The still point between seasons
A few minutes of balance, borrowed from the sky.
This week the Earth passed through one of its quiet hinges.
On the autumn equinox, the sun sat directly above the equator. For a brief moment neither hemisphere leaned toward it more than the other. In the north, we are now tipping, day by day, toward the longer nights.
There is a small detail about the equinox that I love.
The name means equal night. Yet on the day itself, day and night are not quite equal. Sunrise is counted from the moment the sun's upper edge appears. Our atmosphere bends its light, so we see it slightly before it has truly risen. Daylight wins by a few minutes.
The day when light and dark come closest to even arrives a little later. It has a name of its own, the equilux, and it depends on where you live. For many of us, that is right about now.
I find this oddly comforting. Even the sky does not arrive at balance on the day it is scheduled. It approaches, passes slightly beyond, and settles.
We often speak of balance as though it were a place. Once found, kept.
The body knows otherwise.
Your nervous system is always adjusting between two broad modes. One readies you to act, with a quicker heart and narrowing attention. The other supports rest and repair, with slower breath, digestion resuming, the shoulders coming down.
Neither is the enemy. A healthy system is not one that stays calm forever. It is one that can move between the two and find its way back.
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Like the equinox, balance is something you pass through again and again. Not something you hold.
This is worth saying plainly, because the other version causes harm. If balance is a place, then every ordinary week of being pulled about is evidence that you have lost it. Something to be fixed in yourself.
If balance is a passage, those weeks are just the swing. And the swing is the system working.
What makes the return harder is how rarely we pause long enough to notice we have left. Weeks of low-grade urgency start to feel normal, simply because they are familiar.
Of all the ways we can influence our own state, breath is the most available. It happens on its own. Yet you can also shape it on purpose. That makes it a kind of doorway between the body that runs itself and the part of you that chooses.
Researchers at Stanford tested this directly. They asked one hundred and eleven volunteers to practise for five minutes a day, for a month. Several breathing patterns were compared against mindfulness meditation.
Every group felt better.
But one practice lifted mood the most, and lowered resting breathing rate the most. They called it cyclic sighing. Two inhales through the nose, the second a small top-up, followed by a long slow exhale through the mouth.
It was one study, with volunteers practising at home. So take it as a gentle invitation rather than a promise.
Here is a way to mark the turning of the season, if you would like one. It takes about five minutes.
Sit somewhere you can see the light. A window, a doorway, the open sky if you can reach it. Let your eyes rest rather than focus.
Breathe in through the nose, then take a second, smaller sip of air on top. Let it go slowly through the mouth, longer than the inhale, without forcing. Stay with that for a few minutes at whatever pace suits you. If you feel light-headed, return to ordinary breathing.
Then, if it feels right, let each exhale carry something. Silently name one thing you are ready to let lessen as the days shorten. A habit of rushing. A story you have been carrying.
And on each inhale, name one thing you would like to keep with you into the darker months.
You do not need to name them perfectly. The sky does not balance perfectly either.
Autumn has long been a season of harvest and release. Gathering what grew, and letting the rest fall back into the soil to become something else.
You do not have to decide everything at once. The equinox is a threshold, not a deadline.
And if the practice brings up nothing but the sound of your own breath, that is enough. Sometimes the whole gift is noticing that you are the one breathing.
Notice, before you go, where your shoulders are sitting. Not to correct them. Just to know.
May you find your still point, however briefly, and trust your way back to it.
With you in the quiet, Quantum Wave
Sources
- Brief structured respiration practices enhance mood and reduce physiological arousal, Balban and colleagues, Cell Reports Medicine, 2023
- 2026 September equinox, all you need to know, EarthSky
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