CELEBRATING THE EQUINOX :: EQUAL DAY = EQUAL NIGHT

Night and Day are of equal length today so wherever you are reading this right now, you’ll either be celebrating the arrival of Autumn, or welcoming in Spring (obvious, I know!)

It’s a big week for nature as we slip out of one season and into another new one so I thought I’d write out some ideas and ways to celebrate the change of seasons (mainly geared towards the northern hemisphere but some are applicable to both).

So while those of us in the northern hemisphere count and harvest our blessings and start preparing for the colder weather and diminishing day light hours ahead, spring (in Australia and NZ for example) is blooming…less sunlight/more sunlight, hunkering down/opening up…

1. EQUINOX RITUALS: this week is a good one to “emotionally harvest” all our blessings, take stock of things and cast out any negatives you can toss to the wind. Look at things differently. Eg if something needs fixing in your home, be glad you have a home (to fix!)

It feels so easy – especially this year – to focus on lack and losses and what went wrong (and heartbreakingly, who we lost). We just seem to be faced 24/7 with challenges and bleak news and financial worries.

But today couldn’t be a *better* day (of the whole year, except for perhaps 1 Jan?) to adopt a fresh, bright, nurturing and nourishing daily morning ritual, such as…

– sitting quietly with a cup of tea or coffee just be-ing, doing nothing

– adding more herbal teas into your day, including spicy creamy honey-sweetened chai or turmeric-rich, inflammation-busting golden milk

– a glass of lemon water first thing in the morning, every morning (add lemon slices and a little juice, you can also make a delicious lemon rind tea with honey if you’d rather have something warm)

– handwriting five things, events and people you are grateful for

– handwriting, while you sip your tea, how you envision the day ahead/things going well, feel the good things as if they’re already happening before they happen…emotions are the language of your unconscious mind

– walking before work or at lunchtime and noticing how nature is changing

– feeding the birds (seeds are better than bread or maybe a very heavily seeded wholegrain bread), I put out water for them, too, they arrive for different “sittings”, depending on what type of birds they are, the sparrows all chatty and super-friendly in large groups, before the magpies arrive with their somehow darker energy, while the blackbirds seem happy to mingle with the sparrows or trot around my little garden on their own in search of worms…and my owl (he/she?) now has a friend and there’s a lot of rustling going on in the pine tree opposite

– taking a whole 5 extra minutes for your skincare routine

– creating a new wind-down routine before bed

2. SUNLIGHT & VITAMIN D: If you exposed most of your body to the sun for an hour daily (but not Mr weak watery British Winter Sun), you would absorb about 10,000 iu’s of Vitamin D.

But as that’s not going to happen, stocking up on a good vitamin D supplement is better – a liquid or spray if you hate capsules. BetterYou do one (below).

I don’t go near supplements like cod liver oil because if you think about it, the liver is a “toxic” aka detoxifying organ.

Vitamin D deficiency is no joke, leading to potentially bad things ahead – too many to mention here, and like magnesium it seems to get forgotten.

I take 4,000iu Vit D3 daily, more in winter.

A super-easy way to ensure you’re adequately topped up with Vit D – BetterYou’s spray with added K2

“Vitamin D3 ensures that calcium is absorbed easily and K2 (MK-7) activates the protein, osteocalcin, which integrates calcium into bone. Without D3 and K2, calcium cannot do its job effectively. Vitamin K2 (MK-7) activates matrix GLA protein (MGP) to bind excess calcium and promote arterial flow and flexibility”

– from the BetterYou website

Garden of Life also does a good D3 called VITAMIN CODE RAW D3:

3. ESSENTIAL OILS FOR THE NEW SEASON: I find Rosemary is a very ‘energy and room cleansing’ essential oil, and this is a fantastic one – like peppermint – to help clear your head and focus. Or clear out negative energy.

All the woody, grounding, comforting, feel-safe oils are wonderful for autumn, eg cedar or pine (I find juniper a bit heavy but it’s a great negativity clearer) and another one I really love using at this time of year is magical frankincense. It took me a while to get used to it but now it’s a favourite, and it’s a good calmer.

I miss summer when it bids farewell so I have to use a lot of sweet orange, grapefruit, Italian bergamot, the bright cheer-uppers – and I have rediscovered Tisserand’s Lemon oil – in fact both their grapefruit and lemon essential oils are exquisite.

4. AUTUMN COLOURS: Last weekend I bought butternut squash, pomegranates, plums and tangerines – clustered together they looked like an orange, purple and fuschia pink painting in a box!

It’s such a wonderful season for colourful root veg roasts, lush plum crumbles… Or grate organic purple cabbage, yellow corn and carrots into big rainbow salads for a crunchy, vibrant side to something warm and nourishing.

Pomegranates are nature’s ultimate home decor accessory (mine are currently on display in the kitchen).

5: SCENTS, LIGHTS & TEXTURES: Nature’s offerings are everywhere…

An interesting piece of sun-bleached driftwood – or a streaked colourful beach stone…inky berries on hedgerows, pine cones and fallen branches along a forest path and all the magnificent ‘natural metallic’ leaf shades around.

Mixing textures like wood or driftwood with a string of lights… or add a beachy vibe to a room: half fill a glass Mason Jar (or any kitchen jar really) with Epsom salts, add an essential oil of your choice, maybe lavender, sweet orange or pine? Then pop a tealight on top of the salts, which will subtly scent a small room even when the candle isn’t lit.

6: BREW UP SOMETHING COMFORTING: Golden milk with Anti-inflammatory tumeric and plant milk or a spicy, creamy chai full of cloves, cardammom, star anise and cinnamon really come into their own this season, as do beautiful herbal tea blends – which can also help boost immunity, digestion, internal balance, etc.

We have a lot of lovely artisan-style wellbeing tea categories in the Beauty Shortlist Wellbeing Awards 2021 (they’re open now, closing 6 November)

7. VITAMIN C: Oranges symbolise the sun in winter, which is why they were used to decorate trees. An important word about Vitamin C here: watch out for synthetic (genetically modified) ascorbic acid, 80 to 90% is produced in China and acetone is used in the process.

I think it is much, much better, and I cannot emphasise this enough, to take a wholefood vitamin C – in other words, directly from nature so we are talking acerola cherries, amla, rosehip, kiwis, here, etc.

More here on Nogel Organics’ site:

Synthetic ascorbic acid vs natural Acerola cherry powder – what type of vitamin C should be preferred in iron food supplements?

Pukka do an all natural Vit C (I have mixed feelings about this brand since they sold out to Unilever though).

Fushi’s Wholefood Vitamin C is an excellent choice, it’s very bioavailable and again sourced straight from nature:

A wise autumn wellbeing ‘investment’, Fushi’s VITAMIN C – packed with citrus bioflavinoids, kiwi and strawberry powder 60 caps £12

8. MAKE A PLAN: while Australia and New Zealand are celebrating the advent of spring and all the possibilities that season seems to conjure up, as we are hunkering down in the north I think this is an important time to learn something new, whether it’s nutrition, a new language, home renovation, a martial art, “free writing” – like Julia Cameron’s morning pages, perfecting the art of the perfect curry, drawing up an exercise plan, or volunteering – think of the elderly alone at home, and how you could help? Even if it’s just phone calls.

9. CELEBRATE NATURE: Getting out into nature whether it’s for a walk, dog walk, running or just quietly observing the changing colours of the trees and that wonderful earthy early morning smell, one of autumn’s trademarks.

I go out and collect pinecones on walks at this time of year to place by my bedside, infused with pine needle oil. If you live in a city, it’s even more important to balance all that hard white, silver, grey and black urban architecture with nature’s real greens and browns, rounder shapes and flowing water…

10. MAKE AN AUTUMN (OR SPRING) EQUINOX WREATH: This might be my favourite one! It’s next weekend’s project…(wreath shown in main image by Gisela Graham).