Hi everyone,
My 6th house cusp is 14° Taurus 58 and it has a little over eight degrees in Gemini.
For me, when I look at the 6th house, I look at what type of service to the Earth my soul wants to provide within this incarnation. Service includes work, vocation, avocation, mentoring and volunteering. How well one is doing the service component will influence the health component of the 6th house. The more of your avocations you can incorporate into your chosen vocation and then find a workplace that can use them to benefit all, not just their narrow concerns.
In my experience, many people think vocation = work. This is not really the truth, but it is how many have been trained over the millennia to respond to the idea of vocation. I'd like to propose a different approach and if it resonates for you, please use it. If it needs tweeking for it to resonate with you, please do that. If it does not resonate at all with you, please feel free to throw it into File 13.
What is it that you do that really resonates with you fully? Those things that make you feel fully and totally connected into everything, what are they? Whatever is on that list are the avocational services that your soul gave to you to provide in your own unique way in this incarnation. They are the services which the Earth, in all of its forms and dimensions, needs and can only receive them in your unique presentation. These skills are the ones that you combine to create your vocation of service to the Earth. The more of them you can combine together and use to benefit all pulls you into deeper resonance with your soul.
Let me give you an example of one of my unintegrated avocations that I do not use all that often: poetry. I love writing poetry and I have a unique style of expressing myself in it. It is not surprising that I have this ability because Taurus is also the undertone of my 5th house. It makes me feel truly connected with all when I do it, which is not very much. I have not found a way yet to integrate that avocation into the vocational matrix.
Vocation is the way one expresses the avocational services indicated by the signs located within the 6th House into the world. This is the feeling of "what I can truly and honestly give to you that will fulfill the services I am meant to give on Earth at this time." The more one can give this through the work environment, the happier the person doing the work is.
Work is the stage that ultimately the vocation is shown on, in theory. The reality, however, is that the workplace very rarely chooses to tap into the vocational matrix in total, only the pieces that will fit its narrow agenda. This is why ailments from the workplace environment develop, in my opinion. The person wants to provide more service than the workplace chooses to use and the narrowness of the scope of the usage of the those pieces affects the body. The area of the body that will be affected the most will be those ruled by the sign(s) found in the 6th House.
If the workplace is unable to put into action the vocational services of the person, it is up to that person to find the mentoring and volunteer venues that will put the vocational matrix into the greatest action. The more mentoring and volunteering one does that vibrate to the service that the soul came into provide, the less effect the workplace environment will have on the person's health.
The key here, I believe, is to understand what the 6th house sign(s) (and planets located within, if any) are saying about what the soul's service in this incarnation is. You don't have to believe in reincarnation to know that your soul has a service plan for your life. How you choose to meet that service plan will affect how your body responds with health or disease. The more you understand and put into motion your full service plan, the healthier you will be, I believe. The more unconscious you are about your service plan, the greater the chances are that you will attract dis-eased states that will start their manifestations in the signs located in the 6th House.
Elianah