Embrace the Sturgeon Moon: Set Intentions and Achieve SMART Goals with the New Moon Journal by Namaste Studios

By Dennis Bluthardt at Namaste Studios

For centuries, this moon has marked a season of abundance, the exact reason its name holds significant meaning in so many cultures. The Sturgeon Moon is for setting intentions before the summer winds down. It’s a perfect time to watch as the new moon shifts to a tiny crescent in the evening sky and set your intentions for the next month’s cycle. People who take the time to observe a new moon ceremony often write down intentions instead of silently saying them to themselves. One can buy new moon journals to track this work over a year-long cycle of twelve months.

People who set intentions for the Sturgeon Moon can take it further and keep a running list of related tasks and activities. Time frame? Waning [sic] gibbous to new! Here are just a few tasks to get you thinking about what this type of goals list might look like:

Create a list, engage in outdoor exercise, and set clear, achievable goals using the SMART goals method. Research ways to surround yourself with positive imagery, find well-placed affirmations to encourage “replacement thought,” Share favorite WFH board games, and order some nail polish online.

The Power of Affirmations

Affirmations are powerful tools for those interested in personal development. These are affirmations that can assist you in defeating destructive thought patterns. When you repeat them often enough, you start to believe in them.

This is when your subconscious becomes engaged, and you begin to make incremental changes in your life. This creates a powerful and positive cycle that gets stronger over time.

They are also especially powerful when used to “let go” and create space for the “new.”

If this is your first time creating your affirmation:

• It should be in the “present” tense
• You should use the “positive” form of the statement

So not “I will not be afraid”, but “I am strong, confident, and able to meet the challenges before me, every day.”

Personalize your affirmation by incorporating words with special meaning and value. If you write down the same affirmation monthly, you haven’t made any progress on the issue you’re trying to address (or you have a feeble memory and need to invest more time in this process). If either is the case, it’s time to rethink your position or game plan.

Grounding Exercises and Meditation

Grounding exercises are basically “emotional and mental balance” practices. They help create peace and calm when we feel too out of place for comfort. All parts of our lives can benefit from grounding ourselves regularly. We can accomplish this through techniques such as:

• Deep breathing
• Progressive muscle relaxation
• Take a “mindful” walk

The Sturgeon Moon is representative of making changes and significant life transformations. So naturally, it’s great to meditate on when we feel like making changes. Please take a moment to sit with ourselves and the full moon and let us dream about where we’ve been or what we want to close the door to and move past. This is a chance to meditate on the moon and everything it is, setting the scene for a new chapter to begin on the New Moon. It’s time to start saying your goodbyes, to physically and emotionally fill your life up, and say goodbye to this past two-year journey you’re closing the door to. Because you’re moving onward and upward, bask in the moon’s glow. If it’s visible where you are, take a second to appreciate it. What it is and what power the moon holds during this transitional part of the lunar cycle.

Documenting experiences and insights in the New Moon Journal is a powerful way to track personal growth and emotional shifts. Putting pen to paper in a more traditional manner may unlock something special in the moment. There is a strong link between memory and the act of writing, especially with a writing implement in hand. Even though genuinely brilliant- or even decent- ideas may come while performing this more meditative act, the practice’s real power lies in physically jotting them down. Writing makes them more accurate, permanent, and likely to come to fruition.

Energy Healing Rituals and Gratitude

Energy healing is a procedure that activates the subtle energy within the body systems, removes blocks, and restores the body’s natural balances, all to promote physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. It’s a practice not at all reliant upon one’s willpower. Along with August’s Sturgeon Moon, extra potent strides toward healing and transformation can be taken.

This moon encourages introspection and renewal. It’s the perfect time to participate in energy healing rituals that align with each moon’s ideas and messages about the world.

An effective form of the ritual could be using crystals in a circular formation. The crystals (amethyst, clear quartz, or whatever you have on hand) magnify healing intentions. In meditation, be sure to set personal aspirations and goals as you meditate. These aspirations are meant to have energy channeled to them. Sound bowls or chimes make great complementary tools that, when played, will vibrate louder and louder as energy shifts and releases. These sound tools can even become part of your ritual, as sometimes our healing process can look like that of a seasonal change, or even that of a new moon.

In times when healing energy, or Sturgeon Moon energy, is of interest, reflect upon the abundance in your life. From ‘shift your mindset from lack to a space of pure abundance,’ to ‘set in the presence of good vibes to cultivate a positive mindset,’ take a moment to write down a few things on which you reflect with appreciation and that make you feel ‘lucky.’

Reflection and Journaling

Reflection is an age-old tool people use to explore the innermost chambers of their lives—the things they do, how they feel, what they long for, and more. It’s a valuable exercise at any time during the year, but at the New Moon, pausing to reflect is a conscious way to acknowledge the “unknown” of the future. During the pause, you may want to express your thoughts in a journal. This quiet, thoughtful New Moon ritual will help explore the boundaries of one’s life and aspirations.

• What have I learned about myself in the past month? • What do I perceive about my life in the coming month? • What will make me happiest if I follow through on the hunch?

You might also reflect on more specific circumstances. These questions could provide a helpful start, so you can create entries that are indeed your own, not some formulaic astrology thing.

• Who can provide the support I need so I can follow through? • What stepping-stones will guide me on my way? • What affirmations help me stay on the path?

What is the Sturgeon Moon?

Usually taking place in August, the Great Lakes region’s Native American tribes named this the Sturgeon Moon because it was the time when this large fish was most likely to be caught. People have long seen this moon phase as an essential marker for when to secure the most plentiful catches. Around this time of the summer, the sturgeon and other fish like it would swim into the harvesting boats to the point where the boats would fill up.

Because of this, it’s a vital moon phase for many cultures, with some entertaining rituals. Some hold similar feasts to celebrate the cultural heritage of the moon and its symbolic properties, while others appreciate it as the arrival of a time of abundance. This is why holding a feast to celebrate is helpful. Many modern people practice abundance rituals under this moon, while others take the time to reflect on the abundance that this moon highlights in people’s day-to-day lives. In this way, the moon represents a recurring lunar abundance and an expression of one’s abundance in life.

The New Moon Journal by Namaste Studios

The New Moon Journal is a beautifully designed intention tool for the moon cycle. Its elegant layout has specific prompts and areas to write about what you want, as well as blank pages to spill your thoughts and goals into.

This journal can be particularly potent during the Sturgeon Moon (which is always most likely the new moon of August). New moons make for fresh starts, and they’re a great time to catch yourself and reel your desires into the universe. It’s best to write down exactly what you think; this journal already lays out all the sections for you to facilitate that conversation with its prompts.

You’ll also see bits and bobs thrown in to encourage positivity and optimistic thinking. Thinking back on past entries can be a good plan, too; this journal might be filled out little by little (so that you can snoop about for prevailing trends). That’s not to add anything else on top for you to do, just something for you to consider as an option. With just a minute bit of consistency, you’ll gradually become increasingly in-tune with your regularly communing thoughts and intertwining feelings about “general life stuff”.

Setting SMART Goals During the Sturgeon Moon

SMART goals provide a practical framework to structure clear, attainable goals.

• Specifics have two advantages: They bring into focus both the necessary environmental and attitudinal changes and the positive changes, from the student’s point of view, that performance improvement will bring.
• We will know when we have arrived because we will have a clear vision of the new location or the accomplished task.
• Achievable is the alternate and optimistic view of the previous displacement behavior.
• Relevant is the last of the human-scale and Thumb Rule applications.
• Time-bound has an idea of the concept of time, and if only we did not have to do so much else, the task would be easy!

Always a peak phase for personal growth and inner reflection, the unicorn’s magic will abound at this moon with well-placed intentions. It is a time to set intentions, to manifest one’s desires. It is easy to look upon the timing and rhythms of such an event, a full moon, and combine the SMART rules to make goal-setting easier and simplify the structuring of new goals. Continued learning streaks (lessons and reviews on consecutive days) will strengthen a student’s performance. This fish, a canned delicacy that not everyone enjoys, reaches record sizes and will undoubtedly retain a student’s magical strength.

Some may refer to this moon after their evening self-study journal entry, called the “New Moon Journal.” It may start with a student’s “musing,” not surmising. A look up at the stars of a new moon and a recap, an outline of each target subject from a student’s current notebook/journal or point of current focus; a pre-view of the couple of grammar subjects to be seen does not hurt. 

Also, that which surrounds, as in geography, or uses the outlined language as a solution, will guide the outline.

“Sturgeon Moon,” so named because it’s the best time of year to catch this type of fish, means different things to different cultures. But generally, it’s thought to symbolize a time of abundance, a time of reaping what you’ve sown or, you know, tried to catch. Consider what you should set (or reel) this month as it lights up the night sky. It’s the perfect time to do so.

Recommendation: Are you in need of some “moonspiration”? Check out the New Moon Journal from Namaste Studios. It offers inspirational messages for each month of 2021. Use the blank space to jot down your ups, downs, and in-between thoughts. (Don’t have any yet? Don’t worry, this journal comprises days of blank space.) And below those, write out your goals and intentions for the following month. Put everything on the page. Write your deepest secrets and highest ambitions on its (acid-free!) sheets because writing things down can help them happen. 

And since this edition of New Moon Journal comes stocked with a handful of “goal-getting archives,” you can record all the tiny (but mighty) steps you make toward catching your ROTY (Resolution of the Year), as well as following your guide to personal transformation.

Don’t miss your chance to make this your favorite summer. Guide to Personal Transformation (i.e., “you, version 2” see there’s only so much space I can use)

To learn more, visit our Moon Journal Blogs at Namaste Studios or buy a New Moon Journal on Amazon or our Namaste Studios Bookstore. 

For a Limited Time:  Get your NEW MOON JOURNAL for a massive discount at Amazon here!

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