Autumn tends to bring up strong emotions in people. Many of you, while conceding that the colours of the autumn leaves are beautiful, may find this time of year a touch gloomy. Or more than a touch. The reduction in day length, the realisation that summer is really over, the feeling that it’s downhill all the way until the spring. When I did my acupuncture training, we were told that more people make their wills in autumn than at any other time of year – I have no idea whether that’s actually true, but it does symbolise something about this time of year. In terms of the annual cycle of energy, you don’t need to be mystical to understand that this is a time of waning energy, a downturn compared to the upturn of spring. So, internally, if tuning in to that downturn drags you down, maybe you would start thinking about your mortality.
Now, I may be in a minority here, but I absolutely love the autumn! Yes, I do have a preference for bright, crisp, sunny days in which the red and gold leaves glow against the backdrop of a blue sky. But I also love it when it’s misty and murky, soggy and gloomy (it’s foggy here in Northamptonshire as I write this). I love the smell of rotting leaves, as well as the crunch of walking through dry ones. I don’t mind the downturn of energy – in fact I welcome it, as part of the natural balance of things. We can’t be up, up, up all the time. After a while you just long for a bit of down time, don’t you? And ‘down time’ doesn’t have to mean depression. It can mean time to reflect on things.
In traditional Chinese thinking, the autumn is connected to the emotion of grief, or loss. Many bereaved people feel a surge in their sense of loss at this time, often waking up very early in the morning, and revisiting it more poignantly. And that can be a good thing as it shows some emotional clearing is going on. Zero Balancing has a wonderful concept of ‘hurt good’ – when a pain feels useful, helpful, something to lean into rather than pull away from. That concept isn’t restricted to physical sensations, but applies equally to emotional states. We all know about it, actually. “I had a good cry, and felt a lot better”. “It was good to talk about it, I’d been bottling it up”.
There’s a wonderful acupuncture point on the Lung meridian, associated with the autumn – it’s called Meridian Gutter, and it offers a sense of cleaning out the gutters of old debris so that they drain more freely.
Now is the time to be open to letting go of what no longer serves us – and both acupuncture and Zero Balancing truly come into their own in the autumn. So if you’re feeling stuck with some difficult emotions or issues, or you feel sluggish and clogged up in your body – you’d probably benefit hugely from some treatment, to help clear yourself out and breath more easily.
Call me now on 07970 295177 – to book some autumn sessions.
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