Welcome to the Month of the Goat!
Welcome to the month of the Goat, the 6th month of the Chinese Lunar Calendar! The Goat is a playful symbol that also suggests rumination and thoughtfulness—so this time of the year is ripe for both playful expression and also slowing down and looking inward.
Seasonally, we are past the summer solstice, but we are still in the peak season of daylight. Even though days are getting shorter, the shortening of days is at its slowest. So during the Goat month we are essentially just hanging out in the period of maximum sunshine, continuing to bask in the long days of light and warmth. The illuminating quality of this period of sunlight allows us to take a reflective look at ourselves and our surroundings after the powerful forward momentum of Dragon, Snake and Horse have propelled us through the spring and early summer with hardly a moment to look back.
As the Zodiac animal symbolizing this month, Goats have some curious features that shed light on this moment in the year. One thing Goats are known for is the ability to eat anything, from blackberry bramble to poisonous weeds—and even wood and metal! They are able to survive on such a diet because of their incredible digestive system, which allows them to break down fibrous and dense material. Goats have one of the longest small intestines of any animal relative to their size—about 5 times longer than humans—which allows them to digest just about anything. It is no coincidence that the Goat is associated with the small intestine in acupuncture theory.
What this means for us in the month of the goat is that it is a time to digest the experiences of the year so far and make sense of how we got here, and how we feel underneath all the rushing forward and outward appearances.
It is a time to take a close look at what we have experienced since spring, and contemplate how this all fits into the bigger picture of who we are. We are invited into the experience of thinking and self-reflection, but also the embodied process of accepting and integrating all the ups and downs of the year as a total experience in ourselves. This is done through leisure and play: through being out in the world enjoying the cool morning sun and shady afternoons, and by eating the bounty of berries and stone fruit that are ripening after growing alongside us all spring, finally ready to be eaten and integrated into our body. As we enjoy the warming summer days, our bodies naturally gravitate towards relaxation and leisure, which gives us time to daydream— both consciously and unconsciously ruminating over our year so far. The dramatic opening to newness the Dragon brought, the nuanced navigation of these new aspects of yourself explored through the Snake and the exuberant energy of expression brought by Horse all have a chance to be integrated and digested now in the month of the Goat.
“This is a time to digest the experiences of the year so far and make sense of how we got here, and how we feel underneath all the rushing forward and outward appearances.”
As a personal practice, this is a good time to look back over your year so far. If you keep a journal, try reading back through to see what stands out. If you don’t already, take some time to write down or just think about the biggest moments of the year for you, recalling how you felt then and reflecting on how those events and feelings land for you now in the present moment. The Goat month is a time to integrate everything: the good, the bad and the weird. We each have the capacity to digest even the toughest things, like a goat eating a tin can, but doing so can take a long time, and require some serious chewing. So if there are experiences of the year that still feel uncomfortable to accept or confusing for you, that is fine! Continuing to investigate how you feel, bringing to light your underlying experience; facing into what you find there is part of the long, winding process of digestion that leads to a more whole, integrated experience of yourself and the world. There is no rushing this process and, like the Goat, sometimes the best thing to do in the meantime is to just get playful and, while you're at it, eat something fun!
Written by Dr Paul Arellano