Yoga’s Autumnal Equinox

Make Friends With Aloneness

In the deep fall
don’t you imagine the leaves think how
comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of air and the endless
freshets of wind? ...
– Mary Oliver (1935-2019) "Song For Autumn"

23 September, 2025: Our summer and fall have been especially beautiful in the capital city of Edmonton, Alberta.Summer days are warm or cool – not sweltering as they have been elsewhere.This September, the days are balmy. The garden blooms in late-summer nearing autumnal madness. The nights grow cooler reminding us of change. And today, the autumnal equinox announces our mid-point. A time of reassessment for some. A moment to rebalance for others. In the Chinese zodiac system, this season is associated with the metal element. We move from the active aspect yang to the more passive yin. Leaves wither and die. The landscape moves from the gorgeous vivaciousness of full-blown foliage’s green to a soothing monochromatic earthy palette.

Last week, my daughter visited from Vancouver. And as we sat in the garden, a flock of robins arrived to the startled squawk of a territorial magpie who nests in our hundred-year-old pine. The robins’ jouney begins here in this garden’s gathering to prepare for their migration south.

But I will stay on here at latitude 53 anticipating whatever winter brings. Climate change’s unpredicatable weather patterns mean we don’t know what to expect. Our balmy days extend deeper into the new season. This warming night anticipates a solid deep freeze come February or January or December or November. I’m banking on October to warm us in its pivotal arms. But I shouldn’t count on it.

This morning in my zoom yoga class, my teacher Angela spoke of this autumnal equinox as an invitation to seek balance. Invited to articulate an intention, my thoughts turn towards the intense loneliness I’ve been feeling of late. At this moment in my life an intimate relationship shifts ground and we find new ways of connecting. Suddenly the sense of solitude I used to welcome has become a burdensome sadness. Autumn, a time to turn inward and slow down, feels like a trial, an interminable hiatus between encounters with others, friends or students. So in my early morning yoga class, I clarify my intention to: “Make friends with aloneness.”

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My Brother’s Heart

Sometimes you study the way by casting off the mind. Sometimes you study the way by taking up the mind. Either way, study the way with thinking, and study the way not thinking. – Eihei Dogen (1200-1253)

Not long ago, my brother drew this heart for me. So perhaps it wasn’t surprising that my musings about solitude happened just as a note from my brother arrived to say he was mending his heart in the hospital. Two days ago, he rode his bike along a rural road not far from my mother’s farm towards the small hamlet of Young’s Point near Lakefield, Ontario. In an instant, he fell to the ground in the paralyzing shock of a heart attack. Amazingly his watch called 911 and the police and an ambulance arrived to save his life. Such is the upside of AI.

This morning my brother awaits more tests in his hospital room. He tells me is happy on his own. He likes the solitude of his room for meditation and reading and drawing. He is an excellent artist and his focused study, practice, and discipline over his lifetime – ever a student – serve him well.

He tells me: “I’m really enjoying my down time. And I have my own room. A question of timing as this was the only one left. Last night I had a sleepless night on an uncomfortable inflateable bed.”

He goes on to describe how his comfort with aloneness came at a cost: “I paid for that. I was alone for 17 years. I was super isolated. Now I don’t care about being alone at all. I really enjoy it. I’m a kind of monk and that is the whole direction of my being.It takes me a long time to learn and I’m obsessed by certain things. Spiritual things.

The first dream I ever remember was post-apocalyptic. I was on a train of about forty monks going through the Himalayas. Each of us had a scroll and the fate of the human race depended on these scrolls getting through. Jung said your earliest dreams set the direction of your life. When I told this dream to a Jungian analyst, he said, “You have got everything you need. You just have to unpack it.” He had a major stroke soon after that. And then as if to reconsider, he says, “I don’t like to be a monk. I would like to be married. It is just the focus that I need. If I ever got married I would have to have someone who likes that too or who likes that in me.” 

Last May my brother wrote to me: “I dreamt I got married to Simone Weil last night. I had been reading her quite deeply before I went to bed. I guess that was my unconscious compensating me for feeling so blue lately.”

Another day he sends me this seascape while visiting Belledune facing Gaspe Peninsula –

Dreaming backwards. The questing continues. My brother’s story serves me well. Both mentor and model, he is a realist who aids me in making friends with my aloneness.