Preparing for the Year: Early Fall to Autumn

I'm going to start simply and a bit formally, walking through some questions to ground the year to come and to set up some of the framework of how I will use this blog. 

What are my goals for the year? 

My goals involve deepening my relationship to the seasons. I want to do that through writing in this blog and to start to understand the stories I tell about the seasons and explore how those stories shape my relationship to my body and emotions, but also my relationships with others.  I suppose I also hope to find new stories that will take me further into my practices.

I also want to find more language and voice for how I understand ayurveda and how it shapes my life.  I want to take the tools taught to me an move forward by integrating them into my own life.  I want to develop the confidence to take on those ideas and talk to others about this practice and how it is important to me.

I want to gain confidence and joy in my practices and keep myself on this route I'm taking, because I can tell it is something that is helping me find my voice in ways I could never have imagined and I just want to get stronger and more intentional in these practices.

What are my goals for this blog?

This blog will be the space where I hold myself accountable.  I doubt anybody will ever see or read this and that is fine. This is my private-public space to engage in a conversation with my process.

My goals in terms of my presence on this blog is to maintain at least a weekly posting to the blog.  During junctures, I will do my best to post throughout--if not everyday, then every other day.  Outside of juncture, I will maintain a weekly presence.  More if I am inspired to do so.  I want the weekly posts to both reflect on the past week and set up my thoughts for the coming week. This way I can stay intentional as I continue through the year.

I'm posting Akhilanda here as final thought as I begin the year.  She has been with me since last April and I find her a constant source of strength. She is the symbol of being whole and broken at the same time.  Whole and broken.  She is the thing that takes me further and deeper into the myself. As a symbol, I find strength to go deeper and stand face-to-face with the parts of me that are ugly and dark--all that stuff that I so often want to hide and look away from.  It is here that I want to shed light on those things and learn to love those things about myself.

And with that, I will start the blog at the juncture point between early fall and autumn and I will start here, because it is moving me into the season that correlates to my dosha type--vata kapha.  To start here, I hope to understand more about what it means to inhabit that space.  Throughout this juncture, I will do my best to post often and reflect on what it means to be in a season of vata kapha dominance.