This is Bronwyn Isla and it is the autumn equinox and I'm going to speak about how to attune to this time of the year, how to allow the autumn equinox to be influencing our conduct, influencing our conduct. So part of the cycle of being a human being is allowing nature to influence us and to be in harmony with what's happening in the outside world and in the inside world. As the earth is spinning around the sun and the moon around the earth and all of the ways that we are cycling through space, through time, it makes sense that we would want to also harmonize and be included in these massive rotations. Autumn is a time to have the out-breath, the letting go and allowing of the slowing down, and autumn equinox is the middle of autumn. It's not the beginning of autumn. If you think about it, it's right between summer solstice, which is the longest, brightest day, and winter solstice, which is the darkest time of the year. So autumn equinox is right in between and it's the middle of autumn, and we will have the beginning of winter around the first or second week of November, and all of the cycles of the year are are divided into two nodes, of which are all two week periods, and we are entering now into the qi node of autumn equinox, which is when yin and yang have equality, and metal for us is metal, is the long element. And when we say equality for yin and yang, we don't mean in quantity but more in quality. It doesn't take a lot of yang to balance out yin, because yang is so spicy in that way.

So it's important to think of autumn equinox as the middle of autumn, because if we're latent and turning our energy inward, it can cause different dis-eases in the system and then we become out of balance with our environment. And not living in harmony with our environment is a big source of not only dis-ease in our systems but also an unfulfillment of the nourishment of our destiny. Because we're not actually cycling and harmonizing and having phases of completion and doing and ambition and letting go completion and doing and ambition and letting go we can fail to fulfill our destiny. That what it is that we came here for. Because we're not honoring these cycles which can govern our, our beingness in the world.

And during autumn our environment becomes more and more yin, more and more quiet, and this is also the time of year when I often have people coming to me in my clinics in the and sometimes sad and a lot of grief is coming up, and my first course of action is to assure them that that is healthy. It's healthy to have times of our lives where we grieve and where we remember loss and where we want to be less social and more on an inner journey, and allopathic medicine is called seasonal affective disorder, as if it's a disorder, but actually it's healthy to have times of slowing down and being quiet. Of course there can be extremes of that that need to be helped along, but dipping our toe into feelings of loss is a healthy part of life. If we are only wanting the summer beach days or the hot holiday vacation moments, then we're not living in the full spectrum of humanness, of human beingness. So that yin energy that's starting to really become more and more prominent has a very quiet still quality that's quietly calling us to let go and turn in. So if we've been cultivating autumn well in the last six weeks since the beginning of autumn and around August 1st or 2nd and around August 1st or 2nd, then we've spent this time completing projects and allowing ourselves to let go of the ambition of summer and the and starting to organize our lives to prepare for this quiet stillness that winter brings. So this includes cleaning out all the cupboards and the house and really doing a deep purge of anything extra that's not needed and allowing our spaciousness, our time, to not do so. If we have a home that's full of extra things, it's harder to really sink into stillness.

It's the time when we've harvested, cut the fruits from off the stem, off the vines, we've harvested the vegetables or are finishing up that harvest, and so when we cut those fruit from the vine, they're not growing anymore. And same with our projects. We're not adding more steam to the projects Now. We're completing, tying up, crossing the the t's, dotting the i's and looking for ways to complete all of the activity for these last, these last few weeks. So we have six more weeks until winter time.

As we turn inward in autumn, it's it's a time to gather our chi into ourselves and all this level. So this, this means saying no to over committing your time and energy. That would be really taxing on the on the adrenals and the kidneys at this time to be overdoing too many things. It means avoiding any kind of final pushes or one last all-nighter or whatever that could look like in our own life and really slowing down and really taking the time to contemplate what that actually means. And sometimes, if we didn't quite, you know, if we planned our autumn during the summer months, then the autumn can look a lot busier than is actually appropriate, because in the summer we're like, oh, we're going to just do it, it's going to be fine, I'm going to have that much energy in the autumn, but it's not the same amount of energy in the autumn, energy in the autumn, but, but it's not the same amount of energy in the autumn. So sometimes it takes slowing down and and hulling like taking out the things in the autumn that maybe already are too much. So, if you've already over committed your autumn, go through your calendar and see what you can take out as as being too much. So. We want to organize these more scattered, spontaneous patterns of the summer months into a more calm, quiet time for reflection. And it's important to really put in the calendar if if you're living in the west and have a more life of that kind the times for rest and reflection and really noting okay, this day and this evening, this is the time we're going to actually stop and have unstructured time to to be doing nothing.

Eating foods that are sour and astringent can encourage this process of pulling ourselves inward, toward ourselves and our internal sphere. The sour if you think of eating a lemon, the shape that one's mouth makes, that kind of puckering in. That's what you want to do now. You want to start to draw in our energy, pull it in towards our centers, so sour foods can help us. Pull it in towards our centers, so sour foods can help us. For example, vinegars, sour plums, sauerkraut, pickles, alfondari, rosehip tea, leeks, yogurt, olives and grapefruit.

This is the season to pickle, ferment and store our harvests for the winter. It's also a great time if you haven't yet put away anything from the summer months, any kind of financial savings or investments, which is also the time to really put away abundance financial abundance for the winter years of our lives, to take extra money and put it away for saving for when we're older. So the timing for your practice is optimal at 6 pm in the evening and the counselors for these practices whether they're yoga, dance, meditation, qigong, whatever to be done indoors, morning and evening, in short sessions rather than long, sweaty sessions. We want to be careful to use our qi to prepare us for the winter months, to replenish, restore and tonify our blood and our kidneys and our lungs. We want to use all of that tea to tonify ourselves rather than overly exert our energy by squandering our tea through too much exercise.

As far as food goes, this is the time to nourish with slow food. As yin is taking charge, it's best to eat nourishing foods with a high concentration of jing. Jing is our prenatal essence. It's the essence that we were given at the time of our parents' conception and partly also in utero. And this jing is very hard to replenish when we squander it through over exercise, too much sex or overwork or staying up all night and not taking care of ourselves and not living in harmony with the seasons. So we want to eat things that have a high concentration of jing and chi. So we can't really eat jing. Some people would say you can't really eat jing, you can only inherit it. But we can do things that help sustain the jing that we have left in our bodies. Roasted fall vegetables like warm hearty squash, soupss, roots and other hearty foods help us prepare for winter.

Generally, you want to be cooking with less water, at a lower heat for longer periods of time. This is a great time to pull out your crock pot and or roasting in the oven with a low heat on a flame so that these deeper nutrients can start to emerge from our foods. If we cook foods quickly, it creates more rajas or more speed or heat and encourages a kind of a busyness in our minds and our bodies. Allowing things to cook more slowly encourages us to focus more internally and encourage us a kind of a busyness in our minds and our bodies. Allowing things to cook more slowly encourages us to focus more internally, slow down and receive the deep nourishment from foods which is simple and easy to assimilate. So we want to avoid more complicated meals Simple, slow cooked, easyassimilate, quiet food. The more cooked the food is, the less our own bodies need to cook it and so we need less energy to assimilate it. It's our spleens that are responsible for cooking the food that we take in. So it can be hard on the spleen to have a lot of raw food this time of year, and that becomes more and more the case until we have the spring sprouts that come up and then we can start to add in more of that freshness.

And it's important to dress warmly, as Lu Ming, my teacher in this way would frequently remind us, the weather report is not the tree report. So even if the weather is warmer, still vulnerable to common colds and other externally contracted infections. The easiest way for these we think of a pathology or wind to come in is through our wrists, ankles and neck. So if you are hot even, you could still wear socks or like something around your ankles, wrists and throat. You can even just cut off an old pair of socks and put them around your wrists to keep the chi in those areas. Another idea, especially if you're on your bike or exposed to a lot of wind, is to put cotton balls in your ears. That can prevent a lot of the more common colds and flus that can start to come in, starting around this time.

It's important to observe all of the dryness this time of year. We can see that in the crackling leaves, the dry grasses and the crisp air, and part of the susceptibility in autumn is through the lungs and the dryness. This dryness primarily affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Sometimes this dryness coming into our systems can be an itchiness, a thirst, dry skin, a throat, and people who are thin or more vata are often more susceptible to this dryness. Vata means like a windy type, and there's ways to mitigate the vulnerability to the dryness by increasing more moistening foods, foods which have more oil in them olive oil, avocados, evening primrose oil, different kinds of oils inside the system, evening primrose oil, different kinds of oils inside the system, and also some of the foods that are more moistening, such as spinach, pears, apples, persimmons, loquats and different seaweeds. It's wonderful all of these foods just so perfectly come into ripeness right at the right time. So many of the foods that are in season at this time have this function Almonds, pomegranates, pumpkins and so we can mitigate the onset of the deficiency by nourishing dryness at this time onset of yin deficiency by nourishing dryness at this time.

It's also a really nice time if you're to have an oil diffuser going in your home or office which helps moisten the air and dispel the dryness. I like to especially use this time of year fennel, geranium, jasmine and oak moss, which all help nourish the yin and they assist with pulling in rampant summer energy. You can also use astringent oils like cypress and geranium and mimosa For treating and preventing lung ailments. You can go to eucalyptus, pines and firs. You don't need to necessarily use essential oils. You can also just go out into your garden or somewhere where there's eucalyptus trees, pull some of those fresh leaves off, put them in a pot and have it simmering on your stove all day. Add some cloves and orange peels and just keep this kind of autumn brew as a backdrop going. This can just be a really lovely way to keep your house moist. It's nice in the wintertime too to have a pot going in the background. You can add cinnamon things like that, cinnamon things like that.

Another lovely way to keep the moisture happening is oil massages. We say abhyanga in Ayurvedic medicine. It is a self-massage After bathing, rubbing your body with nourishing oils like sesame, jojoba or even olive oil oil. I like to make a blend every few months. My daughter and I have a separate blend, but we use a base of almond oil, semolina, sesame um, jojoba, that kind of thing, and then we add in there some red raspberry seed, blueberry seed, these kinds of really deeply nourishing oils into that base with whatever is our favorite oils, essential oils in that moment that we're feeling called to and then you can also add to this a couple of different flower essences or plant essences and we like to put in our intentions into this oil mix for that time that we make it, because usually it lasts us about six weeks, so we make it, replenishing it. I also make a separate blend for the massages I do in the clinic for clients and it's nice to have these on hand the different blends for sore muscles and things like that.

Using a lot of oil into the body. It's preferably you can warm the oil before you use it. We keep it in a little pot that we can just put it on the soap and warm it each time and you can medicate it based on your individual constitution. But in general this time of year geranium, rose and jasmine spiced oils help nourish you and calm the spirit. It is especially useful to bring an aggravated vata or air element back into balance and mitigate the drying effects of the autumn environment and it really helps slow down the mind, all that vata derangement of all the things that need to get done. Those oils can really help just bring in that calm, nourishment and remembering of the call of a quieter time. And with this it's important to remember ritual as we tune into our out-breath.

Eight times a year I completely undo and redo our altars and I clear off everything off the altar, really dust it, polish it, clean it and rethink of all of our intentions, flow, important pieces and prayers for the next six weeks, and harmonizing those prayers with the seasonal tea it's important so that the prayers become less ambitious and more quiet this time of year. This ritual helps us slow down, make meaning, listen to our dreams and follow the omens so we act from a deeper self. We can run around all day long with a to-do list, the going, the emergency, putting out fires, or we can stop, clarify and use magic to find our way through the chaos. This is a time to really call in your inner ceremonial space and I recommend clearing off the altar sitting. You can ask the oracle whichever oracle you work with, whether it's rinsed or eating, or tarot cards Ask for some clarity for some foreign living places in yourself. Put your altar back together with those intentions and clarity in mind and make sure that you go on a on a ceremonial hike this time of year as well.

So moving, the way we walk on a on a out on a walkabout is the way that we often move in our lives. So take the time to make this your autumn equinox nature walk. Go out, look at the leaves, the quietness, see what's happening in the nature and let there be some messages that come from the animals you encounter, the birds that you see, the bugs, the quiet, the trees, the plants. Let them also have their messages and ways of speaking to you about, about correct conduct in your life right now, how to really be in harmony with what's happening. There are so many. There's so much support for us and our paths when we actually drop in and listen and as soon as we tune in to the light and really take the time to tune into ourselves, to God, to Great Spirit, to the light, to the nature.

However, you want to talk about that process of the tuning in, there's a whole host of support that comes in to help guide us. They're just waiting for us to listen. It's just waiting quietly, calmly, waiting for us to listen. It's us waiting, quietly, calmly, waiting for us to tune in, and so when we tune in, it's remarkable how much support we actually have to be guided in our lives. So that's all we have to do, is tune in. What we have to do is tune in With this tuning in if there comes that noticing of the emptiness, the what's been lost, the what's no longer here, and we have Dia de los Muertos, we have these traditions, which Halloween, which really honor that time of listening into what's past, what's no longer here.

This is a time to really allow ourselves to let that go, and it'll become even more so in about six weeks when we start the beginning of winter. But allowing for the spaciousness now will then allow that process in six weeks to have more, more gravity, more weight, more ability to actually tune into the, the winter time and allow it to to really transform us. That's the idea with tuning into these cycles. We're finding, uh, the cycles allowing us to transform, allowing them to have their way with us so they can actually rock us and move us and allow us to transform into the next version of us. And so that requires updating the habits, all the ways that we, that we are doing our lives or being in our lives, as we evolve to higher levels of consciousness.

It is important that we update our lives to make sure that they're a reflection of our inner space, and the update that we make to our outer lives also, then, will help us evolve to these higher levels of consciousness. They go hand in hand. So blessings in your process and all of the transformations that are available for all of us in this time, and may you take the time to honor and be in this process of transformation. Thank you so much for tuning in. My name is Bronwyn Isla and I will be posting on social media via my Facebook page and Instagram, bronwyn Isla, different updates as we move through the season. I post regular updates and reminders and ways to tune in more. Thank you for listening. You can also find out more on my blog at bronwynislacom slash blog.