You’re listening to our conversation with Chef Carla Contreras — chef, food stylist, content strategist, and the person who has perhaps the most fully developed personal practice around tracking the moon that we have ever talked to. Be sure to subscribe here on Substack and follow — available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. Carla has been tracking the moon since the beginning of 2020. Not casually. Daily. She knows when the moon enters a sign because her body tells her before the app does. She schedules her podcasts, her travel, her client calls, and her recordings around it. I booked this podcast because of his Aries moon, she tells us, twenty minutes in. There are no coincidences here. What she has built, over five years, is not a system she’s selling. It’s a relationship — with the moon, with her own birth chart, with her body — that has gotten specific enough to be useful and supple enough to be a practice rather than a rule. This episode is what that looks like up close. About our guest Carla Contreras is a trained chef, a food stylist of thirteen years, a podcast host, and the founder of Nourishing Creativity. She has built thirteen profitable Substack publications. She is a projector in Human Design (4/6 profile), Aries sun, Pisces stellium, Scorpio moon — and three years into mentorship with her Incan teacher Puma, from Chinchero, Peru. The Incan philosophy at the center of her work is Ayni — reciprocity. Nothing goes one way. Energy moves between you and the world, and within that exchange there’s room for extra abundance and generosity, including toward yourself. Nourishing Creativity (Substack): nourishingcreativity.substack.com Instagram: @chefcarlacontreras On the moon as a personal map Carla’s practice did not begin as a system. It began as noticing. She started paying attention in early 2020. When the moon was in her sun sign — Aries — she noticed: go time, let’s party, let’s come to coworking, let’s go to New York City. When the moon was in Pisces — where her stellium lives — she noticed: let’s create, let’s dream, let’s make the podcasts. When the moon was in Gemini, her rising sign, the energy was so distinct that her friends started texting to ask is it a Gemini moon today? They could feel it through the phone. What emerged, gradually, was a working knowledge of which lunar days she could schedule on and which she shouldn’t. Leo days — where her Black Moon Lilith lives — she protects. I do not schedule a podcast. I do not schedule anything important if I can avoid it. Taurus days — where her Chiron sits — she rests. The donkey is so freaking smart. The donkey is like, okay, I’ve climbed up this mountain and we need to take a break. The map is hers. It would not work for anyone else exactly. That’s the point. On the void-of-course moon, and the practice of honoring transitions The moon goes void roughly every two-and-a-half days, between leaving one sign and entering the next. Some void periods are twenty minutes. Some are most of a day. In KP’s framing, it’s the moon making no significant aspect to any other planet — not in communication, not translating, not doing the relay work she usually does. Carla loves the void moon. In the past, I have really not honored transitions. The moon being void is honoring a transition. For KP, the void moon is email day. Wrapping up things. I’m not going to start anything. For three Aries / Libra / Cancer suns in a room — all initiating signs, all want-to-start-things energy — the void moon is the cosmos giving permission to drift. 🌙 Want to try tracking the moon for yourself? KP Kaszubowski made a free companion page with the full how-to, plus a Notion template you can duplicate to log your daily state. Get it here → https://kpkaszu.notion.site/The-Moon-As-Attention-3609fb7abf1480178952eecaeb6352a7?pvs=74 On not asking whether it’s good or bad Carla names this as the thing she has had to learn slowly, and that she most wants to hand to other people: there’s not good or bad with this. Earlier in her practice, she would text her astrology friends a meme of herself in distress when she saw a Taurus moon on the calendar. She does not do that anymore. The shift was subtle and took years. This is a gift, and I get to rest. This is not labeled, quote unquote, good or bad. KP names what’s underneath the temptation: anticipatory anxiety. The fear of the hard day before the hard day arrives. The way knowing what’s coming can make you tense up before there’s anything to tense against, which then shapes how the day actually unfolds. If you ease in, if you let what happens happen, the experience is the experience. It’s not good or bad — because you’re not putting that anticipatory energy on top of it. Carla agrees, with a small refinement: she would not call those days bad. She would call them challenging. And challenging days need rest. I know today is a Leo moon. I’m going to go to bed at 8 p.m. with my kids and skip Netflix. That’s not surrender. That’s strategy. On the body, the cycle, and the practice of being pulled by the waves Chelsea asks how the menstrual cycle interacts with the moon — whether tracking one disrupts or syncs with the other. Carla, deep in perimenopause, gives the answer that surprised her too: when womb healers and pelvic floor practitioners ask her what part of your cycle are you in, she increasingly answers it’s an Aries moon. She’s not bypassing the body. She’s noticing that for her — Pisces stellium, deep waters — the astrological moon and the physical body are running on the same frequency. I’m pulled, like with the waves. This is also a generous frame for anyone whose cycle has changed, paused, or never matched the calendar. Hysterectomies, perimenopause, hormonal shifts, lifelong irregularity — the moon is still there. I’m tuning into the planet, which just happens to tune into my energy as a human. On the strategist’s invitation Toward the end, KP asks Carla — projector, content strategist, builder of thirteen profitable Substacks — how she’d advise someone who wants to start. Carla’s answer: Start with your sun sign, rising sign, and moon sign. Note where they are. Then watch what happens when the transiting moon passes through each of them. Write it down. I had lots of energy. Oh my goodness, Gemini moon, lots of energy. The pattern emerges from a month or two of notes. Get an app to make it easy. Carla uses Dara (99 cents, no affiliation) for moon position, and Align 27 for an additional layer — its color-coded green / yellow / red days have helped her name when a hard day is happening without needing to assign cause. When I’m having a really hard time, I’m like, oh — is it a red day? Is it a red day? Do I get to sit and journal and have cacao and be with myself before I start my work day? Maybe. The practice is not prediction. The practice is discernment. What is your relationship with an Aries moon? What is your relationship with a Gemini moon? What is your relationship when the moon is void of course? Build that relationship. Trust it. Then — and this is the move Carla keeps coming back to — disconnect from the predictive astrology when you need to. Get rid of the apps. Get rid of reading anything. I get to have my own relationship with my birth chart and the astrological weather. Also in this episode * Carla’s debilitated Scorpio moon, and why she is one of the most in-tune Scorpio moons we know * Why the cards we pulled before recording were uncannily specific — chocolate bar, pizza, dumpling, three of pentacles, nine of cups, the chariot * Ayni — the Incan concept of reciprocity Carla is being mentored in * Cacao as Carla’s daily ground, and the scientific footnote about its possible runner’s-high chemistry * The caballo-and-burro metaphor — the horse and the donkey, the running and the resting * Why some signs are harder than others to live through, and what your Chiron and Black Moon Lilith might have to do with it * KP’s quiet mission to make people with debilitated placements visible as good examples * Whether NASA could please send Carla to the moon Go deeper into making contact with your personal moon with the short audio course Meet Your Moon made by KP Kaszubowski — https://kpkaszu.gumroad.com/l/meetyourmoon Quotes “I’m tuning into the planet, which just happens to tune into my energy as a human.” — Carla Contreras “I would not have, three years ago, talked about honoring transitions. Or pausing in any way, shape, or form. I’d be like, that’s annoying, I don’t like Taurus, I’m an Aries, let’s get moving.“ — Carla Contreras “What is your relationship with an Aries moon? What is your relationship with a Gemini moon? What is your relationship when the moon is void of course?” — Carla Contreras “There’s not good or bad with this. This is a gift, and I get to rest.” — Carla Contreras “I’m leaning into how can I self-source this.” — Carla Contreras “Astrology is not an ‘exact’ science. It’s a contemplative science.” — KP Kaszubowski “If you ease in, if you let what happens happen, the experience is the experience. It’s not good or bad — you’re just not putting anticipatory energy on top of it.” — KP Kaszubowski “I am so jazzed up about the moon just from hearing all of your experiences. I’m sold on using the moon to help me.” — Chelsea Owens Work With Carla Check out her resource on Ceremonial Grade Cacao as a Coffee Replacement here: https://www.carlacontreras.com/blog-recipes/coffee-replacement-make-ceremonial-grade-cacao-at-home Nourishing Creativity (Substack): nourishingcreativity.substack.com — Carla’s home for the podcast, essays, and offerings on creative and spiritual practice Instagram: @chefcarla The Moon Guide: Carla has created a special