February will be about softening judgment.

The new moon on February 1st is the beginning of the lunar year—we move from metal ox towards water tiger. The Sun moves into Jupiter’s house, where Jupiter is currently sitting pretty, on the 18th. Everything else is ruled by a Saturn who is learning to stand tall in the sign that it calls home.

February will be about softening judgment. There’s a type of judgment that is about compassionate awareness. Judgment is assessment. It’s about assessing pain, about assessing the environment, and about making decisions so that you are able to protect yourself claws out and tail high. Judgment is about self protection. It is a sacred act.

Judgment can also feel paranoid. For those of us who do not feel as though attachment is always secure, for those of us who sometimes attach while also holding suspicion, we sometimes hold compassionate judgment alongside paranoid judgment.

This February, I want you to do a certain exercise that I sometimes do with clients to work with aggression and fear: I want you to stand with leg crouched, hands raised to the sides of your head and fingers poised in the shape of claws. This is an aggressive cat pose. It’s the posture that cats, when defensive, put themselves into.

What feelings come up in your body when doing this pose? Are there any memories that you find yourself wandering into? How safe does the aggressive cat pose feel? What does it take to maintain this posture?

Very slowly, bring yourself into another pose. This time, retreat so that your head comes down and your spine curves. Place your hands around your face so that you hide yourself. Pull your knees together. Pretend that you are activating your tail and heighten your hearing senses. Peek out between your hands. This is a scared mouse pose.

What feelings show up in your body when doing this pose? Do any memories come up for you? How familiar does this pose feel to you? What does it take to maintain this posture?

Next, very slowly, move from the scared mouse pose back into the aggressive cat pose. Do this millimeter by millimeter while holding yourself with confidence and stability.

How did it feel to take yourself from a fear pose into an aggression pose? Did either of the poses feel more safe to you than the other? Did one of them feel more familiar? Did either of them take more energy to maintain or was it about the same?

Aquarius

February is about holding your head up high. If shame feels safer for you than pride and dignity, ask yourself why. If pride feels defensive against your fears of shame, ask yourself what you can do to make shame feel safer. Sometimes, it is okay to not have an identity. Identity does not emerge from will but from empathy and empathy is assessed through capacity.

In February, assess your back pain. Do your aches sit on your hips or against your neck and shoulders? What happens when you put your head higher up and raise your chin? What about when you drop your shoulders and make a big sigh? This month is about holding yourself. Talk to your vertical bones and make dialogue with your spine.

Pisces

Follow ghosts in February. Following ghosts is about hearing a story and listening to what has not been named. It’s about returning to Zhuangzi’s useless tree until you understand what it takes to survive. February will be about, as Jenny Odell says, surviving usefulness. Surviving usefulness is about finding an ecstatic relationship with being alive rather than a rational one.

What did usefulness do for you in the past? What kind of judgment did you deliver you from? If you were to talk to your own usefulness, what would you want to say? If you were to change your mind about usefulness and follow a ghost story instead, what gratitude do you first need to deliver towards all of your struggle?

Aries

You’re guided by a spirit this month, in community, and with ecstasy. This means that more people are going to want to share your stories, theories, and teaching. February is a month about assessing the quality of your social interaction. I think that you tend to sell yourself short, as a Aries. You don’t tend to give yourself enough time to do the things that impress other people with your genius.

Genius is like a spirit that you follow because you wouldn’t otherwise know where to go. Sometimes, following genius is about stopping mid-work and not stopping until you’re reasonably excited enough about where you want to take yourself. Other times, following genius is about letting your mistakes make you. Follow genius in February.

Taurus

What makes a gift a gift? I’m talking about the things that friends or other loved ones might give you but I’m also talking about the things that you do spectacularly because you find them easeful. Have you enjoyed all of your gifts? What does it take for you to recognize a gift for what it gives you and what does generosity have to do with it?

Judge your gifts with generosity. This means getting creative with all of the ways that they can be enjoyed with indulgence instead of only assessing how they must be used in the most urgent crises. How might you feel about a gift if you weren’t compelled to make wage labor with it? What kind of generosity would reveal itself when you aren’t coerced into being useful and, instead, let your gifts do what they want to do for their own sakes?

Gemini

What would happen if you didn’t have to fear judgment in this world? What would happen if you were able to act as though you could find the encouragement that you need when you choose to grow in certain ways? What would happen if you knew that the teachers you are looking for are out there, available and happy to talk with you? How would that change the pace at which you move?

Say this out loud: it is possible for me to find kindness and I deserve kindness. Watch what emotions well up. Is it gratitude or incredulity? Anger or joy? I understand that there are moments during which it is rational and valuable for you to fear parts of the world. I also know that your indignity at not being met with kindness is neither naive nor wrong.

Cancer

You don’t have the means to judge yourself fairly—not yet. When you assess yourself without the means to do so, you end up judging yourself in fear and shame rather than in adequacy and inspiration. It’s time to invest in your education. Investment can be money but it can only mean time, relationship, and attention. Investing in education means that you put the things that are most rich for you into acts of wonder.

Only when you learn about the frameworks of love, the frameworks of attention, and the frameworks of imagination can you clearly assess the scarcity and the joy of your love, your attention, and your imagination. Don’t try to judge yourself without knowing, like a wonderful teacher, the fullness of your potential. To do that is to harm yourself without reason.

Leo

There are some things that you can’t possibly spend more money, time, or attention on not because you couldn’t scourge up what it takes if it came down to it but because there are other things that you’d rather give yourself to. This is what it means when you can’t afford a decision. It doesn’t need to be about impoverishment. Saying that you don’t have the time to afford something can be about decision making.

Judge your resources, all of them, from a place of permission. Give yourself permission to account for enough sleep, enough training, and enough nourishment. You’re always allowed to not have enough attention for urgency. You’re always allowed to remove yourself from a job if you can’t afford to work it.

Virgo

Judge the extent of your exhaustion. Does it wear on your emotions, on your imagination, and does it wear on certain parts of your body? You are so used to judging the quality of your rest, trying to gauge whether you slept well enough or indulged adequately. Judge your exhaustion instead. Your exhaustion is there to tell you certain things.

What exhaustion does for you is that it gives you the motivation that you need to create prophecy. Prophecy is what shifts your perception of the universe. It’s a metaphorical relationship with time. You want to listen carefully to your exhaustion because it comes from the body that survived your histories. Prophecy, also, lives in this very body.

Libra

Assessing your own usefulness is a form of judgment. When you assess your own usefulness, whose fear and whose aggression are you judging yourself through? What does fear at work and what does aggression at work look like for you? Is there one of these that feels safer than the other one?

If you were to write your own survival manual, what would be in it? Write one for yourself if only to prove your own expertise around survival. Put into it the things that make you love life enough to want to live it. Put into it also the things that you know to be truthful about your own reactions. Remember, always, that both fear and aggression work to keep you alive.

Scorpio

Attachment keeps you alive and, yet, it’s one of the most terrifying things out there. When you attach to someone, when you know that you’re forming yourself to make room for your growth with another person, you know that you will never be the same without that person. You’re falling in love. That’s all that is. You have the power and the vulnerability to fall in love.

What reactions protect you from attachment and what responses protect your ability to attach? Telling the difference between the two is like trying to figure out the difference between being afraid of someone and being afraid with that person. Your purpose, right now, is to believe that love can survive and that, by surviving, it can keep you alive.

Sagittarius

You get to talk less and say more things. You get to do this with more people. This means that you don’t need to say all of your things. The best teacher lets their students do the work for them. Can you integrate this into your own life? Can you find where it is possible for you to do more by pushing less? Can you, like confident Jupiter, allow yourself to encourage movement by sitting back and watching?

Move like a grandma on her porch. February is about sitting and letting things come to you. When you move like a grandma on a porch, you’re demonstrating your availability and your consistency. You get to be the stationary pillar for once. Let yourself be still and allow your judgment to soften until it is able to recognize true opportunity.

Capricorn

Eating becomes important in February. Remember that food is medicine—all kinds of food, including literal food, heart food, imagination food, and sleep food. When you do things that feel good this month, let yourself stop because you come into full satisfaction. Do this so that you have enough appetite for another one tomorrow. When you stretch, don’t pull your tendons hard. Stretch easy and come back to it whenever you need it.

The thing about routine is that you don’t need to do things to the point of collapse for them to feel done. Routine gives you the chance to come back again and again until you trust the rhythm in which you take care of yourself. Assess your rhythm. Don’t judge yourself through the events of one single day. Give yourself consistency.