To listen to this article on YouTube go here: https://youtu.be/wxg658c81Rw

On 23 September, we reach the Autumn Equinox: a turning point in the year when day and night come close to balance and the long, expansive days of summer begin to give way to the darker months.

There is something unmistakable about this time of year.  The quality of the light changes, mornings become cooler, fruits ripen, and leaves begin to change colour and fall from the trees.  The natural world starts withdrawing its energy from outward growth.

To modern eyes, autumn can sometimes appear to be a season of decline.  Yet nature does not treat autumn as a failure.  It is simply another part of the cycle.

In the shamanic tradition in which I work, the Medicine Wheel offers a way of understanding these cycles, not only in nature but within our own lives.  The wheel teaches us that there is a time for birth, a time for growth, a time for harvest and release, and a time for rest and renewal.

The Autumn Equinox brings us particularly into the medicine of the West: the place of harvest, sunset, pruning, release and preparation for winter.

But there is another aspect of the Medicine Wheel that I find especially helpful.  We are not necessarily in the same season in every part of our lives.

The Medicine Wheel and the Seasons of Life

The Medicine Wheel is a symbolic representation of the cycles through which life continually moves.  In the tradition I was taught, the East corresponds with spring, sunrise, birth, planting seeds, setting intentions and new beginnings.  It is the place of potential, when something new is brought into being and needs our care and attention.

The South corresponds with summer and growth towards maturity.  The seed has germinated, and the plant is growing, flowering and producing buds and unripe fruit.  This is the expansive part of the cycle, but discernment is still needed.  Just as we weed a garden, we decide what deserves our continued energy and what needs to be removed so that something else can flourish.

The West corresponds with autumn and sunset.  Here we reap what we have sown, gather what is valuable, store our reserves and begin pruning back what is no longer required.  It is simultaneously a time of harvest and celebration and a time of preparing ourselves for winter.

Finally, the North corresponds with winter.  This is the place of hibernation, healing, rest, rejuvenation and going within.  Although there may appear to be stillness externally, internally another kind of growth is taking place.  The ground is being prepared for the next spring.

We can see this wheel turning continuously in nature, but the same pattern also appears in our relationships, careers, creative work, personal healing and spiritual development.

What Season Are You In?

One of the most useful things about the Medicine Wheel is that it allows us to ask a different question about our lives.  Instead of immediately asking, What is wrong?, we can ask, What season am I in?

We can then go further and ask what season we are experiencing within each particular aspect of our lives, because our lives rarely move around the Medicine Wheel as a single unit.

We might be experiencing spring in our work because we have just begun a new project.  At the same time, a relationship may be in summer: flourishing, deepening and asking to be nurtured.  Another aspect of our lives might already have entered autumn, where we are beginning to recognise that something has given us everything it can and we need to decide what we wish to take from the experience before releasing it.

Somewhere else we might be in winter, requiring solitude, healing and rest.  We can therefore be standing in several different places on the Medicine Wheel at the same time.

Recognising the season can change how we respond to what is happening.  Many difficulties arise because we try to force something to remain in a season that has already passed.  We try to keep harvesting from soil that needs to rest, attempt to make something flower before its roots are established, cling to autumn leaves when they are ready to fall, or immediately plant something new because we are frightened of the stillness of winter.

Nature does not make these mistakes.  The tree does not demand that January resemble June.

The Medicine of the West

Autumn belongs to the West on the Medicine Wheel, and its medicine is not simply about endings.  It begins with harvest.

Before we decide what needs to leave our lives, the West invites us to recognise what has already been created.  What have we grown this year?  What has reached maturity?  What have we learnt?  Which relationships have nourished us?  What challenges have revealed something important about ourselves?  What have we achieved that we have barely paused to acknowledge?

In our culture, we can become so focused upon the next goal that we forget to harvest the one we have already reached.  Autumn reminds us to stop and gather.

Autumn is both a time of celebration and feast and a time of preparation for the winter ahead.  We take what nourishes us forward, and then we begin to prune.

Look at a tree in autumn.  It does not attempt to save every leaf.  The leaves have performed their purpose.  Their work is complete.  As the tree withdraws its energy, they change colour and eventually return to the earth.  The tree remains.

There are times when healing asks us to do something similar.  We may need to release an old agreement about ourselves, recognise that a pattern of behaviour which once protected us is now restricting us, or accept that a relationship has completed its cycle.  An identity we once needed may no longer fit the person we are becoming.  Sometimes we are simply carrying too much.

There is an important difference between rejecting the past and releasing it.  The Medicine Wheel suggests that we first take the harvest.  We gather the wisdom from an experience before deciding what we no longer need to carry.

Then we let the leaves fall.

Autumn, Healing and Letting Go

In shamanic healing, I work with the deeper energetic and spiritual patterns underlying our experiences.  This can include restoring lost life-force energy, clearing blockages and working with agreements and belief patterns that may continue to influence our behaviour long after the circumstances in which they developed have passed.

The Medicine Wheel can therefore offer a useful way of understanding healing itself.  Sometimes healing requires the medicine of the East because something new needs to be born.  At other times it requires the South because something new needs to be nurtured and strengthened.  Sometimes we need the West because something must be harvested, understood and released.  And sometimes we need the North because there is nothing more to do.  We need to rest, integrate and allow healing to take place.

This can be particularly revealing when we consider our relationships.  Some relationships are in spring: new, tentative and full of possibility.  Others have reached summer and are growing into something deeper.  But sometimes a relationship enters autumn.

That does not necessarily mean it must end.  Autumn may simply mean that something within the relationship needs to be harvested, reassessed or pruned.  Old ways of relating may need to change, agreements may need to be reconsidered, and boundaries may need to become clearer.  Sometimes, however, the relationship itself has completed its natural cycle.

After a relationship has ended, there can be value in allowing ourselves to consider what worked, what did not and what our own behaviour contributed before planting the seeds of another relationship.

There is wisdom in not rushing straight back to spring.

A Journey into the Dark

The Autumn Equinox does not yet bring us fully into winter.  It points towards it.  Autumn is preparation.

The nights become longer, activity in the natural world begins to contract and energy moves away from outward growth.  We begin travelling towards the medicine of the North.

Winter, in the Medicine Wheel, is associated with rest, healing, rejuvenation and going within.  I particularly like to think of this as stillness on the outside with movement on the inside.

This is why I do not see our journey into the darker months as something inherently negative.  Darkness has its own medicine.  Seeds germinate beneath the soil, roots deepen underground, animals hibernate, and human beings dream.  Things happen in darkness that cannot happen in full sunlight.

Stillness also has an important place within the Medicine Wheel.  Stillness and balance work together.  Through stillness we can find our centre, while greater balance allows us to become still.

The journey into darkness can therefore also be a journey towards ourselves.

One of my favourite images within the Medicine Wheel is what happens to the things we release.  The fallen leaves eventually become compost, returning their nutrients to the earth and helping to create the fertile ground from which new life will emerge.

The ending becomes nourishment.  Nothing needs to be wasted.

Even difficult periods of our lives can eventually become part of the soil from which something new emerges.  The relationship that ended may teach us what we truly need from love.  The career that collapsed may lead us towards work that is more aligned with who we have become.  The boundary we finally learnt to establish may transform every relationship that follows.

The person we once were does not have to be erased.  That person becomes part of the soil.

An Autumn Equinox Medicine Wheel Practice

Around the Autumn Equinox, find somewhere quiet where you can sit undisturbed.  If possible, go outside and spend some time with the land.  You might light a candle, smudge your space, drum or simply sit quietly.

Draw a circle and divide it into four sections representing the four directions of the Medicine Wheel.  In the East, consider what is beginning in your life and the seeds you are planting.  In the South, consider what is already growing and deserves your continued care and energy.

When you reach the West, spend some time considering your harvest.  What has this year given you?  What wisdom can you take from your experiences?  What has reached maturity?  What needs pruning, and what are you ready to release?

Finally, turn to the North.  Ask yourself what needs to rest.  Where do you need healing, quietness or contemplation?  Is there anything you are trying to solve immediately that might instead need time?

Then look at the whole wheel.  You may discover that different areas of your life sit in completely different places.  Allow that to be so.

Ask yourself one final question: Where am I trying to force something into a season that it is no longer in?

Do not rush to answer.  Sometimes the most valuable part of the practice is simply becoming still enough to hear what we already know.

Moving with the Wheel

The Autumn Equinox reminds us that balance does not mean remaining unchanged.  Nature’s balance is found through movement.  Light becomes darkness and darkness eventually becomes light again.  Spring becomes summer, summer becomes autumn, autumn becomes winter, and winter eventually returns us to spring.

Shamanism teaches us to recognise these natural rhythms and to bring ourselves back into right relationship with them.  There will be times to plant and times to grow.  There will be times to celebrate what we have created and times to prune and release.  There will also be times when the wisest thing we can do is become quiet.

The tree does not mourn every falling leaf or mistake its bare branches for failure.  It withdraws, rests and trusts the cycle.

Perhaps the invitation of the Autumn Equinox is to do the same: to recognise where we are on our own Medicine Wheel, honour the medicine of the season we have entered, and trust that the darkness is not the end of the journey.

It is part of the wheel.

Shamanic Healing

If you are presently experiencing an ending, or feel that something in your life is ready to fall away, Shamanic Healing can support you through this period of transition. 

Sometimes we know that an old relationship, behaviour, belief, agreement or way of being no longer serves us, yet we find it difficult to release the energetic patterns that keep us connected to it. 

Through Shamanic Healing, we can work with what is ready to be cleared or released, restore lost life-force energy and create space for the next part of your cycle to emerge.  Like the autumn tree, we do not need to know exactly what the next spring will bring before we allow the old leaves to fall. 

If you feel that you have reached such a turning point in your own life, you can find out more about how I work and the Shamanic Healing sessions I offer here: https://www.roseautumn.com/shamanic-healing/