Mark the Autumnal Equinox With This Four-Part Breath

The practice of sama vritti is a perfect way to mark the year’s transitions.

In the midst of life’s chaos, few things provide more certitude than the earth’s fixed points. The autumnal equinox — which this year will occur on September 22 in the Northern Hemisphere—is one such point. Twelve hours of light, twelve hours of dark. No matter what happens in the news that day, that fact will remain. It’s reassuring to think about.

I’ve written before about how the breath is a powerful tool we can use to drop into our bodies in the moment. But it’s also a way we can punctuate the year, manage big transitions in life, and find corollaries between the small, minute cycles of our bodies and the big, meta cycles out in the natural world.

To use your breath to mark the equinox this month, you can first break the breath into four parts — inhale, pause at the top, exhale, pause at the bottom. In yogic tradition, this is a pranayama (breathwork) practice known as sama vritti, which is commonly used to smooth out the breath in order to calm the nervous system and prepare the practitioner for meditation. It’s also commonly referred to as “box breath.”

When you add the seasonal aspect, it goes like this. Each part of the breath becomes a season: The inhale is the invigorating rush of relief that comes with the first signs of spring. The top of of the inhale is that fullness and bursting quality associated with summer. The exhale is that feeling of relief and return in autumn, as things start to wind down and wend inward, back to center. The bottom of the exhale is that wintery stillness, a low point, an eerie calm as you wait for the next breath.

I first learned this adaptation of sama vritti in a yoga workshop several years ago. I’ve come back to it often since then, finding myself hovering at the part of the breath that corresponds with the season I’m entering or currently in. The end of summer can often bring with it some grief and trepidation, especially if you live in a place where winters are harsh. But if you can experience the turning of seasons as part of a certain yet ever-changing cycle (just like the breath) there is some reassurance to be found in this repeating cycle.

You can practice this as part of a formal meditation, yoga, or breathing practice, or simply do it as you walk around during your day, on the bus, or pause on a walk. Try to keep the two parts of the breath and the two pauses as natural and un-forced as possible, and revel in that moment where the exhale starts and you feel your body returning back to itself.