Transcript: EP 347 – Astrology and Self-Discovery: Harnessing Astrology for Personal Growth and Transformative Self-Discovery with Debra Silverman

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Debra: What is the reason that we would know about climate crisis, for example? What is it about us that doesn’t even consider the change factor? And it is a human nature dimension that there are some design faults in our psychology. Astrology gave me the answer to how to help people take the high road.

Dr. Taz: Hi, everyone, and welcome to Super Woman Wellness. I’m Dr. Taz. I’ve made it my mission throughout my career in integrative medicine to support women in restoring their health using a blend of eastern medical wisdom with modern science. In this show, I will guide you through different practices to find your power type and fully embody the healthiest and most passionate version of you. I’m here for you and I can’t wait to get started. This is a Soulfire production.

Welcome back everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Superwoman Wellness, where we’re determined to bring you back to your super-powered self. And I have a treat for you guys today. I love the many different elements of health, and I always talk about physical health and we spend a lot of time diving into that mental health, emotional health. But there is spiritual and energetic health as well, and I’m a big believer that it all merges together. In that line of thinking, I can’t wait to introduce you to Debra Silverman. She’s an astrologer, psychotherapist, and spiritual guide, and she’s here to bring hope to those experiencing collective pain with the climate crisis standing in the foreground, she brings her wisdom of the elements and astrology to the table to uncover solutions for our times. She’s the author of The Missing Element: Inspiring Compassion for the Human Condition and is founder of a school that has trained more than 4,000 people in astrology. She’s done so much more good stuff. I’m going to let her tell her story. Welcome to the show, Debra. Thank you for being with us.

Debra: Thank you so much.

Dr. Taz: This is a fascinating mix of tools. Tell us a little bit about your journey. It’s interesting that you’re framing it in the context of the climate crisis. Help us cross over that bridge and understand what that means for all of us.

Debra: I have a master’s degree in clinical psychology, and my question at the very beginning of graduate school was, “Why don’t we do what’s good for us?” What is the reason that we would know about climate crisis, for example, and we don’t do anything with the plastics or we don’t do anything with the consumption of oil, or we don’t change our style at all when it comes to Amazon? What is it about us that doesn’t even consider the change factor? And it is a human nature dimension that there are some design faults in our psychology. Astrology gave me the answer to how to help people take the high road.

What will it take to get people to consider the steps that we can use to make things better? And if you have resistance or you’re “lazy,” said the water signs, or you’re “confused,” said the air sign, or you’re “feeling pressured,” said the earth sign, because you’re not getting enough done, or you’re just fire and you have all these opinions and you just have such a loud voice, but you don’t do anything. Those are the personality types that I’ve noticed. Then I get to say to someone, “Here’s the high road.”

If you’re water and you’re super sensitive, you’re going to have to learn about meditation, and you have permission to be alone. Your version of doing healing on this planet is not being around people. And if you’re air, like you are, you have so much air in your chart, you have to research and talk and communicate and keep the conversation going. Hello to your podcast. Because… You know that you have so much air in your chart?

Dr. Taz: No, I have no idea whatsoever.

Debra: Oh my God. show it to you.

Dr. Taz: I thought you were going to tell me I’m all fire. That’s usually Aries, fire.

Debra: No, you have… That’s an air. The communicator, the networker, the researcher, the collecting of information, and then the translator to other people. That is the more predominant element in yours. That’s your people, but they get confused and they’re indecisive and they have a million ideas and they can’t focus. So the high road of air is choosing your words with wisdom. Then comes the earth element, and the low road of earth is that pressure. Some people feel like they’re never getting enough done, they never have fun because they’re so busy working, poor things. We don’t have that problem. It’s not in your chart or mine. Too bad. And then the last one, the fire one, to your point is the low road is they’re so enthusiastic and they’ve got so much energy and they’re so much bigger than everyone else that people can’t keep up with them. And they impose, and they become a little bit of the leader who is demanding rather than accepting of other people’s rhythms. You are so advanced.

Dr. Taz: So interesting. Before we talk about me, I want to understand the climate part of this. Can you explain that to me? Yes.

Debra: I live in Hawaii six months out of the year, and I live in Colorado six months. This last couple of days with the event that happened on-

Dr. Taz: Lahaina, yeah.

Debra: Knowing my chart the way I do, I knew that the first day that I got the news that I had to cry. I have enough water that if I pretend like it didn’t hurt me, I would be dishonorable to my nervous system. The nature of my work is what is it in your system, based on your chart, that will allow you to find calm? For a fire person, they’ve got to get loud and mad and exercise and get outside and just go, “I’m pissed.” And the water person has to go, “I don’t want to talk. I’m just feeling so sad right now. I can’t even communicate.” We need to know our styles in the name of what’s about to happen.

My best friend is writing a book called The Practical Guide to Climate Crisis. There is so much about to happen over the next five years. We’re not going to have any more fish. This is fixed. The water system on Earth, the coral is gone all around Hawaii. There’s none left. And once that system breaks, which is just… Watch Chasing Coral, the number one documentary on Netflix. It’s a fact that we are losing our ecosystems. Now, nothing’s wrong, said the astrologer. This has been predicted. But what will I do internally? How do I manage my own psychology? What do I tell the kids? How do I take care of this? We are the mothers that are going to transition into this era without being totally overwhelmed, and that’s where the nervous system comes in. I’m all about helping people identify, “Who am I? How do I get comfortable in my skin? And then I can be the leader and the helper and the assistant as we go through these difficult times.”

Dr. Taz: Oh my gosh, that’s fascinating.

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Climate change for all of us. What do you see? What’s your greatest-

Debra: Have you done any research with all your air? Have you done any reading?

Dr. Taz: No.

Debra: Good. Well, this is great. This is the time. There’s some great films out there that are very important to watch, starting with Choosing Earth. This was a great film with an unbelievable amount of luminaries, from Joanna Macy to… Who wrote The Soul of Money? She’s so brilliant.

Dr. Taz: Oh, I know that.

Debra: Lynn Twist, Joanna Macy, the guy that ran Spirit Rock, all of these major brains came together and said, “We’ve got to talk about climate.” There’s one called Kiss the Ground.

Dr. Taz: Oh yes, I know them. Yep, I know them.

Debra: Whatever you can do to start with, research it. Here’s the simple answer. We are going into crisis. This is not a mystery. I’ve lived in Colorado. We had no summer, we just had rain. In Hawaii, we just had a giant of fire. In Colorado, the fires… We all know this, but we don’t want to talk about it because the built-in design fault of our psyche is, “If I can’t help, I don’t want to know.” But that’s the wrong answer.

Dr. Taz: In your opinion, for everybody listening today, with climate change… And same here in Atlanta, where I am, it’s just been wet, constant rain, just a very wet summer. What are things we can do? In your opinion, what are two or three things we can do to make a difference?

Debra: Number one, research. Please do not leave this behind. Don’t pretend it’s not happening. Go online, watch the documentaries. This great one by David… I’ve been having brain farts when it comes to names. He’s 99 years old, he lives in England, and he’s written all these documentaries. He talks about… I want to say David Attenborough. Everything he does, you should go watch. He is the guy that talks about what… Because he’s clearly 90-some years old, almost a hundred. And he’s watched the evolution and he’s saying in no uncertain terms, “This is not unlike what happened to the dinosaurs.” We’re going towards a transition of the human species. So number one, research.

Number two, ask yourself, “What can I do?” I’ve stopped driving a car, I use a bike. I’m on an electric bike every city I’m in, everywhere I go. What can I do to diminish that? I can’t stop flying. Most of us get in the car and we don’t think about, “We’ll both drive to the same place at the same time. I’ll meet you there.” As time goes on and we see the transition, we will cut back on our consumption of oil.

Three, Amazon. Do I need to have three boxes in a week or can I wait till the end of the month and just order once? These are simple things. Recycling, yes. There’s many things we can do, but the most important is the research so that you’re not living a life of pretending.

Dr. Taz: I love that. I do feel like many people are under the rug like, “It’s not happening, it’s not happening.” And others are, “Please, please, please,” desperate to communicate this. You merged together this changing climate with a lot of our personal charts and a lot of what’s going on and how the elements… Which is fascinating by the way, because a lot of my background is in, of course, conventional medicine, but also Chinese medicine. And they use the elements. You were air, fire, metal, wood, all these different elements to describe your personality type, what your strengths and weaknesses might be, and then that translated to medical conditions. If you were this element, this was the medical condition you’re going to be prone to, this was the right diet for you. And we use some of that, believe it or not, in practice. But I’ve never looked at it from a psychological or astrological standpoint. Talk to us a little bit about that and what you’re seeing in me, because now I’m super curious.

Debra: Well, this is the best part. I always tell everybody, “I hook your ego to get you to your soul.” The rising sign is the most important indicator, because it’s called the ascendant or the rising sign. It’s taking you up to the level where you operate from your soul and not your ego. The sun sign’s your ego, but in your case, because your double Aries, your soul and your ego are the same, which makes you extremely spiritual because everything you do is congruent with your higher self. You’re like, “I’ve got to get going. I have to help people. I have to share as much…” You’re like… It is so double Aries.

Dr. Taz: Yep, pretty much.

Debra: I imagine you came in at a very young age with everyone saying, “Why is she so excited? Why is she so enthusiastic? Why is she so motivated? Why is she so get up and go?” I am sure your poor husband… Who can keep up with you?

Dr. Taz: Oh, my God. I will tell him that you said this. He’ll literally tell me, he goes, “You’re stressing me out right now.” He’s like…

Debra: Because your soul is so activated. This is a really good problem to have. It means that you have the gift of being inspired by your soul with no bars, no confusion, no hold barred. You’re ready to go. And that’s not like the rest of us. You need to know that. Most of us have a confusion between our ego and our soul, or our rising sign and ego are conflicted. The soul will say one thing and the ego will say another and they don’t get along. Yours do, which makes you excessively energetic and able to take on things that everyone else would feel exhausting. You’re like, “What are you talking about?”

Dr. Taz: That resonates.

Debra: And if you’re okay with it, I’m going to share my screen and show your chart.

Dr. Taz: Of course.

Debra: You have something very beautiful in your chart. I’m going to share the screen.

Dr. Taz: This is all so fascinating. I feel like whenever we walk these journeys, we learn so much about ourselves, but more importantly, about destiny, like you’re saying. I think one of my greatest challenges, and I see this in patients too, is “What is the road I’m supposed to be on? Is this the right road?”

Debra: Okay, watch this. You have something very unusual in your chart, which is this big giant triangle. If you see there are, in the elements here, here’s fire, air, earth, and water. You have nothing in water and you have a little teeny bit in earth, but you’ve got a lot in air. 1, 2, 3, that’s not a planet. 4, 5, 6 planets in air. This big giant triangle is all air. Every planet is 120 degrees away from the other planet. Literally, when you were born, in the sky was a big giant triangle. And that suggests, it’s all air, that your intellectual appetite for life is insatiable. You’re curious, you ask questions, you study, you’re advanced, you get it so quick, you’re wondering why we’re still talking about it. You’re so fast that your mental ability as a doctor, as an intellect, is insatiable. Am I right or am I right?

Dr. Taz: You’re so right. But I have a question. Because I have no water, is that why I crave water? I crave my water.

Debra: Yes, exactly right. You need water to balance. This is exactly about the climate crisis. For you to get your nervous system relaxed, you must be around water.

Dr. Taz: No way. Oh my goodness. I’ve always felt that. I’m like, “I need to be by water. I need to live by water.”

Debra: And you need to be in the sauna and the steam and the hot tub and the bath and the pool and the ocean. You need water. And because you have Jupiter on top of your chart, you were born under a lucky star. This lifetime, you’ve been very blessed, which I’m sure you can see.

Dr. Taz: Oh yes, for sure.

Debra: Especially professionally. At the professional level, your ability to take on the leadership, be the one that’s in the front, get all the answers, give directions, delegate. That is your function, this life.

Dr. Taz: That’s what it feels like. It feels very natural to me.

Debra: I am simply, as an astrologer and in our school and in our immersion, I just speak to the obvious. But to you, you wouldn’t have language. Who knew you were all this air? Now that you know, intellect, curiosity, teaching, writing, talking, communicating, translating for people, being able to take big concepts and making them super simple.

Dr. Taz: That’s what I love to do. It’s so funny. I feel like everyone thinks medicine is my skill, that’s where I’m the strongest. It’s actually I think communication. And that matches air, right?

Debra: Destiny. The biggest, hardest part about your chart with all that air is that you get confused easily. There’s too many options. Totally. You’re like, “There’s so many options. I have so many ideas. What should I do?”

Dr. Taz: Totally. What does it say? Where should I focus?

Debra: That’s why you have… You have no water. You have to meditate, you have to learn to get in the bathtub, you have to meditate by doing something. You can’t meditate by sitting still, it’ll just drive you nuts.

Dr. Taz: Yeah, very much so.

Debra: When you tell someone to meditate and they can’t do it, that’s mean. But if you say to somebody, “You can go do guided meditation, you can go do a bike ride, you can go sit in the tub and put some music on, you can do…” Whatever it takes. But don’t ask her to sit quietly, because she’s got so much air in her chart, her mind does not stop.

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When you’re seeing a client, for example, and you help them with this information, how are they shifting? What kind of things can they do?

Debra: Like what just happened to you, like, “Oh my God, I must be in the right spot. She knew everything. She just nailed me.” And there’s confirmation. Therefore, you can go and follow your instinct without thinking, “Is this right?” Because that’s what you do all the time. “Is this right? Am I doing the right…” If you know your right thing is to have multiple things going on at once to be the leader in the front, to be unashamed about you being bossy, to tell your husband, “I’m sorry I’m stressing you out. I’m going to go in the bath now I have no water and I get so excited. I got to get the fire to go down.”

Dr. Taz: I love it.

Debra: That’s practical. This is the practical. My school is called Applied Astrology. How do we make it so that it’s simple, it’s not confusing?

Dr. Taz: I love that. I think sometimes it feels like it’s confusing or…

Debra: So much to study.

Dr. Taz: Then some people think things are predestined. They’ll stay away from astrology because they think it’s about things are predestined, or they don’t want to know it, or where is human will and all of this. What do you say to some of that?

Debra: I love your questions. Here she goes with all her air. She’s got all the questions. There is no question you were going to meet your husband, that you’re going to have those kids, that you’re going to get that dog, and that you’re going to have those parents that was not free will. That was a destined by the stars that you would meet the person. Now, will you stay with them? That’s another question. Will the dog die? Yes. There’s a whole bunch of drama that comes with, but there are hard facts about this life that are not movable. On the other hand, what you eat for breakfast and whether or not you’re going to be on time and if whether or not you’re going to choose to be kind, that’s free will. But the hard, big, giant ones, way out of the free will zone.

Dr. Taz: That’s destiny.

Debra: And it’s called Akashic records. They’re things that have been written that you’re not going to argue with.

Dr. Taz: Wow. Do you see all that in my chart, too? Are you able to see…

Debra: I did a reading for Deepak Chopra a long time ago, and he told me the story of going up to India where there is people that can say to you, “Here’s the names of your kids, here’s when they’re going to be born.” He spooked me out when he told me that story, but I don’t do that. There is that level of astrology and yes, there’s medical astrology, where they can look, to your point, at the chart and be able to identify the weaknesses in the body. There are people that are brilliant at that. That is not what I do. I’m a psychotherapist that’s an astrologer that works with your psychology to make your nervous system relax so you fall in love with yourself and everything changes.

Dr. Taz: Oh, I love that. Beautifully said. Let’s go through the elements, let’s give each element a tip. All I’m air, I don’t have any water, and I know all this is individualized. I get that. But for someone who’s thinking, “I wonder which element am I.” Is there a quick way to tell?

Debra: You’re so cute. This is why my book doesn’t stop selling. It’s called Missing Element, and the subtitle is Compassion for the Human Condition. I’m working on a new book now, and I just got a forward, an advance and all that. I wanted to call it You’re Fucked Up and I Still Like You, but they wouldn’t let me. But that is the point. Everyone has quirks and you learn in The Missing Element, for you, you have no water in your chart. Now how am I going to cultivate that? That’s what I would ask.

Dr. Taz: Yeah, interesting. Finding water… What if someone needed more air? Are they-

Debra: That’s all the people that can’t talk. They’re the opposite of

Dr. Taz: Speaking. They’re not speaking, got it. That’s my husband.

Debra: I knew it. I just said, “Your husband probably is this.” We always draw people who are the opposite of us.

Dr. Taz: Goodness gracious. How do you help those people?

Debra: People come to see me and they don’t get divorced because I say to the husband, “Your wife has six planets in air. If you think she’s not going to talk…” And then I say to the wife, “And by the way, he has none, so stop making him talk.”

Dr. Taz: So what’s the solution for someone with no air? What would they need to be doing more of?

Debra: They have to ask questions. They have to practice asking questions. They have to pretend they’re interested in people. By pretending, it will begin the… Because they really don’t care. They’re like, “I don’t want to hear all this noise.” But if they practice as mindfulness, “How do I communicate? My wife wants this..”. They learn astrology. It’s the best thing for a person missing air. Now they’re like, “Wow.”

Dr. Taz: That’s fascinating.

Debra: They study. They have to learn to study. Someone’s missing earth, ungrounded, not good at money, never on time feeling like they don’t have enough. And the gift of that is, “I create a structure and a rule system and I start doing a schedule.” It’s unnatural to go towards the missing element.

Dr. Taz: And if they’re missing fire?

Debra: They don’t have get up and go. They don’t have bluntness. They don’t want attention. They tend to be shy, and they tend to be reluctant to stand in the middle of the room or have the party. They’d rather not be exercising. And then you’ve got to say to them, “Honey, you got to go exercise because if you don’t insert fire, you’ll get fat.”

Dr. Taz: Wow, this is all so fascinating. Do you do more in-depth readings for folks, or are you way beyond that now?

Debra: There’s 20 people on my website that… I do matchmaking. I always like to (singing). You send me your chart, and I figure out which of my team will be best fit for you. Because I don’t do readings. I do readings, but I’m very expensive.

Dr. Taz: Yeah, yeah. Well, no, I mean this is fascinating. But the book is The Missing Element. There’s another book coming soon.

Debra: There’s an immersion. There’s free… We’ve already begun, but August 21st through those five days, I’m interviewing five fascinating characters, all about how they turned off their gremlins, specific to their chart.

Dr. Taz: Oh, wow. Fascinating stuff. Well, whatever we can do and use to really help bring us into our power, I am so big on trying to understand all the different elements of who we each are, because I think that’s when we live in alignment and that’s when we’re able to make the right decisions for us. If anyone wants to get in touch with you, what’s the best way for them to do that?

Debra: Three words. D-E-B-R-A, DebraSilvermanAstrology.com, and all of it’s there.

Dr. Taz: Awesome. Easy enough.

Debra: On Instagram, on TikTok, on YouTube.

Dr. Taz: You’re out there. I love it. Well, thank you so much for taking some time to join us on the podcast today. I really appreciate it. I’ve learned… Well, I have confirmation of what I internally do.

Debra: That’s what I do. I hold up a mirror. I don’t give you new information, I just confirm what you already knew.

Dr. Taz: Yeah, and it is a lot of energy, a lot of talking. My mind never stops. Sometimes I wish it would. Water does slow me down, absolutely. It’s a lot of confirmation of my very nature. I know if I’m getting this much in just a couple minutes with you, I don’t know how much more there is to learn. There’s probably an immense amount to learn.

Debra: That’s our school. The school starts only twice a year, in September and in January. If you want, it’s a six-week-long class.

Dr. Taz: I appreciate it so much. Well, thank you so much. And for everybody else watching and listening to this episode of Super Woman Wellness, thank you for joining us. We’ll see you next time.