Living in New England, I am fortunate enough to experience four different and very distinct seasons. It is truly one of the greatest gifts we are given living in this part of the United States. Fall in particular, is uniquely extraordinary. To me, Fall is representative of so many incredible lessons and parallels with what we as people are experiencing in our daily lives. Seasons in nature, have a very particular process, have a pulsation that is unique to each season. These pulsations are both purposeful and necessary. In yoga, Spanda is this pulsation. Spanda is the expansion and contraction that exists in everything. Spanda is the heartbeat of the Universe. 

Nature is constantly changing around us. Expansion and contraction is an ever evolving process, an ebb and flow, a back and forth, expression and internalization, a breakDOWN to breakTHROUGH, a fall APART to fall TOGETHER. It is Spanda. The question is, are we PAYING ATTENTION to this pulsation, to the expansion and contraction that is happening all around us in nature, and within US as human beings. Our own breath, our own heartbeat, our emotions, our joys, our sorrows, our celebrations, our obstacles, our introspection, our expression! The season of Fall is an incredible teacher of Spanda, if we make the choice to pay attention. In early Fall, the trees that surround us turn a vibrant green, a green illuminated so clearly as the late summer sun sets in the evening. Then, the spectrum of color shows itself. The leaves on the trees begin to turn a deep, crisp and clear red, a bright and illuminating yellow, and a vibrant and powerful orange. It is one of the most beautiful things to witness, and the change happens rapidly at times. Some trees take longer, and others are quick to shift. With this shift brings an incredible moment of expansion, of color and vibrancy, of full expression. Then, the leaves begin to slowly fall from the trees. They fall gracefully back to the earth, where they will decompose, contract, and become the soil. They will become the dormant and introspective winter that goes inward to prepare for the next expansion and freedom of spring. Often, there is sadness and grieving expressed when the beautifully colored leaves fall from the trees, leaving the trees bare, naked and exposed. However, I find this shedding immensely powerful. The trees, within their nakedness and vulnerability, actually offer us new perspective, a new depth of experience. The trees show us how beautiful it is to let go. To embrace the pulsation. To experience the Spanda within ourselves.

So what are you willing to shed this Fall? What can you let go of? What are you willing to expand into? What are you releasing and who are you BECOMING? Are you open to experience the contraction, to unleash the EXPANSION?

Stop.

Pause.

Look around you.

Pay attention.

Allow nature as it truly exists around you, to be the invitation to embrace the Spanda WITHIN you. 

Almost 4 weeks ago now, I came across this beautiful lotus with Svea on a walk within the community where my in-laws live. Svea and I admired its beauty, and I told her that a lotus is one of my favorite flowers. She asked “because it’s so beautiful and colorful?” And I said “yes, that is part of the reason, but the bigger reason it is my favorite flower, is because of the process it has to go through to get to what it becomes before our eyes as the beholder.” She didn’t quite understand at that moment, so I took a moment to explain to her why a lotus is so extraordinary. A lotus does not bloom or show full color, expansion, or it’s magnificence without a complex, difficult process that happens in the muck, in the mud, and in the darkness. A lotus is also known as “mud-born.” It does not simply appear. It begins as a small seed in the darkest depths of the water, in the muck, at the bottom. But it does the work, it believes and knows, and CREATES the vision of becoming something extraordinary, but acknowledges the process it will take in which to get there. To BLOOM.

Anything worth ANYTHING takes work, commitment, grit, failures, pitfalls, lesson after lesson after lesson of learning. It takes creativity, belief, VISION. It takes ACTION, and more action, again and again. It takes doing the things you know you have to do when no one is watching, when no one is telling you you’re doing the right thing, where there may be no validation. Just the belief, grit, heart and actionable steps you KNOW you must take to BLOOM into the BEST version of YOURSELF. And then, you know, that you would do it OVER and OVER again, because the journey to get there, was worth the work in the dark.