Yoga helps us align our energies to the natural rhythms of the earth and sun’s light cycles, creating a sense of ease at a change of season., and more recently – peace and acceptance with the Earth ! We bring our awareness to the balance between day and night, light and dark, fire and water, yin and yang.

We move from sun to moon, outer achievements to inner reflection, movement to stillness, Samana / centering energy to Langhana/ grounding and calming.

The autumn equinox is a time for celebrating Harvest and Gratitude, for rest and renewal, a dormant phase. At a broader holistic level, we can think of our own personal harvest, taking time to acknowledge a sense of completeness, whole, just as we are, time to consider our journey over the last season, reminding ourselves to stay centred, connected to our higher selves and to our creativity, and then to move forward with acceptance to the coming season. We prepare for the coming winter and incubate seeds within, a time of rebalancing, focusing on new shoots that will grow, cutting out the old wood from our lives!

The autumn equinox reminds us to practise continuous holistic motion and to balance all parts of ourselves, on all levels – physical, mental, emotional, energetic, bringing us into equilibrium. Yoga practice for the Autumn Equinox involves a variety of grounding and balancing asanas, rhythmic sun salutations, still yin poses opening our yin meridians, which tend to be on the inside of our limbs and sides of the body– heart, pericardium, lung and kidney, spleen, liver. Yin energy involves the intuitive feeling parts of ourselves.

We can acknowledge the Autumn equinox by honouring the flow of life and greater cycles of which we are all a part. Perhaps celebrate a few days either side, in your own way, with a meal, a candle, yoga practice, a meditation or just connecting with the heart of the sky and the Earth, in this way our natural body rhythms become more in tune with the flow of days.