Autumn Equinox Blessings
It's that time of year again, when the wind starts blowing, the nights and mornings get cool, and the days get shorter. In fact, we are halfway between the longest and shortest days of the year, in a powerful place of balance and headed into the darkness. If you'd like some support during this time of letting go, see below for articles on balancing Vata dosha, Ayurvedic Abhyanga therapy, and wisdom from Rudolph Steiner.
I hope to see you soon for massage or Ayurvedic bodywork, private yoga instruction, or Integrative Holistic Health Counseling.
With Love and Gratitude,
~Liz
This image has been something that I have meditated on throughout the years ever since I learned it from Tom Altgelt several years ago. I have used a simplified version for teaching my upper grade gardening classes at the Waldorf school and so appreciate this and the many other metaphors in gardening for the spiritual and practical truths in life.
As you can see, we are entering into the in-breath, interiorisation, and the opportunity to cultivate our inner light in the time of darkness. This season can also be labeled on this mandala as the season of 'death and becoming', and mother earth can also be known as the 'Informing Wisdom of Sophia'.
This mandala, with the seed at the center of the lemniscate, the infinity symbol, or figure 8, is a wonderful tool for contemplating the cycles of the year as well as cycles of death and rebirth, in breath and out breath, that we go through each and every day over and over again. I hope it speaks to you as deeply as it has to me and assists you as you traverse the ‘terrible ocean of exsistence'.
“When to my spirits depths I penetrate, expectant yearning wakes and stirs, to find myself, self-contemplating, as gift of summer, a seed, that warming lives in autumn mood, as germinating force of soul seed." ~Rudolph Steiner
The above image is of the Ayurvedic doshas and times of day and seasons of the year behind beautiful artwork by my dear friend and artist JaMeson at Life4Source where you can find water bottles, candle holders, and more.
In Ayurveda (the science of life), Autumn is the season of Vata dosha. There are three doshas, each composed of a combination of the five elements. Vata is Air and Ether, Pitta is Fire and Water, and Kapha is Earth and Water.
Doshas can be understood as psychological/metabolic types, but also exists in all manifest matter, so for example the doshas cycle in dominance throughout each day and throughout each year. Summer is pitta (light, hot, sharp, acidic, intense, penetrating), autumn and early winter is vata (cold, dry, light, rough, variable), and late winter early spring is kapha (cold, wet, heavy, dull, stable, slow).
In Ayurveda like increases like and opposites balance. So, in order to keep Vata from going out of balance, we need foods, experiences, visions, etc that are warm, moist, grounding, heavy, and smooth. What might this look like in our daily lives?
It looks like eating warm soups and grounding root vegetables, keeping warmly dressed on cool days and especially protecting the back of our neck, or wind gate, with a cozy scarf or jacket, practicing rhythmic movements like thai chi or yoga, combined with rhythmic breathing. It also looks like keeping a regular schedule and getting plenty of good rest.
One of the best ways to keep vata in balance, as it is dry and cold, is warm oil massage, or abhyanga. This can be done 1-7 days a week at home with a nice copper oil warmer like the one at the very top of this email, or even by putting oil in a jar or cup and setting the oil in a bowl of hot water, then in a room free of drafts, gently massaging the oil into the skin and following this with a warm shower with no soap, patting yourself dry, and leaving a spacesuit of love for your nervous system (which is vata)!
You can also always come in for a professional Abhyanga session with me here in downtown Carpinteria and receive oils that are infused with vata balancing herbs in the traditional Ayurvedic manner.
