970x125
Recently, my yoga teacher commented that “Fall is a windy time of year.” Depending on where you live, the cool wind may pick up or briskness cut the air. This seasonal shift can feel energizing, or rev up your anxiety.
But my yoga teacher was not just talking about the external weather forecast. She was also talking about the shift of weather inside of each of us; that is, a feeling of worry, frenzy, and overwhelm that ramps up quite predictably each fall. Not coincidentally, these freshly stirred up feelings might bear relation to the weather around us; after all, we’re intimately connected to what philosopher David Abrams calls the “more than human world.”
A favorite ice-breaker in a group that I used to run with teenage girls was: “What’s your internal weather report?” “Thunderstorms,” “cloudy skies,” and “bright and sunny” were all common responses. This question is a great place to check in on your emotional state.
Fall coincides with many transitions: back-to-school, back-to-work, changing bathing suits for sweaters in a closet, crop rotations in a garden, etc. For many folks, there’s a ramped-up pace of life every September, October, and November: more events, activities, work, social engagements — and the challenge of juggling and multitasking to meet so many demands.
Pile on top of that a huge heaping of today’s looming existential burdens, be it on the personal level (i.e., health issue) or global level (political unrest).
Indeed, there’s a strong current of unease and worry that’s pervasive and visceral — and, for many folks, it is haunting their bodies with stress accumulation. We can intellectualize this all day long and call it “chronic stress,” “collective trauma” or “malignant normality.” Nonetheless, the prescription from a mental health perspective will often come back to the body, breath, and allowing unconscious thoughts and feelings to come forward.
When we, as a society or as individuals, are distressed or imbalanced, our best way forward is to rebalance ourselves. Fall, though windy, also houses the fall equinox: a day when day and night are approximately the same length due to the positioning of the sun and Earth (this year it was on September 22nd, 2025). A few weeks past, we sit in a space of dwindling light each day. More of our day is spent in darkness than sunlight as we move deeper into the winter. As with other mammals, we experience a felt sense of this shift in our bodies, naturally craving more quiet and peacefulness, a desire to slow down, sleep more, and succumb to natural rhythms.
The equinox is a good signal of balance. When our lives feel loud, unpredictable, or windy, we can ask ourselves where in our lives we are off-balance. And how do we return to inner equilibrium? One easy answer is: micro-resets — a sincere and compassionate attempt to rebalance our nervous system. This rebalancing is most effective through our physical bodies, not just mental work.
Here are three simple balancing exercises you can try this fall (or any time) to feel calmer, more grounded, and more connected:
1. “Book-end” your day
Daily rituals are comforting. Whatever the weather inside or outside, your rituals anchor you in the here and now, connecting you to yourself. A daily ritual can be as short as five minutes. Taking this to the next level and “book-ending” your day by engaging in a ritual at both the start and end of the day is even better. A twice-a-day ritual offers a sense of containment, a touchstone for mindfulness, and repetition supports the rewiring of neural networks. The ritual can be the same both times of day, or it can be two different rituals that achieve the same end.
Examples:
• Sitting meditation, walking meditation, mindful eating
• Listening to calming music, playing an instrument, or singing
• Journaling
2. Get earthy
Humans have evolved for centuries in their natural environments: forests, rivers, coasts, deserts, jungle, and so on. At our deepest core level, experiencing an intimate connection to the more-than-human world is calming and recalibrating. Our egos trip us up over and over again with all of our internal stories and lively narration. When we are immersed in the vastness of our landscapes, in the elements, the chatter in our minds dissolves. What a relief!
The late Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh referred to our intrinsic connection to the web of living things as “interbeing.” In my new book, Raising Anti-Doomers, I explore “embeddedness” as a central aspect of our mental health and resilience. When we feel separate or distant from the more-than-human world, it can be a slippery slope into a pit of loneliness, grief, and despair.
Examples of getting earthy:
• Bare feet on earth
• Gardening with bare hands
• Observing animals, birds, insects, and earthly creatures with your five senses
• Finding a tree to look at, imagine your legs as sturdy as trunks growing roots down into the soil. Push gently down through your feet and feel into this metaphor. Imagine your heart and arms growing from that strong foundation. If you can do this outside next to or touching a tree, even better.
Resilience Essential Reads
3. Balance your breath and posture
How we breathe — our quality of breath — dictates how we feel. (And, yes, vice versa too!) Think of a time when you felt nervous or afraid. What happened to your breathing? Likely, your breath became shallow, more rapid, your heart rate increased, and perhaps your eyes opened wide.
Posture is also part of the equation. When you feel sad or insecure, you might slump. When you are angry, you might stiffen through the spine, tense your jaw, and coil your fists. Your posture gives you clues about how you are feeling.
With both breath and posture, you can make micro-adjustments to restore balance. With breath, you can lengthen your exhales to exceed or match your inhales to help activate your parasympathetic nervous system (i.e., rest and digest). With posture, if you notice where you are holding tension in your body, then you can intentionally soften those areas through movement or gentle self-massage. Breath and posture work in tandem — so you will likely need to adjust both.
Examples:
• Box breathing (Sama vritti pranayama)
• Tai chi, Qigong, Yoga
In these coming weeks, in these windy times, try out these balancing exercises and see how they work for you. Make adjustments as needed. Be playful and curious, and don’t beat yourself up for forgetting. If you fall out of practice, can you hop back into it the next day?
To cultivate a calmer mind and body in unsettling times takes practice and commitment. Every time you do it, you are helping not only yourself, but others too. Limbic resonance mean that when you are calm, it radiates to others around you. Slowing down is half the battle.
