How to navigate your Saturn Return according to a mental health expert

I just turned 28. While the duration of my twenties has been something of a rollercoaster, this birthday marked a real shift for me personally. “Two years until thirty” is a phrase that keeps rattling around in my head, despite knowing that life absolutely does not shrivel up like a dead weed upon reaching the big 3-0. 

Aging is a privilege of course, but I can’t seem to shake the feeling of inexplicable, existential dread. Unlike turning 25, my fellow ‘97-’98 babies and I can no longer chalk our irrational feelings up to a quarter-life crisis or an underdeveloped frontal lobe. That was until a friend interrupted one particularly self-pitying dinner conversation with a diagnosis: "It's your Saturn return!”

For the unfamiliar, a Saturn return is the astrological milestone that occurs when Saturn returns to the exact position it occupied at the moment you were born, typically between the ages of 27 and 30. Believers say it marks a period of profound transformation, prompting career pivots, relationship shake-ups and a serious reassessment of life's direction. 

While I’m not particularly ‘woo-woo,’ it was a relief to have a justification for my moping. Yet, the question remains, how to best navigate your Saturn return? 

We asked Oxford-trained therapist and nervous system expert, David Cornwell, for his expert insight on the matter.

What advice would you give to someone struggling to navigate their Saturn return?

"The Saturn return is the symbolic astrological moment where you stop living according to what others want you to be, and when you start living for yourself. To do that, you also have to confront the patterns and beliefs that have led you astray or prevented you from living truthfully. Psychologically, this means addressing who we were raised to be and what our parents wanted from us. Around the age of 29 is when a person's childhood starts to fade into the background. They become aware a chapter is closing. They may start to get grey hairs, and feel their own mortality in a way they weren't aware of before.

The openness and unconstrained optimism of youth starts to shift. We realise we don’t always get what we want, and the path towards our dreams is often more complicated than we imagined. We also begin to see that the pursuit of external rewards doesn’t bring lasting meaning. Career, owning a house, beauty. These things are fleeting and borrowed. The Saturn return marks a shift from external desires to internal ones. 

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Coincidentally, this was the age that the historical Buddha fell into deep despair and left the comforts of his palace in pursuit of freedom from the existential suffering he had woken up to. Realising his own mortality was what began the spiritual journey that eventually led to his awakening at the age of 35.

From a mental health perspective, this is often the point where people begin turning towards internal practices like yoga, meditation or therapy because they recognise they need to turn inwards. There is an awareness that they have to deal with the pain of their youth and let things go in order to move forward fully as themselves. This is what can feel extremely challenging, and why someone may psychologically resist that process. It's uncomfortable, but necessary. 

Robert Bly talks about the long bag that we drag behind us. Throughout childhood, every time we’re told there is something wrong with us, or a part of us isn’t accepted, we compromise ourselves and put that part into the bag. Around the age of 29, we have to take everything out of the bag. We turn towards our shadow and begin integrating the parts of ourselves that we didn’t love, or that weren’t accepted in our home life.

My advice would be to move right through it, don't resist or the process will be more painful than it needs to be. The discomfort will lead you to a freer, more connected version of yourself that cares less what people think and is more connected to their own intuition."

Are there any products that might help? 

“The Saturn return is the awareness that external gratification is no longer working. It’s an inflection point where we need to turn inwards. Journalling can be an amazing introspective addition to one's life. It can also be as simple as going to the gym and reconnecting with your body in a meaningful way, or to take up a yoga or meditation practice. Of course, going to therapy to get to know yourself more deeply can also be valuable.

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It can also be a time to change vocation or move into work that feels more in resonance with who you are. It’s the point where we begin to realise, ‘I don’t want to keep living according to the expectations that were placed on me by my parents or other authority figures. I want to step into my own existence and discover what I want.’ Anything that aids that introspection can be beneficial. 

For example, I have clients who avoided sport because it was forced on them as children. Then around the age of 29, they discover movement that they genuinely love because they’re choosing it for themselves. You have to listen to your heart and follow it. The idea of the Saturn return is that the sound gets louder, and it’s our job to listen to it.”

These are the products I'm using to navigate my Saturn return:

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