Why Autumn Is Such a Perfect Time for Grounding

I know autumn is coming long before the calendar officially gives me permission to call it fall.

The sun changes first. It feels softer somehow, less insistent than it did in July and August. The mornings have become cool enough that when I step onto the deck to check the potted herbs, I occasionally regret not grabbing a sweater. The sage and basil are still standing tall and looking fairly pleased with themselves, but my strawberry mint from Lake Street Garden Center — which spent the summer making my homemade lemonade exponentially better — has been wilting for weeks. I’m salvaging whatever leaves I can so they can become tea instead of compost.

The diminutive and iridescent hummingbirds are leaving, too. For several weeks they were reliable visitors to the beautiful glass nectar hotel hanging off my deck, sometimes hovering fearlessly right in front of me and sometimes behaving like tiny territorial maniacs with wings. Now I can sit outside for quite a while without seeing one.

Diagonally across from the deck, the baby maple has little flashes of yellow where there was nothing but green before. And the gargantuan pine trees in my yard have apparently decided that anyone foolish enough to attempt laptop work beneath them should be pelted continuously with rusty orange needles.

Autumn is definitely on its way. It is also, without question, my favorite season.

I love the cacophony of color — deep reds, golds, pumpkin orange and russets set against the emerald greens that haven’t quite surrendered yet. I love sweaters and boots. Apple picking. Cider. Cardamom-spiced applesauce. I love when darkness arrives early enough that dinner feels cozy again and lingering at the table by candlelight seems like a perfectly reasonable way to spend an evening.

And I think all of that is part of why autumn is such a naturally grounding season for me. “Grounding” is one of those wellness words that has been asked to do a lot of heavy lifting over the years, so it can mean almost anything depending upon whom you ask. At its most basic, I think of it as bringing your attention back to your body, your senses and the place where you actually are.

Which sounds very simple until you own a business.

There are days when my to-do list has extended well beyond the bounds of what a mere human being could accomplish, and I spend almost the entire day in my head. I can be clipping herbs for soup while simultaneously calculating profit margins. I can take a perfectly lovely walk through my neighborhood and realize halfway home that I’ve spent the entire thing mentally designing a social media post. I can sit beneath those magnificent trees and, instead of noticing the trees, start working out next month’s schedule.

It is remarkably easy to be physically present for something while mentally being somewhere else entirely. When I get too far into that state, I know it. Anxiety ramps up. Frustration does, too. Brain fog settles in. I become forgetful. And perhaps most noticeably, I start to feel disconnected from my own body, as though my head has taken over the whole operation and the rest of me is simply carrying it around from task to task. This is usually when I need something concrete.

Trees help. So does a warm cup of dandelion root tea. Talking with my husband and son. Putting my bare feet in the grass or the sand. The sound of the ocean. Weightlifting, which is particularly effective because a barbell has very little interest in whatever imaginary conversation is happening in my head. It demands that I pay attention to what my body is doing right now. And, of course, there is Laylah — my Harmonic Egg®.

It may seem as though sitting beneath a pine tree, lifting weights, talking to my son, drinking dandelion root tea and spending time inside a chamber filled with light and sound have absolutely nothing in common. And perhaps they don’t, except that each one manages, in its own way, to pull me out of whatever mental rabbit hole I’ve disappeared into and give my attention somewhere else to go.

Autumn does this for me almost without trying. There is simply so much going on outside. The air feels different against your skin. Leaves that were perfectly green two days ago suddenly have veins of gold running through them. Acorns appear everywhere. The gardens begin looking a little tired around the edges. The birds change their routines. The smell of the air changes after rain. And darkness starts arriving at an hour that makes me look at the clock and think, Really? Already?

The trees in my yard are especially good at stealing my attention back. I have looked at them every day for years and somehow, every autumn, I become fascinated all over again. I’ll notice one branch turning before the rest or realize that a tree I swear was green yesterday suddenly has huge swaths of yellow. Then there are the pine trees, which are less subtle and simply dump their needles on my head, my deck, my patio furniture and, apparently, anything electronic I am foolish enough to bring outside.

As a Piscean with a creative soul, I have to resist the urge to turn every observation of nature into a spiritual thesis. The trees do not need to teach me how to “let go.” The mint is not demonstrating how to bravely surrender to the next season. The hummingbirds are not always angelic messengers sent to demonstrate that love transcends physical absence (though they often are). Sometimes a hummingbird is just a very small, surprisingly combative bird that wants everyone else to get the hell away from its feeder. What matters to me is that I noticed it.

For however long I am standing there watching the baby maple change color, I am not calculating revenue, worrying about next month’s schedule, composing an email in my head or mentally rearranging a social media calendar. I am simply looking at the tree, and to me that is what grounding is in its most ordinary form.

I see people arrive at Emerald Heart Sanctuary carrying their own version of that mental noise. They often describe ruminating thoughts, anxiety, profound exhaustion coupled with an inability to actually rest. Sometimes an intake conversation wanders through three or four seemingly unrelated stories before circling back to where we began. I usually let it. People need to unload sometimes, and I have never believed that every conversation needs to follow a straight line to be worthwhile.

When they emerge from the Harmonic Egg®, one of the things I hear most often is how deeply relaxed or rested they feel.

There are many elements to the Harmonic Egg experience — the music, the colored light, the vibration, the shape of the chamber, the coziness of the chair and the blankets — but I suspect part of its appeal is wonderfully uncomplicated. You get to stop doing things for a while. Nobody needs an answer from you. There is no phone in your hand. There is no conversation to steer. You are not cooking dinner while making tomorrow’s list or lying in bed wondering whether you forgot to return an email. You are simply there.

And when I think about wellbeing, I keep coming back to the fact that we are complicated creatures. We have physical bodies, thoughts, emotions, relationships, responsibilities and, for many of us, some sense of spiritual life as well. It is remarkably easy for one part of that equation — usually whichever one is yelling the loudest — to monopolize our attention.

Perhaps that is why I love autumn so much. The season keeps interrupting me. Just when work has become too loud in my head, something outside changes. The sun hits differently through the trees. The basil is somehow still hanging on. The mint has finally given up and is headed for the drying rack. The hummingbirds have mostly moved on. The baby maple has a little more yellow than it did yesterday. And the pine trees continue pelting my laptop with absolutely no regard for my deadlines.

I will never get through every item on my to-do list. I know this intellectually, even if some stubborn part of me continues to behave as though I might. But autumn gives me plenty of reasons to look up from it. And, for me, that is exactly where grounding begins.