As the year winds down, we naturally find ourselves reflecting on the path we’ve traveled and peering ahead at the road before us. Looking back, it’s easy to retrofit our experiences into a narrative that makes sense in hindsight. We think, “Oh, of course, that’s why this or that happened.” If you’re like me, you might enjoy exploring the year ahead through lenses like astrology, numerology, and Tarot, using those insights to plan for what’s to come. Yet, life’s unfolding often catches us off guard—we adapt, adjust, grow some, stumble some, and understand much more when looking in the rear-view mirror, as I’m doing now.
Numerologically, 2024 was an 8 year—a time of expansion, growth, recalibration, and manifestation. Growth often brings destruction, and expansion tends to create tension. This year, power dynamics played out on personal, local, national, and global stages. Systems were dismantled to make way for restructuring—a necessary tearing down to build something better. Even the intense, unpredictable weather mirrored this energy, literally tearing apart buildings and communities in its wake.
From an outward perspective, 2024 was bold, chaotic, upsetting, invigorating, and transformative. But for me, the internal lens revealed the most profound shifts. In the moment, it was often hard to see the bigger picture, but soon after, I could connect the dots and trust that everything unfolded as it was meant to. Amid the chaos, I reminded myself to stay the course, focus on inner work, and align with the expansive energy surrounding me.
Balancing Growth: Outside and Inside
The year’s energy felt like a balancing act between action and reflection, internally and externally. Personally, I love learning, eager to absorb everything I can, then need to let it all simmer so I may understand how to apply this knowledge or leave it behind. I’m often prone to overworking, then realize I need to hit pause and rest. What was interesting for me this year was the ways in which I found myself unusually calm while the world grappled with political and global issues and unrest. But this newfound equilibrium wasn’t as easily accessible during my mother’s move to California, her rapid decline, and her passing. Navigating the subsequent familial power struggles was painful and tumultuous, but I realized in their necessity soon after or even during some of these experiences. Our family structure unraveled, yet in its unraveling, profound insights emerged. Some things, I’ve learned, aren’t meant to be rebuilt, especially when the foundation is unstable. The gift of obliteration is the clarity and recalibration it brings.
This year taught me that growth isn’t just about outward achievement; it’s also about internal realignment. The intense highs and lows—professionally and personally—have pushed me to trust the process, even when the destination wasn’t clear. It’s this inner work that prepares us for the introspective, empathetic energy of 2025, a 9 year of completion, endings, and transition into new beginnings.
The Shift to 2025: A Year of Reflection
2025 invites us to tie up loose ends, release limiting beliefs, and embrace transformation. While 2024 was about ambition and bold moves, 2025 asks for a softer, more introspective approach. Numerologically, it’s a time to look inward and focus on the greater good, finding meaning in the journey rather than just the destination. It aligns beautifully with the Year of the Snake in Chinese astrology, which encourages wisdom, strategy, and transformation. Unlike 2024’s bold and daring Wood Dragon energy, the Snake teaches us to slow down, shed old skins, and embrace deeper layers of growth. Together, these energies call for a thoughtful transition into a more compassionate and connected future.
I love the ways the energies of the year ahead also align with all we understand from our yoga practice. After all, yoga is an inside job. It teaches us the practice is about the journey not the destination; the poses aren’t the goal, but what we learn on our way into and out of them. Transformation on the mat occurs when we allow ourselves to slow down, gaze internally, and peel away external layers that no longer serve us—a shedding of our metaphorical skin. 2025 is the perfect year, in my opinion, to truly embrace all yoga has to offer us.
My 2024 in Review
Professionally, 2024 was a whirlwind of creativity and expansion. I worked hard and continue to make my website the hub of information, programming, and content I had envisioned upon its inception. This work also reignited the flame within me for my deep love of writing—something I’d set aside for too long. Creating blogs, newsletters, programming content, e-books, and even magazine articles continue to add fuel to this fire. In addition, I launched my dream podcast, The Real and the Woo, creating a platform to connect people to people and to fun, transformative conversations and information. I was also invited to realize two more of my dreams: to produce yoga videos for a new app launching soon and to create and lead workshops blending yoga and chakra work for niche client groups and upcoming retreats.
It’s no shocker the expansive energy 2024 created for me externally also produced opportunities for growth internally. I couldn’t ignore how much comparison-mode crept into my mindset this year. Did I know enough? Was I doing enough? How could I grow my business when so many others seemed to be doing similar things? These types of questions lingered as I watched others in my field seemingly thrive. I learned to sit with this discomfort, embrace the insecurity and limiting beliefs, in order to weed them out. Noticing these aspects of myself at first made me angry and ashamed. But over time, I was able to see these parts of myself as gifts in which I could offer myself compassion and forgiveness.
I’ve learned this past year that comparison diminishes the unique value I bring to my work, even if others are in the same field or industry. My offerings are distinct because they come from me—my perspective, my energy, and my unique way of connecting with others. Understanding and believing there is enough to go around—enough business, growth, opportunities, and ideas—raises our vibration, whereas remaining in comparison mode diminishes our light. Embracing this truth is one of the gifts this past year has given me.
In addition, my commitment to daily journaling and meditation this year deepened my connection to Spirit and enhanced my intuition. This connection and trust in the downloads, signs, and synchronicities within and around me also enrich my work as a yoga instructor and Reiki practitioner as well as provide much-needed solace since my mother’s passing. With her and other loved ones on the other side, I’ve found peace and joy in ways they have been able to send me signs, songs, and messages and I have been open and ready to receive them.
Capricorn Season and the Winter Solstice
As I create this blog today, December 21, 2024, we are experiencing the Winter Solstice and also entering Capricorn season. The Solstice is an especially potent time to reflect on what occurred during the past year, plant seeds for the future, and create intentions that nurture our dreams and desires. This is a time to welcome darkness and simultaneously celebrate the rebirth and return of the light. The Winter Solstice is associated with spiritual renewal and seen as an invitation to turn inward and come into a deeper relationship with ourselves and our inner light.
The beginning of Capricorn season initiates a phase of introspection and inner exploration and invites us to override our minds and allow our intuition to take over—another huge example of how the energies connect to this period of time between last year and the year ahead. The idea of dropping our heads into our hearts inspired my most recent blog post that discusses this idea https://www.customdesignedwellness.com/post/the-heart-drop-tuning-into-the-energy-of-your-own-rythm Both the Winter Solstice and Capricorn season encourage us to take responsibility for our lives and align our actions with our intentions and ideals. We are asked to trust the process, stay committed to what truly matters, and embrace the journey toward personal mastery with resilience, patience, integrity, and maturity.
Reflecting on the Bridge Between 2024 and 2025
Straddling the precipice between light and dark, last year and the year ahead, this transition from an 8 year to a 9 year invites us to reflect on all we created, reorganized, utilized, or perhaps misused. It’s a time to renew our fervent wishes and desires to connect more deeply with ourselves and others. Viewing darkness as a gift that brings forth light, we rethink how we perceive negatives and challenges as opportunities to learn more about ourselves. What we’ve thought to be true may no longer align with us, illuminating the darkest parts of ourselves to provide light-bringing nutrients to dormant soils within us.
This time of the year shines a spotlight on our search for truth, meaning, and purpose, challenging us to embrace radical authenticity. As the Sun travels through Capricorn, we have an opportunity to reassess our commitments, long-term visions, and the structures we’ve built so far. Capricorn reminds us to be deliberate and intentional about what we are building, what we are creating, and how we are investing our time, attention, and energy.
The Invitation to Transform
As we move from the bold, expansive energy of 2024 into the reflective, transformative energy of 2025, the invitation is clear: clear out what no longer serves us, physically and energetically. This is a time to step out of the cocoon of familiarity and embrace the unknown with courage. Growth requires movement, and staying stagnant only breeds discomfort. Like water, we’re meant to flow freely and clearly, not sluggishly in murkiness.
You are the authority of your life. You hold the power to make changes that align with your highest self. If you’re ready to move from the familiar to the remarkable, to shed old skins and embrace renewal, I’m here to guide you. Together, we can create a custom wellness pathway tailored to your unique needs and aspirations.
You’re already a unicorn—magnificent, rare, and full of potential. Let’s tap into that magic, align your inner and outer worlds, and stride confidently into the year ahead. Transformation begins with a single step. Are you ready to take it? If you are, I would be honored to be your guide in 2025 as you embark on the important, worthwhile and amazing journey into yourself. You deserve to enjoy a year of prosperity, joy, connection and self-love: YOU MATTER!!!
In the season of giving to others, I have gift cards, packages and more on my website and did you know, if you refer a new client to me, YOU get a discount? Check them out: https://www.customdesignedwellness.com/gift-card and https://www.customdesignedwellness.com/refer-friends
Namaste, happy holidays and may we all have a very happy, healthy 2025!!!
Lauri
©Lauri Stern - Custom Designed Wellness
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