Over the past week I have been feeling funny.  For me "funny" can lead to all sorts of misplaced reactions and compensations when the feeling isn't seen clearly and understood.  So the process of finding balance goes something like this:  I get short tempered - bossy with husband, frustrated with domesticity, mad at my cat.  A lucid moment strikes, sometimes spontaneously, sometimes in the middle of my practice - all these things are symptoms of an underlying feeling that's not being seen.  So, what's the feeling?  Anger?  Nope.  Worry?  Nope.  Sadness?  Maybe.  Loss?  Yep, that's it.  Loss about what?  Family issues?  Nope.  Marriage? Nope.  I remember at this point looking outside at the gray day and the falling leaves and something lit up inside.  The summer is dying - and I'm feeling it. 

I actually enjoy many aspects of autumn but there is a distinct change in the essence of this season.  The summer is the season which represents the prime of life in the overall life cycle - it is full of activity, vibrancy and life.  Every day as the leaves turn and darkness takes over I believe that there is something in us that recognizes the dying season and reminds us of our own mortality.  I know numerous people in the mental health field and they say that every fall there is an increase need for services.  Every year I have sought counselling for the deep feeling of melancholy that is present for me in autumn.  This year, I recognize it.  And that's enough.  I watch closely as the natural rhythms of fall invite me to join in.  I am being invited to a slowing down, a letting go and a preparation for the deep stillness of winter.  

By detaching from the summer and letting go into the natural cycle of the season I can be invited into feeling the parts of myself that want to express this rhythm.  A time of quiet introspection, a time when old emotions and wounds can be shed, a time when we release the unneccessary things so that we can dwell in the emptiness of winter.  We may cycle through these seasonal rhythms many times a year but the external representation of that can be powerfully symbolic and a time to check in:  do we allow the dying season into our lives?  Or, are we addicted to the constant activity of summer?  Can we allow things to die, rest a while in the emptiness and be filled again in the spring of our lives with fresh energy?  The great Mother manifests her seasons, they come and go rhythmically and endlessly -  can we allow them to do the same inside ourselves? 

Take these questions into a quiet moment of your day or your practice.  What season do you find yourself in most?  Can you let nature show you how to feel the other seasons in your being?  Let your yoga practice express it.  What does an autumn practice look like?  A summer practice?  Let the nature within and without meet at the threshold of your heart.

This past week I was with my family camping in the Rockies.  In the days before we left I was feeling bored with day to day activities and also a little stressed trying to prepare for a week away with a one year old.  The trip was long as we stopped numerous times for road construction and to ease Rowan's fussiness.  By the time we reached the mountains I was fatigued. 

With my regular destress routine out of whack with travel and unsuitable conditions for doing yoga I had little hope of relieving my fatigue in usual ways.  After setting up our camp we walked to a nearby river to show Rowan this majesty of nature that she hadn't seen before.  As she clapped and squealed for the fast moving water I noticed the tension in my neck and spine begin to melt.  My fatigue lifted and a renewed sense of aliveness was present.  Certainly, having arrived at camp and prepared our "home" lifted some of the weight off me but there was something very noticable happening as I sat by the river.  I felt everything in me beg to be afftected by it's flow.  Like my whole being wanted to take on it's characteristics - that of fluidity, crispness, clarity.   My mind gave in and all concerns about the past or future became washed away by the sound of water rushing over rock and the crisp feel of misty air.  I've been by many rivers in my life, never before had I been so receptive to letting it run through me.  Not just past me, or near me - but through me.  And for a moment I wasn't the stressed out mom or bossy wife I had been moments prior.  I was the vibratory echo of one of nature's most beautiful gifts.  I looked west to the grand mountain that rested above the river and again felt magnetized to let it in, to be affected by it's immensity.  I felt it's solidity, groundedness and mass and it brought me into a deep feeling of earthiness.  The sun radiated it's illumination right into my very pores.  It enlightened the darkness of my stressful mind while the soft breeze of the day reminded me to breathe.  There was an intimacy with the scene that I had nothing to do with.  The deep, forgotten elements of flow, groundedness and illumination within me were called forth by nature to meet themselves again.  In the midst of this joyful reunion I noted how uncharicteristically my mind let go to this process.  Nature's call to balance was so huge that my egoic mind had no chance of holding on to the negative thoughts and anxiety's it had been grasping, and so it surrendered.  

This experience was so uncontrolled, so wild, that when it started to fade I knew that because I hadn't created it, I couldn't hold on to it.  But it has made me more sensitive to the rhythms of the world around me.  Can I let myself be affected, and perhaps balanced, by the slow steady rhythm of my husband's energy which is so different from my fast paced more erractic rhythm?  What would it be like to stop before the flowers of my garden and let them inside?  To let their soft, delicate nature mirror my own and call it forth in the times when I feel myself hardening?   What is it like for you when you are affected by something completely?