Autumnal Intentions

The clamor of late summer is over and now it is time to dive into autumn.

Seasons are incredibly important from the lens of Traditional Chinese medicine, and, therefore, Yin Yoga. Traditional Chinese Medicine, as most other indigenous practices, does not view the human experience extracted from nature. We are nature and everything that we do is informed by it. Because I teach and think from a lens of Five Element Theory (from Traditional Chinese Medicine), I am constantly thinking about seasonality as it relates to daily practices, the movement practice, breath, hydration, and nutrition.

Five Element Theory correlates the five seasons of Spring, Summer, Late Summer, Autumn, and Winter to the elements of wood, fire, earth, metal, and water, respectively, as well as emotions, energetic movement, organ function, thoughts, and desires.

This is an oversimplification and only demonstrates correlating emotions, season, meridians/organs, and element. Seasons are both generative and supportive. In this context, support means that they help retrain qualities to keep energies in balance.

Autumn is ruled by the metal element.

Think: the minerals that actually are a part of the Earth—these are the foundational building blocks of the earth. Metal Element is correlated to lung and large intestine meridians, energetic lines that extend from those essential organs.

Now let's just think about the lung right for a moment, and consider that Traditional Chinese Medicine views the lungs as the direct access points to qi or life force (prana). Because of this, this is an important time to be in breath practices and also to utilization energy efficiently.

This is a great example of the intersection between East Asian philosophies (TCM) and South Asian philosophies (Vedic). Brahmacharya or the way that we utilize our energy in a conservative way becomes more important as we attempt to be in right relationship with ourselves and with others.

So what does any of this have to do with fall?

Well Autumn is a time of slowing down, as opposed to summertime, which is our fastest pace of the year. Late Summer, correlated to Earth Element, is a reset season between all of other four seasons.

We all know that people start talking about, oh we're going to start letting things fall away just as the trees are letting their leaves fall, yada yada yada… Well there is actually truth to that. This is a time in which the entire season is focused on getting really essential with practices that make sense for our energy expenditure.

What are you going to be carrying into the wintertime, which is a dreary season for most people? As we move towards the longest nights, what do we need with us as we move into the darker aspects of life?

Fall is associated with the emotion of grief. If that comes up for you a little bit more during this time, that is absolutely normal. A way that we can assuage grief is through practicing gratitude and getting really present with what is. For me and my own grief journey, I was able to have a pretty healthy relationship with it by allowing myself to feel massive amounts of gratitude for having people in my life who were worth grieving, experiences in my life that were worth grieving. You know, it’s the cost of love.

So how can you approach Autumn in a way that is edifying for you?

Take time to actually assess what is serving you.

This is a really great time to tune in to the moon cycles — not because you're diving into astrology or something like that, but because it gives you much shorter seasons to use as a measure of your progress towards or away from things. Moon cycles are only 21 days so it gives you an opportunity for you to say: OK, right now I'm really tapping into doing a little bit more as a moving towards the full moon or Right now I'm calming down a little bit, introverting a little bit, as a we move towards the New Moon. It also gives you an opportunity to create new goals at the New Moon and to figure out what didn't work on the Full Moon. These concepts follow our ancestral practices of seed-time-harvest and allow us to tap into flow.

If none of that resonates with you, perhaps this will:

We need to figure out if we're actually going to do things differently or are we going to keep repeating the same patterns and expecting different results. If we actually want to do something different we actually have to do things differently. That can look like creating different goals, leaning into vision differently, and letting some things go that are no longer serving us.

It is important to know that feeling stuck can happen easily this season. Dip into your toolkit and keep going.

When this happens, take a more invigorating movement class, go for a walk, start a new project, or enjoy belly laughter with old or new friends. Shake things up.

So instead of just looking at fall is an opportunity to get your pumpkin spice latte, look at it as an opportunity to practice deep listening to and with yourself, and to let some things go while gathering the essentials in preparation darker season of wintertime, or as I call it, Gumbo Season.