Autumn Equinox 2014
It won’t be long now before the leaves start to turn and the autumn air brings a fresh chill to our cheeks. The change of the seasons, is for me a bittersweet turning point, symbolic of many other similar moments in life. My most recent major example has been the passage from motherhood to nomad coinciding with daughters blossoming into women, menopause, marriage (as in for me mother-in law) bones shrinking and retirement thinking. Ready or not I have hit the autumn of my life.
Nostalgic as it is and perhaps unsettling, there is something about the impending change that on some level I feel and know is necessary – it is part of our nature. Change is life. We are all of what Nature is, it can teach us all of what we are. Curiously as nature is a metaphor for life with regards to the seasons, so too can nature be an example of how to best meet the potential turmoil and disruption of change.
In time, Summer surrender’s her fiery display and subdues into the long shadows of fall, and we too must adjust and follow natures example, by coming back down to earth, balancing our external output and collecting in our resource’s and energy. Yoga and Ayurveda offer many tools and techniques to help ameliorate and manage our own life-force. The Dragon & Tiger Practice, it is useful at this time of year and helps to calm or focus ones energy.
Like a beautifully scripted symphony-both spring and fall equinox bring us to a balance point, while the two solstices winter and summer take us to the extremes of darkness and light. In the end the more we understand and know about ourselves, our true nature and how to work with it, the more empowered and liberated we become. We cannot alter the flow of life, but can learn to surrender and ride the waves – and move with and through the turbulence.
Bountiful & Balanced Fall Blessings,
Mary-Jo
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for 100 miles to the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese harsh and exciting – over and over announcing your place in the family of things.
– Mary Oliver
Upcoming for Fall
Fall Yoga Schedule
Fall classes begin in October, click here for the complete schedule. Our next 40 Hour Adaptive/ Restorative/Therapeutic-ART, 3 day training is this Oct 2014- in beautiful Whistler, BC. Find out more and apply today HERE!
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Wander-Events…
Yoga Teacher Training Level 2 takes place this November in beautiful Whistler, BC.
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Do you wonder…
What is your body type and what are its needs? The sister science to yoga – Ayurveda, is a perfect way to support yourself and understand your nature. Here are two great resources: Anna Colin – Natural Life Ayurveda & Madhuri Phillips – Madhuri Ayurveda Yoga.
Reach out to them to find out how Ayurveda can support you.
Ponder some closing thoughts by the late great, BKS Iyengar……
As you come back, (from savasana) don’t move from habit. Instead be still and observe the world itself waking up inside your awareness. Witness the senses waking up, then the mind and finally observe how the body and the world reconstitute themselves.
This is a critical moment. Don’t go into the old mental habit that wants to paint the days landscape from memory. Instead, remain absolutely still. Understand the world through fresh innocent seeing, feeling, smelling and tasting. Be open to the unknown.
– BKS Iyengar
