Restoring Balance in Your Mind, Body, Soul and Spirit
In last week’s blog, Bringing the Significance of Autumn Equinox into the Autumn of Your Life I helped you take the crucial steps to align with the powerful transition of Autumn. It is an important season for restoring balance in your mind, body, soul and spirit. I see this time as a vital part of the enlightenment and growth process for us all; but this shift can go unseen by many who simply ignore its importance.
If you’ve been reading my blogs and watching my videos this month, then you’ll know that the Autumn Equinox is a time of transition. The bright days of summer shift to the darker days of autumn. It signals the change in seasons, the second harvest, and is a day that divides both the day and the night into equal portions.
In pagan tradition, it is known as Mabon and it’s a time of balance between polarities. It’s a time to acknowledge both the dark and the light and to give thanks for aspects of both.
Regardless of your religious or spiritual orientation, we can all benefit from finding balance in our own lives. We can use the Autumn Equinox as a time to explore the polarities within ourselves and to find a place of harmony between them.
Autumn can bring harmony
Considering the past 18 months or so, I feel ‘balance’ is key and an area to focus on for all of us. We have all experienced some unwelcomed changes and even trauma and suffering for some. Autumn could be the reboot and restoration in life that is most needed. When life is unpredictable, complicated and chaotic, everything comes back to finding harmony and balance.
Is this autumn an opportunity for you to pause and to reflect on life and the areas of your life that still need to be brought into balance?
Maybe as we embark on this last quarter of the year, you feel like you have been riding a roller-coaster? The ups and downs of personal challenges during the past 18 months that none of us had planned for. Maybe, as you step into the pause, you feel a sense of relief without having realised this yet, of the changes this turmoil has brought about. There could be a blessing in there that is waiting to be noted. Embrace the pause and catch your breath, before hurtling through the final four months of this year with a sense of wanting the year to be over already.
And the gift that autumn is showing you is that you need to find balance more than ever. But finding balance isn’t always easy, is it?
Autumn ceremonies and rituals
We don’t just decide we’ve come to our happy place because we have declared it so. There are practices and techniques that will create a shift in our mind, body, soul and spirit that helps us to achieve the harmony and balance we are craving.
I call these practices ‘ceremony’ or ‘rituals’, if you prefer you can just refer to them as a healthy practice to establish a little more balance in your life. You can adopt these practices for spiritual reasons or simply because you have a desire to feel more centred in your everyday life.
Autumn is a wonderful time to restore balance in our lives. All of the restless energy we’ve been feeling is a natural part of transitioning from one part of the year and transforming into another. It’s a growth process, and we can learn to embrace it. And not only to embrace all of the light.
We can learn to embrace the darkness that has given us such incredible reserves of strength and has propelled us forward into a better future. We can use the equinox to centre ourselves before the change of seasons, so that we may reap the harvest of the work we’re doing.
I use my Pura Vida Your Life Compass to illustrate the transition and cycles we move through in being in flow with the seasons, elements and the world around us.
A great way to restore balance this Autumn is with my 3 Golden Gifts and Deeper Wisdom. I will help you pause and attune your mind, body, soul and spirit to this magical time of the seasonal year.
Golden Gifts
1. Unpack Your Baggage
I feel like I’ve spent the last few years doing nothing but unpacking my baggage. It’s so necessary. Go through your life and gain some perspective.
Revisit your relationships, in your mind, and find a balance between the light and the dark. What was good? What wasn’t? Find a way to reconcile yourself with the reality that the bad memories don’t necessarily cancel out the good ones. Gaining perspective of those relationships can help you make better decisions going forward, and it can help you come to a place of peace with those times in your life.
Deeper Wisdom:
This can be a ritual, too. Write a letter to yourself or to others, expressing anger or forgiveness. Burn it safely in a fire. Let go of those hard feelings and find a place of softness in yourself. Watch the flames and remember that we, as humans, are resilient. We’re like the mythical phoenix, capable of rising from the ashes of our disappointments. Unpack the baggage and leave it behind in the old season, rather than dragging it into a new one.
2. List it
Making a list can be an invaluable tool. List all the things that you’ve done this year, every single success you can think of no matter how small. List your goals by order of priority. List what steps you’re taking to achieve these goals.
Deeper Wisdom:
Draw a large square and section it into four smaller squares, label each smaller square with Mind, Body, Soul and Spiritual. Take that list and sort it into these categories. Are you equally developing all aspects of this square? Do you focus more on the body (physical) part of life than the mind (mental), the soul more than the spiritual? How can you bring more balance into your life?
3. Sweep out Negative Energy
Take a step back and look at where there is chaos in your life, what’s causing you discomfort, physically, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually?
Sweep out the negative energy, and you can also smudge your home with white sage to clean the air. (This isn’t superstitious; it is backed by science.) We can bring plants into our home that have proven physical benefits and add a touch of nature to our households.
Deeper Wisdom:
When we’re done with that, we can take that cleaning mindset and apply it to ourselves, making our bathing time into more of a ritual. We can focus on cleansing, exfoliating, and moisturising our skin (this isn’t just for women, either), generally taking good care of our bodies. Light candles, play beautiful music, and make bathing a full sensory experience.
While getting clean on the outside, it’s helpful to focus on positive affirmations, too. Ban the body shaming and negative self-talk that can sometimes accompany a focus on ourselves. Be kind and find a place of compassion and love for the body that houses your soul.
So, let’s summarise those Golden Gifts again:
- Unpack Your Baggage
- List it
- Sweep out Negative Energy
I know it can be difficult to change the way you’ve been living life up until now and install new ways of being, to help bring harmony and balance into all aspects of your life.
I’m happy to announce that I am now holding live in-person events in Coventry. The first one will be Shamanic Cacao and Sacred Drum Journeying Ceremony, which is intrinsic to bringing about harmony and balance to all aspect of our being; mind, body, soul and spirit.
And the exciting news is that they are being held in a Tipi, which was a dream or vision of mine when I was in Costa Rica in 2020! This is literally a dream come true for me! If you want to know more, then get in touch: rachel@puravidayourlife.com
Thank you for joining me and I look forward to seeing you again next week for Pura Vida Your Life Happenings for insight, inspiration and more Golden Gifts and Deeper Wisdom to help you live a happier and fulfilled life.
I invite you to come on a journey of empowerment with me – sign up to Discoveries to start taking steps to improve your life!
Pura Vida Your Life – it all starts with you 🧡💙💛
Until next time – Pura Vida!