Celebrating the Autumnal Equinox

Over the past week, it’s started to feel a lot like fall – staying darker later into the morning and growing darker earlier in the evening. The chill in the air. And tonight is the autumnal equinox, marking the time when day and night are approximately equal in length. Two sides of a scale coming into balance for a brief moment in time. When I visualize this in my mind, I see in that brief moment of balance, stillness, a pause – no movement. 

As we transition from the outward expression and expansion of summer to the more inwardly focused, contemplative fall, it’s a good time to notice the moments in between – the spaces, the pauses. On our mats, we can experience this as the space we create in our bodies, between the vertebrae of our spines, in the way the inhale helps us to create space in a pose for our exhale to invite us deeper. And, we can experience the pause between breaths at the end of the exhale and the end of the inhale. We can begin to expand into these spaces, these pauses, these brief moments of stillness, to relax into them, and rest in the space we create in our bodies and the pauses in our breath. Off the mat, we can start to notice brief moments of stillness in our otherwise busy days, and take those moments to pause and reset.

If you're in the Burlington area, join me tonight for a de-stress yoga class and celebration of the autumnal equinox at evolution yoga from 5:45 to 7:15.