Autumn has begun to settle in here in the northern hemisphere—the temperatures are dropping, the air is feeling more crisp, and the leaves on the trees are getting ready to change colors and start falling. As the external environment changes, so does our internal environment.

Seasonal changes are a big time of transformation in the environment and in our body, as the qualities surrounding us as well as inside of us shift. Our body and mind can have a hard time maintaining balance during the seasonal transitions, and our immune system can get bogged down—ever notice how there is often a surge of illness right around the seasonal transitions?

Ever since I started incorporating Ayurveda into my life a decade ago, I noticed a pattern that emerged every autumn. I was in a couple of car accidents a long time ago, and had a lot of sports-related injuries, and have overcome a huge amount of chronic tension and pain through my spinal release yoga practice and implementation of Ayurveda in my life. Most of the time these days, I am pain free, or only experience very mild symptoms. But every September/October as summer gives way to autumn, I suddenly get a resurgence of pain and lack of stability in the same old spots - in my SI joint where my sacrum and hip bones meet, and in my neck/shoulder area.

So, why is that? What does this shift into autumn look like?

Four weeks ago was a time of big transition in my house. My nearly 5 year old daughter started Transitional Kindergarten at our public elementary school, after two years at a really sweet Montessori preschool. This was a big shift for the whole family, establishing a new morning and evening routine, and supporting Juno with some apprehension over uncertainties around having a new teacher, being in an aftercare program, and starting at a big kid school with a bunch of kids she didn’t know.

In the same week, I was staying up too late putting the finishing touches on my new website so that I could launch it two days after Juno started school. This launch was a big transition for my Ayurvedic work, really putting myself out there into the public sphere in a bigger way. Normally I’m in bed by 10pm and sleep well. With all of these transitions, I was up until midnight or 1am, Juno was waking up in the middle of the night, and then I needed to wake up early to get Juno ready for school.

When we go through periods of poor sleep, transitions, stress, and anxiety, it is common for digestion to become impaired.

In the past year, I have established a routine of making ghee most months on the full moon, as it is considered an auspicious day to do so, where Soma nectar is plentiful and is believed to imbibe its tremendous nourishing properties into the ghee.

In early July, we had the brightest full moon of the year, a luminous day celebrated as Guru Purṇimā, which one of my teachers, Kaya, described as “the day we honor the divine role of the teacher who guides us to remove and release all that obstructs the luminosity within”. On this extra luminous and auspicious of full moons, I planned to chant a mantra about leading from ignorance to truth and darkness to light during the entirety of my ghee making…

Welcome to the brand new online home of Chandani Ayurveda! You might be asking, what does that name mean? Chandani means moonlight in Sanskrit, and Ayurveda is the science, wisdom, or knowledge of life. So, why Chandani? The reason is multi-faceted…