As we change seasons, it’s a good time to discuss seasonal junctions. Both Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine see the season changes as times when we’re more susceptible to being thrown out of balance, because our system is challenged to adapt to the shift. 

Ayurveda has a saying that “diseases are generated at the junctions of the seasons.” Other junctions are also challenging, with the challenge generally proportional to the magnitude of change. Author Robert Svoboda writes, “Ovulation and menstruation are the ‘joints’ of the menstrual cycle, dawn and dusk are the joints of day and night, and adolescence and menopause are the junctions of life.” If you have kids, you know that the “joints” of the day are the times you’re likely to have trouble, and if you’re clever, you find ways to make these transitions easy, such as the ever-popular “five minutes until we’re leaving.” 

Although we technically just started autumn, in the Chinese Five Element system, we’re not there yet. Seasonal divisions are more organic and specific to where you live. Here in the foothills of the Rockies, we’re firmly in the fifth season known as late summer. Although we’ve been getting food from the garden for months, late summer is the harvest season, the time when everything that’s left seems to ripen at once and we have more than we can handle. Right now, we have pears, apples, pumpkins, winter squash, tomatoes, peppers, fennel bulbs, beets, and more. 

Each season is ruled by one of the classical elements, and late summer is the season of earth. Many cultures have referred to earth as Mother Earth because earth is the great provider. She birthed us, she feeds us from her body, and she offers the raw materials to build everything we need, from bricks to skyscrapers to cell phones. She is the great nurturer, and it’s the earth element within us that allows us to give and receive nurturing and nourishment – to others and ourselves. She is the solid plane beneath our feet, offering a perpetual sense of groundedness and stability. And, wherever we go on the planet, she’s offers a link to a sense of being home.

If we allow ourselves to feel it, she encourages us to have an experience of being taken care of, even a feeling of abundance – just like the abundance of crops in late summer. However, because things don’t always go the way we desire or expect, we learn that uncertainty is a fact of life, and this can make us feel insecure and untrusting. It may even blind us to the fact that we have virtually always gotten what we need. Unfortunately, our attention feeds whatever we put it on, so when we ruminate about uncertainty and focus on what we lack, this insecurity can dominate our life story. 

Luckily, it works both ways. As we pay more attention to what is consistent in our lives, we form an enduring sense of trust. As we practice generating an experience of gratitude (not just a mental list of things we “should” be grateful for, but a palpable feeling), we open ourselves to an increasingly reliable connection with the Source that’s got our back. Instead of feeling like we live in a random universe that doesn’t particularly care what happens, it’s possible to feel that we live in a loving universe that challenges us because it knows we will discover our superpowers in the growth process. We may even start to feel that the game of life wouldn’t be any fun without the element of uncertainty.

During this seasonal phase, I encourage you to tune in to the earth qualities I mentioned above. Now is the time to explore and recognize these states, to observe how they’re exemplified by nature and how they also exist within you, ready to be evoked. I especially wish for you to explore the feeling of abundance, to notice it in the fruit-covered trees or pumpkin-dotted fields in your area. I urge you to ask, “Is abundance a feeling that only results from my external circumstances being a certain way?” Or is abundance perhaps a choice, a state of mind, and a recognition of the ways we’re perpetually supported?

Be well,

Peter