Dragon 🐉 Letter #111: Urgency is loud right now. This is an invitation to slow Time down enough to feel the turn.
Hola! I’m Ixchel Lunar (they/them), an Indigenous-Time ecologist, ancestral medicine guide, and rhythm witch for creative rebels, decolonial dreamers, and neuroqueer visionaries. This Substack is dedicated to weaving business, body, and belonging into something no empire can replicate. Still punk as fuck. Still cozy in the chaos.
If you haven’t shopped the Black Friday sale yet, you’re in luck! My sweet Canela needs surgery this week. So I’ve extended the sale through Dec 31st. The BOGO sessions are a fabulous way to receive mentorship with me on your personal cosmology.
Beautiful Wildling,
I’ve been thinking a lot about urgency how it shows up right when something is close to turning. Not complete. Not resolved. Just on the edge of shifting. That moment when the body starts asking for an exit, even when nothing is actually wrong.
This has been alive for me since my first temazcal on the winter Solstice.
The space itself was small. Crawl height. Hot rocks in the center. A cloth pulled over the door. Pitch dark. Steam so thick it pressed against my skin and filled my lungs. Sometimes it felt too hot to breathe unless I covered my mouth. I laid down on the wide banana leaves along the edge, trying to find a cooler patch of earth.
My heart started pounding. Not panic exactly, but insistence. I tried slowing my breath. Changing positions. Letting the heat pass. After a while, I told Gabby I thought I needed to go out. My heart was racing, and I was worried I’d gotten too hot.
She stayed calm. She told me we were close. She said this was the moment when the heart often races. She asked the others if they were feeling it too. Everyone said yes.
Something shifted when I heard that.
I wasn’t failing the process. I wasn’t misreading my body. I was in the middle of it. Right at the point where intensity peaks and the urge to leave gets loud.
I stayed.
A few more minutes passed. Then the door opened. Cooler air rushed in, gentle enough that my body could receive it. We were given warm atole. There was more steam, so thick you couldn’t see across the space. And then, slowly, one by one, we exited the temazcal.
I keep returning to that moment as the year turns and the “New Year, New You” demands start in.
Urgency tends to surface at thresholds when something is changing shape. When the old way of moving no longer fits, and the next one hasn’t fully arrived. Without context, the body can read intensity as danger. The mind looks for control. For an ending. For a way out.
December amplifies this. Dominator culture pushes closure. Finish the year. Resolve the story. Clear the slate. Move on clean.
But thresholds don’t work like that.
Nothing in temazcal asked me to finish anything. The heat didn’t require resolution. The process didn’t demand insight. It asked me to stay long enough for the sequence to complete itself.
The year feels similar right now.
So much remains unfinished. So much is unclear. Many people are under pressure to decide, resolve, or wrap things up before crossing into whatever comes next. I don’t feel that pressure as wisdom. I feel it as urgency disguised as care.
The year doesn’t need to be finished. It needs to be listened to.
Listening moves slower than decision. It asks for presence instead of control. It allows intensity without demanding escape. It becomes easier when we’re not alone.
This is why collective practice matters at thresholds. Context softens urgency. Shared pacing changes how long we can stay with what’s alive. Knowing others are feeling the same heat helps the body settle into trust.
That’s what I’m holding space for tomorrow in Ancestral Ways for Precarious Times.
It’s a live Rhythm Reset for listening between years. A threshold practice for those standing between seasons, carrying what’s unfinished, and wanting a collective way to pause, listen, and orient without urgency. We’ll slow Time down together and practice staying with what’s present without forcing insight or resolution based on some guy name Greg.
This moment isn’t actually the beginning of a new year in many ancestral calendars anyway. The lunar and Maya new year arrive in February. The solar new year turns at the March equinox with the rise of Aries.
As I wrote about refusal in earlier letters, this threshold between Gregorian years is another point of refusal. A chance to stop defaulting to imposed timelines and choose your own temporal path.
In the Rhythm Reset, we’ll listen through five pathways. There’s no need to choose ahead of time. Once we slow down together, the body begins to signal what actually needs attention.
We’ll begin with Time Threading. This is about reweaving your week with one protective rhythm cue. Something small and specific that holds your energy where it matters, so it isn’t continually pulled into urgency or fragmentation.
We’ll explore Visibility Rhythm by listening for a cadence your system can sustain. Attention goes to how presence wants to move through you, at a pace that preserves safety and does not drain your nervous system.
There will be space for a Soma Reverie check-in. This is where habitual bracing can soften. The body gets support in releasing a pattern of holding and settling into one somatic practice that brings tangible relief and steadiness.
We’ll move through a Flow Diagnostic by listening beneath stagnation. Often, what looks like a creative block is an interruption in the current. When the root constraint is named, flow has room to return without being forced.
We’ll close with Ancestral Belonging. Attention shifts from urgency into relationship. A ritual anchor offers protection and reminds you that Time is not something you carry alone.
As in temazcal, these pathways bring us into contact with moments where discomfort rises. This is often where dominator culture trains us to retreat toward comfort instead of staying present. By remaining with the sensation a little longer, capacity expands and trust deepens.
The orientation that emerges is simple. A life held by rhythm. A pace shaped by relationship rather than urgency.
Monday, December 29
10am PT / 12pm CT / 1pm ET / 7pm CET
This work is about staying long enough to feel the turn, listening rather than rushing toward completion. Trusting the door opens when it’s time, and remaining with the heat shapes how we emerge.
The year doesn’t need to be finished.
It needs listening and the willingness to stay with the heat.
Stay wild, love fiercely. Your presence is golden.
With wild and rebellious love,
Maltiox! xo Ixchel
P.S. If you want a quieter way to work with Time, Rhythm Reset is a single session where we follow your body’s pace and listen for what wants repair. One session. No long arc. Just attentive listening and a small recalibration.
P.P.S. Maltiox pronounced mall-tee-osh means with gratitude in K’iche Mayan.
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I was raised and bore children on the traditional, unceded, and stolen lands of the Coast and Central Valley Miwok (colonized as Petaluma, CA) and Nisenan (colonized as Sacramento and Fair Oaks, CA), past, present, and future. I also write, work, and live in the highland forest of the traditional, unceded and stolen lands of the Totonac, Nahua, and Mexicah, past, present, and future, in what is known as Coatepec, Veracruz, Mexico.
P.P.S. I do not live or consent to the colonial impositions regarding the construct of Time. I also practice honoring rhythms of work, play, and rest so that I can serve you with embodied presence and with loving care. This means I may take several days to respond to your requests and questions. (h/t Eva Glamaris)
P.P.S. A mention is not necessarily an endorsement of someone. It’s an acknowledgment, a citation, of the origin of information in my process of understanding. (h/t Kelly Diels)
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Copyright © 2026, Cheyenne, WY, and Veracruz, Mexico, All rights reserved. Sharing your lineage of knowledge is decolonial. When iterating, please cite me. Not citing is epistemicide.
