How Working with Astrology Supports Your Cadence Practices

I know astrology isn’t for everyone, but for the people it is for, it can be a powerful tool to help you reconnect to and anchor into your natural rhythm. Admittedly, I haven’t always been an astrology girlie. Sure, I checked horoscopes in magazines growing up, but I didn’t know anything beyond my Sun sign for years. 

But then that changed in 2019 when it kept catching my attention when I was on a self-exploration journey. Then in 2021, I started to study it in earnest and understand more of its wisdom.

So for folks who know nothing about it or are rightly skeptical of it, let me offer you a reframe: Astrology isn’t some woo-woo mythology where you make predictions about your life or read people’s fortunes. That can certainly be an application of it, but that’s not what it is. 

Astrology is a combination of two things: science and history. Science because it is directly dependent on astronomy. Any astrologist worth their salt can track stars in the sky and calculate their path forward. It requires you to know some basic, if not advanced, astronomy. And history because astrology is the study and documentation of how the stars and planets move in the sky and how that movement corresponds to events happening on the Earth. 

What do I mean by that?

Well, first astrologers have been tracking how stars and planets move in the sky for several thousand years. And because we have thousands of years of records, they’ve identified patterns about how the planets move and the time increments they move in. It’s how we know things like how long each planet spends in a sign, how often a planet turns retrograde, and how often two planets make aspects to (relate to) each other. 

But in addition to tracking that information, astrologers also wrote down what was happening in their societies when certain planets did certain things. They recorded what happened when Mars squared Saturn every time that happened for several thousand years. They wrote down what happened when Venus went retrograde every time it happened for thousands of years. 

And now, thanks to that documenting by lots of different astrologers for thousands of years, we have this insane catalog of information that reveals certain patterns and trends about a ton of different astrological signatures such that when those astrological signatures happen again, we can make educated guesses about the types of events that may happen or how it may feel. 

The reason we can do that is because just like history repeats itself, astrology repeats itself. Even the rare ones that only happen every couple hundred years. And when they repeat themselves, we can go back into the astrological archives to see what happened the last time that astrological signature occurred, and the time before that, and the time before that. 

And you know what the best part of astrology is now? We can track this information for ourselves. We don’t need to know how to make the calculations anymore. There are plenty of apps and websites that do it for us nowadays and they even tell us the significance of certain planetary configurations, both generally and personally. 

This to me is the power of astrology and why I rely upon it so heavily to connect to my natural rhythms. 

Core Lessons I’ve Learned from Astrological Cycles 

So what exactly have I learned about Sustainable Cadences from working with astrological cycles?

A few things come to mind, but the most important lessons have come from learning how to listen to my body and my needs, how to pivot towards the path of least resistance, and how to trust cycles of rest and action. 

Listening to My Body

Anyone still in corporate or fresh out of it can tell you that working a 9 to 5 really trains you to ignore the cues your body is giving you.

If your body says it's tired, you're trained to ignore it and keep creating output.

If your body feels like it needs to sleep longer, you get out of bed anyway to check your email, reply to a few Slack messages, and then jump out of bed, get dressed, and rush to work.

This structure of working for someone else conditions us to ignore all sorts of cues from our body, like needing a break, needing to move, or needing to take a day off. We ignore and push past the things our body tells us all the time.

Working with astrology taught me how to pay attention again. To understand it and how it impacted me, I had to pay attention to the details of how the planets were moving and interacting with each other so I could notice things. For example, I noticed that when there’s a really great aspect between Mercury and Uranus, you're likely to have a surprising revelation that you'll feel inspired to act on. 

But if Saturn and Mars are squaring each other, aka having a tense conversation, then chances are it will be hard to move things forward and the better thing to do is to stand still until you have the energy and the clarity to move forward again. 

The planets are constantly telling us when to stop, when to go, and when to go back. Learning to pay attention to and understand what the planets are telling me became a transferrable skill that reminded me to pay attention to my body and what it's telling me again.

Now when I wake up, I consider what I want to do, what I need to do, and how I feel generally. And because I have a basic idea of what the planets are doing each day, I can sense whether the things I need to do and want to do align and if not which should take priority for the day. 

Working with astrology has trained me to disrupt the cycle of “wake up (ignore my body and needs) and work.” Now I wake up and check in and that dictates whether and how I work.

Finding the Path of Least Resistance

Once I learned how to disrupt the “wake up and work” cycle, a natural next step was to “wake up and notice.” Under capitalism, there’s never time to notice. There’s only time to wake up, shove food and coffee into your face, and then rush to work. 

But waking up and noticing became a habit when I got into the habit of checking the astrological forecast every morning. I’d check the astrology weather on the Chani app, the Time Passage app, or the Spirit of Change website, read what it meant, and then take a moment to see if I felt the impact of the astrology weather for the day personally. 

Had the astrology been intense enough to interrupt my sleep and therefore leave me feeling tired?

Did it stir something up emotionally that made working or doing anything “productive” feel hard?

Or did my brain feel scrambled, unfocused, and/or preoccupied?

The astrology prompted me to check in, notice what was happening to me, and then choose the best path forward. 

If I’m not ready to dive into work, then I don’t. I let myself journal, do a tapping session, move my body, or do something else that will help me process the barriers standing between me and focus. 

If I’m sleepy, sometimes I eat breakfast, drink water, and go back to sleep for an hour only to wake feeling refreshed and ready to go. If it feels like my brain is floating somewhere in outer space, I don’t fight to bring it back home. Instead, I opt for creative expression and let my brain wander and take me where it wants to go instead of wrangling it. Sometimes that looks like journaling, painting, or storywriting, and other times it looks like watching a movie or reading a good back. 

But that morning check-in and reflection that astrology offers give me a chance to orient to my needs and desires each morning and choose the correct path forward for myself, even if that path is lying down and staring at the ceiling for a while. 

Cycling Between Rest and Action

The other big thing that working with astrology has taught me is how to trust rest. When I still worked in corporate, I used to tell people that on my best weeks, I could earnestly do a solid 3.5 days of work. Not 3.5 days worth of billable hours, but 3.5 days during the week where I showed up ready to focus and get something accomplished. 

But to achieve that level of output, I had to get great nights of sleep, eat nourishing food, and maintain relatively low stress levels. If any of those things were off, then that 3.5 days of focus started to look more like 3 or 2.5 days.

Well, let's just say those ideal conditions rarely happened. But regardless, I still tried to push myself past what I knew to be my limitations to meet my employer's expectations. 

Now that I know about the limits of my executive function and have more control over my schedule, I’ve learned to stop trying to push myself past my limits and I’ve let go of trying to achieve maximum output each week. I definitely credit a big part of this shift to time away from corporate and learning more about the harms of capitalism. But the other reason for this shift came from me tracking and working with the moon. 

You see, there is this glorious thing the moon does every couple of days called a void-of-course period. Essentially, after the moon does all the work she’s meant to do in a sign (aspecting other planets), she takes a break until she gets to the next sign. You can read more about it in my Moon Cadences Part 2 post, but the basics that you need to know are that the Moon takes a break every couple of days. Sometimes the break is long, like a full day, and other times it’s only a couple of hours. 

When I discovered this particular astrological signature it made a ton of sense to me. I’ve never been able to be “on” 5 days in a row. As I got closer to the end of my corporate tenure, trying to achieve high levels of output for 5 days straight seemed increasingly ridiculous to me. So it made sense to me to do two good days of work and then take a break to regroup and then try to do another 2 days. 

I take the same approach to moving my body and it’s how I stay consistent with that. 2 days on, 1 day off. And sometimes after a while, my body needs two days off and I freely give it. With the void-of-course moon, I’ve learned to do the same with my work. I’m always just taking things one day at a time, but I utilize void-of-course moon periods to take a step back and rest intermittently. It’s one of the key ways I ensure that I can run my business for the long haul without burning out. 

My Favorite Astrological Cycles to Work With

Moon Cadences

If you can’t tell by now, I love working with the Moon. It’s my favorite planet to work with because it changes so frequently and it teaches me so much about how I’m always changing – my needs and wants are different from day to day and the moon teaches me to honor that. If you want to learn more about Moon Cadences, you can start with Part 1 here or skip directly to Part 2 if you’re looking for strategies for slower living and incorporating more rest into your life. 

Days of the Week

My other favorite astrology cadence to work with is the days of the week. I am so obsessed with planning my week using astrology that I’m not sure I’ll ever really be able to express my obsession fully. But there is so much magic here. Each day of the week is ruled by a planet and you can tap into that planet’s energy to achieve certain tasks or goals in your life. It’s easily my most successful Cadence Experiment both for me and folks who have taken the Sustainable Cadences program. If you want an intro (including a mini video workshop) on how to begin this practice, you can check it out here. 

Surrendering to Retrogrades

In addition to the regular practice of working with the moon and the days of the week, I love to practice the act of surrendering to the energy of retrogrades, especially for the personal or inner planets (Mercury, Venus, and Mars). 

A retrograde is when a planet appears like it’s moving backward in the sky and depending on the planet, it can last for 3 weeks (Mercury) or closer to half a year (Pluto). When planets are retrograde, it’s said that words that begin with “re-” are a good idea: review, reconnect, redo, reflect, etc. I like to use these times to do exactly that as I find there are always important lessons and kernels of wisdom to be collected when I let myself walk back over previously treaded pathways to see what I missed. 

I wrote about how I’m working with (okay, surviving) the current Mars Retrograde to create space for the lessons to come in and I invite you to read it if you’ve been struggling with the retrograde. 

Finding Your Way Into Astrological Cycles

Working with astrology isn't about becoming an expert astrologer or understanding every technical detail. It's about finding tools that help you reconnect with your natural rhythm and create sustainable practices that honor your energy. Just like the planets move at different speeds and have different cycles, each person's journey into working with astrology will look different.

How to Start Your Journey

Choose an entry point that feels natural to you:

For Complete Beginners:

• Start with simple moon-tracking
• Notice how you feel during different moon phases
• Use basic apps to follow lunar movements
• Focus on observing patterns without pressure to interpret

For Those with Some Astrological Knowledge:

• Experiment with planning your week using astrology
• Download apps like the Chani App or Time Passages for deeper insights
• Begin connecting chart elements to your natural rhythms
• Practice working with one planetary cycle at a time

For Those Seeking Guided Support: Consider becoming a Rhythm Crafter for a customized Sustainable Cadences report that:

• Explains your chart's key elements for creating sustainable practices
• Provides personalized weekly planning strategies
• Identifies your most aligned cadence experiments

Remember: There's no rush to implement everything at once. Like any sustainable practice, working with astrology is about finding what resonates and building from there.

As usual, if you have questions about any of this, drop them in the comments and I'll do my best to get back to you with a response. To leave a comment, you need to be a member (free or paid). I'd love to hear how you all are implementing these practices into your everyday life and what you're learning along the way.