Autumn — You Invite Me to Turn Within
Welcoming the entry of dark season
As a woman, honouring the natural rises and drops of my physical energy- and giving myself the opportunity to adjust my activities according to my energy levels, has been crucial to my wellbeing and happiness. I’ve spent years learning to surrender my mental ideas of how I `should` act, feel and behave, and instead teach myself how to listen to — and obey — the natural prompts of my body. And it’s an ongoing practice.
In my quest of adjusting my everyday life to fit my energy levels, rather than forcing my energy to fit with my everyday life, I’ve come to appreciate any clues that can prepare me for the shifting and changing of my energy. Being attentive to my monthly bleeding cycles already gives me an invaluable fundament. But there are other clues too.
Today I’ll share a bit of what the shift into autumn did with my energy. Maybe my experience resonates with yours?
Hello autumn
In the middle of September, I was on a great creative flow. I had a bunch of plans that I was prepared to act on, and all of them demanded a lot of energy. And I had no problem with that, because I thought I had that energy.
But the week before autumn equinox, my energy came to a sudden halt. I woke up one morning and found myself completely uninterested in any creative adventures. I got out of bed, walked a few confused rounds on my living room floor, and then retreated to my sofa. There, I tucked myself up under a blanket and went into cave mode.
Unable to get back up, I pulled the blanket over my head, and dived into the darkness inside and around me. And like that, the next hours and days slipped by.
I didn’t want to be creative. I didn’t want to watch a movie. I didn’t want to work, or to talk with anybody. I was barely interested in eating. All I wanted to do was dropping down to the basements of my subconscious realms, and investigate whatever were going on down there.
At first, I wondered if I was sick — since all my energy had evaporated so suddenly. But then, in a break from my darkness, I stumbled across this article by ADEOLA SHEEHY-ADEKALE on the autumn equinox, and how to use it as a catalyst for change. In this article, Adeola presents five stages of an autumn equinox ritual, and I was amazed to find how those points more or less summed up what I was tending to there under my blanket. And I realized that I had intuitively retreated to my sofa: To commit to my personal change of seasons-ritual.
Using the shift into autumn to evaluate the direction we’re heading in
The Autumnal Equinox is a celebration of the harvest, of reaping in all that we have sown this year. Of pausing and taking stock of what we have nurtured from the seeds of our imagination and brought into a tangible reality.
Adeola Sheeky-Adekale: “How to Use the Autumn Equinox as a Catalyst for True and Lasting Change”
Yes, as I was laying there on my sofa, part of my interest was only to… rest with the darkness. But there was also quite a lot going on just below my conscious mind. Safely tucked up under my blanket, I found myself deeply pondering how to move on with both my work, love, and my home situation. Was there anything I needed to adjust or upgrade right now, to make sure that the track I was on would take me where I was ready to go? Or was I happy with how things were naturally unfolding in my life?
It looked like I was doing nothing at all, but I was evaluating. Intensely. I had subconsciously received the change of seasons as an inspiration to stop for a moment. And within that stop, I was now busy clarifying if the direction I had been heading in all summer, was still an expression of my highest choice?
The art of allowing a change of plans
But here was my challenge: I had not planned for neither my retreat or for my intense inner evaluation. Quite the contrary: I had planned for creative adventures. I had planned for FORWARD movement, not standstill. And I had certainly not planned for inner analyses which could render invaluable all of my plans for the next months.
And therefore, as my body prompted me to stop, I battled how to embrace my change of plans. “Get your grip together” my mind said. “Go do something more constructive”.
But then, deep within me my body told me: No! Stay! You are doing very constructive business here right now. I know you like to move, but allowing for this stop is essential for you to eventually start moving with ease again. AND to continue moving in alignment!
So, I stayed.
Life is a combination of movement and standstill
And then, a few weeks passed, and my mood turned. My energy came back, and I instinctively got out of my sofa and started moving around again.
So, why am I sharing this story with you? I’m doing so to make a point of what I’m learning: that life herself is a combination of movement and standstill — or between inward and outward flow. And; I’m also learning that my smartest option is to allow the shift between those two opposites as they happen naturally.
Listening to our body, and allowing our intuitive impulses to lead our way — especially when our mind thinks we should be doing something else — is a constant practice. It’s seldom easy, and it demands sacrifices.
Personally though, I’ve come to learn that in most cases: My body is smart. When I start overriding her impulses, things always end up going highwire around me at a point. And that’s why I’ve come to embrace the practice of allowing my body to lead the way as one of the most important tools I have to keep my emotional and mental health in balance.
Cycles and cues
There are so much to learn about honoring our natural cycles of outwards and inwards energy, and of movement and stillness. I love writing about these cycles. So do many of my sisters. Chantell has written a beautiful essay this week on flowing with our bleeding, and Agnieszka wrote an essay on our bleeding in connection with the moon phases a few weeks ago. And this was my contribution to that discussion: We want to take the change of seasons into the discussion too!
Because just like our bleeding phase, autumn equinox might be one of those natural moments of standstill, where everything in nature prompts us to… stop — and go deep.
Can we allow ourselves to receive that prompt?
