Juniper Medicine Alchemical Acupuncture

12/31/2025

12/19/2024

Attuning to Winter’s Medicine

Color: Black
Element: Water
Organs/Meridians: Kidneys & Bladder
Spirit: Will
Direction: North
Motion: Stillness/Gestation
Emotion: Fear
Virtue: Wisdom/Courage
Territory: The Unconscious
Medicine: Dreams
Archetype: The Dark Goddess

“Black breaks the paradigm…Each moment of blackening is a harbinger of alteration, of invisible discovery, and of dissolution of attachments to whatever has been taken as truth and reality, solid fact, or dogmatic virtue. It darkens and sophisticates the eye so that it can see through.”
—James Hillman, Alchemical Psychology, p 88-89
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Seasonal transitions bring new opportunities yet can also be destabilizing as the body, spirit and soul are being shaped by new energies and demands. How we tend the body’s changing needs and attune the heart and soul to what is new and emergent can make an enormous difference in how we transition.

As we enter the dream of winter we are informed by a particular consciousness. After the completion of autumn’s falling away and releasing of familiar structures, our source energies move further downward and inward. Winter takes us below the surface of what is knowable to be reshaped, renewed, dreamed into being. Through adequate rest, stillness and the warmth of consistent presence, the passage between death and birth is carefully tended while we travel the watery depths of the night sea journey between what is and what wants to be.

Instead of using our will to resist this natural slowing down time, we can instead use our will to direct our energies inward to conserve our vitality and allow our bodies and inner world adequate resources to create new life.

We can make time and space to become available to the wisdom of the dream body where soul lives and moves.

Winter’s medicine nourishes the vital stores of energy in the physical body while containing and helping us orient around the blueprint of our most authentic nature. Just as we need yang’s fiery brightness and upward and outward thrust of movement and growth, we equally need the downward and inward wisdom of yin darkness, stillness, rest, and receptivity to fully thrive and know wholeness. Together, the wild dance of yin and yang—darkness and light—movement and stillness creates and re-creates through the course of a lifetime and beyond.

Although this inner journey is uniquely yours, you do not need to travel alone.

“Why is she lying so still there? And what is she dreaming? We here, in the center of this darkness. We not so different from darkness, not seen but known as darkness itself, and dark to ourselves. She sleeps, her sleep is like death. And what is she, in this night becoming?”
—Susan Griffin, Women and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her, p 169

*Photo taken the morning of Winter Solstice 2018 at Washington Park, Anacortes

11/29/2024

Today and Every Day

May you take pause and listen for the feeling tone of this time and place and how it echoes through the landscape of your body until you remember what has been forgotten.

Your willingness to remain soft and sensitive even amidst life’s sharp edges is the initiatory attitude that attunes you to the transformative power of vulnerability.

May you continuously be shaped and moved to your very core, by the beauty all around and within you.

May you hear with the invisible ear, the ways in which your heart unceasingly guides you, even (and especially) through times of breaking.

May the times of breaking reveal the wonder of your true essence.

May tears of joy and sadness baptize you into the sanctity of soul within and without.

May you lovingly and faithfully tend the earth of your body—your vessel for containing all the myriad awe-inspiring phases of becoming.

May you attune to the one breath—the connective tissue that breathes mystery through all of us.

May you know how supported you are as you go about your days, even when you feel lost and alone.

With love, awe, and gratitude for each one of you, and for the enduring wisdom of the winged ones, creepy crawlies, four legged ones, standing ones, may all beings everywhere be held in reverence, and care.

Thank you for being you,
Monique

05/12/2024

May you be held in the arms of the Great Mother and know you are loved and wanted just as you are—that you have never been and never will be alone. May you know your own wild beauty, tenderness, tenacity and fecundity. May you trust in your ability to regenerate after times of fallowness—after the burning, poisoning, flooding and storming. May you discover the mysterious depths of the Great Mother within your own body and the treasures that you hold. May your truest self be nurtured into fullness. May you share the fruits of your labor generously and be fertile soil for all life to come.

There is an acupuncture point on the side of the body directly under the armpit between the 6th and 7th ribs called ‘Great Enveloping’. It is on the spleen meridian which is part of the earth element (the Great Mother). It is located in the place where loving arms embrace us. When we touch this point with tenderness and love, we evoke the Great Mother or Divine Mother that lives within and is connected to all life. It is a deeply nourishing point for the whole body/being that allows us to be held and expand into the places that have not yet known love or that have been drained by long-held dis-ease on any level.

I took this video at Swan Lake, a protected coastal lagoon on the north end of Whidbey Island. It is a watershed and estuarine wetland, where fresh water from the uplands and marine water come together and mix. Native plants help clean the water of pollutants before it reaches marine life. Wetlands like this one help slow floods and recharge our groundwater while providing a rich habitat for migrating and non-migrating birds and a diverse community of wildlife and native plants.

04/19/2024

There is a beautiful, mad genius to the reality of ‘no guarantees’.
We set out whole-heartedly with our visions, hopes and dreams not knowing what will happen, if anything. We believe. We try. We love. When things turn out we celebrate. When they don’t we may rage, blame, numb out, or collapse. Or perhaps we simply grieve for a time and let it go into the compost pile.

Things go our way and we are happy. Things don’t go our way and we are miserable. Yet there is something else beyond this dualistic way of seeing—something deeper than happiness or misery. Sometimes succeeding can be our failure. Sometimes failing can be our success. There is often no rhyme or reason to outcome. Something larger seems to be at play, beyond conceivability.

Something keeps us going. Something keeps us hoping and dreaming and trying. Something for which succeeding and failing are inconsequential. It seems to be oriented around something deeply true and ever-present. It seems to have its own wisdom. It carries grace. It is whole just as it is. It contains light and dark equally.

I’ve noticed that what keeps emerging from the manure pile of ups and downs and especially through the failings, is some ever-green part of myself that is determined to find its way. It simply wants to live and thrive. It insists. Persists. It knows no other way.

It feels like it comes from a place that is larger than myself. Perhaps this is how earth and star live and move in me. In all of us. We are, after all, made of earth and star.

Something in me knows that there is nothing else to do but keep going with as much of my wholeness as I can, knowing fully that it will be hard and my heart will break. Yet I will be fully alive. My soul shows me the depths of things I would never have seen had I turned my back. My spirit sings with wren, rises with sun and breeches with whale when I allow it to lead. Much is learned and I will continue to discover and become more human through it all, regardless of outcome.

Even when I don’t know which way is up and there is no hope is in sight, something refuses to quit. It comes back again and again, and yes, again. It searches, dreams, wanders and wonders in sheer delight of what might be possible. It won’t stop at anything, at least not for long. Occasionally it takes time out at a source so deep, I forget that it exists for a while. Sometimes I begin to worry that it finally has given up and there is nothing left to hope for. Until once again it emerges with a direction so clear and so compelling, I wish for nothing else but follow. For the privilege of seeing what happens next.

I share this latest blog below in the honor of spring, hope and the beautiful, mad genius no guarantees…

The Way of Innocence and the Greening of Soul “The traveler knows nothing but the road, the guide knows nothing but the stars: The world tree stands between them, marking the center of the world.”1 Like a seed shattering to become itself, some part of us knows that in order to evolve the st

03/03/2024

https://junipermedicinewhidbey.com/peace-and-the-darkness-shall-be-the-light/ -52688

I Ching Hexagram 11. T’ai/Peace
The receptive earth over the creative heaven.

This hexagram belongs to the months of February and March.

“Heaven has placed itself beneath the earth, and so their powers unite in deep harmony. Then peace and blessing descend upon all living things.”1

I open the I Ching to these simple, yet complex words in the midst of the devastating horrors of war and genocide that continue across the body of Gaia. I wonder about the inner workings of peace as the sky continues to darken throughout the late afternoon. The wind howls and hisses through the trees, and the power goes out.

Later, I wake to the sound of branches cracking through the forest surrounding me. The neighbor’s dog barks relentlessly just before thunder shakes the house. Lightening flashes like daylight through the opacity of the blackened wee hours. Heaven opens and a torrent of rain fills the atmosphere, replaced suddenly by silence as rain turns into snowflake softly floating in its return to earth. My dreams are wild and many. I feel the year of the Wood Dragon arriving... CONTINUE READING FULL BLOG POST BELOW 🐉🌲💛

Peace:And The Darkness Shall Be The Light I Ching Hexagram 11. T’ai/PeaceThe receptive earth over the creative heaven.This hexagram belongs to the months of February and March. “Heaven has placed itself beneath the earth, and so their powers unite in deep harmony.Then peace and bl

11/19/2023

Still learning to navigate the wild and demanding teachings of compassion. Many blessings from the rocky edge of 'non-cozy waters' this Sunday morning.

"Compassion is threatening to the ego. We might think of it as something warm and soothing, but actually it’s very raw. When we set out to support other beings, when we go so far as to stand in their shoes, when we aspire to never close down to anyone, we quickly find ourselves in the uncomfortable territory of “life not on my terms.” The commitment traditionally known as the bodhisattva vow, or warrior vow, challenges us to dive into these noncozy waters and swim out beyond our comfort zone. We vow to move consciously into the pain of the world in order to help alleviate it. It is, in essence, a vow to take care of one another, even if it sometimes means not liking how that feels."
—Pema Chödrön, 'Making the Warrior Commitment' https://www.lionsroar.com/a-greater-happiness-november-2012/

11/12/2023

Painting by Monique Gaboury, Winter of 2020-2021 Acrylic on Wood Panel 35.5” x 46”

From my latest blog post, "In Our Incompleteness Is Our Authenticity: Tending the Journey of Soul"

To read full blog post or subscribe, click the link below. With love,
Monique ❤️🌑🌕

Painting by Monique Gaboury, Winter of 2020-2021 Acrylic on Wood Panel 35.5” x 46” In Our Incompleteness Is Our Authenticity: Tending the Journey of Soul I Ching Hexagram 23 Po Stripping Away/Splitting Apart—Keeping Still, Mountain over the Receptive, Earth belongs to the months of