There You Go: Preparing Yourself for the Season of Fall

We are entering the transition from summer to fall soon. For those of you following the solar terms, Start of Fall (立秋) is Aug 6-22 this year, and a great time to do a seasonal tune-up if you don’t receive acupuncture regularly.

The transition from summer to fall is especially important because it involves changing the direction of how we use our energy. In summer, we were supposed to avoid feeling angry and find outlets for our qi. In fall, we are supposed to stay calm and quiet and bring our qi back into ourselves.

Fall is the season of harvest, the point when we stop fertilizing our garden and begin to harvest the fruits of our labors from spring and summer. It is the time of day when we wind down in preparation for the recharge that comes with a good night’s sleep. It is the time of your life when you stop seeking new connections and growth, to rest upon and enjoy the relationships you’ve already cultivated.* It is the top of the breath when we begin to exhale.

Take a deep breath. Sip the air through your nose slowly, like it is some delicious beverage to be savored. Fill your lungs all the way up, and hold it for a moment, feeling the fullness of summer. And then let it go. The letting go part, that is the essence of autumn. Say to yourself, “That was a lot. That’s enough. You don’t have to stop, just maybe go a bit easier.” It’s time to dial the intensity back a little, and get ready for the cozy hibernation of winter.

My child has been speaking to me in Chinese a lot more since she started preschool this year, but when she wants to express reassurance, she always says “there you go” in English. “There you go” is, in my opinion, the perfect mantra for this season. It is also the affirmation my favorite dance teacher uses after she’s given a correction, to say “now you’ve got it, keep heading this way, you’re on the right rack.”

When I try to express this in Chinese, I usually say 「就像這樣」 jiù xiàng zhèyàng, “Just like this.” But I like “there you go” so much more because the verb ‘go’ evokes movement, and the word ‘there’ indicates a direction. And even though ‘you’ are going there, the speaker isn’t going with ‘you’, just assisting, and affirming, and letting you figure it out for yourself.

You are going,
and I am here,
helping you balance
and then letting you go
like a father
launching his child forward
as she learns to ride a bicycle,

“There you go.”

* My acupuncture professor Hong Jin suggests that this process begin at age 60, since the human lifespan according to the classics is 120 years.