Welcome Autumn
I usually love autumn and by the time September rolls around, I’m ready for a break from the heat. This year was different, I wasn’t longing for the break from the heat - and I wasn’t ready for the summer to end. But here we are anyway.
Embodiment can be described as accurate attunement to the present reality. My body has been attuning to the change in weather and light before my mind caught up with acceptance. I am my body and my mind and my soul, and I am now accurately attuned to Autumn.
In my own recovery and working with others on their journey back to themselves, embodiment is paramount. I had the privilege of reteaching many yoga teachers how to hold space and deliver trauma sensitive yoga to our fellow travelers on the thresholds of recovery. We talked about refriending the body. We embarked on the journey of reclaiming the body as ourselves through language, agency and tending to our internal rhythms. (Carly McDade continues this good work of supporting yoga teachers - check out her latest workshop)
These principles of embodiment lead us back to ourselves. If we give up trying to think our way into a life of peace, fulfillment and joy, we can learn to feel our way into a new way of living.
“Intuition is feeling and trusting the felt sensations of the body” - Carolyn Myss
This new way of living in the present does not come easy, the past is not forgotten or discarded as easily as last season’s dress or the slightly faded furniture. The journey back to the present must be taken with compassion, patience, fortitude, and courage. Gently tend to your internal rhythms: drink when you are thirsty, eat when you are hungry, rest when you are tired. Say yes when you mean yes and no when you mean no.
Cultivate compassion and patience for your self when you fall back to your disembodying habits of escaping into food, sex, money, shopping, scrolling, etc. This adventure of being human during this wild time still has many twists and turns to come, hold to your vision and your felt sensation.
What can you feel on the bottoms of your feet?
Can you feel your sits bones, or the outside of your hips?
Put your hands on your body to FEEL
Does the expression on your face match what you feel on the inside?
The journey back to the present must be taken with compassion, patience, fortitude, and courage.
Big courage comes from a heart that is broken open.
My heart was closed.
I kept my heart closed and my mind separate from my body. I almost couldn’t find my way back to myself, and I definitely never could have done it alone. I let people love me back to life, I followed in their footsteps, full of fear. They told me that courage was having the fear and doing it anyway, so I did it anyway. Through the breath I reunited my mind and body, with united body and mind I moved my prana to blow open my heart, recovering the pain and grief. I let the sadness, despair, rage, and regret break my heart open. I continue to practice somatic breath work regularly to keep the channels of prana open, to release what is sticky and reveal the wisdom that rests quietly in my body.
Embodiment is accurate attunement to the present moment, part of that journey is making peace with the past. The energetic, emotional, and physical tethers to the past must be released in order to experience the spiritual buoyancy of the NOW. CranioSacral therapy and the somato-emotional realization that can naturally arise during the sessions release these tethers from where they are hooked into the fascia, the consciousness of the body.
Here we are in Autumn, the season of completion.
What is ready for harvest within you?
What new ways of being are you ready to embody? (perhaps you’ve been tending to your rhythms all summer and now you are ready to create your loving boundaries)
How have you kept the promises that you made to yourself at the turn of the year?
As you read these questions, what moves? what is moving you? What happens when you let your body move as wonder about your own harvest?
What happens if you embody a tree, or mammal, or bird preparing for winter?
This is the season to complete and discard what will not come into the cave of the heart for winter. You don't have to know all the answers.
There is no need to rush the harvest. Notice what is here. Notice what is ready to be gathered, what is ready to be released, and what still needs time. Notice what you notice.
Notice how the changing light shifts your perspective of everyday world. The leaves change, and so does the light that shines on them. Notice the changing ground beneath your feet. Listen for the quiet wisdom of inside yourself.
May you keep your promises to yourself, harvest what you planted, and make room for what is ready to come next.
Welcome, autumn.
