Autumn warmth and wind

When there are a lot of thoughts flying about and we’re falling

Autumn has always felt like such a rush. We are met by it slowly and then it gathers about us like a great cloak blowing us within and all around, swatting us like fallen flies of summer’s forgotten secrets.

Is it possible to hold the churning, changing, moments just as soon as we let them go?

All the back-to-school, back to-getherness, gathering, and back to the swing of routines, schedules and all else after the extroverted fire of summer.

I used to really fear the autumn. I used to really fear the kilt of the wheel into darkness. I spent many years fearing the shortening of days, the cold trickling into my joints, my bones. The scattering of thoughts as the clouds drift in.

In autumn everything changes. The nights stretch and gather and the seeds we planted bear rich fruit. We must start to preserve. Preservation brings promise. What are your favourite ways to use autumn? Do you enjoy the falling of things, or do you simply love the colours?

Having spent my early twenties trying to avoid this seasonal change and the depression that came with it, I am learning not to fear the darkness, but not to love it too much either.

Ayurveda nods the path forwards for me, in times of incoherency and doubt. Ayurveda is an ancient Indian health science that speaks and cares for both the body and the mind. I was lucky to learn a few strands of this wisdom in my yoga teacher trainings — and what I really learned is how intricate, vast, complex and individualised this medicine practice is, compared with western medicine system. In the Ayurvedic system, there are three ‘doshas’ designated to three body-mind types known as vata (air), pitta (fire) and kapha (water/ earth). We have adapted this ancient is known to our western world in order to have a more holistic health approach. Which is increasingly important as the whole world seems rushing toward the finish line and we are living far too much in our brains, it seems, far too much minds over bodies.

Vata is light, changeable, full of thoughts, they are often accident prone, clumsy, imaginative and forgetful. Unlike the bellowing fire of pitta and the deep, smooth, solid texture of a Kapha, the Vata person often suffers windy body ailments and feels warm and cold and sometimes both at once. Their pulse is not stable.

But Vata, element air, falls in the season of autumn. So it is quite normal and indeed natural to feel pulled every which way this time of year — breezing into cobwebs and becoming entangled in them. The winds of autumn blow leaves upon this grave earth and grant us only a few small brain cells and fragments left. Then winter sweeps in, like a drought. And if your dosha is Vata, or vata-pitta