex,

In a good way,

By the way,

And because of that,

I think it's important to go a little bit over the polarities and the elements,

Not going out of the context,

But really looking at the underlying energies of the element,

Of the polarity,

And of the zodiac before going into the overall thing as well.

And that way,

You yourself can also reach your own conclusions and have your own thoughts and opinions,

But I will briefly go through each of these and then have some form of closing thoughts.

So today,

The theme is the year,

And each year has its own polarity and elements,

And this is not to be confused with the fixed polarity and fixed elements that each zodiac sign has.

For the astrology of the years,

Yang polarity is represented by even numbers,

Since this year is the year 4724,

Then we are in a yang energy year.

So,

We are leaving the yin wood snake year,

Which was the year 4723,

And we are stepping into the yang fire horse year.

Now that we've sorted the polarity,

Let's look at the elements.

The elements in order are metal,

Water,

Wood,

Fire,

And earth.

So there's five elements,

Each will be present in one of the two polarities in consecutive years.

This means that we are going into the yang fire year,

Correspondent to 2026,

And next year we are going to the yin fire year,

Which will be 2027.

Basically,

Each year element begins with a yang polarity and is followed by its yin polarity.

For example,

2024 was the yang wood dragon,

And 2025 was the yin wood snake.

Now we have 2026,

The yang fire horse,

And we will have 2027,

The yin fire goat.

However,

The zodiac sign does not repeat the year like the element does,

As I'm sure you've noticed by now.

Hence,

You just have to follow the order of the zodiac signs to know which zodiac is the Because each element is predominantly associated with a color,

You can choose to say the color instead of the element.

For example,

Since the fire element is associated with the color red,

You can say that this is the of the yang red horse,

And we know that you're talking about the fire element.

Yang fire is called bing,

B-i-n-g.

I'm spelling it because I know that with my nasal voice,

I can't really properly pronounce certain words,

Especially with an n.

And this is much less common,

But if you would say the bing horse year,

It wouldn't be incorrect.

Right,

So now that you understand the basics of why it is called yang fire horse year,

Now let's look at the energies that are represented in this year.

Let's start with the yang principles.

Yang principles represent masculine energy,

The sun and daylight energies,

Dry and heat energies,

Active and fast energies,

As examples.

So when you look in to what actually these energies that I've just mentioned are about,

Then you will find that you can expect a year characterized by intense activity,

With a lot of things happening fast and quick in the outer world.

So in our reality and in the collective,

You can expect active actions driven by ambition.

Not necessarily a bad thing,

This ambition,

It just really depends on the intentions and the morality or lack of morality behind it,

And the push for achievement and accomplishments in the physical world.

The fire element is symbolized by the red bird or the red phoenix,

And is related to the shen in our body.

The spirit and consciousness shen lives in the heart,

And in a nutshell,

It keeps us stable and protected on all levels,

So emotionally,

Spiritually,

Mentally,

And physically.

So as you can imagine,

The attributes of the shen are pretty extensive,

And therefore I'm not going into it today,

But I want to say that this year,

Physically,

Pay attention to the health of your cardiovascular system,

The whole system,

To your gut system,

But especially the small intestine,

To your eyes,

To your shoulders,

And to your kidneys.

So five things to look at physically this year,

Whether you have any form of underlying illness or condition or not.

This year is a year in general to pay attention to these organs and organ systems,

And to work with the meridians that are associated with these.

And regarding the fire element,

I want to focus a little bit on the numerology of the fire element,

Which is the number seven.

And by the way,

The horse is the seventh zodiac sign,

So we have the double energy of the seven embedded in this year's energies.

So I thought that would be really interesting for us to look at.

Seven is the number of emotions that upset our spirit or our spirits,

Depending on how you are perceiving them as individual parts of the consciousness or as a whole.

And these seven disturbing emotions are fear,

Fright,

Anger,

Grief,

Sadness,

Worry,

And overexcitement.

And if you don't know,

Then you may be surprised to hear this last one,

The overexcitement.

But it truly is,

And one of the ways that you can see is in another mammal species,

Which is the dog,

You can see how overexcitement really takes them off their center and their balance energetically,

And then of course their behavior.

And even in us humans,

We know that biochemically,

Our physiological and bodily responses are the same,

Whether it's an excitement response or a nervousness or anxiety type of response.

Our body doesn't physiologically distinguish them.

For example,

In Chinese medicine,

It is generally understood that if you get too excited about something,

You will lose your capacity to clearly evaluate things and see things with clarity,

Which in turn upsets the Shen mostly.

So too much excitement and overall excitement that is not quickly and easily de-escalated and controlled will upset the Shen and will make you do bad decisions and have actions and thoughts that are not good for you,

Which in turn upset the Shen even more.

And i think that not only we can see it in our lovely friend's dogs as the example i gave just now,

But i think we can all agree on this,

I think we have all experienced situations where we got perhaps so excited or in other words if you wish too happy or so happy about something that when we didn't catch ourselves and we allowed it to just grow and escalate,

We missed many times a lot of flags or a lot of data and information in other words that was just right in front of us because we lost the ability to see clearly in that moment.

And if you think of your reaction when you are very stressed and very nervous and anxious about something,

It's the same.

We also don't have the same capacity of clarity of thoughts and to read the room and to have the correct perceptions.

Right,

So i'm mentioning this and there is a point to this rambling because in a way since it is a fire year you could see this as the year of the Shen and the year of the seven emotions.

In this regard i think that it will be a year that may bring emotions to the surface that we will have to deal with so it may be a quite emotional year and dealing with them i mean that we will have to process them,

We will have to heal them,

We will have to transmute them,

We will really have to look deep to see the even the origin of the emotion if it's a secondary emotion what else is there it's a year to really look after the health of our spirit and of our Shen.

Another thing on the numerology that i'd still like to mention in the yi jing the number seven represents the rebirth of time and space which by the way they are always together in chinese cosmology there is no space without time and no time without space if you notice it's a number associated with medicine from the ancient times to nowadays when a treatment was used for seven days if there was improvement we knew that it was working and even today though we are able to tweak concentration and formulation for better metabolism and better efficacy seven is still generally a number used in healing in medicine for example the call that i have now generally takes about seven days to fully go away once there's the onset of the cold and you could say this sometimes for the flu but sometimes flu can be seven plus seven and there's always a little bit an element of the seven in healing and the funny thing that i've noticed is after the sessions when they give advice to anyone for example that they have to repeat a specific healing from the sessions for a certain number of consecutive days most often than not they tell to do the healing for seven consecutive days so even spiritually it's a very important number this idea of the consecutive seven days so i think this year we can expect a year with the energies of birth and rebirth of new things but also of things that may have sort of been broken or not going very well there could be the possibility that those things might actually start to work depending of course on a number of factors so i think this energy will be marking this year as a final note on the the element fire and still going into the numerology the fire element is associated with seven but it's also associated with the number two because in in the numerology the two generates fire that the seven completes or accomplishes i think that it is very likely this year that we might be sort of triggered by some form of the energy of the two for example duality or polarization which elementally creates the fire that will help us to change to birth and rebirth for example say that someone decides to lie to you and you know it is a lie and in that moment you're just stunned and fed up with this person and the drama and whatever this is an example of a duality and the polarization triggering a response in you where the lie pushes you to the other pole and thereby you have the fire element to help you change and rebirth something new i think we will generally have a lot of incidents where we are pushed to the other pole of the incident which then can allow us to transmute one of the seven emotions even if it is not the most comfortable thing to go through in this sense i also won't be surprised to look back and to see at times some form of extreme reactions overall or that could be classified as extreme reactions so it doesn't have to be sort of the reaction that creates the biggest chaos but something that was sudden and expected and extreme because of this energy of the two okay so i've been talking quite a lot about the fire element so let's talk about the horse the horse is the first sign of yin energy rising so the zodiac is composed by 12 signs and from the first to the sixth we have the young energy rising reaching the peak on the snake and i sort of explained this last year and from the seventh to the twelfth we have the young energy warning so the rising of the yin that reaches its peak on the 12th sign and begins with our horse this conference this year with a form of yin energy that the way that it shows up is just like the horse who has an inner yin nature and a young outer nature in other words you can perceive it as sensitive gentle sensible nature with a very strong assertive sometimes stubborn and leader type of qualities as outer expression the horse whilst very sensitive to emotions and energies likes to help by leading or even co-leading with a partner because it's a herd type animal the horse is generally a leader by helping others to achieve things because it is a naturally friendly sign it has to do with their friendly nature there's one of the things that i think we can expect this year is that somehow there will be more partnerships and co-leaderships to achieve goals and to meet needs and the horse is remarkably enduring they are fast yes but above all their quality that helps horse people to achieve things is their endurance coupled with their general openness and enthusiastic nature another reason that i decided to mention earlier the seven emotions and why i took my time a little bit explaining the emotion of overexcitement is because to the horse people it is advised to always be careful to look for joy and enjoyment and not what makes them excited and this is valid for all of us this year so i think to be very aware this year is to really be careful with the emotion of overexcitement that i mentioned earlier because the horse can have a negative tendency to look for excitement because it's confusing it with what makes them feel joy and enjoyment because the horse is passionate is lively likes to live life in a passionate way so very often needs help or maturity of course to differentiate that excitement doesn't really equal what brings them pleasure and joy on the negative expression the horse tends to be quite arrogant very easily and intensely irritable and agitated so they lack the energy of calm and peace they're almost constantly anxious or on edge this energy of agitation overall okay and i think i've brought forward the main messages that i think are crucial for this year and that i hope that it helps you to navigate and to understand the energies more and even you yourself it's sort of a food for thought or food for meditation or whatever so i'm going to now wrap this up with the overall energies for this year coming from all of these different energetic players and the combination of these energetic players so i won't repeat the things that i've mentioned because i know i've mentioned some things to expect i won't repeat them i think this year will be about taking the opportunities that show up at our doorstep to make way to find some form of peace calm and position of power and power i mean of personal power in our life in general in relationships and in our works and jobs business endeavors especially power because given the current energetic wave on a spiritual level that the earth and mankind are going through coupled with the horse because the horse is associated with the energy of power it has a gentle empathetic nature with a strong powerful response as an expression and i think we will have situations in general during this year where we will have to somehow step up in our power through the energies of rebirth and birth and through the energies of healing and purification and this is going to look very different for each of us i really feel that there is a sense of individual experiences exactly because it's a sense of self power or self empowerment the energies that are mostly here i also think it will be a year about the heart in the sense that we have the heart and shin as central figures of the fire element its color and its neurology and association within our body anatomy and energy flow and also because the horse is about learning to be in the heart space when they are with a partner and about being friendly and honestly nice when they are in friendship and work and social type of contexts so the embodiment of the horse this year i think it's about going through the lesson of this zodiac sign we all just like the horse people have to learn should take in the lesson of speaking more from the heart and practice a lot of empathy and spirit of collaboration and being together in sort of a heart not in terms of her type mentality but in terms of supporting each other how and in what context this should be more embodied i think it's going to be in the context of getting together having to get together to achieve goals faster and bigger there will be this need so we will have to embody these energies of the horse which in turn encompasses all of the energies the horse fire and the young principles i really think we will be brought to situations that although people may not choose to go through with it but the best course of action will be for people to drop the stubbornness and arrogance that the young and the horse can have on their negative expressions and go the other way around form types of alliances to meet needs and achieve goals that are the best for all parties and i reference here meeting needs because sometimes especially in a very dense collective there needs to be some sort of higher needs that everyone shares for this energy to really be able to be embodied and really bring forth this positivity this year in all parts of it this year has an expansive and outward energy thus i think it will be a year where we will all somehow be driven or perhaps at times pushed to have some form or response that means to not stay silent or quiet this can touch on what i've started by saying with the presence of personal power and finding peace and tranquility in the several different spheres of our lives but it could be something more collective as well so it can really come up in any context very importantly perhaps one of the most important ones of this year is that i think that whatever is that we do on the collective whatever is we focus our attention on and put our energy into it will grow and there's the potential for it to grow fast for better or for worse hence be very careful with the choices that you make be very mindful and be very intuitive because this energy that is enveloping our collective energy can easily be channeled into our individual reality and if we are not putting the effort or the energy or however you want to see this on the right thing it can be sort of disastrous surely given that it's the year of horse it can definitely lead us to exhaustion and burnout which is also embedded on the energies of the fire and the young on a negative expression still as a negative expression this year can be marked by dominance through taking away power so this negative energy is from leader to tyrant t-y-r-a-n-t i don't know if i pronounced his word correctly and i really can't pronounce it well with my congested nose um so where where the the establishment of their dominance so the tyrant dominance is marked by strong actions towards removing people's power in however way this is done it has to do with creating more power imbalance by stealing it taking it away i'm going to end here i hope you enjoyed listening to this episode even though is my voice is not at its best i hope you learned something and that this is helpful and somehow even sort of form of enlightening for you if you have any thoughts or comments i'd really love to hear them happy new year i hope it's filled with health success and joy and i hope to see you soon again take care