Returning to soil

I think it's been six days since I deleted social media from my phone, and already I've noticed things.

The first is how addicted I'd become. Not just to creating my own stuff (I'm a small business owner, after all. Surely I need to be visible? Surely I need to keep showing up?), but to diving into the noise of everybody else's lives, too. The constant checking, the little hits of inspiration, the comparisons, the feeling that there's always something happening somewhere else that I ought to know about.

I'm not going to lie, there are times when I LOVE social media. I feel creative, I want to share things, I have things I'd like to say. It helps me find my people, spread the word about my work and invite people into the spaces I create. But I've also become aware of how much of my attention it takes up, and how easy it is to get caught up in the outward-facing business of being a person with a business.

For now, I'm curious about what happens when I step away from that for a bit. Perhaps part of this is about choosing where I want my energy to go next. The summer has been wonderfully outward-facing, full of people, connection, creativity and activity. I've loved it, but I can feel that familiar seasonal shift happening in me now, the pull towards quieter things, towards myself and towards the connections that feel closer to home.

Tuesday was my last day working as one of the seasonal growers at the community farm, following a pretty full-on summer. The summer at the farm has been exactly as summer should be: full of wonderful connections, heat, other people, sun, light and expansion. And now, oh, I am SO ready for autumn. On Tuesday it rained so much, I was soaked through - it somehow felt like a fitting end to a long, hot & dry summer.

All of this doesn't mean I want to stop sharing. If anything, I want to share more personally. I'd like to return to writing longer pieces, to my blog and to this newsletter, where I can take a little more time with my thoughts and share the things I'm sitting with, the questions I'm asking and the experiences that are shaping me. Less of the constant broadcasting into the wider world, perhaps, and more of a conversation with this gorgeous little community of people who've chosen to be here.

There's something lovely about that. About choosing to nurture the connections already around me and allowing myself to share in a way that feels more thoughtful and personal. I'm not making some grand declaration that I'm giving up social media; I know there are things I love about it, and it has its place in the work I do. But right now, I want to redirect some of that energy, and I'm curious about what might grow in its place.

Because I also want to deepen my commitment to living seasonally, not just in the work I offer through She Moves with the Seasons, but in the choices I make about my own life. How I work, how I share, when I reach out and when I turn inwards. If I'm inviting other people to question the expectation that we should always be doing more, growing more and putting ourselves out there more, it feels important to give myself the same permission to question those expectations.

The autumn series of She Moves with the Seasons began a few weeks ago, and every time we gather, I'm reminded what a wonder it is to explore the wisdom of the seasons with a consistent group of curious and deeply wonderful women. There's something about returning to the same space, with the same people, over time, that allows things to unfold differently. We have time to talk, to listen, to get to know one another and to notice what's changing, both in ourselves and in the world around us. So much of our movement practice happens in a culture of drop in, do the class, leave and get on with the rest of your life. I love that we make space for something else: a practice that isn't about moving towards a fixed destination, and a group that has time to develop its own connections and rhythms.

And perhaps that's part of what I'm craving more of in my own life, too. Less reaching out in every direction, more time to settle into the connections that matter to me. Less pressure to keep producing, more space to notice what's already here.

We live in a culture that celebrates constant growth, productivity and expansion. We're encouraged to keep going, keep improving, keep showing up, regardless of what's happening around us or within us. But autumn offers us another possibility. Things fall, die back, break down and return to the earth. Not because they've failed, but because this is part of the cycle. There's a kind of wisdom in knowing when to let go, when to stop pushing and when to allow something to come to an end.

This autumn, I want to practise a little more surrender. To trust that, without my constant attention, my little business might still continue to thrive. To resist the urge to fill every quiet space with something productive. To mark some important anniversaries of loss and give them the time and attention they deserve. And to notice what happens when I stop trying to hold everything up and allow myself to be held by the rhythms of the season instead.

This Sunday, I'm going to return to an old ritual. For a few years, after the clocks went back, I used to spend a whole Sunday without artificial light. No switching on lamps or brightening the darkness, just living with the light that's there and allowing the evening to arrive when it arrives. Like lots of things, I stopped doing it, but this year I want to bring it back.

I want to really BE in the darkness. Rather than trying to escape it, distract myself from it or hurry it along, I want to sink into it and see what happens when I stop treating darkness as something to overcome. We have so many ways of keeping the dark at bay, quite literally, but also in the way we fill our days, our minds and our lives with things to do, things to consume and things to pay attention to. I'm curious about what it might feel like to stop doing that for a while.

In a culture that celebrates light, activity, consumption and constant expansion, I want to celebrate the dark. Not as something to fix or get through, but as something to be with. A place to rest, remember, grieve, compost and perhaps discover something I couldn't have found in the light. I don't know what Sunday will bring. Maybe I'll feel peaceful; maybe I'll feel restless and want to switch on every light in the house. Maybe I'll discover just how uncomfortable it is to sit with nothing to distract me. We'll see.

I suppose this is what living seasonally means to me at the moment: allowing the season to shape not just what I teach, but how I live. It's not about getting it right or following another set of rules. It's about paying attention, noticing what's changing and being willing to change with it. Sometimes that means expanding and reaching out; sometimes it means pulling back, letting things fall and trusting what remains.

So perhaps this little corner of the internet is part of that practice, too. A place to share more slowly, to explore ideas in a little more depth and to stay connected with the people who are curious about these things alongside me. Thank you for being here, for reading, for coming along to move and gather, or simply for being interested in what I'm exploring. I'm looking forward to spending a little more time here with you.

And if you're feeling the pull towards a different rhythm, a little more space to pause, move, reflect and reconnect with yourself and the world around you, the next year-long pathway with She Moves with the Seasons begins in January. We gather one Sunday a month, moving through the seasons together and exploring what becomes possible when we stop expecting ourselves to be the same all year round. It's a space to notice, to question, to move and to be changed by the seasons, rather than simply watching them pass.

If that sounds like something you'd like to explore, I'd love to have you join us.

Until then, I'm off to spend Sunday in the dark.