Aq’ab’al is the nawal of dawn, duality, and new beginnings. The sacred moment when darkness and light meet in perfect balance, night surrenders to day, and all possibilities exist simultaneously in a liminal space. This energy honors the polarities that define existence: masculine and feminine, shadow and light, earth and sky, inhale and exhale. Aq’ab’al honors the marriage of opposites within ourselves and the world.
10 brings manifestation, community, wholeness, and the energy of hands working together. It is a powerful day for collaboration, gathering, and bringing the invisible into form through collective effort and grounded action.
Today, 10 Aq’ab’al creates a potent portal for birthing the new while honoring what came before: a day to stand at the threshold between cycles, to bless both the darkness that held us and the light that is calling us forward, and to trust that we contain multitudes. This is the second of five introspective days before the Mayan New Year, asking us to sit with the duality within ourselves—our strengths and shadows, clarity and confusion—and to welcome all of it as sacred. It’s essential to claim the fullness of who you are.
Opposites attract, as they say. On this day—10 Aq’ab’al, the marriage of light and shadow, the second of five introspective days before the New Year, and Valentine’s Day (or as we call it here in Guatemala, Día de Cariño)—I am contemplating the truth of that old saying.
My partner is, in many ways, my opposite. I am typically optimistic, open, and trusting. He is generally cynical, more closed, less inclined to trust people or situations. I tend to lead with my heart open. He leads with caution. I am from Texas. He is from Colombia. We met in the middle at Lake Atitlan over 14 years ago and have built a life together. We have a home, a 13-year-old daughter who is a blend of both of us, and a gaggle of pet cats and dogs.
Aq’ab’al teaches that polarities are part of the same totality. Dawn would not exist without the night that preceded it. Duality is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be honored.
We have also inverted the traditional gender roles. I am the breadwinner. He is the domestic. I work outside the house to earn the big bucks (LOL), while he tends the garden, fixes what breaks, builds what we need, and cooks delicious meals. It took us quite a while to accept and embrace our roles and strengths. There was resistance, ego, and the weight of cultural expectations pressing down on both of us. But it is the energy of hands working together, recognizing that what we create together is far greater than what either of us could create alone.
On this second day of the Tz’apin Q’ij, in the space of introspection, I am discovering gratitude for the ways our differences have made us whole. He grounds me when I would float away. I lift him when cynicism threatens to calcify into bitterness. He shows me how to be more discerning. I show him how to dream with an open heart.
This is the teaching of 10 Aq’ab’al: you are both the night and the dawn. You need both the dreamer and the realist. The soft and the hard. The open and the guarded. The sweet and the salty. Today, I am grateful for my life partner, this complex, caring, unique man with whom I am sharing my life. For the way our opposites have not driven us apart but woven us into something neither of us could have been alone.
The threshold of dawn is not about light defeating darkness. It is about their holy marriage. And so it is with love.
🌿 Ready to explore the sacred balance within yourself and your relationships?
Join us for the Heart Wisdom Guided Personal Retreat, March 7–14, 2026 at Villa Sumaya, Lake Atitlán—where yoga, Mayan cosmovision, fire ceremony, and personal reflection come together.
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