YOGA FOR THE AUTUMN
How are you adjusting to the autumn season? Are you filled with energy or feeling rundown and on a sluggish side? Are you focused and alert or do you find your thoughts somewhat scattered? Autumn is the season of transition and this change affects both nature and your body. It’s not uncommon to feel unsettled, ungrounded, weak, overwhelmed, fidgety and unbalanced as the days get shorter and darker.
The best way to approach this changeable season is to learn how to align with it by implementing practices that help you stay calm, grounded and focused as well as enhance your immunity and balance out any overwhelm and unsettledness.
HOLISTIC PERSPECTIVES ON AUTUMN
Traditional Chinese medicine
Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is a widely practised holistic discipline that centres on five elements: fire, water, wood, metal and earth.
Five-element theory — one of the most significant systems within Chinese medicine — recognises that these elements are in constant movement and emphasises living in alignment with the seasons. It also provides detailed information about how the changes occurring in nature as the wheel of the year turns correspond with your inner environment (your body and mind interactions). Five-element theory advocates that health and wellbeing can be achieved through physical, nutritional, mental and emotional balancing in accordance with natural cycles.
Chinese medicine associates autumn with the metal element, which provides energy governing the lung, a yin organ, and the large intestine, a yang organ correlating with the lung.
Even though in TCM the names of the organs remain the same as in Western medicine, remember that Chinese medicine sees
