Salve: A Ritual and Mix for Wisdom Collectors / W Tim Koren
Inspired by the transformational nature of the Balsamic Moon
The Moon is wise. She understands that the thread between confusion and insight is time. Each of her four phases offers a different pathway into the complex workings of our emotional world, and how we feel about the reality we're creating for ourselves.
Every month, just before the sky goes dark without the moon's light, her wisdom offers an invitation: to set aside four days to stretch time, create space and make sense of it all.
This is the Balsamic Moon phase.
So if you, like me, value intentional stop gaps each month, taking the space to ground, make sense of it all, collect wisdom and realign, I'm sharing my Balsamic Moon practice: soundtracked by one of Naarm/Melbourne's most brilliant curators, Tim Koren and for his mix, Salve: Balsamic Moon.
This reflection and ritual come from lived experience. Working with this phase intentionally over the past few months has held me through moments of real despair: a break up, moving back home and getting to know myself again inside a body that keeps asking to be heard through anxious bursts of change.
These simple reflections have helped me untangle thoughts and emotional knots amongst the complexity of modern living. For years I outsourced that wisdom to algorithms and strangers on the internet. And as someone on a spiritual path, most of my suffering has come from not being able to hear myself, from losing touch with my own natural evolution and creative process.
I know we need each other. But to connect properly, it’s imperative that having a relationship with my own discernment, built through working with my lunation practice across all moon phases, that's brought me back in tune with my own inner compass, the foundation I need to explore from right now.
I really do believe there's a special kind of insight that only comes from drawing up your own blinds, shining a light on hindsight through honesty. For me, nothing else comes close to this kind of wisdom collection, because it forces you to reflect and integrate, rather than consume and confuse yourself more.I hope you enjoy contemplating, exploring and feeling into the salve this phase can offer.
Let’s take it deeper….
Lunation Work: Getting to know the Salve of the Balsamic Moon Phase
The Balsamic Moon, also known as the Dark Moon, is the final, slender phase of the waning crescent: the roughly four days when the Moon sits between 45 and 0 degrees behind the Sun, right before a New Moon begins the next cycle. "Balsamic" shares its root with the word balsam, the resin used for centuries to heal and soothe.
This phase supports us to access our emotions in the same way: our consciousness becomes primed for loving, emotional discernment. Think of it as the sky's version of the luteal phase, the stretch right before a period, when the body naturally turns inward before it sheds and begins again. With that same instinct, it becomes easier to compartmentalise the month's past lessons, putting things in boxes to make energetic, emotional and physical space to seed intentions at the New Moon.
It's not an ending so much as a preparation: a highly spiritual window that lets you leave the complexities and the junk of the month behind you, rather than carrying it into the new cycle ahead.
The healer and energy worker Barbara Brennan puts it simply: "The body is a self-healing organism, so it's really about clearing things out of the way so the body can heal itself." So much of what I've learned about wellness comes back to the same idea: clear away complexity to give the body what it naturally needs, and trust it to do what it's designed to do.
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Behind The Mix: Designed for offline listening & existing
This mix is a lush curation of beatless soundscapes: a salve in the truest sense, for restoration, slower brainwave states and deep body listening.
The ears and hands behind this mix is Tim Koren – A Melbourne based artist and curator and a Libran Sun through and through. We share a mutual love of sober and not-so-sober raves, quality house music and building our livelihoods around whatever keeps us passionately present and connected to the people and the work we love.As a Libran, his selections are always mixed to perfection: a complete, well rounded, balanced body of work. I'm telling you now, it's an art and Librans just know how to carve it. True to the sign, he's a crowd pleaser too.
We both work from the same premise: music is a gateway towards upwards spirals and somatic connections to bypass the thinking mind and process life through sound.
Listen on SoundCloud
If you are into sober dance floors and house music with a like minded community, Catch Tim Koren play live at Soba, Friday 14 August, at sBase in Fitzroy. Tickets here
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How to listen:
Treat this less like a playlist as a backdrop for offline listening, ritual reflection and existing.
Journal prompts for the Balsamic Moon:
Sit with these before or after listening. Write in dot points if that's easier than full sentences.
When did I say yes when I wanted to say no? What happened?
What area of my life has become overcomplicated? What's asking for more clarity, curiosity and simplicity?
Where was my attention most this month? How did that feel? What did I do with those feelings? Was there space left for myself?
Empowerment check: where did I show up for myself this month, even in a small way? What did that prove I'm capable of?
Body ritual: stretches for deep listening:
A gentle, lying-down sequence. All can be done in bed with the mix on.
Reclined butterfly. Soles of the feet together, knees falling open, one hand on the belly, one on the heart.
Knees to chest, gentle rock. Hug both knees in, rock side to side to release the low back.
Supine spinal twist. Knees drop to one side, arms open wide, hold for several breaths each side.
Legs up the wall (or up the headboard). Stay here for the long stretch of the mix if it's comfortable.
Final rest. Arms and legs loose, palms up, let the last few minutes of the mix hold you.
When to use this:
Sundays (before the fresh week ahead), Balsamic Moon Period
If time seems to slip through your fingers, and you want to get better at offering yourself an hour each month to land, sense-check and tune in, I've made you something.
A no-excuses, free Balsamic Moon calendar: download it straight into your Google Calendar and every window for the next year is already blocked in for you, with a direct link back to the mix and this post each time, so the ritual is always one tap away.