The transition from Summer to Fall is a sensitive time for many human bodyminds. The summer’s heat and activation stay in our bodies much the same way our brick homes and studio retain heat from baking in the summer sun. As days grow shorter and cooler, the heat seeks release in the form of cold- and allergy-like symptoms (and sometimes actual sickness), increased anxiety, decreased sleep, feeling scattered, and inflammation.
Through the Ayurvedic lens, we’re dealing with an aggravation of Vata Dosha by Pitta Dosha. Cool and dry Vata is associated with the air and ether elements. It rules and regulates the nervous system and the movement (or lack thereof) arising from its state.
Pitta, on the other hand, is the fire element. It is the motivation behind the movement, passion, heat, activation. We experience its imbalance in the body as inflammation, indigestion, impulsivity. In the same way that fire creates wind, the pitta of the summer aggravates the nervous and immune systems.
All people become more Vata imbalanced with age. You see this in the drying and thinning of our skin and the loss of suppleness in our joints and muscles. The increasing rigidity in our ways of being and our worldview. Perhaps you’ve noticed about yourself that you didn’t experience seasonal allergies when you were younger, but you do now. That’s the increased Vata being more easily aggravated by the Pitta (or Kapha Dosha in the transition between Winter and Spring).
So how do we work with this seasonal change? For starters, we can slow down, reconnect to ourselves, reconnect to Mother Nature. When we notice the frantic behavior of the wasps, see more spiders making their way into our homes, we can appreciate the shorter days and cooler mornings provoking their behavior—and perhaps avail ourselves of a few minutes every day of that dawn and dusk air on our skin, light in our eyes.
We can emphasize hydration (see the rehydration therapy and Abhyanga slides that I recently published on social media). Neti pot (or a more Western sinus irrigator like this one) practice with a drop of sesame or nyasa oil added to the saline flushes out irritants and moisturizes your sinuses. We can trade the raw salads of summer for the soothing soups and chilis of fall (mind spice if you tend toward indigestion, however). Warm, liquidy foods are our allies now. Oats or quinoa porridge in the morning. Slow down for lunch.
Tart apples can also be helpful as they particularly help the liver and gallbladder release heat. I’ve seen recommendations of eating 2-3 per day in the fall.
Slow down. Turn in. Prioritize rest. Be wary of mind stuff that whips you into a frenzy of doing—so difficult during this season of back to school and sports. I know it’s hard, but making time to get to Yoga (we even have a weekly Restoratives class at Akasha now!), to sit quietly and intentionally every day or every other day, to snuggle up with a pet or a loved one is a radical act of self care that prevents illness and the stressful mistakes that come from moving too quickly.
As always, connect, connect, connect. To the natural world of which you are part, to people who ground and support you, to practices that soothe you. Break free of momentum and set your right pace.