The Wisdom Of Autumn
Release Reflect and Restore
If you are lucky you may experience over 80 autumns in your life time. Each autumn has something different to show you. The older we get, we have more capacity to tune in to what the season is trying to say. Every year will be different, some Autumns may feel easy and others challenging. Of course there are life events that may effect the season you are in however the emotional body resonating with the frequency of autumn is what will reverberate.
Softening To Let Go
The Metal element arrives in autumn, attuned to the organs of the lungs, large intestines and the emotions of grief.
Gripping, holding, tightening, pushing, squeezing just so you don’t have to let go. This maybe an idea, a belief, a habit or even a relationship, career path or a loved one.
Here’s a little test, think of something that’s very important to you, maybe it’s something from the above list, maybe it means a lot to you or seems fun or comfortable, but in your heart you really know that it is no longer serving you. Bring it into your minds eye and imagining stopping it immediately. Now what do you notice? How is your breathing? What does your body feel like?
It will be different for everyone, but I bet there’s some physical tension, maybe some breath holding or shallow breathing.
Autumn is all about endings, releasing and saying goodbye to the year, preparing for the eventual close of winter. It doesn’t serve us to hold on, like it doesn’t serve the tree to hold on to its leaves, letting go of the leaves allows for hibernation and new life to arrive in the spring.
Like the leaves, releasing that which you have outgrown will eventually allow for something new to come.
As you can see for this test, attachments create dependency, which make us feel complete, this is why setting yourself free from your attachments, can create a painful emptiness. This is why breath, movement, yin, acupuncture and face reading all has its place to aid with process of letting go and exploring your essence that sits in the void.
Contemplation
Liberating yourself from your attachments also provides the sometimes discomfort of an empty space inside. We may feel inadequate or incomplete. However there is much richness in the space to explore you at your essence.
Autumn creates space, each tree surrenders its leaves, bushes, plant life wither and die. The natural world looks more expansive, we have time to see, space to reflect, room to contemplate what we might be doing with this one wild and pecious life.
The emptiness allows you the space to consider what’s of value and what is important to who you are now. What in your life now is special, what’s at the heart of your experience and perhaps your year that you would like to take forward into the next.
Making time to meditate on the serious and essential, gives clarity of mind, just like the light on a perfect cool autumn day. It’s the resonance of your heart that is right and true for you that builds a strong foundation of meaning in your life.
Restore
Clearing away the clutter, letting go of the old and out of date, sitting in the space for reflection, accepting where you are now and what’s of value to you gives time for your body to rest and restore. We can enter winter or a period of surrender to let everything be as it is. In this restful yin space this allows for seeds of your future self germinate.
When we unbind ourselves we release ourselves from tension, holding, gripping and grasping in life. We stop resisting and we can just be. Resisting inhibits the state of yielding, our nervous system stays in flux and away from a state deep restorative rest.
The surrender is needed for new life, just like the space we can sit in at the end of an exhale breath, the space to soften before a new breath arrives, the space before new life can exist.