In short
Mars retrograde comes round every two years and lasts about two and a half months. Big launches stall, conflicts flare over nothing, the body asks for less. This is not a run of bad luck, it is the pause before the next lap: whatever you force into being now, you will be redoing later.
Mars, the planet of action and force, turns backwards for almost three months. The usual way of pushing things through stops working: less energy, more resistance, a slower tempo.
This comes round every two years. While Mars ran forward you kept accelerating and rarely asked where the force was going. Now it arrives in smaller doses, and every expenditure becomes visible.
