​It’s Autumn Equinox for all of us in the northern hemisphere.

These seasonal transition spaces can be hard to navigate, and with the year that we have just had this year feels even harder.

So, I’d like to share some practice ideas, tools and reflections that could help support you at this tricky time of change, and I’d also like to talk to you about what cyclical living means in ‘real life’, well to me anyway.

For me, cyclical living is about deepening my awareness to my own internal seasons and cycles, but also the seasons and cycles and shifts happening in the world around me. It’s about being in relationship with myself and nature and my own inner nature that also helps me to be in relationship with others more fully too.

Each shift in the seasons I view as an opportunity for me to return back home to myself to reflect on how I feel, what’s changed and what’s needed in the months ahead. And from there I can then reflect on what I’m doing in my own life and whether that supports what is needed right now and also whether it is supporting the direction I want to move in to support my own ongoing evolution.

Each season, just like our own inner seasons, has its own flavour and quality, with the Spring and Summer often being times of growth and productivity, times of more Yang outward focused, doing energy.

Not always though, life may have other plans for us, especially if we have become queens of overdo consistently in our lives!

Sometimes Spring and Summer may feel a lot like Winter!

And the quality of Autumn and Winter is more about reflection, restoration, rupture and renewal, a time to clear the clutter and dream big. Planting seeds and ideas in these darker, colder times that can start to bud at Imbolc and fully blossom and grow in the Spring.

Autumn Equinox was traditionally the time of the harvest when the crops and fruits would be gathered in from the fields (hence this week’s harvest moon!) to be honoured, appreciated, eaten and stored away to keep us nourished over the leaner Winter times ahead.

And we can also view this time through a similar lens in that we too can use this time to reflect on our own personal harvest, the fruits of our labour so far this year.

The Equinox is a powerful time to take a moment to pause, take stock, reflect, and from there make decisions about where we go next.

Because what we do NOW really matters, just as it matters in our monthly cycles. What we do in one phase impacts the opposite side of our cycle – Summer being reflected in Winter and Autumn into Spring.

And so my big question for you right now is.

Is it time for a sacred pause?

I think so.

We need time at this phase of our cycle to Rest and Restore ourselves, to gather in, to ask difficult questions of ourselves and to listen deeply in a full bodied way for the answers, so that we can then make the shifts and changes we need ahead of Samhain to let things that are not working go, to let them die before we spend our Winter time dreaming up new plans and ideas ahead of Spring.

And so at this threshold of change when are pulled back into ourselves after the outward focus of Summer (and you know some of us might not have felt wholly ready for that as yet), it can feel a bit edgy, a bit uncomfortable and there may be some resistance to this shift.

And it is quite normal to feel like this at this time – there is a lot of vata air energy around this time of year and often when we feel resistance these are the places where we need to look a little deeper, there may be some gold in there for us to explore.

To support you in your own excavation work and to help you figure out what a sacred pause might look like for you, I have created an Autumn Reflection Pack for you to help you navigate this threshold of change in the seasons; you could use it as a supportive resource for your own inner Autumn time in your own cycle too.

Self Honouring Practice

Here is a short self honouring practice to connect you to your womb.

It can be lovely to do this after your bleed time, but it can be used anytime.

The practice invites our awareness to the constant dance in life between moving outward and coming back in; this practice combines expansion – opening out and contraction drawing back in.

This practice is perfect for this time of year when we feel a deep need to complete any unfinished business, remove life’s debris and draw a line under any outstanding issues that may affect our wellbeing as we prepare to rest and retreat into Winter

Autumn is this really key transition point when the focus changes from outward achievement to inner contemplation and reflection.

When we start to transition from:

• Sun to Moon
• Light to dark
• Yang to Yin
• Action to contemplation
• Growth to dormancy
• Building up to releasing and letting go
• Movement to stillness

Some people love it, some hate it, but either way here we are.

And so for me, this is what cycle awareness looks like in ‘real life’ – supportive, resourceful, insightful, deeply nourishing.

I will be taking a little sacred pause myself for a couple of weeks to do my own inner reflection work and to enjoy life at a slower pace…a social media break is calling, see you on the other side.

Are you in need of some nourishing one to one support during this transition time, a space dedicated just to you, a space where you can feel held and supported, where you can move and connect to you?

Then I am able to offer online support for wherever you are in the world.

Get in touch for a chat to discuss you needs.