A Yogi’s Guide to Mercury Retrograde – How to Harness the Power of a Cosmic Pause
Erica Stanzione is a NYC-based yoga and meditation educator, retreat host, and teacher training leader. She was given a mission and has a deep passion for supporting and empowering her students as they elevate their lives spiritually, emotionally, mentally, physically, and energetically.
Spiritual believers, truth seekers, and yoga practitioners love to talk about all things woo-woo, right? But don’t you find that there is always a look of fear or trepidation on our friends’ faces when we know that Mercury is about to go into retrograde? These powerful cosmic pauses that happen three to four times a year do indeed get a bad reputation and can absolutely wreak a bit of havoc. However, despite the expected miscommunications, technology mishaps, messed-up travel plans, Universal tests, etc., this can be a profound time to slow down and reflect. Even though external energies can feel chaotic during these times, if we choose to release the dramatic flair that people love to attach to it, it’s essentially an invitation to reset, release further, and tee ourselves up for a new level of alignment. In the twenty-two years that I’ve been a yoga practitioner and almost thirteen years as an educator, I can say without a shred of hesitation that this past retrograde, which ended on November 29, 2025, was my most powerful and freeing to date. With that, this article is all about learning how to fear these periods less and use them to our advantage as we harness those potent energies more.
Astrologers believe that when it comes to communication, many things can go awry or resurface, like old lovers or friends from the past turning up where there is unfinished business. These periods of contemplation have the ability to show us where stronger communication might be required for closure. They can also present us with a new angle of awareness around how we can be clearer when speaking our truth, enforcing or reinforcing our boundaries in order to protect our peace. When we’re deeply connected to our intuition, we may also get that gut feeling that the Universe is throwing a curveball our way to test what we’ve learned in past relationships. If that’s the case for you, can we then ask ourselves, have I learned this lesson in completion? Have I mastered this lesson? Am I responding differently? Am I responding versus reacting? Am I now laughing at things that used to upset me? Or on the flip side, can we courageously ask ourselves, am I failing this lesson? When leading my weekly yoga sessions, I always make sure to preface these bold questions with the loving reminder to leave any judgment out of the equation. When the narrative is free from critical thoughts, we can then use the answers to those questions as information. If we catch ourselves getting tripped up on these tests, that information can beautifully serve as a compass showing where there is more work to do. When we strive to always be present and move intentionally through life, it can feel incredibly liberating to check ourselves and maybe even chuckle from time to time when we know that we aren’t passing a test the Universe is continuously sending to us. As many of us have experienced, the Universe loves to send us the same lesson over and over in the form of different people, packaged differently, until we can truly extract what we need to see within these dynamics. But once we’ve mastered those lessons, we get to enjoy the fruits of our labor and take that invaluable intelligence with us moving forward. That priceless wisdom then shows its rewards as it translates into more successful and fulfilling relationships with ourselves and others.
As you breathe into and consider this most recent retrograde that lasted from November 9, 2025, to November 29, 2025, can we notice how our responses to old situations may have evolved? I’ve always loved the saying, “The smarter we get, the less we speak.” Unhealed versions of ourselves may have responded with paragraphs and found ourselves in exchanges explaining how we feel ad nauseam with constant back and forth. Yet healed versions of ourselves know that many times a response isn’t even warranted. Similarly, what my spiritual practices have taught me time and time again is that the Universe knows our hearts, and when we also know our truth and the purity of our intentions, proving that to others in conversations that result in endless circles simply isn’t necessary or worth our energy.
When I think about these powerful invitations to explore past energies and our spiritual journeys, the word samskaras comes to mind. In Sanskrit, samskaras are mental impressions from our past actions. Each time we repeat an action, the impression becomes stronger, which then becomes a pattern. If we respond out of habit or conditioning, just like on our yoga mat when we move habitually versus intentionally through our poses, that can be very limiting. However, we always have the opportunity to rewrite these impressions by consciously choosing to respond differently. Thanks to the indispensable gift of self-awareness that our mindfulness practices foster, we become crystal clear about these patterns, behaviors, communication styles, and conditioning that we’ve absorbed along the way and that might be stored in our subconscious. Each time we choose to reply differently, we weaken that impression. Then it simply becomes a matter of consistency in our messages and how we show up in the world while reinforcing our new choices and elevated responses.
Being a long-time advocate and facilitator for the powerful modality of journaling, these are just a few prompts that I hope will feel supportive and provoke thought during the next retrograde, which runs from February 26, 2026, to March 20, 2026.
What did this retrograde reveal to me? Where is the Universe showing me a possible unresolved situation? What am I ready to release for good?
As yogis, we know the immense value of perspective, so as we prepare for the next retrograde in February, can we remove the drama from the narrative the media loves to sell us, lean into these sacred opportunities, and try to approach these reflective times as a spiritual tune-up rather than dark periods of dismay? Even if there are inevitable discomforts and interruptions, may we choose to view these celestial pauses as forced slow-downs to reset, refine, and release further. Perhaps it might also feel comforting to think about how we can transmute the energy behind any possible endings and view something coming to a close as an initiation instead. Because once we’ve freed up that space in our physical realities and created more bandwidth emotionally and mentally, we can soften further into the receptivity of what’s unfolding for us next in that heightened state of alignment.
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Erica Stanzione, Yoga and Meditation Educator
Erica is an industry leader in guiding the life-changing practices of breathwork, vinyasa yoga, and meditation. She leads by example both on and off of the mat, and teaches others about the profound effects of our mindfulness practices that far exceed the external benefits. The intention behind her classes, workshops, retreats, and trainings are to serve as a sacred container where her students feel safe to step further into their power, confidence, emotional intelligence, spiritual connection, and continuous evolution.
