Up here in New England the hot and humid heat is slowly dissipating to be replaced with the crisp weather of fall. A few of the leaves are changing and I have an immense amount of apples in my fridge destined to be turned into applesauce. Every ounce of my being is yearning for the cozy and the adventurous that comes with finally 1) taking out the sweaters, slippers and scarves and 2) going back outside for fall and then winter outdoor activities (goodbye humidity).
Plus, as the shift in the seasons go, the beginning of fall is a great time to intentionally embody the energy of the new season, taking in new lessons and new opportunities for self care. To me fall self care (and when I say self care I mean the internal, mind-body, well BEing kind of self care) is an opportunity to take in what is nourishing and let go of the rest embracing the inevitably of a season all about change.
To help you bring in the qualities of this fall season to your own self care practice, here are 3 of the top lessons I consistently learn from the season of fall about how they can be applied to your life through–of course–the lens of mindfulness.
Fall Self Care #1: Embrace Intentional Change
Fall, as cliche as it is, as often as you have heard it, is a time of change. Depending on where you live you might physically see these changes in the plants or in the animals. The Canadian Geese start to fly south as do the Monarch butterflies. Hibernating animals get ready to hibernate. The animals that do choose to stick around and tough out the winter begin to look a little more rotund.
To that end there’s an air of moving, intentional, busy energy of preparation, coupled with a hunkering down to weather all of this change with safety and a degree of comfort.
When it comes to caring for yourself this fall, perhaps begin to notice where change is occurring for you. Is this change directed and aligned with what you need and want or is it scattered and a little bit all over the place?
Both are okay (let’s ditch the attitude of one way is the right way)–sometimes life is a lot more mess than clarity when in the throes of change–BUT sometimes change is displaced, almost running for running sake and there’s a level of avoiding yourself while keeping yourself busy.
Mindful Moment
Can you notice what is shifting for you during this season of fall? AND Can you direct that shifting by focusing your energy in the areas that matter to you? You don’t have to do everything all at once, just enough to make it through the metaphorical, and literal, winter.
Fall Self Care #2: Allow Yourself to Let Go
Again, I am hitting you with the cliches BUT from a slightly new perspective. Fall is a time to let go. Plants stop flowering, the leaves on the trees fall off and there is an air of death. November specifically really carries that air of death that things are no longer what they were before.
While the concept of death can be scary, we are in a broad and figurative way “dying” all the time, it is also the catalyst for regrowth.
Fall reminds you that it is okay to ultimately surrender aspects of your life that no longer serve you. Relationships, ideas, stories, and old habits can all be intentionally discarded. Just like the trees, these aspects of death lend themselves to new beginnings, where energy is conserved to give way to something else thriving.
Letting go can be super scary. Building the capacity to trust that what you are leaving behind can and will make way for something different takes time. Many seasons may come and go before you feel capable of making changes that feel more final and long lasting. Also, letting go is not always easy, so give yourself some grace that death in all its forms requires both discomfort and grieving.
Mindful Moment
Do you have something you want to let go of? Fall might be a great time to set an intention to notice more fully what is no longer needed, or wanted, in your life and then take intentional, courageous action, to surrender these aspects. Keep in mind, there’s two different aspects of mindfulness at play here:
1) The capacity to notice, building awareness of what to leave behind
2) The capacity to apply your awareness in a tangible way
Both are skills. Both are an ongoing practice. Which is to say, trees don’t drop their leaves in a day, neither do you have to.
Fall Self Care #3: Harvest the Abundance in your life
Fall is a time to harvest. Harvest season is the time to physically gather the abundance from the summer to serve as sustenance for the upcoming cold.
In this way, Fall urges you to gather your own abundance. Chances are you have been spending your time working towards something; OR, ditching the capitalist rhetoric that we always have to work towards something, chances are the summer season has brought to you in some capacity a gift to be gathered, collected and used as nourishment in the coming months.
Mindful Moment
While noticing the abundance in your life takes practice, it’s a perspective shift in and of itself, the idea of searching for what is going right, what we have to be thankful for, is a practice that has been shown to have immense benefits.
To that end, can you harvest the abundance of your life through gratitude? Actively become aware and even write down what you are grateful for. This could be something you do daily, weekly or even seasonally. The point is that when you can more clearly see the abundance that already exists within and around you, the easier it is to use that abundance as a source of sustenance, creating a new more positive (and perhaps realistic) outlook of your life as a whole.
The Fall season can serve as a wonderful reminder to come home to yourself, to begin to nourish your mind, body and soul through the practice of intentional action and discernment. It is a reminder, you don’t have to do everything all at once, that change can be more directed and that you don’t always have to be striving for something better to reap what has already been sown.
Now excuse me while I grab a cup of tea, my journal and get real cozy as I build some fall self care into my own mindfulness practice.
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