Working with Seasonal Routines - Shifting from Summer to Fall

I don't know what's happening where you are, but I think call is finally here where I live. The temperature is a cool 55 this morning and the high for today is in the high 60s. It's chilly enough to get out of bed and put on your favorite sweatsuit and make a warm and cozy breakfast that you eat on the couch snuggled up under a light blanket.

Later, it will be the perfect temperature for an afternoon walk and talk with your bestie in the sun before coming home to make a nice pot of stew.

And what I love about the fall is that it's a season to simplify. In Chinese Medicine, the fall is associated with the metal element. And metal, as you know, is a conductor. It also symbolizes simplification and purification by letting go of what you no longer need.

I personally love this time of year. I love the coziness of it. I love the fall rituals I have like pulling out a warmer blanket for my bed, going to bed earlier, waking up before the sun, and shifting my walks from the morning to the afternoon.

But it also means that I have to readjust my daily cadences from the summertime and settle into new seasonal routines. So here's a little bit of what that looks like.

Honoring the Shift in my Energetic Capacity

The first big change that happens for me when fall hits is that I have a lot more energy. I'm generally not a huge fan of summer, especially late summer. By the time August rolls around, I just want to hibernate until fall officially arrives, which is probably why I haven't written a blog post since August, lol. During late summer, I can hardly get any work done due to intense brain fog from the heat and I don't want to move my body because it's simply too hot. I'm also exhausted because it's very hard for me to get good, quality sleep in the summertime.

But once true fall hits sometime in October, I am energized. The cooler weather means I sleep so much better and I wake up promptly at 6:30am most mornings feeling rested and ready to go. My mornings themselves are still slow. I start them with a fascia floss, meditation, reading, and/or journaling plus a nice hearty breakfast. Sometimes I start my work right away after those rituals (like today) and other days, I don't start work until closer to 11am.

Then I work for a couple of hours. I find that working in 90 minute to 2 hour sprints is about all my brain can handle. On a really good day, I do about 4 hours of work and feel really accomplished. On days where I just don't have it, I tend to tap out around 2 hours.

But either way, I work until 12:30 or 1 and then sit down to enjoy a hearty lunch that I meal prepped on Sunday or Monday. Once 1pm rolls around, I usually feel pretty lethargic. In Chinese Medicine, the hours of 1pm to 3pm are ruled by the small intestine, which is the organ that does all the sorting in the body. It says what we're keeping (nutrients) and what we're getting rid of (waste). In a lot of cultures, this is when folks take a nap. I've started practicing taking it easy during these hours this year as well. I'll either lay down and close my eyes for a bit, read on the couch, take a leisurely walk, or do some combination of those things.

It's not usually for the full 2 hours, but I often spend a solid hour of that 2-hour window relaxing. After that, I settle into another round of work. I usually last until 4:30, maybe 5 on a good day, and break for a workout if it's a workout day. After that, I eat an early dinner, which is my lightest meal of the day and settle in for the evening. Sometimes I listen to an audiobook, other times I read, and sometimes I just become one with the couch and watch a tv show. I recently binge-watched Fellow Travelers and cried like a baby. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it! I've also been watching documentaries and replays of black ancestors in their prime like Nikki Giovanni, Audre Lorde, Kwame Ture, Malcolm X, Fannie Lou Hamer, Lorraine Hansberry, and so many more. It's been deeply, deeply nourishing.

By 8:30 or 9pm, I find myself ready to turn in so I power down my screens, take a shower, moisturize, do some acupressure points, and then read with my legs up the wall before I go to sleep around 10:30pm.

Shifting My Movement Patterns

The arrival of fall also marks a shift in my movement patterns. In the summer, my energy is scattered and I basically become nocturnal due to the heat. As I mentioned, I'm uncomfortable, bloated, swollen, and deeply irritable because it's so hard for me to get a good night's sleep. My anxiety is at an all time high and my primary emotions are anger, frustration, and annoyance. Basically, I'm a real treat to be around, ha!

That means my summertime movement is also erratic and any movement, including walks, feels like a monumental accomplishment. That's why I take the intensity of my movement down significantly in the summer. I simply haven't gotten the proper rest to push my body and I don't need to heat my body up any more than it already is. So I end up doing a lot of walking, light yoga, and light pilates. And I spend most evenings doing a walking workout on Youtube to expend my excess anxiety so I can have a hope and a prayer of getting some sleep.

But when fall comes, my blessed ability to sleep returns and my body is ready to move. I start adding more strength training and HIIT workouts and I even feel compelled to flirt with jogging (I haven't gone yet, but I've thought about it!). I usually move two to three times per day (flossing, walking, and a more intense workout) and my body is down for all of it. Working out generally feels a lot more fun and I find that I'm excited to move as opposed to dreading it.

Shifting my Eating Habits

Another seasonal shift that happens for me is what and how I eat. All I want to do in the summer is not be hot so I eat a ton of cooling foods. Most of the time I crave watermelon, mint, and chia seed smoothies for breakfast, cool bean salads for lunch or dinner, tinned fish on toast with a boiled egg, lots of salads, and rotisserie chicken.

I'm one of those people who can eat the same thing over and over again and not get sick of it. So I will literally have a chia seed smoothie for breakfast everyday for a month before I need to switch it up. And in the summer, I buy a rotisserie chicken to eat off of like clockwork every week. But generally, the meals I prep are light and cooling. I also snack on a ton of fruits and dryer foods like popcorn and chips.

Once fall hits, my body is all done with that shit. Like by late August, I am very over all melons (you can still find me gorging on peaches and nectarines though) and I don't want to see a chia seed for a few months. That's when I start making congee and millet porridges for breakfast more often. I'll also do a more savory breakfast like tinned mackerel and boiled eggs on toast with a side of stir-fried veggies.

I'm also less interested in fruit because I'm not so hot. If I'm eating fruit, it's usually a grape here and there or an apple or pear chopped up in my millet porridge. But I generally eat a lot more vegetables and my carb intake goes up, especially when I start moving my body more. I also start making bone broth more regularly to sip on each day as a way to keep warm and hydrate since the fall is associated with dryness. To that end, I also tend to cut out drying foods like chips and popcorn. This always makes snacking in the fall kind of challenging, but I also find that I have less desire to graze in the fall than I do in the summer.

My Work Starts Ramping Up

The last big shift the fall brings is an abrupt change to my calendar. I book most of my work and especially my speaking gigs in the fall, which means I have a lot of meetings and in-person events I have to go to. Essentially, I have to be outside more. That means I have to be really good at managing my calendar in the fall in a way that I simply don't need to be in the summer.

My summers are usually slow and all that time creates its own form of deeply unhelpful chaos because I spend a lot of it unhelpfully spiraling on social media. But once the fall comes, I don't have time for that because I need to use the downtime I do have to manage my business and do all the other tasks like create quality content, etc.

But there is one magical thing that tends to happen every fall thanks to the energy of metal season calling for simplification: I get clear on a direction. I usually have some kind of big breakthrough in my business about what it needs to do to get to where I want it to go.

This year has been no different as I've started to understand how I want to position my offers in the world and what I need to do to welcome people into my world and introduce them to my offers. And since it's almost the end of the year, it feels easier to plan what I want to accomplish in the next 3 months as opposed to for a full year. The artificial deadline of the holidays does something for my brain and really helps it focus and simplify.

So yes, work is a lot busier in terms of activities that require me to go outside and talk to people, but I also tend to make big strides and really enjoy working without succumbing to the ADHD mania that often hits me in the spring. It's a very welcome shift.

Okay, that's how I've been transitioning into fall over in my world. What's the transition looked like for you so far?