Every year, right after the leaves finish their last dramatic performance and the world turns to wind, I feel it. Something shifts. The air gets sharper, my mind gets louder, and suddenly I’m pacing the kitchen like a crow in a storm, opening cupboards and forgetting why.
If you’re feeling scattered, anxious, restless, or like your to-do list is reproducing asexually in the dark — it’s not just you. This is what happens when the season turns to Vata — when air and space rule the world, and our nervous systems are swept up in the gale.
Our culture doesn’t name this. It just calls you “unproductive,” “distracted,” “lazy,” or “too sensitive.” But what if you’re not failing? What if your body is simply listening — to the wind, to the cold, to the long dark settling in?
Maybe your system is saying: I am not a machine. I am weather.
When the Wind Moves In: The Mental Weather of Autumn
In Ayurveda, the ancient Indian science of life, everything — body, mind, world — is shaped by five elements: air, space, fire, water, and earth. From these, three doshas (organizing energies) emerge:
- Vata (air + space): movement, breath, and change.
- Pitta (fire + water): transformation, digestion, drive.
- Kapha (earth + water): structure, steadiness, nourishment.
Right now, as the air grows dry and daylight thins, Vata dominates — and we feel it in our bones.
When Vata is balanced, it feels like inspiration, creativity, intuition. The wind moves through you — alive, electric, full of possibility. When it’s unbalanced, it feels like the wind moves you: anxious, scattered, sleepless, unmoored.
Modern life is basically a Vata hurricane with Wi-Fi.
Cold air outside, constant motion inside.
We scroll when we should sleep, sip iced coffee in October, and call it normal to answer emails at midnight. Our whole culture is air meeting air — all movement, no grounding.
(If you want to go deeper, Dr. Vasant Lad’s “The Complete Book of Ayurvedic Home Remedies” and Maya Tiwari’s “Ayurveda: A Life of Balance” are brilliant companions.)
Vata Season as Archetype: The Witch on Her Broomstick
If this season had an archetype, it would be the witch — wind in her hair, flying between worlds, intuitive, awake, and a little wild-eyed.
She rides the currents of intuition, listens to whispers others can’t hear, gathers knowledge from unseen realms. Her element is air, her gift is perception. But when she forgets to land — when her broomstick becomes home instead of transport — she spins out.
All head, no body. All thought, no root.
Her magic frays because it has nowhere to settle.
This is what Vata imbalance looks like in the psyche — psychic flight without anchor. In a world that glorifies constant motion and “high productivity,” it’s easy to forget that even witches need to touch down.
Her real power isn’t flight; it’s the ability to move between worlds — to land, gather herbs, tend fire, and carry her magic back into the material.
So the invitation of this season isn’t to escape the wind — it’s to dance with it consciously.
To honour its insight, but keep your feet on the ground.
Modern Life and the Aggravation of Wind
Here’s the problem: as the natural world starts to slow down, our world speeds up.
Plants pull energy into their roots; we’re told to “finish strong.” Animals rest; we open our laptops earlier and work later. Capitalism doesn’t have a wintering season — it runs on fire all year and calls it ambition.
No wonder our nervous systems revolt.
We feel anxious, foggy, or unmotivated not because we’re defective, but because we’re living against our animal nature. Every notification, every “urgent” task is another gust of wind against a system that’s already rattling.
Even Seasonal Affective Disorder can be read, partly, as the body’s protest:
I need more light. I need less motion. I need rhythm.
To remember that our sensitivity is not a flaw but a form of intelligence — that’s radical. To say, “My body still knows what the earth is doing” — that’s resistance.
Grounding as Radical, Embodied Care
When I talk about grounding, I don’t mean bubble baths and self-care hashtags. I mean rebellion.
I mean looking around at a world that profits off our exhaustion and saying: No. I choose to move at the pace of my own nervous system.
For me, that begins with the body. The mind is wind; the body is earth. To come back to the body is to land.
My anchor this season has been abhyanga — warm oil self-massage. I heat a little sesame oil, rub it into my skin before a shower, and it’s like telling my body, “You’re real. You’re safe. You exist.”
Or I move through slow, steady yoga — mountain pose, warrior, child’s pose — not to stretch, but to weigh myself down again, to feel gravity’s pull. Sometimes I just stand barefoot on the cold ground and breathe until the chatter quiets.
These acts are small, but they are not small in meaning.
They are refusals — gentle ones — to let the world steal our presence.
Practical Invitations: Balancing the Winds
If your mind feels like a plastic bag in a windstorm, try opposite action: what’s cold needs warmth, what’s light needs heaviness, what’s erratic needs rhythm.
Eat to ground.
Think soups, stews, roasted roots. Use ghee, olive oil, tahini, avocado. Add warming spices like cinnamon and ginger. Skip the cold smoothies — your digestion is begging for soup.
Move to settle.
Slow yoga. Gentle shaking. Walks among bare trees. Movement that releases, not depletes.
Soothe the senses.
Oil your skin. Dim the lights. Play music that feels like heartbeat, not caffeine.
None of this is a checklist. It’s devotion — a way of remembering your aliveness in a season that tries to scatter it.
Listening to the Animal Body
Here’s the truth I keep circling back to: we are not built for endless motion. We are weather, we are rhythm, we are animals made of earth and sky.
When the witch in us finally lands, she doesn’t lose her magic — she roots it. Her flight becomes choice, not compulsion. The wind becomes teacher, not tyrant.
So if your mind feels untethered right now, don’t shame it. Step outside. Feel the air on your face. Notice the trees stripping down to essentials and let them remind you — maybe this too is wisdom. Maybe your scattered mind is just trying to return home to its body.
The season is changing. You’re allowed to change too.
Land. Rest. Let the wind pass through.
Your magic will wait for you.
If this spoke to something in you, there are a few paths you can follow from here:
Work with Me
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The Wolfskin Project
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Each door leads somewhere different. It is my hope that all of them lead back to you.
<3 Rachel
What are your thoughts?