The Rochelle Christiane Podcast
Welcome to the Rochelle Christiane Podcast! This is the space where spirituality meets self-discovery and personal growth. I’m your host, Rochelle Christiane—your guide to holistic health, emotional regulation, embodiment and soulful alignment. This space is all about helping you reconnect with your body’s wisdom, master your emotions, and align with your unique energy using tools like astrology, Human Design, and holistic wellness practices. Each week, I’ll share transformative conversations and practical guidance to help you heal, embody your truth, and create deeper alignment in your life. This is your invitation to step into your power, trust yourself, and master your emotions. Let’s dive in!
Are you ready to connect deeply with your body, align with your energy, and unlock your fullest potential? Through my Wholistic Human Design Academy and one-on-one coaching, I help women like you embrace their intuition, understand their astrology and Human Design charts, and cultivate confidence in their unique energy. Together, we’ll create the alignment you’ve been seeking—whether it’s deconditioning limiting beliefs, attracting abundance, or finding peace within.
The Rochelle Christiane Podcast
255. Emotional Intelligence, Astrology & Your Business
This week spoke with Meaghan Dunham, business mentor and astrologer, all about emotional intelligence.
In this episode, Meaghan and I talk about:
- From music teacher to marketing to Astrologer
- Astrology is the permission slip to be
- Elements of the moon
- Working with the moon in business
- Mercury and the moon
- The importance of emotional intelligence
- Using the transits in astrology
- The birth chart and Ayurveda
- Midheaven and the 10th house
- Post Saturn return
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Email: info@rochellechristiane.com
The Self Care Collective, created by Cassandra Juniphant and her company Ori Ara, is a space for real women, living real lives, and committed to real self-care. It’s not just another wellness group—it’s a community. A support system. A place where you can show up exactly as you are and evolve into who you want to be.
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Welcome to the Rochelle Christian podcast, formerly the Emotional Mastery podcast. I'm Rochelle, your host. I'm here to help you come back to your body, take charge of your emotions and live life on your terms. This podcast is a space for raw, real conversations about what it means to trust yourself, lean into your power and create a life that feels aligned and alive. We'll explore human design, astrology and other tools to help you understand your unique energy. More importantly, though, we're going to talk about what it means to actually live and embody these aspects.
Speaker 1:So each week, I'm going to share stories, lessons, guidance to help you navigate life's challenges and really own your magic. So if you're ready to step up, take control and show up as the most authentic version of you, let's begin. Today I have Megan Dunham, who is a business mentor and astrologer, and we're going to get into all things astrology and emotional intelligence which I find so fascinating. I absolutely love to dig into things from that lens. So, just to start, if you are open to sharing a little bit about your human design and your astrology and anything that you feel really kind of maybe made sense as to like the path that you got on, and then just your story, like as much or as little as you'd like to share um any pivotal moments. That sort of got you where you're at today and we'll go from there.
Speaker 2:Sounds good. Okay, so it's a long story. Of course, everyone has a long story, right. But I'll start at the beginning.
Speaker 2:When I decided that I was going to go to college, I thought that I was going to be a teacher. That's what I always wanted to be, ever since I was little. I have pictures of myself at like seven years old, sitting at an old like student's desk that my grandparents had at their house and pretending to be the teacher. Right, so that was like my dream. So I went to school for education and I became a music teacher and I was a music teacher for a number of years and it was so joyful and satisfying. I loved the kids. I worked in elementary school.
Speaker 2:Uh, but my last year I got really sick and I had to have my gallbladder removed and I began to realize that a lot of the reason why I was feeling so sick was because I had so much stress. I would stay up late at night worrying about some of my kids and where they were and who was taking care of them, and you know, it was just. It was really hard. It was really hard. I didn't feel like I had the support from my administrators all the stories that lots of teachers tell right. So the final straw for me, I think, was when I got really sick and I was only offered one week of time to take off after my surgery. And I'll never forget coming back to school and having the kindergarten nurse come to my classroom because I was a music teacher. I saw all the kids in the school and one of the teacher their teacher said to all the kids OK, I know you want to give her a hug, but you can't right now because you know she, she has a hurt belly and just the amount of care that we had to take in explaining the whole situation to the kids and I just felt heartbroken and that was that was kind of it for me, and that was kind of it for me.
Speaker 2:So I decided that I was going to move on from teaching and see if I could find something else that could fulfill me and still offer me that opportunity to be a teacher, but in a way that didn't require me to lose my physical well-being, lose my physical health.
Speaker 2:So I began in corporate, in the corporate space, and I thought, oh well, maybe this will be better because you know I'll actually be able to go to the bathroom when I want to and take breaks, um, and ended up working, as I think a lot of people experience a somewhat toxic corporate environment, and then I just realized that the only way that I was going to really make this thing my own was, or this experience my own, was, by being an entrepreneur, and so I began teaching people about marketing because I knew that that's what I could do right, having worked in corporate marketing, and in 2017, I had my astrology chart read for the first time, and I realized in that moment that all of the things that I didn't like about myself, all of the things that I thought were wrong, quote unquote with me, were actually parts of myself that I could see reflected in my astrology chart, and I no longer felt like they were a burden.
Speaker 2:I all of a sudden felt like a door had opened and the possibility of me facing those things that I didn't necessarily like about myself it just felt easier and more approachable, and so that kind of led me on the path of my spiritual awakening. I got my yoga teacher certification in 2019, and I started to incorporate those things into the work that I did and, as someone who has experience as a teacher and someone who has experience working in the social and emotional learning space, I felt that using those tools to help people better understand themselves through their astrology chart in my one-to-one coaching just felt like a really natural fit, and so that's where I am today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I resonate so strongly with just the first time I saw for me my introduction to like that sort of world was human design.
Speaker 1:And very shortly after, because astrology is a huge part of that right, it was kind of astrology, but I remember the same thing.
Speaker 1:When I saw my chart I was like, wow, everything I think is wrong with me isn't it's only because I'm resisting it, I'm trying to fit into this box that I'm not made for was the most liberating thing ever. I mean, of course, there was so much work after that to really accept it, because then you have all the conditioning and the you know subconscious beliefs and like that's still a journey. But to have something that I felt like I could come back to and have the languaging of like, oh, this is what it is, you know, I don't have to be this, I can just be this. It's so powerful and you know, kind of like you, I feel like that was the thing. That helping other people see that and have that same experience was like the driver for me too, so it's so beautiful. What in your chart do you feel like, or was there anything that really spoke to specifically like the emotional aspect of it for you?
Speaker 2:Um, I think learning about my moon sign was really important for me. I, when I was young, I would read horoscopes and you know 17 magazine and all those things. Maybe I'm dating myself I don't know.
Speaker 2:And I'm an Aries moon, but I'm a sorry, not an Aries moon. I'm an Aries sun but a Taurus moon, and so those two energies are very opposite from one another. And so I would always read the Aries horoscope because I knew that I was an Aries sun and I never fully resonated with that energy talking about being a fighter and picking fights and being aggressive, and I just was never that type of person. And it wasn't until I learned about my astrology chart that I learned that I had my moon and my Venus and Taurus, and those are two really powerful placements and also my south node is in Libra, and so there's a lot of this like Venusian energy that surrounds me and the way that I interact with the world, and it helped me understand who I am and be more accepting of the more assertive part of myself, that is, my Aries North Node and my Aries Sun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm like sort of flipped in that way, like the same energies. I'm a Taurus sun and a Leo moon, so for me and I have a Leo rising, so kind of that same thing where I felt like, yeah, I did embody some of that grounded energy, but I felt this like fire that was always like burning inside. So I was like my emotions were super dramatic, like a lot of the way that I did things was like fast, and so I really resonate with being a Taurus, but at the same time there was just this piece that I was like but but what about this little like fiery part of me? Like I felt like I constantly suppressed that. So it's sort of the same thing.
Speaker 1:And then I also have my I think we're born the same year because I have my North node in Aries, my South node and libra, as well as like all that. Like that, um, you know, like for me, being leo rising to like the sun and taurus and then venus, I feel like that whole like little you know you can go down that rabbit hole are so fascinating, right, but it really is so prominent to like the experience. But yeah, it's, it's so fascinating just to see, like how these little pieces show us and and how we resist that part of ourselves.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yep, yeah. I mean I'm a Capricorn rising too, so I have a lot of earth, a lot of earth, but I didn't know that I had that earth. I always assumed that I was just a fiery person that was living inside of a body that didn't necessarily feel fiery all the time. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So how can we, you know, whatever our moon sign is, if we're looking from that lens like, lean into that or understand that in a way to help our, you know, emotional world?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So it's so funny that I'm talking about this because I'm actually leading a workshop soon called the Head and the Heart, which is about our Mercury and our moon sign and how they can work together.
Speaker 2:I think that that is the maybe the first gateway that people can take as they're learning more about astrology is their moon sign, because it's such a, it's such a personal placement, right, it's our subconscious, it's the way that we see ourselves, it's our inner voice, it's our emotions and the way that we react to things.
Speaker 2:And I think that, um, just like you said, you you knew you had that little fire inside of you, but you didn't know exactly where it came from, and then you realized you were a Leo moon and it gave you the, the um, permission to express that part of yourself. And I think that that is a really important key to healing perhaps some of the trauma that we've experienced, or to deconditioning is to understand our moon sign, because that in you know, within our deepest self, is who we are and how we interact with the world, um, and and how we react to things. So if we know that we react by pulling back and dissociating, like a Taurus moon, perhaps then it gives us the opportunity to build guardrails and to build in systems that we can use so that, when we are reacting to something in our environment, we already know how to anticipate the way that we're going to react.
Speaker 1:Can you maybe just describe, like maybe elementally, how each of us would kind of lean into that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so from an elemental perspective, we have four elements in astrology. We have the earth, which is Taurus and Virgo and Capricorn right. We have the fire, which is the Leo and the Aries and the Sagittarius. We have the air, which is Aquarius, Gemini and Libra. I'm trying to think on the chart.
Speaker 2:And then we have the water, which is Cancer and Scorpio and Pisces. So all of those different, we all have different ways of acting based on those elements, right? Of course, each of the zodiac sign represents or manifests in a different way according to the element, but they're all fairly similar. If we think about water, for example, water is very deep and I think that most people think of our emotions when they think about water. So someone with a Cancer moon, for instance, is going to be a highly emotional person, a highly deeply feeling person, because if you think about water and the ocean, it holds so much, and so knowing that about yourself, knowing that you might be more sensitive, more intuitive, more in tune with the energy around you, could give you the opportunity to build in systems that support that extra sensitivity that you might feel in times when you're feeling triggered. Likewise, someone who is an air moon that is more of an intellectual reaction.
Speaker 2:So, in the same way that the earth is logical and so can dissociate, I think that the intellectual moons can also dissociate because they're trying to piece apart what happened and trying to make sense of it, and that can feel really draining and exhausting. So, knowing that about yourself perhaps you're an Aquarius moon, knowing that you like to dissect experiences that you have and and have an answer for why something is the way that it is you could try to soften that a little bit and realize that you're not always going to have the answer. And so what can you build in that supports you when you have those moments where you're not quite sure exactly what's happening? And then you have the fire moons, so, like an Aries moon, of course, fire is known for moving very quickly and for generating a lot of heat. So people who have fire moons often react very quickly to situations, and sometimes the reaction can be overblown or can be larger than perhaps it needed to be at the moment. But that's just the way that people with fire moons are. And so, understanding that your reaction might be big and impulsive, what can you do to build in systems to support you in those moments, so that you're not running around, you know, trying to put out all the metaphorical fires, and you're not feeling like you're not feeling really angry or really frustrated in that moment.
Speaker 2:The dissociativeness of an earth moon comes from the fact that they're in the same way that air moons, I think, are trying to find an answer. Earth moons do as well. But there's this sense of trying to keep your feet on the ground during a crisis. And I noticed that about myself, that when other people are kind of spinning out around me, that I'm always the one who's kind of bringing people back together and trying to chart the way forward, and that can feel very overwhelming, because sometimes I want to spin out but I don't feel like I can because I'm the one who has to kind of hold everyone's feet to the ground. And so, knowing that about myself, then what are the things that I can do to support myself when I need to have that opportunity to actually just release?
Speaker 1:that energy. Yeah, I love that. I haven't heard it put that way before. I am someone who, for some reason, constantly attracts Capricorn moons.
Speaker 1:And I'm like we are so not compatible emotionally just because I'm so dramatic, but I've I've learned to like love them because they so they're so grounded Right, but maybe, like you said, it's because they feel this obligation to like hold that that they can't like get wrapped up in their own stuff, but I'm like just meet me here, come here be dramatic with me and they're like what is wrong with you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a sense. There's definitely a sense of obligation. I think that comes with all of the earth science.
Speaker 1:How can we like, when we're looking from the lens of you know business because I think, specifically, entrepreneurship is this ever evolving journey of self-discovery in order to like be in it and like, remember, like why you're doing it, cause it's challenging. But how does that, you know, how can we work with, specifically, that moon energy and like whatever way that shows up in our business, because I mean it's, it can be super emotional, right, and learning to like separate that while staying authentic is kind of a challenge.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I would challenge people to think about it, not in the way that you're separating things right, because as an entrepreneur, you really can't separate the personal from the professional. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But what I would say is that entrepreneurship is the deepest way to get to know yourself. It's the best course that you can take in self-development, and the more you know about yourself, the more successful I think you will be. And so when I when I look at it, you know, from the perspective of your moon specifically is I look at what does your moon sign desire and then what can you do to create that desire inside your business. So, going back to my moon placement, I have my Taurus, my moon and Taurus, so that means that I desire stability. So how do I create stability in my business? Maybe that means that I create monthly recurring revenue, because that helps me understand every month that I'm going to be receiving the same amount of money and therefore it gives me the stability I need to be able to branch out and do other things.
Speaker 2:Leo moons need creativity, right. So how can you build creativity into your business? How can you build in? Um, you know, maybe you do new seasonal offers every once in a while and you try this, that and the other, and you keep things fresh, because that's what your deepest desire is as a Leo moon. Yeah, maybe as a Gemini moon. You know, you love learning, and so how do you add in those opportunities for learning new things and incorporating the things that you've learned into the way that you're structuring your business and the way that you're interacting with your clients and your audience?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. How do you? So, going back to sort of like you said, you're doing that workshop on, like Mercury and the moon, which I find is so fascinating because I've often tried to or like just in understanding those. My Mercury is in Taurus as well, and then my moon is in Leo.
Speaker 1:So it's like there's all this fire, but then I'm feel like I have to communicate it in this like really grounded, practical way, and sometimes the ideas take a while to like percolate right to the point where I feel like I can communicate them. Um, so how are you like pairing these two together and like how does that work for us?
Speaker 2:so I haven't fully formulated the workshop yet, but I am reading a book that is. That has been very helpful for me to understand the relationship between those two planets, especially when you have a Mercury placement and a moon placement that feel like they are not working together. So I think that the first thing to recognize is that you know, we all have dissonance in our chart. It doesn't matter where it is, and the more we can understand that the dissonance is a place of growth and a place for curiosity, the easier it becomes to begin to integrate those things together together. So obviously, I think, particularly as women, it can be difficult for us to work with our head and our heart, because our head sometimes I think more often than not feels like it's fighting against our heart. So I think that's why it can be really important to understand what it is that those what, what fight are they having? What it is that you know, what are those conversations that are being um, that are being put forward.
Speaker 2:So for me, for instance, my mercury is in pisces and my moon is in torus, so they're both very slow moving, and so what does that mean? Um? But then it's the water and the earth right, and so the water and the earth together can mean that I have a really hard time moving things forward, that I stew over them before I bring them to life, and so in that sense I'm seeing, okay, what are the? And I look at this from the Ayurvedic perspective as well, because I study- Ayurveda.
Speaker 2:And when I think about the elements of water and earth, I think about mud. And what happens with mud is that there's this kind of like you get stuck and then it's really hard to move out of that. It's almost like quicksand if you let yourself sit in it for too long, but mud is also very cooling and very soothing out of that. It's almost like quicksand if you let yourself sit in it for too long, but mud is also very cooling and very soothing. And so I have to kind of come at it from a multi-lens perspective of, okay, well, I recognize that it could take me a little bit longer to make decisions because I'm, you know, I have all these things moving around in my head and my heart, but once I actually do bring those things to life, here are the qualities that I can enshrine in those ideas, in those services, in those offerings that are going to bring forth the best of me, and the best of me might be this really grounding and supportive energy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that and I liked what you said about there's always a part of our chart that holds some dissonance right, and I think that's the beautiful part about really getting to understand you through the lens of your chart, because I think, just as humans, we're always going to experience that on some level, right and and, of course, like our conditioning and just all these messages of like.
Speaker 1:You know, especially, like you said, the fight between like the heart and the head, right Of like.
Speaker 1:This is what I think, or this is the thing that's been conditioned in here, but then this is what I truly like desire and what I want and being able to like have those meet somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 1:You know, and I think I mean emotional intelligence is I was just having a conversation with somebody and it's it's just, I think it's one of the most important things that we can do for ourselves, like even you know, I mean even for me like having a fire moon, like I'm so dramatic, but like learning, learning to like take that pause, and it's not to like stop what I'm feeling or stop my experience, but it's to like like see myself through it, if that makes sense, you know, and so I think that's like the power of. But before I knew I had a Leo moon, I was like I can't be this dramatic, like I can't be, I can't have these intense emotions Like it's just wrong. Right, and I think that's the beautiful thing is being able to step back and be like no, it's not wrong, it is what it is and also like how are we going to move through this?
Speaker 1:So I think that you know, combining that you know with business I think is so powerful and I've, and I feel like I had like a reading with somebody who he was a Capricorn moon but he was like super successful, like businessman, you know, and like he would tell me about these situations where people would come into his office just like all heated and things like that, and I'm like that Capricorn moon is so beautiful in that situation because you're not being like pulled into the emotional world, that that stability of the earth moon was so like I could see it played out, where he would just like respond to people as like okay, and how are we going to move through this, but people would want him to fight. People come in looking for an argument or looking for a fight and I think just understanding the dynamics of all of that is so cool to watch it being played out and having that emotional intelligence to know not to get sucked into it, because I think without it we're very reactionary.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, I think as humans, especially living in such a chaotic time, it is very easy to react just at the flip of a hat and not take any responsibility for your reaction. And I think that is where emotional intelligence comes in, and particularly understanding your innate qualities or your innate impulses through your astrology chart can be super helpful.
Speaker 1:Is there anywhere else in our chart besides, just like the moon, that we can look at to understand or to work with this part of ourselves?
Speaker 2:I think, yes, I think that each part of our chart can help us understand ourselves in a different way. I think that another part of our chart that speaks to the depth and the subconsciousness would be our Neptune placement. And Neptune is a generational planet, which means that people, within a certain period of time, are all going to have that same placement. So people who were born around the same time as me are going to have their Neptune and Capricorn, and one of the things that I find so fascinating I've read dozens of charts at this point and a lot of people have come to me, have had their Neptune and Capricorn and there's this deep sense of responsibility for charting a new way forward that I see in a lot of these people who come to me with placement, particularly as it relates to our subconscious and healing our subconscious, healing our inner child, healing our, you know, doing the shadow work, and that can feel like a really heavy burden, and I see it in a lot of people's faces when they come and have readings with me, and I think it's important to recognize that.
Speaker 2:One of the beautiful things about Neptune is that it allows you to go really, really deep, but one of the hard things about Neptune is that, because of that depth, there is often a desire to stop and just kind of look away. It's too hard, and I think I would encourage people to. When we're thinking about doing the work the emotional intelligence work, the shadow work, the inner child work, the emotional intelligence work, the shadow work, the inner child work Don't push yourself too hard. I think that is a trap that people fall into, especially women, who are conditioned to do it all and be it all. Take baby steps, don't feel like you have to get to the end as quickly as possible. This is a process, it's a journey, and it's more important to experience the full um range of emotion that comes through the journey rather than being focused on the destination.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's really important and it's something that's so hard to like really be in. You know, especially, I don't know if it's just all my fire energy, but I'm like no, I want to be there now, Like I know, in the beginning of my journey. That's why I was like no-transcript that piece of my chart. So it's interesting that you bring that up and I think that, especially with that Neptune and Capricorn doing the depth and doing the work around, work, I guess, with Capricorn, and then that need or the possibility, I guess, of escaping it, Right, it's like, it's like I don't know. I mean obviously like addictions and burnout and disassociation and avoidance and all those things that can come with that energy towards work makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that it's important to remember that this is a collective energy and so it's not one that you have to. It's not a journey that you have to go on by yourself. Yeah, that there are a lot of people within your same generation who are experiencing the same thing, that you are, of course, you know, within different houses and that sort of thing. Um, knowing that this is a collective journey, um, I think help can help, um us really think about how we rewrite those stories yeah, do you work with a transist?
Speaker 2:I do ish. I am more of a birth chart reader, so okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, I sorry. I was like I heard the siren we have. I'm in Texas so they put off those sirens like at noon on Saturdays and so I was like what is happening? I know there's not a tornado, I forgot, I don't know if you could hear it. I did it distract me for a second.
Speaker 2:I heard it just a little tiny bit yeah.
Speaker 1:It'll pass. That's so funny. I heard it just a little tiny bit yeah, it'll pass, that's so funny, yeah. But as far as like the transits, I'm always curious, just, I mean, I I work with them in the sense of like, I use it a lot for reflection, I I find that I can't like, I like, I track them and I know what's coming, but it's never until I'm past it that I can actually have the the like perspective of like.
Speaker 1:Oh that's what was happening in my life. That's why, you know, I like saying for me Uranus has been on my son, which I don't know what degree your moon's at, but I'm sure Uranus has been passing over it at some point in the last what eight years or something like that, but it was literally just. I mean, my son is at 24 degrees of Taurus, so it's been like hovering over that for a while and I like recently quit my nine to five and it's in my 10th house. So I like quit my nine to five, I was like I'm burning it all down, like I can't do this anymore. And then afterwards I was like, oh shit, that's maybe like I let the pressure of that like get to me. But you know it is what it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I, um, I my um, I um, I my um. My home and roots is in in Taurus as well. Um, so I got married, and so I think that for me, that was like the huge shift and change for me was that I always, I never thought I was going to find someone um to be with for my entire life. I was. I was this kind of like fiercely independent woman, eerie, son, right and um. Then, in 2022, I met my husband and it was like just kidding, yeah, so, for sure, I love that, I love that.
Speaker 1:So you bring in a little bit of, like those ancient modalities, right, like, are you veda and things like that? How like? How do you work, or do you work with that, with clients? Like, as you're reading a birth chart, are you taking into consideration those things and how do you, how do you weave them in?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we we take a look at for Ayurveda specifically, we take a look at their elemental composition in their chart. Do they have a lot of earth? Do they have a lot of fire? And what I've noticed is, depending on their elemental composition, it can often tell me what their Ayurvedic constitution is. And if you're not familiar with the Ayurvedic constitution, in Ayurveda there are five elements instead of four. So it's still earth, water, fire, fire, air, but um. Then there's another one called space or ether, and those four elements are comprised, or um they're, they create three different doshas is what we call them and um.
Speaker 2:Basically, what happened is that these ayurvedic scholars, thousands of years ago, they were, uh, looking at nature and they were observing what was happening, and they noticed that the combination of elements came together in three very distinct ways. The first is kapha, which is earth and water. The second is pitta, which is water and fire, and the third is vata, which is air and space. And what I can often see in someone's chart is if they have, for instance, a lot of fire, then they're definitely a pitta. Like there's no, especially if one of their big three is in a fire sign.
Speaker 2:More often than not, when we go through the Ayurvedic quiz and we learn a little bit more about their lifestyle.
Speaker 2:They're, for sure, a pitta, their lifestyle, their frusciapitta, and so then that really kind of helps me from a coaching perspective to help them build in guardrails for, you know, where they may suffer burnout or where they may get stuck or where they may dissociate, or where they may start something but never want to finish it, and I think it's just one extra tool that is really supportive in helping not only me but also my clients understand more about themselves.
Speaker 2:The really neat thing about Ayurveda, too, is that it moves with the seasons. So we right now we are at the end of Vata season, the beginning of Kapha season, and so what does that mean as far as the transition of energy, and how does that impact a person who is Kapha, or how does that impact a person who is Vata or Pitta? See how you know I can, I help my clients see how that energy might be more supportive during certain times of year to, you know, launch something, or to create more space in their business, or to even go on vacation and just let themselves live for a couple of weeks or a couple of days or whatever they need, and I just find that the intersection of those modalities can be really extra supportive in creating a business that feels more energetically aligned for the people that I'm working with.
Speaker 1:How do you find ether in a birth chart?
Speaker 2:so that is a hard one, but I think that most of the time when I see someone has a lot of air placements in their chart, it points to them being a vata um, so there really is not necessarily a something that completely translates to ether um, but I would say that the and I think it's interesting too, actually, because in some cases someone like a Pisces who has Pisces energy, where we know that Pisces has the predisposition to kind of space out, if you will, that that could be seen as a space energy. So it's really more about understanding the energetic qualities of the different zodiac signs. Of course, definitely the elemental qualities come into play, but there can be a little bit of a second step to the process.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would say from I mean, just like my knowledge of ether, what the first two that I would think of was like Pisces and Aquarius, just for like that fact of being like yeah, kind of like out there, and like I always describe Pisces as like being in the ether, so you're just, you're not like grounded right quite here and I know it's water. But that was kind of my first thought as it relates to that. It's interesting, yeah. So how, how are you like, like if we're again kind of pivoting back to that lens of like business, like in what stage are you working with people? Is it like in the beginning of their business, or they're trying to stabilize it or grow? Like is there, or all of the above, but like is there a place that you find people typically come to you?
Speaker 2:Typically I have people come to me when they are in the very beginning stages of their business. So within the first five years I've had some people come to me who've been entrepreneurs for a number of years. But there's always some sort of beginning that's happening with them. So perhaps they're starting a new business or perhaps they've moved and they have to kind of start their client base from the ground up. There's always this sense of a seed that's been planted that they are looking for nurturance and guidance to help grow.
Speaker 1:Have you noticed like a common thread through, like their charts or anything?
Speaker 2:That's a good question. I think that, obviously, one of the things that I've noticed is that a lot of people tend to come to me with the same generational planets, um, so people who are within that same um, born within that same time time period, um. But I also noticed that there are a lot of women who have placements that um that would point to them being more open-minded.
Speaker 2:So I have women who will come to me who have a lot of Sagittarius energy. They're like, yes, like, give me all of this, you know, like philosophical stuff, like I want to sink my teeth into it. I also have people who come to me with that Gemini, like curiosity energy, where there's this kind of um innocence about them that they feel like you know they, they desire someone to kind of spark that next um, that next period of growth for them. And I think that, as someone who also has a lot of earth placements, I tend to attract people who are opposite from me, who desire the strength and stability and um, perhaps I don't know if rigidity is the right word, but structure that comes with me, being a copper coin rising, for instance. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Is there anything that so I know we've talked about Mercury and the moon and Neptune and things like that but, like, if somebody is coming to you beginning their business, besides like the emotional aspect of it, is there anything that you're necessarily seeing in it to maybe help them, like clarify their vision or like, do they already have an established business so they're trying to like figure that out through the lens of their chart?
Speaker 2:Most people that come to me already have an established business, so they've already kind of figured out what their purpose is, but they're really struggling with how to bring it to life. So one of the things that we can look at their astrology chart for, specifically when it comes to business, as their midheaven and their 10 where's their 10th house right obviously that is a very important part of understanding your public life, but I don't necessarily think it's the only piece.
Speaker 2:So it's almost like the first piece of the puzzle. We'll look at that puzzle piece first and we'll say, okay, well, how, for instance, if your midheaven is in Scorpio and your 10,000th is in Scorpio, how could that manifest for you? But I think it's really important not to put words in people's mouths and to hold space for them to discover what it means for them, rather than saying, okay, well, you have a Scorpio midheaven. Discover what it means for them, rather than saying, okay, well, you have a Scorpio midheaven. So that means that you are going to be someone who just goes in and gets really deep with people and helps them. You know, pull out the roots.
Speaker 2:Um, it could be that or it could be something completely different. Someone who has a Libra Midheaven doesn't necessarily have to be a lawyer. That's a very literal depiction of what it means to be a Libra Midheaven. Someone who is an Aries Midheaven doesn't necessarily have to be a CEO of a Fortune 500 company Like. That's again, just a very literal depiction, and I think that people will sometimes come to me with those preconceived notions and I think it's really important to hold space for the discovery that it might be something that they might actually already be doing. It is what I discover a lot that they might feel like, oh, I'm not really aligned with my midheaven, I don't really understand how that works. But then, as we dig a little bit deeper, they begin to understand that actually, oh yeah, I am exhibiting these qualities just in ways that I hadn't really thought about before.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it definitely is like a holistic thing and it's not like one piece or the other, and I think sometimes we can get caught up in just like this one aspect of it that's gonna like unlock the key or unlock the like all the answers you know. So I think like, yeah, looking at it from that like broader lens of how is it all kind of playing into that Makes a lot of sense. How do you feel like your experience like even just like with music and teaching, has like brought you to where you're at today? So even just like I feel, like I hear it in the way that you speak, like I can hear that sort of like that like teacher energy, right of being like in a session with somebody, and I think that's yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, I find it hilarious that my mercury is in Pisces and that I was a musician. It just feels very literal to me. I think that, um, I think that one of the things that I learned through music, specifically because I was, um, and still am, a vocalist so my body is my voice or is my instrument? Excuse me, my voice is my instrument. And I remember doing a podcast interview with someone years ago and she asked me the same question and I thought to myself.
Speaker 2:Actually, I think what it is for me is that when I was a singer, I was sharing this very deep and intimate extension of myself out into the world through my voice, and I think, ultimately, that's what we do as business owners. We have this little seed that's inside of ourselves and we nurture it until it grows and then is shared with the world and it's. It can be very scary because it's this really deep and intimate part of ourselves, and I think that being a person who has familiarity with the power of bringing that up and out to share with the world through music has been a really beautiful guiding light for me as an entrepreneur and as a coach.
Speaker 1:How do you do you still incorporate music just like in your everyday, Like are you performing places, or is it just something you keep for yourself?
Speaker 2:I still teach, yeah, very, very rarely nowadays. I haven't really taught in about 10 years, but I do teach a little tiny ones, and I think that that is, um, that's part of the joy for me is that I wanted to be able to ultimately get back to the joy that I felt in being um, get back to the joy that I felt in being um and sharing music, and I think that sharing music with little tiny humans who are still in those very formative years, um, is just another beautiful way for me to bring joy into my life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. I think kids I have two, mine's 14 and eight but my eight-year-old, my 14-year-old, she's kind of gone through her conditioning now and like society and friends and school and stuff like that, so she's a little bit more hesitant, but my son will just like bounce around singing and I think it's just such an authentic expression that, like kids don't necessarily feel the fear of like oh my gosh, what are they gonna think about me? You know, like he's just everywhere singing in the shower and you know I think it's a really authentic expression for everyone that I think sometimes we disconnect from as we get older, like I even for me I'm like I could never sing in public, like I don't think I'm good at singing but I do love like I mean, like most people sing the shower with my kids and stuff like that. But I also, you know, I went to college a couple of times and I finally got my bachelor's degree in photography because I was like I need to do something. Maybe it's the Leo Moon, the creativity was like I need to do something that really like ignites my passion and is creative.
Speaker 1:But then I found when I did it professionally I lost my passion for it.
Speaker 1:I was like I think it was the exchange of money for something that I felt so deeply.
Speaker 1:For that I was like I can't do this anymore and it was always by somebody else's standards and not mine, which is where I feel more, and it's probably just age and growth and experience now, where I have my own business, and now it's kind of like by my rules and if you don't, maybe it's just the ability to communicate what I do and what I offer and not be like, well, what do you want from me? You know what I mean. It's like the more empowering thing of like I'm going to attract people who are here for me. That I didn't necessarily have in my twenties. But yeah, I don't know, I just cause you had mentioned, you know that you hadn't taught in a while and I think that that is maybe something that's very, um, maybe not talked about or that's common, where we lose the drive for something that we feel so passionate about because of that. You know, I don't think it has to be that way, but I think it's an experience for a lot of people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree with that. I think that that's one of the beautiful things about being an entrepreneur is that you have the opportunity. If you feel like you are not being fulfilled and you feel like things are not moving in the direction that you want them to, you have the opportunity to move in a different direction.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when I think that early experience with, I guess at the time I wouldn't have considered myself an entrepreneur, but if I was, I mean that's basically what it was. It was a photographer, right, like it was my business. I was taking pictures of people, but it was the inability to express what I wanted to do, right. It was more so, like I feel like the lesson there was in in being able to stand in like what I do, and to be able to say no to people. But I'd like back then like this is my early 20s I couldn't say no. It's like people wanted me to do all sorts of pictures at weddings and I, literally I can't stand doing weddings.
Speaker 1:It's not a passion of mine, but I found myself doing it for the paycheck no-transcript thing, and we are all like afraid of it and I'm like I there's like simultaneously like society, right where I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm getting older and I look different and my body looks different. But then at the same time I'm like but it's also so exciting, like the older I get, the less I care, and it's not like, it's not like a selfish thing, it's just like I don't care as much about what other people think about me anymore you know, yeah, yeah and um, I, I have a mentor who talks about the um, the midlife transits, and I don't know a lot about them.
Speaker 2:But, um, the nodal return at the age of 37 is kind of the beginning of the midlife transits and it is so fascinating to me how much more comfortable I am in my skin after that initial experience and now knowing that I have all of these other transits to look forward to all the way up until the age of 50. And I'm actually really looking forward to them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's challenging my kids. They were like I can't remember what it was a few months ago that my kids are like mom, are you middle-aged? And I'm like not yet, give me the next four years, let's not talk about this. But like I do notice. It's just that, I think, is a conversation. We don't have enough that aging conversation, because even you know, I listened to my mom and she's in her sixties and the, the the like, almost like unwillingness to admit that aging is a thing like the avoidance of the conversation, of it and it's I don't know. Like I mean, you know, everybody has their things, you know.
Speaker 1:And, like I said, sometimes I look in the mirror. I noticed, like, like I tried to do like something working out the other day and I noticed my knee cracked and I was like oh, like, come on. But at the same time I just think like the evolution of who I am is so beautiful at this at this age, right? So I think like looking at it from that way, is is really cool, definitely. But how do you so kind of going back to the whole, like you know, the, the emotional intelligence, how do you feel like since your evolution, you know, or since you first discovered this in 2017 until now. Like how do you feel? Like your relationship with your own emotions has like shifted, like where was it then? And kind of like what has the evolution been to be where you're at now? And like where do you think it's going?
Speaker 2:Um, so I look back at my twenties in particular. So in 2017, I had just entered my thirties and I look back at my twenties in particular and I cringe a lot. And I look back at my 20s in particular and I cringe a lot. I was a person who felt uncomfortable taking accountability. I was a person who constantly felt like I had to live for other people rather than living for myself. I felt a huge responsibility to maintain certain standards, and when I had my astrology reading, I think I realized for the first time that it was okay for me to live the life that I wanted to live and to not be so focused on being someone else that someone wanted me to be that I began to realize that my passion for certain things wasn't something that I had to be ashamed of. It wasn't something that I needed to, that I couldn't follow. I think so.
Speaker 2:When I was a teacher, I was really afraid that I couldn't be anything else other than a teacher because I had a master's degree in education.
Speaker 2:I had spent all this time and all this money focusing on being a teacher and, in a lot of ways, I felt like I had failed everyone when I decided that I didn't want to be a teacher anymore, and in 2017, that was the first year that I wasn't teaching at all, and I think that if I had not had that astrology reading, I know for sure that I would still be working in corporate and I would not have my own company. I would not be an entrepreneur, because in some crazy way I think a lot of it conditioning I felt like I wasn't worth it. I felt like I didn't have the skill set that was needed to be able to bring all of these things that I was so passionate about life. I was afraid that some, that people, wouldn't listen to me, that I didn't have the authority to speak on XYZ, and I think that that moment sparked in me this deep desire to prove everyone wrong. Capricorn.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I think it's interesting how, you know, know, in our 20s we spend so much energy and money in our education to create this like identity, I guess, for ourselves, and then when it kind of crumbles, we're just like, wait what? Now? You, I you know I bounce between different things but like even just having that final degree of like photography. I'm like I'm a photographer and then, like, for me, it was 2015 when I stopped. No, 2000, might've been 2017 as well yeah, when I cause I had my son. So, yeah, I think it was around the same time and I was like I same thing. Well, I didn't go into corporate, I went to a gym and then I went into corporate, but like that shift of not doing that creative work anymore, you know, it's really interesting and I also think, like that Saturn return and there's this piece about.
Speaker 2:I think that 30 to 31,.
Speaker 1:That age is so interesting because it's like everything that we knew for some reason around that time I don't know if it's because of our Saturn return, but it's like everything that we thought that we knew about ourselves is like all of a sudden confronting and like, not like way to have to build all over again, you know, and then like finding, I think, through that, finding that thing that really like gives you that fire. And some people are fortunate to find it in the early twenties. I wasn't. I was, you know, going crazy, partying very much. I have Jupiter in Pisces, so I was just very much in that phase of my life. I'm like I'm just going to drink and have fun. And I mean I had my daughter young too, so that was a part of it where I was forced to I wouldn't say forced to be a mom. I'm blessed to be a mom, but I don't know, I didn't. When I look at it, you know my daughter's 14, I'm like man in 10 years.
Speaker 1:If she had a kid, I would be like wait, just wait some more time to figure yourself out, but we all have our own journeys, so I don't know it's interesting, yes, yeah. So what do you feel like? Um, just in, like kind of coming into a conclusion of this or not conclusion, but like what, what would? What advice would you give someone? Kind of like coming into this, and also like what advice would you have given yourself, like in hindsight, looking back at, like you know, the earlier version of you, to who you are now?
Speaker 2:Well, I think that one of the biggest things I would have told myself is don't be afraid to take up space. I, as a child it's it's funny to think about because I, as a very young child, I took up a lot of space. I was always very active and talkative and friendly. And then I had this really traumatic experience around the age of five that pushed me into a shell of myself and I can remember being in kindergarten or first grade and wanting to audition for a play at the community theater and I so desperately wanted the main part but I was so afraid to speak that they wouldn't give it to me. I was terrified to speak and, of course, my chyron's in Gemini. So I think that that was the biggest lesson that I started to have to deconstruct and to learn was that it was okay for me to speak and to share my story and to take up space.
Speaker 2:I think that, particularly for me as a woman, I was conditioned to be the one who was in the background, and I know that a lot of other women feel that way as well. Lot of other women feel that way as well that it's important to be quiet and it's important to be more submissive and to make everyone else happy rather than make yourself happy, and that couldn't be further from the truth. I think that in making yourself happy, you can then fill the cup of others. I have a friend who used to say to me all the time selfishness is the greatest form of altruism, because when we can be fully fulfilled, we can then fill up other people, but when we're trying to fill other people from this emptiness, it's not going to. It's not going to work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's really powerful. Well, thank you so much for sharing all of your wisdom and, you know, helping the audience kind of like get in touch with that piece of themselves, you know, and specifically through the chart, how can they find you, how can they work with you, and is there anything that you're currently working on or putting out in the world?
Speaker 2:Sure, so I, um, I have a membership community called the Venusian society that I, um, absolutely love. It will be one this year in January and June, really excited about it, um. And it is for female entrepreneurs who are in the very early stages of their business, who are looking for ways to incorporate all of these holistic and spiritual modalities into the way that they build their business, so that registration for that is always open if anybody's interested. And then I actually do things called stellar strategy sessions where I help people understand their astrology chart as it relates to their business, and then we take a look at what's happening for them over the next three months. We do it in a quarter by quarter basis, um, and try to better understand when things will be supportive for them to make certain choices in their business. So yeah, and where can they find?
Speaker 2:you Uh website. So it's Megan and Dunhamcom. Um, I'll make sure you give you that cause my name is spelled kind of funny and you can find me on threads and you can find me on Instagram at Meganmdunham.
Speaker 1:Amazing. I'll link it all up in the show notes so they can just go. Thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me.