Rituals for the AUTUMN EQUINOX
Shifting from summer to fall feels dramatic, right? Party time is over, there's a seriousness in the air. A little more hustle, more cozying up, more focus, and hopefully more celebration. But before getting there, let's take a minute to assess what we really want before recalibrating into a busy season.
What are your patterns? What is organized? What is chaotic?
How can you be grateful without recognizing your daily habits? Get to it, sister. Take stock of what you do passively on repeat that keeps you from consciously being grateful. Is your daily interaction with yourself and others uplifting, passive-aggressive, aloof, assertive, structured or do you feel like you're unraveling?
Gratitude is an action word.
It's a practice of surrendering to contentment. We express it in many ways--facial cues, words, gestures, acts of service.
Surrendering does not mean giving up, it means coming to a place of understanding in the present moment. Like the pause before inhaling and exhaling, my body naturally surrenders to the next phase of the respiratory cycle. Peace is taken in through the ever-transient present moment.
My actions model how I'm choosing to be in the world. All that has come into me is transmuted through me as an expression.
So with the change of the season, it's important to set aside time to take a deep dive into our priorities. Dig them up, uncover them, shake them out, toss out or keep what we need. A beautiful way to start fresh is to mark the season with some kind of ritual to demarcate the change you seek to set in motion.
Here's a few ritual ideas to incorporate and celebrate the change into the fall season.
1. Create a harvest centerpiece for a focal point in your home. Choose crystals, nuts, moss, feathers, candles--anything that already exists in or around your space--to represent what is abundant in your life. Add to it throughout the season. Allow your family to contribute. It's a beautiful exercise to see their perspective of harvest.
2. Feed the birds. Set out bird seed in a feeder or make a hanging seed ball. Hollow out a grapefruit, use half of the rind for the bowl-like container. Mix bird feed and just enough coconut oil to bind the seed together. Fill the grapefruit bowl. Poke four small holes at the rim, then hang with twine of ribbon from a tree.
3. Prepare garlic honey. Peel 5-6 garlic bulbs. To a sterilized glass (with lid), add the garlic, a dried chili pepper, a vanilla bean pod, and then completely cover with honey. Let the mix sit on the counter for 6 weeks, shaking every day. Take a teaspoon with a clove daily or at the onset of illness.
4. Learn about your native blooming plants during the fall. Take a walk around your neighborhood or close field and look for 3-5 "weeds". Do an online search with descriptive words to try and identify them and find possible home uses. Becoming acquainted with help synchronize you with the flow of the seasons.
Here's a little present to get you going this season. Make your tea, take time with a salt soak in your bath, oil your body, and commune with yourself. Set your trajectory--intentionally--this season.
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Happy Autumn Equinox, Sage Woman. May you shift into exactly who are are meant to be this season.