I first started studying astrology probably like any kid when I was in junior high or high school and reading horoscopes. And I kind of knew my sun sign, of course. And I wasn’t until I was in college, and my roommate and I at the time went out with a friend. It was a guy that I had met at the gym. I worked at the gym and he was just a gym member. And he was about our age and he came over to hang out with us. We went to the movies. And she and her boyfriend at the time came. It wasn’t a date. We were all just friends. But I noticed this very strong pull. She and I both were pulled into him. In fact, she also pulled away from her boyfriend at the time and pulled into him. And I just thought it was really interesting because we were not attracted to the same guys at all. But it was this chemistry. And I couldn’t deny that we both were like gaga. And it wasn’t that he was the hottest guy in the world. It wasn’t that he had the best personality in the world. I mean, he did have a really good personality. But it was one of those interesting, energetic pulls that I couldn’t deny.

And she actually bought me my very first book. It’s called the “Astrology Book of Days: An Illustrated Perpetual Calendar.” And it’s a very small, simple little book, and I really, really love it, and it’s beautiful. And that’s kind of what started the knowing and the acknowledgment and the study and the curiosity about astrology. And I know that I had my chart done when I lived in New York, and I’ve always been interested in astrology, but I started applying it to my relationships probably about 10 years ago. And I really got deep into understanding and learning about sort of someone’s natal chart and the different positions and how that affects a person.

So first off, on the astrology conversation, in case you’re still skeptic and thinking, “Oh, this is hooey phooey and this isn’t real science,” it is science. It’s based on energy. And while it’s not measurable by a device, it is measurable because the question I have for you is what’s the determining factor in a wave in the ocean? High tide, low tide. What affects the ocean to the point where the waves change and get larger or smaller? Most people would know it’s the moon and the planets, the energy in the universe. And that’s what affects the ocean. So if you know that the position of the moon can affect the ocean to make a big wave, what do you think it does to us? We’re made of mostly water.

You can also ask any nurse or doctor who works in an ER or a hospital and knows when the full moon is. You may not believe it, but I’m sure anyone who can tell you who works in a hospital will tell you the full moon is a crazy time. And there are reasons for that because emotions are heightened. Energy is heightened. The moon is full. It’s so big. All that powerful energy coming off of the moon affects the water within us all and, therefore, the emotions in us all. So that’s my five cents in trying to get you to believe at astrology, even though it’s not a science that, again, someone can measure with a tool. They probably can. Someone probably can, and I just don’t know about it. But I don’t need to know about it because I see it, and I see it in people.

In fact, a couple of years ago, well, more like 10 years ago, I had a friend who threw me a surprise birthday party, and I was “kidnapped” by a guy who was an actor working for a company, and it was this limo ride. Anyway, we were in the car and we were talking, and I looked at him and I said, “You’re a Capricorn, aren’t you?” and he said, “Yeah. How did you know that?” And then years later, I proceeded to be in another party with a different group of friends, and the guy that was hosting the party was talking in the kitchen about something. And I could just hear the way he was talking, and I said, “You’re a Capricorn, aren’t you?” and he said, “Yeah. How did you know that?”

Now, there are 12 different signs. And I no longer guess, by the way, because what I’m about to share with you will tell why I don’t guess. I just happen to hear the way people look at the world. I used to think, “Wow. Why isn’t everybody reacting the way I am to this situation?” I’m a Pisces. My sun sign is Pisces, so I have a lot of emotion. I’m very sensitive. But in the last 10 to 15 years, I’ve learned how to use and channel that sensitivity in a more productive way that’s more proactive and self-soothing and also not a victim. A victor, right? So not blaming anyone for how I feel, learning how not to react to things in a way that I feel powerless, that I feel like a victim. And because I have so much fire energy of different planets, people don’t know that I’m a Pisces because I come across a little more direct and self-assured. And a general Pisces, people think, are weaker.

So as a very sensitive Pisces, I’d look around and be just flabbergasted at why other people were not reacting the way I was to a situation that upset me. And I used to think, “Are people just stupid? How are they not upset by this?” And I really didn’t think people were stupid. I just didn’t know what the answer to the question was. And astrology gave me that answer. Astrology explained to me how people look at the world differently, and how different signs and different elements are attracted and notice different things. So all of a sudden, now I have all these different points of view to look from, and now I understand and can have compassion: compassion for other people, compassion for myself, patience, because again, if I’m looking at the world and wondering why everyone else is not looking at and responding the same way I am, that’s a very frustrating place to be because you assume that everybody thinks the way you do, and you assume that everyone feels the way you do. And that’s not true at all.

So I started using astrology to make sense of relationships, to make sense of the dynamic between people. I used it in my work. I used it with all my clients. In fact, if I meet you, I will know your sign before I know your name, not because I guessed but because I asked you. And then later, I would see in you those traits, and then I would remember those traits, and I would remember your sign, but I may not remember your name, although I am good with names, too. I’m better with signs.

So I’ve told you a little bit about how I’ve gotten into it, that I’m not an astrologer, but there are plenty of great astrologers out there. I think you can get a little long-winded with some of it. I love interesting facts and tidbits, and I definitely subscribe to other astrologers like DK Brainard. He’s a great astrologer, and I love his audiocast that he does every month with each sign. It’s about 15 or 17 minutes long. But there’s a point in time where it’s too much information for me, and I don’t really care. I mean, I like what he has to say, but I’m not following it. To me, the most useful part of astrology is in communication and relationship with others and with yourself, knowing how you work, because when you look at your chart, you can make sense and get validated on why your tendency is to do this or do that or respond in a certain way. And then rather than beating yourself up for doing something wrong or responding in a bad way or a negative way and thinking there’s something wrong with you, you actually get validation that “No, this is how you look at the world.”

So to explain astrology and to make it really simple, just like the calendar, obviously it continues and it keeps going. And most people see astrology in a wheel. I don’t like the wheel, and I’ll tell you why. Because it’s not like the calendar. The calendar is January-December. That’s not a wheel, right? It keeps going, but we understand that the beginning of the year is January and the end of the year is December. Well, in astrology, the beginning of astrology is Aries, and the end of it is Pisces. And unlike the calendar month of the year, each astrological sign builds and grows and expands into the next astrological sign.

So Aries is the first. They’re considered the infants. That is not a judgment. It just is. And in fact, it’s very enlightening when you could understand that because there’s a lot of Aries that are very frustrated when they’re overwhelmed. An Aries feels more confident and able to make a choice when there’s two choices: yes or no, right or wrong, left or right, black or white. When there’s three choices, then that can be frustrating. And I noticed in my chart that I had Aries in my Venus. So Venus is how you deal with love. And I’m going to get into the planets in a minute. But I looked back at my chart maybe eight years ago because I was in a relationship that was really frustrating me. I wanted “No. Are we together, or are we not together?” To me, it was a very simple question, and he wouldn’t give me an answer. But I noticed, because I’m a Pisces and I’m a why person, I’m a gray person, I’m a circumstantial person, I’m a point of view person, so to me, there is no hard “This is the way it is.” I thought, “I’m very gray in a lot of areas, and so why am I so impatient with this particular question? Why can’t I just be okay with whatever it is and not have to label it?” Intellectually, and the Pisces in me is like, “Yeah. Go with the flow.”But for some reason, I couldn’t.

And I happened to look back at my chart to see that my Venus is in Aries. I was like, “Oh, no wonder why I have no patience,” because it’s in the area of relationships and love, and I just don’t know how to operate if I’m on limbo. I need to know. Are we on, or are we off? So again, it just was very validating for me to go back and look at that and go, “Oh, okay.” Now I understand. It didn’t really change that I still wanted an answer, but at least I didn’t feel impatient and I could stop judging myself and being mad at myself for being impatient. So I could understand that that’s how my energy works.

So Aries is the first sign, and Aries then evolves into Taurus. And then it goes down the line all the way to Pisces at the end. There’s 12 signs. So if Aries is the infant of the signs, the baby, then Pisces is the end, and we have everyone’s good stuff and everyone’s bad stuff. You’ll find a lot of neurotic Pisces and very highly emotional and dramatic Pisces, as well as very sensitive. And drugs and addiction can happen in all signs, but it’s definitely in a water sign a little bit higher chances of that because of how much we feel and how deeply we feel things.

So that leads us to the next conversation about the elements. There are four elements. So there are three phases of four elements. So if you took that line or if you wrote out 12 in a line, the first four represent the elements, all the elements, all four. And then it repeats itself two more times. So the first element is fire, and fire is about energy. Energy, movement, being bold, taking charge, excitement. So that’s fire. And it’s just like fire, like a blowtorch. Think of a blowtorch. And it can also be extinguished and burned out. So an Aries or a fire sign may go, go, go until they crash. And again, there’s more to you than just your sun sign, but let’s go over this first.So fire is Aries, Sagittarius, and Leo. Not in that order. It’s Aries, Leo, Sagittarius. So first phase, the first grouping is Aries. That’s the least developed of the signs. Then we move to Leo which is the middle group. They’re more developed.

And then we have the last which is the most developed of the signs, and that would be Sagittarius in that fire sign third stage, third section. Then we move to earth. So earth would be Taurus, Virgo, and Capricorn. Just think of earth. Does earth move? No. Earth doesn’t move. Earth is about stability. Earth is about assuredness. Earth is stability. Earth is the only sign that doesn’t move. And I don’t mean that necessarily so literally, but think about that element. In fact, I think out of all the signs that earth signs are the most stubborn. Now, Taurus is known for being the most stubborn, but I would have to argue that Virgo and Capricorn are pretty stubborn, too. And it’s because they’re earth signs. The earth doesn’t move. It’s about stability.

Now, this is important to understand if you have part of that in your chart. I was dating someone who was also a Pisces, but in the moon sign was a Taurus. And I have a moon sign of Sagittarius. And your moon is how you deal with emotions, and I’ll go over all that. But one of the things that was really frustrating was that his Taurus moon was all about the box, feeling safe in the box. “I have my controlled situation. I know where everything is. I now feel safe.” And I understand that, but I don’t operate like that. In fact, the Sag in me wants freedom above and beyond anything else, and the idea of a box makes me cringe. The idea of a box has me wanting to run in another direction, so I don’t do boxes. So needless to say, there was a lot of head-butting there because I wanted freedom and he wanted security. But yet we’re both Pisces. So that begs the question. So we’re more than just our sun sign.

Think about your favorite cake, your favorite flavor of cake. Let’s say it’s chocolate or vanilla or cinnamon or pumpkin or whatever it is. Let’s just go with vanilla for right now. No, let’s go with chocolate because that’s one of my favorite cakes. And I’m sure in the past five years, you’ve had plenty of chocolate cakes or whatever your favorite is. And were they all the same? No, of course not. Why weren’t they all the same? Well, because they had different ingredients. While they were all chocolate cake, one used butter, one used coconut oil, one used vegetable oil, one had whole wheat flour, one had rice flour, and one had bleached white flour. One had vanilla in it. One had almonds. So you understand that the ingredients that make up this cake are going to be different, just like the ingredients that make up who you are as a personality aren’t going to be just based on your sun sign. There’s a whole list of planets that sort of make up the ingredients of you and your personality and how you look at the world and how you react and respond.

Now, absolutely how you were raised and where you’re from and the modeling that your parents did is a huge factor in your development. But for any parent, you could attest that your child came out with a personality. Pretty quickly, they probably had a personality in the womb that wasn’t yours. So they didn’t learn it. This is not learned behavior. So how did they get to be who they are? Was it just because of watching you? I mean, I’m pretty different than my parents. I didn’t have anybody in my family that was an entrepreneur. I didn’t have anybody that moved far away from their hometown. Everybody stayed where they are. And I was curious. I always asked why. And my parents don’t really…I mean, they’re curious, but not like I’m curious. I have a thirst for curiosity and for understanding and for truth-seeking. And that wasn’t because I learned it from somebody. That was what I was born into with these signs.

So we’ve covered fire and earth. Now we need to move quickly to air. Air is Gemini, Libra, and Aquarius. And air signs are about thinking, thoughts, big picture, big visioning. And a lot of air signs are very unique in their points of view, conversation, debates, understanding. Also very curious about thoughts and thinking. One of the challenges you can get into, though, with air, if you’re an air sign, is being disconnected from your body and not being grounded. So air signs, again, about thinking, thoughts, big picture, in your head.

And lastly, we have the water signs which I’m a part of. So we have Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces. And water is about emotion. And water signs have very, very deep capacity for feeling lots of feelings. And not that we all don’t have feelings. Of course we do, but you may have water somewhere in your chart that shows up in a different way. So we have fire is action and energy and movement. Earth is stability. Air is thoughts. And water is emotion.

Now, let’s move to the different components of your chart. And if you’re interested, in case you’ve never had your chart done, you can get it done for free on astro.com, and you’ll want to pull out your personal profile. I had done a two-day workshop for Fit 2 Love when I first released the book in 2011. And what was really interesting, which is why I knew I would need to do a show like this eventually, is we were talking about relationships. And astrology, mind you, was not on my curriculum for the weekend. Not that I don’t love it and would love to talk about it. It just wasn’t in the lesson plan. And within the first hour, someone had asked me a question and, of course, I responded by mentioning that that person was a Capricorn and that they look at the world this way, and the person they’re with probably doesn’t look at the world like that. And all of a sudden, that opened up a whole discussion, lots of people asking questions about astrology. So an hour later, after I realized I had diverted from the lesson plan so far to the left that I said, “Look, if anybody wants me to read their chart, I’ll do it during lunch tomorrow. Go home or to your hotels, print out your astro report, and bring it to me.”

So these are the planets that I think are most important for determining personality, emotional processing, the way that you look at the world, what you gravitate towards and why. So obviously your sun sign, which everybody probably already knows, based on your birthday. Your moon sign. Your moon is how you deal with emotion. And my moon is in Sagittarius, which is why I ask why, because I’m a truth seeker. I’m an education seeker. I’m an information seeker. I want freedom, and Sag’s are all about that, so, of course, I ask why. And that’s how I deal with my emotions is to question them. And that’s why I didn’t learn about that. It was innate in me.

Then you have your rising sign. Your rising sign is not as important as I think a lot of people think it is. It’s what the personality you put out there is. And that’s fine, but that’s not the inner belly of you. That’s not the inner workings of you. That’s more of the energetic picture that you want the world to see of you. And you’re not necessarily choosing it. It’s just what we think you are. So to me, the rising sign is the least important of the ones I’m going to share with you, which there are seven. And the rising sign, I believe, is the only one affected by your birth time. In order to get your chart, you need to know your birthplace and birth time, of course birth date. So you’re going to add that all in. And if you don’t know your birth time, the only thing I think that’s affected is your rising sign. So that’s okay if you don’t know it. You can leave that one out. I don’t think it’s huge. But that’s my opinion.

We have four more planetary positions that I think make up the whole of who you are and your personality and learning about other people’s personality, but I do need to take a moment, before we cover that, to thank our sponsors… All right, so we have sun, moon, and rising sign. Next, we’re going to move to Venus. Venus is how you deal with love. And as you heard me talk about earlier, mine was on Aries. That was the only sign in my chart in the first phase, in that sort of least developed phase of astrology, which made sense because I had zero patience, and I needed an answer, and I didn’t know how to function with a third choice. So Venus is how you deal with love and relationships.

Then we have Mars. Mars is like your warrior energy. Mars is your action energy. And I used to think it was communication, but it’s not. Your communication is Mercury, which funny enough, I only really got into this year when I went to a writer’s workshop. And Doreen Virtue, who I think is amazing, has a book out called “Angels and Astrology.” And most of the astrology books I have don’t really talk about Mercury. While I know it’s important, I hadn’t really researched it. So when I bought her book and I started reading about Mercury, let’s just say it was a life-changer. It was a life-changer. In fact, that’s why I’m bringing you this show. One of the reasons why we are doing this podcast is because of that book and my acknowledgment of my Mercury and the position.

The last sign that has a whole book dedicated to it is your true node or your north node. That is your soul sign, and that takes into consideration past lives and your lessons in this lifetime. And whether you believe in all that or not, the first couple of pages of each true node sign is very interesting. So Jan Spiller wrote a book called “Astrology for the Soul,” and it is about this one position. It’s about your true node or your north node. They have two names. So if you’re interested, I definitely recommend that book because that helped my relationship.

My husband and I were having an argument years ago, and it was one of those situations where you know that there’s a miscommunication going on because whatever is being said is being reacted to in a much different way. And I’m sitting there thinking, “What just happened?” I don’t know what happened. I don’t know how the communication was so off. And somewhere in that book literally explained it to me, and I thought, “Wow. Okay.” And I’ve even used it with friends. Friends who I might have been a little frustrated because they blamed me for something. Maybe they blamed me for how they felt, or they were scolding me for something I did that had really nothing to do with them, but somehow they were personalizing it. And then I came home and I looked up that person’s information, and then when I read it, I had compassion. I was like, “Oh, okay.” That’s their charge in this lifetime is to learn this.

So I really am a big believer in using astrology for that reason of just really understanding, increasing your communication, and being able to talk to somebody in a way that they can hear you. Now, that doesn’t mean you are responsible for how they react because they’re not. But wouldn’t it be nice to learn how the people who are most important to you see the world? So in that way, in case it’s very different from you, that you can understand it, instead of making them wrong or making yourself wrong, or making everyone uncomfortable with these shoulds of how everybody should react, because astrology really shows me, and hopefully will show you as well, how you can just change the point of view and then understand.

And I think it’s a great tool, and I love it. And I hope this podcast has inspired you. I would love to hear back from you. Go to fit2love.tv and write a comment underneath the podcast, or share it with your friends, if you think there’s some people that could use this information, especially if they’re frustrated or struggling with communication and relationship, or why do they feel this way and they don’t really know? I really think that astrology can validate and shed some light on sort of your predestined ways of responding.

Now, that doesn’t mean you can’t learn another way. It just means that I had to accept that I’m a sensitive being as a Pisces. And rather than feel victimized, I accepted that my first response might be that I feel hurt, but then I could recognize that no one is out to necessarily hurt me. So in order for me to process my emotions, understanding that it’s okay to feel what I’m feeling, but then to change the conversation and shift the energy is what I needed to do in order for my life to go the way that it’s gone. Otherwise, I would have probably been a pretty big victim for a long time. And I definitely appreciate not… I love being empowered and feel in control of my life and in connection with source and God and astrology and whatever you want to call it, but feeling centered yet connected, feeling solid and grounded yet free-flowing.

So I hope you use astrology to improve your life. And if I can help in any way, I’d love to. So thank you again for listening to this show, and I’d love to hear some feedback, especially if you loved it. Go to iTunes and subscribe, rate the show, and let me know what you think. Have a great weekend.