It’s again autumn.. the time of the year when the trees turn pretty colours, shed their leaves, the days become gradually shorter and we feel like hunkering down. For me, autumn is my favourite season .. I love the colours on the trees, pulling out warmer clothes and wrapping up a little warmer. I sometimes wonder if it is also because we are drawn closer to the earth and there is a certain kind of comfort in coming back to earth.
This year has been a year of change so far .. some good, some less pleasant. For some reason I’d felt this since the start of the year and it started picking up pace in early summer. The summer felt like it was a whirlwind that has swept me up in its energy and tossed me around. There have highs above the skies and lows that have been lower than the deepest ocean. Throughout this I have held on to my yoga practice which has become my stability, my safety net, my moment to pause and breathe. It’s not always been easy and there have been moments of guarding boundaries very carefully and pulling back from some more intense poses to find calm and rest.
So as this whirlwind continues, I try when possible to anchor myself to the ground, to stability, to this sense of coming back to earth. I try to feel the stability of the earth underneath me, feeling with my bare feet the surface of my mat or sometimes the wooden floor of my home, noticing subtle differences in the surfaces underneath me. Feeling how this earth can be something to provide stability and rooting down, staying connected to the earth like a tree sinking its roots into the earth and weathering the storm.