Fall 2011

Harvest

Fall is the ideal time of the year to refine and release the past. Are your facing big changes in your life, your relationship, job, home, or are you confronted with an old pattern? Now is the season of letting go of what no longer serves you. This takes a courageous step. Grief and sadness might occur – they too will pass.

It is also the time to deal with details and to process experiences. Reflect on what you have learned and what has nourished you. Let go with gratitude, warmth and serenity, clarity and compassion.

Questions for your re-evaluation:

• What do you want to let go of?
• What open matters call for completion and clearance?
• What keeps you holding on to the past?
• What have you harvested so far?
• What have you learned?
• What nurtured you?
• What are you thankful for?

If you are balanced with the fall season, you find yourself grounded in reality, accepting ‘what is’, being centered and peaceful. You are a person with integrity and your life is about giving and receiving support. You can speak up or be silent when appropriate. You are precise in your thinking and open to new ideas.

An imbalance shows up as an ongoing grief, the inability to organize thoughts and resources, scattered attention and lack of focus.

Physical correspondence:

The corresponding organs with the autumn season are the lungs and the large intestine and the connected emotions of sadness and grief. The repressing of those emotions and the inability of letting go can show up in imbalances of the large intestine and the lungs. Both have to do with communication and the exchange of our environment: one through inhalation and exhalation and the other through our digestion. They are an expression of the assimilation, absorption, digestion and elimination of what you let in and out or hold onto. Just as you breathe easily thousands of times a day and letting go of the old and taking in the new. This may mean that you have learned what you can in a particular area and it is time to release, let go, and move on.

Inspiration:

• Be aware and acknowledge your feelings of sadness, depression, grief and/ or low self-worth, as they can come up easily in this time of the year
• Do journaling, have support, work with a therapist, do art, meditate, pray, take long walks
• Organize your priorities, schedule, finish projects.

Diet tips for fall

The fall is calling for more warming foods such as root vegetables, grains, nuts and seeds, which are high in fiber for the large intestine. The valuable flavor in autumn cooking includes spicy, hot, and aromatic flavors, as they have a warming energy and stimulate digestion. They stimulate the nose and the lungs, clearing them of mucus and dispersing sluggishness. White pungent foods such as onion, garlic, ginger, and horseradish can be especially helpful. Sour flavored foods, such as vinegar, yogurt, lemons, grapefruit, and sauerkraut can also be helpful during the fall season, as it has a gathering and contracting affect on the body.

Grain: whole brown and sweet rice, oat, millet, barley

Vegetables: celery, cauliflower, turnip, cabbage, pumpkin, Chinese cabbage, onions, watercress, mustard greens, garlic, cucumber, leek, carrot, parsnip, spinach, squash, broccoli, radish

Legumes: white beans, garbanzo beans, peas

Fruits: banana, pear, apples, oranges, papaya, pineapple

Nuts: peanuts, walnuts, almonds

Herbs and spices: dill, fennel, thyme, ginger root, horseradish, cinnamon, cayenne, basil, and rosemary