October sees us entering the last two phases of the year. Nature slowly exhales and the four-season-cycle comes to an end once again. After the Autumnal Equinox at the end of September, there’s an entirely new energy present in the world around us. One that ensures we become more aware of nature than we may have been for the past few months. October’s Autumn colours, weather patterns, harvest foods and time honoured traditions all call our attention at this time of year. For your October intentions try encouraging a slower pace and reconnect to what’s important on a personal, emotional and spiritual level.
Monthly Mantra: Exhaling, I release what I no longer need. Inhaling, I create space for new opportunities
Taking Stock
After several months of planning, doing, manifesting and learning, October can signify a necessary time to take stock and harvest what we’ve accomplished, overcome or learned. If you’re the type of person who feels overly busy and caught up in to-do lists and tasks, use your October intentions to pause and reflect. Take time to consider how your actions and current way of doing things have been serving you. All too often we focus on our future selves and goals without acknowledging just how far we’ve come or how much we’ve grown.
Pause for a moment and take stock: where were you this time last year? Do you feel different? What three important lessons have you learned? What have you achieved? Which hurdles have you overcome? Are your values and priorities different now than they were a year ago? There’s absolutely no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answer to any of these reflective questions, they simply allow us to learn from past experience and help us realise that every action, obstacle, mistake, miracle and moment of the past year has resulted in this moment right now. If ‘now’ is a good place, then maybe our actions this past year were wise. But if ‘now’ is a challenging place, then perhaps with your October intentions it’s time to let go of current habits and beliefs. Time to create space for new opportunities ahead. We evolve and expand by learning and making changes.
Letting Go
As cliché as it sounds, our own lives can very much mirror the outside world at the moment. The changeable weather is implying the need to change our routines and be able to adapt. The darker nights encourage more rest. And indeed the falling leaves showing us how natural it is to release, let go and lose some things in order to make space for the new. For thousands of years systems like Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayurveda have recognised nature’s cycles of growth, peak energy, releasing and resting, the necessity of change and the natural ebb and flow of life. Further back in time and as hunter-gatherers, humans naturally moved and changed their activities in alignment with the seasons and cycles of abundance and scarcity.
In an age of over consumption, absolute abundance, quantity over quality and information overload, we have way more than we need both in life and within our own minds. If we accumulate too much, it can be difficult to recognise what we truly value, and what is simply taking up space. It’s difficult to grow when there’s no space to do so. Animals like reptiles and sea creatures display this wisdom perfectly. They shed their skin or move from one shell to another when they require room to expand.
Notice in your own life perhaps; Do you feel as though you’re running out of space to explore, think and simply be? Are you saying yes to things that drain your energy and de-value your worth? Are you continuing habits that exhaust and overwhelm you? Where can you make space? What can you let go of? What is life asking you to make space for? Step outside into the Autumnal October air and see for yourself how nature teaches us to take stock, let go of what we no longer need and make space for what we do.