Practical Magic | How to Navigate Changing Seasons
Shifting from Summer to Autumn isn't as seamless as putting the sandals away and pulling out the cosy socks. As the balance of light and dark changes, so do we – on a bodily, emotional and spiritual level.
To help you transition with ease and intention, I share practical tools for how to align and flow into Autumn.
How Do Changing Seasons Affect Us?
This Practical Magic tool offers a few anchors to put down as we shift from season to season, ways in which seasonal transitions affect us on our body, emotional, and spiritual levels, and how we can align and flow with the universal energies of the natural world around us – rather than fighting against them.
I recorded this episode after the equinox on September 22. An Equinox marks a point in the year when we have equal light and dark; the day is exactly as long as the night. It’s a balancing point between expansion and contraction, light and dark. It's a portal into a new state and it affects us on several different levels.
Changing Seasons Affect Us on a Bodily Level
As human beings, our organism is exquisitely attuned to the natural environment around us. Specifically, our circadian hormonal rhythms – that govern our energy, waking and sleeping times, appetites, and even our moods – are driven by how much light is coming through our eyes. So when our relationship changes to light and dark, it changes everything about us.
Here in the Northern Hemisphere, we are about to go from a six-month period when there's been more light than dark to the reverse. We are going to start experiencing less energy steadily every day. If you're in the southern hemisphere the opposite is true; you are moving out of a period where the dark has been dominant. As the light increases and you take in that light through your eyes, and I encourage you to spend as much time outside as possible to get the full benefit. You will start to feel more energized and your moods will shift.
Changing seasons have a profound effect on how we experience life. Whether you're in the northern or southern hemisphere, the Equinox is a great moment to take stock, evaluate, set intentions, and adjust expectations for the six months ahead.
Changing Seasons Affect Us on an Emotional Level
Seasonal changes can also affect us on an emotional level because there is a change in the collective psyche. There's a ‘back-to-school’ energy in September when we come out of the summer holiday period and re-establish a sense of routine and structure. There is also pressure to make up for lost time and we may feel the pressure that we have so much to do.
On top of that, we know our energy is going to start to dip. This triggers feelings that we need to hurry and harvest as many things as possible before the nights start to get very long and we have less energy to do the things we want.
I encourage you to dig deep and figure out how you want to spend your time in the season of the dark. The following intention-setting exercise will help you to flow with the seasonal energy and be more compassionate to yourself. I recommend doing this recalibration whether you are shifting into autumn or into spring because as the light changes, so do we.
How to Flow With Seasonal Energy
1. Start With Body-Checking
Start with body-checking. In Episode 15, I share the Daily Alignment Practice. This is a short 3-step exercise that you can do at once a day or many times a day to help make a connection between your mind and your body.
If you want to go further, I recommend checking out my Align + Flow 7-day free challenge. Each day, you’ll receive one 20-minute or less video lesson on how to integrate this practice into your life and how to create the five foundations of flow so that you can massively supercharge your ability to tap into your intuition, body wisdom, and sense of right timing.
If you want to work with seasonal transitions, tap into your body and check in with how you’re feeling.
What does your body need right now?
How is your body trying to get your attention?
What are the emotions that are coming up?
Do you feel a contraction of fear and dread or an expansive delight and sinking into something comfortable?
Check-in with yourself so that you're not approaching this intention setting for the next 6-months purely from your mind and letting your mind use rational logic only. Your body needs to be in charge here.
2. Reflect on September to March of Last Year
After you've done a body check-in and feel like you've opened up that channel, I encourage you to reflect on September to March of last year.
How did you feel?
What was working for you at that time?
What made you feel good?
What did not work?
What do you do not want to repeat this year?
For me, I have far more things in the ‘do not repeat’ list than I have in my ‘what was working’ list. Last September to March was incredibly difficult for many of us all over the world with Covid lockdowns and restrictions. All of the lifestyle elements that make our lives feel meaningful and rich, like going to restaurants, cafes, or gyms, taking trips, seeing family members, doing winter activities were all off the cards. Here in France, we also had a curfew which began at 6pm until 6am. We were not allowed outside of our houses for 12 hours a day and it was a really difficult time. I struggled during that time and threw myself into work since that's really all I had.
I let a lot of my health and fitness and well-being routines slide because I find it very difficult to find the motivation to just work out in my bedroom at home. I felt sluggish and worn out when I arrived in March because I was so unfit and I don’t want to make the same mistake this year. Even if there are restrictions put back in place, I want to be more loving and intentional for myself, keeping in mind how fit and good I feel right now and that’s what I want to maintain.
3. Set Your Intentions for the Next Season
The next thing I invite you to do is to set your intentions for this next season and reflect on your relationship between light and dark.
I like to spend my autumn and winter moving into the dark. Exploring what it means to be in the mystery; exploring what we can tap into when there is less light. It's true that darkness, although initially destabilizing, does help you hone other senses. I personally love to spend autumn and winter, the season of the dark, working on my spiritual work which tends to get a backseat in spring and summer when I'm spending a lot of time outside doing adventure sports – rock climbing, mountain climbing, surfing, and travel. Whereas in the autumn and winter, I feel called to be a lot more devotional and to explore my relationship to spirit and work a lot on my altar. I look forward to that time now because I’ve decided that rather than being afraid of the dark, I will set up a reverent relationship with it.
You may have your own intentions for how you want to spend this season.
What do you want to deepen your relationship with?
What edges do you want to push?
What are the themes or topics that you want to explore?
What are the projects that you want to be fully devoted to?
When you live and work seasonally, you let things go for a season and pick them up again when the timing is right. There are plenty of things that are best suited to autumn and winter. For instance, maybe some of you are keen readers and you currently have a stack of unread books that are building up somewhere. A season of the dark might be a perfect time to set an intention to devote yourself to that stack of reading material.
Whether your intentions are work, lifestyle, relationship, hobby, or adventure related, jot them all down and see what comes up for you. If you feel like your mind is taking over, simply put your hand on your heart or belly as you're writing and say to your body, “What do you want? What do you have to say? What is your intention for me?”
How to Harness Universal Energies
After the body check-in, evaluation of last year, and intention setting for this next season, you might want to ask: How are you going to harness the universal energies of the season you're entering to carry you through your intentions?
Each season has its energetic gifts. Autumn is a time of dying, composting, and endings. Winter is a time of quiet and invisible work; of fuel being created for the expansion of spring. Spring is a time of opening and growth; of trying new things and being bold. Whatever season you're entering, you might want to consider how to use this universal energy to harness your intentions.
A lot of things that are on my intention list have to do with organizing, decision-making, and becoming more focused on where I'm putting my resources – my money, attention, and energy. I'm investing this season in profitable activities and finishing things I've started. It's not a time of experimentation for me. It's not a time of playing or throwing spaghetti at the wall, which I did a lot of in spring. It's a time of consolidation. This is one example of how I'm going to use this autumnal energy in my own life.
In traditional communities for most of human history, this would be a very important time after the harvest of late summer to take stock before the lean months and evaluate what have we harvested. How much do we have? What resources do we have? What needs to be going into stores? How do we plan accordingly in our communities so that we have enough to carry us through the lean months?
We now live in a world where everything seems limitless so we've lost touch with this practice. You can have anything at any time; it's always available. But this ability to evaluate our own resources and understand that there are natural limits, even if they seem invisible to us, is a valuable practice.
1. Ask yourself: How will I manage my resources?
As you enter into these lean months, ask yourself, “How will I manage my resources?”
What am I going to prune?
What am I going to leave behind?
What am I going to put off until the next expansion?
I'm not saying that I don't have the urge to experiment, play, do new things, or add new projects. I'm just saying that when they arise in me, I channel that excitement. I take lots of notes and put them on my Trello board. I also allow myself to say, “This is something I'm picking up again in spring next year because right now is a time for consolidation and wrapping things up. I'm entering into the lean months, and I have to be intentional about what I carry.”
Contraction is the fuel for expansion. The more energy you can store and use wisely in the lean months, the more power you will have going into your spring and summer. If you exhaust yourself in autumn and winter, you will have no energy left to expand. And so the cycle continues. There is something to be said by deliberately and consciously winding down during the autumn and winter seasons so that you can expand out in a big burst when the universal energy is there to help you.
You might want to make some very specific commitments to yourself commitments to help you carry through on your intentions. For example, my number one commitment is to not overload myself, even if it means moving slower on my goals than I think I would like. I'm committing to not overloading myself and overgiving my energy in the lean months, even if it means that I make less progress and move slower on my goals.
2. Ask yourself: How will I set myself up for success to deliver on my commitments?
How will you take what's going on in your internal world – your internal desires, intentions, and commitments – and actively design your external world to make that easy for yourself?
Let's say you want to read a lot – that's an internal desire. The external setup would involve gathering those books, putting them by your bedside, and perhaps setting an alarm every evening that signals now is the time to change into comfy pajamas and to get into bed and start reading.
Many of us struggle to make good on our internal desires because they remain internal and we do not take action on the external world to facilitate them.
For me, my intention is to not overload myself and to maintain my energy-raising practices. My external commitments involve things like:
Track my daily movement with my fitness tracker
Commit to moving every day even if it's just a little bit of stretching
Keep my weekly planner on my desk where I've committed to only 20 hours of booked work per week.
Keep my protein powder visible in my kitchen so that as I'm working out a lot more, I have a visible reminder that I should have 20 grams of protein three times a day. If I get hungry, that's what I need to reach for rather than bread or some other carbohydrate that may not nourish me in the same way.
Another one of my desires is to be with people, which I did not have at all last year. My external commitments involve things like:
Be proactive about booking trips.
Work in cafes here in Bordeaux three times a week (that's also on my calendar).
I'm designing my external world to deliver on my internal desires and I really encourage you to do the same.
I'll be the first to admit that I find the ending of summer and moving into autumn extremely difficult. I dread it in a sense because I know hard, lean times are coming. I am someone who is very sensitive to the light and I really feel the changes of longer nights. We have to remember that this is part of the dance of life itself. Everything is change. We can deny it, fight against it, and have it knock us sideways, or we can consciously commit to aligning and flowing with it, playing with it, dancing with it, getting ahead, and setting ourselves up for success.
Be Compassionate With Yourself
When we change seasons like this, we simply shift gears. A car uses a lot more fuel when it's shifting gears, and so do you. Be compassionate with yourself if you're feeling sluggish, tired, listless, and nonexcited about going into autumn and winter. You're not alone.
I believe that setting your intentions now and understanding ahead of time how your energy is likely to be affected is one of the most empowering and beautiful gifts you can give to yourself.
Please also remember that you can have a loose grip on your goals. You do not need to cling, force, or grip tight in fear that if you don't white knuckle your goals won’t happen. This is not true. Proceed gently. Fall in love with the process. Bring all parts of yourself along for the ride and be aware, open, and conscious of how to use right timing and the universal energies in your favor.
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Episode Resources:
EP 15. Practical Magic | The Daily Alignment Practice
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