The waxing and waning of the moon affects the energy generally available to us. Luna also affects us in a very personal way, depending upon her phase at our time of birth. This is known as the natal lunar phase. By developing an awareness of your natal lunar phase you can begin to deepen your connection with the natural energies within and around you.

To begin to notice the effect of your natal lunar phase, build your awareness gradually, in ways that fit in with your life. Tying moon awareness to the mundane can add great depth to daily life and ensures you won’t forget to make time for it. An easy way to start is to connect your monthly tasks to a particular moon phase. I give my cat his flea and worm treatment on the last quarter moon each month, as this is the part of the cycle most conducive to elimination and culling. Use a moon calendar at first to find the dates of the phases, and familiarise yourself with the actual shape and movement of the moon. Children love to look at the moon, and will quickly learn to recognize the phases if you include them. They also love to remind us when we forget to make time for the rituals they enjoy! Have your natal phase calculated, and those of your children, and get to know what they look like in the sky. Pay attention to your reactions, and also the reactions of your children when your natal phases reoccur every month.

For women, the natal lunar phase is a second possible fertile time, regardless of where it occurs in the menstrual cycle. Understanding this is integral to natural fertility management. Instead of fighting our bodies, “controlling” our fertility through artificial means, we can come into awareness and balance with our own natural rhythms. This knowledge can then be used to consciously choose to conceive or not. It can also be used to synchronize the menstrual cycle and lunar phase, for ease of contraception or to increase fertility if trying for a baby. Some women experience an easing of menstrual symptoms when they synchronise their cycle.

The first step is to chart your cycle with an awareness of when your lunar phase occurs every month. If you are already recording your fertility, the lunar cycle is easy to incorporate into the same chart. It can be a very empowering process to take just a few minutes before you start your day, to tune into the rhythms of your own body. Sometimes this growing awareness is enough to synchronise over the course of a few cycles.

If you are particularly keen to coordinate your cycles, it may help to sleep in darkness for most of the month, and introduce a small amount of white light in your room for the three nights around your natal phase. Ovulation is thought to have originally been stimulated by the full moon, and this process mimics the full moon light. Over several cycles notice how your cycle shifts to entrain your lunar phase, with ovulation at the natal phase and bleeding on the phase opposite. This is more than just tuning into the moon, but truly coming to “know thyself”. Our bodies have an intimate connection with the cosmos if we will just listen.

See http://www.lunabloom.com/ for free templates of fertility and moon cycle charts, or to enquire about personal natal moon profiles.

Recommended reading for more information about the lunar cycle relating to fertility: “Natural Fertility” by Francesca Naish, Louise Lacey’s “Lunaception”, and “The Wise Wound” by Penelope Shuttle and Peter Redgrove.