On September 22, 2022, we meet the second equinox of the calendar year. The word “equinox” is derived from the Latin words meaning “equal” and “night,” referring to the roughly 12-hour days and 12-hour nights that occur twice each year. It indicates a moment of stillness before the Earth shifts directions. The fall equinox is a sacred day of equal parts light and dark, facing outward as well as turning inward, and allowing our past and future to merge in the present.

What does the fall equinox 2022 mean for you?

As the Earth rotates around the Sun, one half, or hemisphere, faces the Sun, the other faces away. During the last six months, the Northern Hemisphere has been tilted closest to the Sun. The September equinox brings this chapter to a close. Our proximity to the Sun lessens, the days shorten, and the nights lengthen. The temperature of the air becomes cooler as the outward energy of the Sun is felt less.

Spring and summer hold outward-oriented movement. Fall holds a slower pace, a time of inward stillness, and an invitation of surrender. This is the metaphoric death before the rebirth. We witness it all around us. The leaves that fall from the trees. The Earth that continues to tilt away from the life-supporting energy of the Sun. The trust in the natural cycles of life that hold steady, even amongst the darkest days of the year. There is only continued surrender.

Like the Earth, we, too, are in a continual motion of becoming, releasing, transforming, moving, expressing, and receiving. As the Earth comes into a balance of light and dark, day and night, we are invited to honor the polarity within ourselves.

When we are in our chapters of outward expression, it can be easy to dismiss our internal light. Fall represents a time of releasing. Of finding a new groove. Of reorienting ourselves to a new direction that will continue to take us away from the Sun and into some of the coldest, darkest months of the year. It offers us a time to renew our relationship with outer darkness and turn inward. It is a chance to rediscover our own light that exists only within darkness, our inner voice that can only be heard in the quiet, and our richness that can be found only in stillness.

The equinox in September is an opportunity to bring our past and future into the present moment. To witness each step that has gotten us to where we are now, and acknowledge that this exact moment is leading to all that has yet to come on the journey. It is on this day that we can bridge together who we have been with who we are becoming, to honor the parts of ourselves that we have lived,  expressed, and praised as well as the parts of ourselves we are still discovering, getting to know, and learning to love.

It’s not unlike being present to the yoga pose that you hold while allowing yourself to surrender to the entire sequence. You integrate the poses as well as the the movement in between the poses, the part of the flow that got you to where you are and the movement that is still to come.

The fall equinox initiates a chapter in which you discover the medicine within. To move through your inner landscape while the outer landscape begin to slow down, to heal through feeling, and to release patterns, beliefs, emotions, identities, and more through awareness and an entirely new discovery of self.

Your invitation

“You cannot recreate yourself until you uncreate yourself.” —Neale Donald Walsch

Many of us were taught, from the moment of our birth, to live from the outside inward. The fall equinox ushers us into a chapter that asks us to let go of all we have been taught, and to instead live from the inside out. To find our own language, guidance, perception, and desires.

Let go of who you have become. You cannot add to what is already full. Empty your hands, knowing it is only then that you may receive. Empty your mind, becoming the student, the inner explorer, the pathfinder who knows each moment of life is the greatest teacher. Become the listener, hearing the wisdom in each meditation and yoga practice. Become the intuitive, sensing the guidance in moments of silence.

Growth, transformation, and becoming can only take place when there is space to do so. Empty what is ready to be emptied. Let go of all that is excess. Release all that feels like noise. The emptiness, the darkness, the unknown, the mystery, the spaciousness, silence – this is where we emerge. This is where we get to meet ourselves anew. This is what lies waiting for us in the coming months.

**By Jordane Maree

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