It’s getting into the territory of Summer, where a softer light whispers a gentler word, a spell that surrenders sycamore leaves to gravity, an incantation that sacrifices solar energy on the altar of night. As the season shape shifts, its tenderness exposes an imperfect inspiration, reminding us to live an authentic life, not a flawless one.

Relief and melancholy tangle their bodies into and around one another. The heat still breathes on the ambers of the season. She’s not done. But as she claws into her form, she hears that her laughter resembles the cackles of Fall. It’s the knowledge that she is in transition that turns her toward the strength of her vulnerability, the softness of her power.

Kids dropped off for the first day of school. Grief for the gone Summer tingling, lingering, licking like flames all over our beachy vibes. Breath not fully moving in. Or out. Inhale a bit more slowly please. Tears. Exhale. The passage of the breath is tight. The passage of time leaves me spun around. Dizzy. Childhood evaporating in front of my eyes. And the slipping awayness of life. Yet here is Muse. She loves sparkly visits in the graveyard of great phases. 

Inspiration flows feral and fantastical through the cracks, through the shimmering dark, through the tenderness of broken hearts, she comes in through the ambiguous parts of a life that wavers and wanders and weaves in and out, a rise and a fall, a tree, a seed, a sprout, through the fog of confusion, through a reality so layered it seems like an illusion, because we forget that paradox is often what makes something true. 

Puzzle pieces scattered over the living room floor. We didn’t get to finish it before school started. Bathing Suits still hanging. Dry. But I’m not gonna take them down. The beach basket full of sand and sunscreen sits outside the back door. Maybe if I leave it there, it’ll make me feel like we can take off and go catch some waves. 

One thing we didn’t do this Summer is get things organized and sorted around here. Oh well.   

Muse makes her way into the mess, into the wrinkles, into untidy spaces that aren’t ready to host, into the unfinished places where we might have a ghost floating around, into the fields of unfulfilled dreams, it comes at you in the night flying on a moonbeam, into the unwashed dishes in the sink, and it stares at you through a broken link. Muse doesn’t need you to be perfect. 

Transitions are gateways into new selves, initiating the pulse of new cells, intensifying the presence of new scents, calling us to reinvent. These thresholds are not without sadness, not without simmering sensations that contradict one another, not without loss and lament. But innovation is a bubbling brook that births itself into possibilities not yet known, and bursts into visions not yet seen, bending into versions of being that ignite a big yes in bodies ready to blast open. 

It’s not yet Fall, but Summer’s last phase is leading us into the liminal land of endings and beginnings, of cemeteries and birth centers, of ripe fruit and fallen pieces of unmet expectations. There’s a roaring regenerative energy in the compost bin of a sexy season stripping away into her death. There is a feast of fecundity in this movement of maturity about to deconstruct its form and break open into other possibilities. 

Our creativity craves complexity. She is thirsty for contrast, for the complementarity that is commingled with contradictions and conflict. It is hungry for all that can be brought to life through the doorway of death that we get to peek into as the season sings her ballad of goodbyes. 

The Autumn Equinox Somatic Ceremony is a meaningful, powerful way to shift into the new season. It’ll be your guide and your friend from the Equinox and throughout the Fall. You’ll get to explore the mythopoetics of the season, with stories and symbols that inspire the creative heart, and entice the intelligent mind. There are five rituals that bring the mythology and metaphors into the body through breath, movement, mantra, mudra, and asana. There’s a meditation and pranayama practice for you to keep returning to as the season unfolds. And there are prompts for your journal and/or conversations. Join us on this deep journey of inquiry, inspiration, and transformation. Details are here. 

And if you’re in need of a grounding meditation that will help you break away from beating yourself up, and break up with perfectionism, check out this FREE pranayama & meditation practice. Like this moment in the season, it will invite you to move with imperfection as a portal into deeper connection. 

So much love,

Hagar