Embracing Balance: The Autumn Equinox and Self-Care
by Dr. Denise Renye
Sunlight filtering through autumn trees with golden and orange leaves scattered on the ground, symbolizing the transition of seasons and a time for reflection and renewal during the Autumn Equinox.
The Autumn Equinox arrives at an interesting moment in the year. Summer is ending, the light is changing, and we begin the gradual movement toward shorter days and longer nights. Around the Equinox, day and night are nearly equal in length, which has made this seasonal threshold a symbol of balance across many traditions.
As a psychologist and certified yoga therapist, I am interested in what these seasonal changes can offer us beyond their symbolism. Our bodies live in relationship with the natural world, even when our schedules and responsibilities make it easy to forget that. Light changes. Temperatures shift. Energy changes. The rhythms around us are not static, and neither are we.
Balance is often spoken about as though it is something we should achieve and then maintain. I don't experience it that way, personally or clinically. What feels balanced during one period of life may be entirely unsustainable during another. There are times when work requires more of us, times when relationships take up more emotional space, and times when the body makes its needs impossible to ignore. There are also periods when we need more solitude, more rest, or more time to understand something happening within us.
Perhaps balance is less about keeping everything evenly distributed and more about becoming responsive to what our lives actually require.
The Equinox offers an interesting image for this because its balance is temporary. Day and night meet briefly, and then the movement continues. Autumn does not remain suspended at the point of equal light and darkness. It moves toward darkness.
There is something psychologically meaningful about that movement.
We tend to have a complicated relationship with darkness. We use the word to describe depression, grief, fear, uncertainty, and aspects of ourselves we would rather not encounter. Much of contemporary wellness culture reinforces the idea that health should move us toward feeling better, becoming lighter, and remaining positive.
Depth psychology offers another way of thinking about this. Not everything that is difficult needs to be immediately transformed into something positive, and not everything outside of our conscious awareness is something to fear. There are times when turning inward allows us to encounter parts of ourselves that have had very little room to speak.
Autumn can offer a natural invitation into that kind of interiority. As the external world becomes quieter and the light begins to recede, we might notice what becomes more audible within us. This does not require withdrawing from life or interpreting every seasonal change psychologically. It can simply mean becoming a little more attentive to our own rhythms.
The body is often a useful place to begin.
One of the things yoga has taught me over many years is that balance is not stillness. Anyone who has stood in a balancing posture knows this. The body is making countless small adjustments even when, from the outside, we appear completely steady. Balance is responsive. It requires attention to what is happening now rather than rigidly maintaining a position that worked a moment ago.
I think psychological balance has something in common with this.
We can become attached to routines because they once supported us, even when our needs have changed. We may continue moving at the pace we maintained during summer even as the body begins asking for something different. Or we may decide that because we have established a particular self-care practice, we should continue it exactly as prescribed even when it has begun to feel more like another obligation.
A practice that supports us should have some capacity to change with us.
This is one reason I prefer to think about self-care as a relationship rather than a collection of activities. Meditation can be deeply nourishing, but so can deciding not to meditate one morning because what you need is sleep. Movement may bring you back into your body on one day, while stillness does that on another. Connection can be restorative, and there are times when being alone is what allows us to hear ourselves again.
The question is not simply, "Am I doing enough to take care of myself?" It may be more useful to ask, "What does care look like for me right now?"
That question becomes especially important during periods of change. Our bodies, relationships, identities, sexuality, work, health, and inner lives continue to evolve. The practices that helped us through one stage of life may need to be reconsidered in another. Sometimes taking care of ourselves means adding something. Sometimes it means recognizing what we are ready to put down.
There is a spiritual dimension to the Equinox that I appreciate as well. Seasonal thresholds remind us that we are participating in cycles much larger than our individual plans. Things emerge, flourish, decline, become dormant, and begin again. We do not have to turn this into a lesson or insist that every ending leads immediately to a beginning. Sometimes there is value simply in noticing where we are in the cycle.
As autumn begins, you might allow yourself to become curious about your own internal season. Perhaps you feel energized and ready to move outward. Perhaps something in you wants to become quieter. Maybe you are grieving something that has ended, or noticing that an aspect of your life is beginning to change before you fully understand what that change will mean.
There is no correct way to enter autumn.
The Equinox does not ask us to remain perfectly balanced. Nature itself doesn't do that. It offers us a brief moment of equilibrium within an ongoing process of change. Perhaps our task is not to hold ourselves steady against that movement, but to become more attentive to what is shifting and more willing to respond.
A Reflection
As we cross this seasonal threshold, consider what balance actually means in your life right now rather than what you think it should look like. Where are you being asked to make an adjustment? Is there something that needs more of your attention, or something you have been giving more energy than it needs? You might also notice what happens when you imagine the coming months not simply as a loss of light, but as an invitation toward a little more interiority.
If you are moving through a transition and would like support exploring what is changing internally, my work brings together depth-oriented psychotherapy, sexuality, embodiment, and attention to the spiritual dimensions of psychological life. You can learn more about working with me or schedule a consultation through Whole Person Integration.