I am a summer person. I adore the heat, the sunshine, the light, the long days. I tend to perceive Autumn as loss, as a drawing inside that I am not yet ready to do. Once I accept it, I love the scarves, the darkness and the colours, but it does take me a while to adapt to the fact that it is no longer summer. Last year, in December, at the height of pandemic uncertainty, I attended a satsang with James Boag at which we considered seasonal change. We looked at a medicine wheel, mapping changes that take place on a day, a year, a lifetime.

My perspective changed somewhat when I realised that, to truly transform, a period of integration is vital. I had not considered that before, always driven forward by the growth of the summer. But is it growth if it is not fully integrated in the system? So, instead of revelling in my energetic pursuits of the Summer, its social life and freedom, in Autumn, I cultivate intuition and presence. I get to be and reflect, rather than constantly do. Permission to do that is a blessing. What did I learn in the summer, what is new and I can now embrace?

In the satsang, we linked the medicine wheel to the four qualities that Patañjali lays out in the yoga sutras as being essential to support yoga practice. They are (in James’s words):* Śraddhā: the faith, confidence, conviction, self-trust that comes from heartful exploration.
* Vīrya: the heroic valour, courage to wrestle with all it means to be human, to heed the call of conscience even when everything around us is flooding in an opposite direction.
* Smṛti: the memory that comes from wholehearted practice, that it is worth it, that challenges will come, are part of the process.
* Samādhi: the balanced, integrated awareness in which I can recognise who I really am.

Autumn is the time to cultivate memory as a quality of your practice.

It is so easy to feel ungrounded at times of change. But we have tools and mechanisms in our body to feel there is solid ground amidst the shifts. One of these tools is the Hara. With Kia, I learned this beautiful practice of meditating on the breath at the belly. Now, thanks to her and Yotam, you can too. This is what Kia wrote about it in her letter (to which you should subscribe):

Dropping our awareness deep into our belly, our Hara, brings us down from the control-tower of our mind and connects us to the very seat of all layers of our embodiment. Here we come to know wether we are connected to ourselves and the world, or disconnected.

And if you are not a meditator, here is a gorgeous soundscape Yotam created for Mysore Yoga Paris. It is called Changes and it is one of my favourites. Wonderful for your asana practice, but sometimes I listen to it when I am at home doing some work and I want a held vibe around me. I am listening to it as I type!

Don’t let changes make you serious or heavy. Walk lightly. And dance. James always says convert the battlefield (the one both Arjuna and ourselves are in) into a dance floor. And who better to make you boogie, big or small, than David Bowie? Ch-ch-ch-chaaaanges …. The video is great too. He was so skilled at reinventing himself. Pure resilience.