Pumpkin Spice & Everything Nice: Fall Has Much to Teach Us

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Pumpkin Spice and Everything Nice, Fall Has Much More to Teach Us…

If you’ve been following my newsletter or blog musings since the end of May when I launched Moondance, you might have noticed that I can find almost any reason to talk about how much I love fall.

And now, for the first time in four months: it’s COMPLETELY LEGIT.

Let me just begin by saying a warm and hearty HAPPY FALL EVERYONE!

We’ve just crossed over the Fall Equinox – this past Saturday, September 22nd – ushering in the official beginning of the unofficial best season ever.

There is something magical about fall: the crispness, the crunchiness, yes – the pumpkin-spice everything-ness. And the colors. OH the colors, how my heart flutters.

Aside from the ciders and the bonfires and the scarves, there’s something else I’ve always loved about fall.

It’s the FEELING of fall.

Hot off the tail of Late Summer, fall marks a distinctive energetic shift of yang into yin. Who into where? Yang energy is that hotter, brighter, lighter, faster and more expansive energy that we can easily equate with the jubilance and busyness of summer.

Yin energy, on the other hand, is that cooler, quieter, slower, darker and more grounding energy that makes us think of the coziness of fall and winter.

Fall is the beginning of the dark cycle. But before you scrunch your nose at the sound of that, remember that we can only enjoy the light of day because we have the dark of night to rest ourselves.

Much the same way, we can’t fully enjoy the fast, bright, expansive, growth-filled periods of our lives without equal time for rest, renewal and reflection.

Fall marks the beginning of our time to rest, to contemplate, to instrospect. What’s that you say? A job? Kids? Family? A million other responsibilities that aren’t paying attention to the natural cycles of life and letting you take a much needed breather?! Blimey!

That’s ok.

In this world of busyness, we do our best to stay connected to the rhythms and cycles that keep us sane, that keep us from reaching complete burnout.

What’s the first step? Awareness. Awareness in this case means we start by paying attention to the cycles around us, we start tuning in to how they affect us.

Feeling sleepier lately? Not sure why you don’t want to get out of bed? Wondering where all that summertime get-up-go got up and…went?

Welcome to fall. You’re wondering why this is still my favorite season now, right?

Great, we lose energy and don’t want to get out of bed. Perfect.

This will only be a difficult time IF we resist it. You know that wise saying by psychologist Carl Jung: “what we resist persists?”

What if instead of resisting the things we don’t like about this time of year, we choose to embrace them instead? Because of the way our world likes to run, we just have to get a little creative about how we do this.

We can’t embrace staying in bed every morning if we have a job we have to go to; but we can embrace that feeling of wanting to hunker down and move slowly by not over-scheduling ourselves this time of year. By allowing ourselves to say “no” to even one single engagement and using that time instead for our own self-care.

By starting a practice that encourages this slowing down and turning inward, like meditation or yin yoga. Or a practice that encourages us to tap back into our inner sense of gratitude, like finally starting that gratitude journal practice, or taking a (slow) walk through the neighborhood, breathing deeply, and counting our many blessings.

Fall is the perfect and natural time for turning our attention from the outer world, to our inner world. The perfect time for remembering who we are at our core, or discovering it for the very first time.

For many of us, it’s much more comfortable to keep our attention focused on the outer world. It’s more comfortable to keep moving fast, more comfortable to keep ourselves busy and distracted so we don’t have to risk having to go inward and being with…ourselves. Don’t have to risk being with our thoughts, our feelings, our wishes and dreams, our discontent, our emptiness.

If it’s been awhile since you’ve gone inward and gotten acquainted with your innermost self, I say now’s the time to do it. Comfort doesn’t encourage growth – is it comfortable to pick up a heavy weight in an effort to grow your muscle? Not really. Personal growth is the same way – it’s not supposed to be comfortable, but it is fascinating, life-changing, and totally worth it.

If you need a little help figuring out what personal growth looks like, check out my Coaching Programs and know that I’m here to help you in any way I can!

If my programs don’t make sense for you, but you feel a real yearning to do some inner work – reach out anyways and we’ll design something around your needs that fits your timeline and your budget.

There’s no other season that offers the same coziness as fall – warm tea, sweaters and scarves, and beauty all around us. If you want to make going inward and transforming yourself a little less scary and a little more cozy, you can’t beat fall!


 

Nagging health issues?

Feeling unfulfilled?

Needing a kick in the pants towards healthier habits or a life that makes you squeal with glee?

Let’s talk.

Notice how I didn’t encourage you to get this real in the summer? Energetically, it’s not a great time for that because we’re just so outward focused. Summer’s a great time to reap the benefits of any work we’ve put in – like showing off that swimsuit bod after working on it all winter. Same thing with personal growth, only less swimsuit-y: summer is a great time for reveling in our newness, our joyfulness, our newfound sense of wholeness.

But we have to put in the work ahead of time.

And you know what IS a great time to begin that sort of inner work and transformation?

FALL!

Wishing you a thousand warm cups of tea to make your fall the coziest. And if we meet up in person to work on a plan of personal growth, health, and transformation together – I promise there will be tea.

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