The Wisdom of Late Fall

And this energy is about slowing down. Boy, that was fun to do.

It's about introspection. It's about preparing for rest and restoration. Thank you for tuning in your consciousness to the Naked Human podcast. I want to acknowledge your presence and what it took for you to be here today listening. My intention for you is that you receive what you came here for and find what you didn't know you needed.

This podcast is about what it means to be a human being and what it really means to be naked and how our relationship with Mother Nature has the power to heal us. My name is Carrie Caught and I'm a new to nature photographer, licensed physician of Chinese medicine, plant guide and wild woman embodiment mentor. I help women heal from sexual trauma, awaken their authentic voice, and distinguish between fear and intuition so they can be led by their deep fear feminine heart.

I bring to life in this podcast my own internal wisdom. I will only share what I've learned and experienced on a personal level. As you listen, I encourage you to take from this what you need and just trash the rest. So happy listening as I record this episode. The sky is so incredibly dark. The wind is howling, there's snow on the ground, on the trees, pretty much everywhere. And it's cold. Ish. Certainly with the wind, it makes it colder.

At the time of this recording and the time that you hear this episode, well, that's if you listen to it when it's released. But anytime that you find yourself here in this episode, it's perfect because this energy is what you clearly need. This is the energy of late fall. It's also the energy of the late luteal phase of the menstrual cycle. And this energy is about slowing down. Boy, that was fun to do. It's about introspection. It's about preparing for rest and restoration.

And I am going to continue to speak in mirrored aspects of the menstrual cycle and the rhythm of nature and what's happening. So this time, this phase of the menstrual cycle, this phase of our elemental cycle, if you live in a part of the world where you experience four seasons, and I know that some of you listening don't experience four seasons, you experience wet season and dry season.

So this is reflective of summer, fall, winter, spring energy and of the menstrual cycle of ovulation, luteal, menstruation and follicular. But really all that you need to connect to is the luteal in the fall for this conversation and menstruation, which is the bleed Time and winter. And so this time, just before the winter solstice, the time of late fall is this space that can feel. I'm going to make a bold statement.

By my perspective, this is the time of year, this is the time of the menstrual cycle that is most likely the most uncomfortable time. And I'm going to tie in some aspects about the liver, the organs and Chinese medicine.

And so we're just going to like have a really fun time being with this beautiful blueprint that we gifted ourselves as human beings in this human experience of how everything reflects everything and how like beautifully intricate the wisdom of our bodies, the wisdom of the earth, the wisdom of ourselves is at play all the time. And how we've left ourselves these beautiful mirrors, these beautiful breadcrumbs so that we, so we can see ourselves.

It's like, you know, imagining walking around blindfolded in the dark and finding these breadcrumbs that illuminate something and turn on a light bulb and we're like, aha, I left this here for myself so that I would remember something. So this time of year can be highly uncomfortable physically, emotionally can be tough. There's less light. There's way less light. And in the lack of light, that's our quote, unquote, shadow space.

So it's the space where we've left skeletons and unresolved conversations and tucked away emotions and forgotten. Forgotten some things. It's really akin to the proverbial junk drawer that I'm imagining we all have in our homes. If you live in a traditional kind of home where it's kind of like the catch all. And it's also this space where I don't know what to do with this. So I'll just stick it here for now. And then one day you discover that your junk drawer is bursting.

This can be a junk drawer, a junk closet, a junk room, a junk garage, a junk house, a junk shed. I mean, fill in the blank. But it's this, it's a catch all space. And it's a space that you can tuck things away. I actually just did this today. I thought some people were coming to see my cabin today. And I've been constantly like going through things and I just had stuff, you know, just hanging out because I'm, I'm.

I'm going through things and I'm reorganizing and letting go of things and just tending to, tending to late fall energy. And spring cleaning doesn't just happen in spring because there's a thing called fall cleaning. I coined it maybe exists somewhere else, who knows? But I want to drop more into this with you and that and, and just why that is, why is there a fall cleaning? What's happening in our bodies and in nature at this time?

So at the beginning of fall, what starts to happen is there's like still an explosion from nature. So if you have a garden, you know exactly what I'm talking about. And if you don't, that's okay. What happens is that Mother Nature in all of her abundance of summertime, like things are blooming, so much activity. And what happens early in fall is there's still some of that energy of summer, right? Fall is the transition between summer and winter.

And so it contains aspects of, of both of those energies. And at the beginning of fall there's still this highlighted summer active, full, abundant energy when Mother Nature is just booming out. But in early fall she's booming out in the way to kind of like the finale of the fireworks because it's about to end. And so there's an enormous amount of harvest things to be harvested, food that's still readily, abundantly available in this time of the year.

And the reason that this happens is because this abundance is required to help sustain ourselves throughout the winter. So it's when you think about a bear that's going to hibernate, any animal that hibernate, but a bear will consume as much food as possible, as much high fat food as possible to sustain itself throughout its winter hibernation, which is not a time of consuming and foraging for food. So there's this abundance explosion and it's about gathering.

And it's not just about gathering food, it's just about gathering resources to prepare for this very inward time. And so resources of wood, for example, to keep ourselves warm in these cold times, harvesting medicines, harvesting shelter aspects, harvesting just gathering anything that we're going to need for this hibernation. And it's also about harvesting emotional energy and inspiration and knowledge and we're going to take in and reflect.

So it's like having this reserve of energy of things that we then get the opportunity to reflect on, to evaluate, to be with, to bleed on and along with this harvesting energy.

So there's like, you know, gathering all these resources and then as we come like mid fall, it becomes a time to start tending to our loose ends. Now all aspects of fall energy are prevalent in fall, but they subtly start to shift as the energy shifts. So then it's about tying up loose ends. So tying up loose ends means tending to anything that's important that needs to be tended to before you take a big old hibernation sleep.

So imagine what would you need to tend to before you went on vacation, before you went on a retreat or attended a seminar or you know, left to go somewhere really just thinking about a trip, going on vacation. There's aspects of your life that are going to need tending to, right? So it's maybe you're leaving work and so you're not going to be working while you're on vacation. So you're going to need to deliver communication that you're not going to be available.

And you're going to need to tend to anything that might need your attention during that time. And if you have children, maybe the children are coming with you or maybe they're not. And so there's things that you need to set up in order for that to happen. If they're in school and communicating things with their school and making sure that they've tended to any homework that's important.

Or maybe there's animal friends that you live with and you're going to take them to a place where pets get to go on vacation. Or maybe somebody's gonna come and stay in your home and just take care of them and take care of your home. And so there's all this energy. And it's also about communicating things that have been uncommunicated. It's about speaking into places that we've repressed, that we forgot to, or we said, I'll do that later.

So this is about taking care of those things so that when you bleed, when you go into winter, you can enjoy that experience and be in the stillness, be in the silence, be in this really important time of slow down, so slow. It's almost as if it's a stop, though it's not quite a full stop. It's like just a deep, deep rest. And so this tying up of loose ends is so important to not be interrupted so that you can relax, so that you can bleed without the expectation to deliver things.

Because that is so anti bleed time and is so anti winter to be interacting as if it's summer. To be outwardly expanding your energy and going to lots of parties and activities and talking a lot with people and going and traveling and busy, busy, busy, busy. And so if you're in the Northern hemisphere and at least in the culture that I live, there's this thing called like Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year's and it's all this external outward energy, which is summertime energy.

It is not fall time. Energy and is definitely not winter energy. And so this mid fall energy is about tending to these things, is making sure that these things are tended to so that, yeah, like this beautiful exhale can happen. And then what begins to shift from that space of tying up those loose ends, though you still might find remnants of them, is the shift into late fall, late luteal phase. And this might be the most crunchiest time and a note about that, this being the crunchiest.

By crunchy, I mean, like, you know, crunchy, like uncomfortable, like that kind of crunchy. The note is that if there's so much repressed, unattended to emotions and energy and communications and things that we've been holding, holding on to, this time of this season, this time of our menstrual cycle is the worst because this is the time that is like at the peak of the unresolved energy coming to the surface and is coming to the surface because it actually wants to be tended to and released.

It wants to be. To have these loose ends tended to. This is exactly what this time of year is for. And so it is yearning. This energy, this aspect of you is so desperately yearning to be freed up, to be in movement, to be felt, to be expressed, to be tended to. That's what's happening. And yes, it can be uncomfortable because the reason that we suppressed it or threw it in that junk drawer was because we didn't know what the fuck to do with it. And we said, yeah, I'll get to that one day.

Well, that one day is here now. It's here right now in this time of year. It's here right now in this part of your menstrual cycle. This is what is known as pms, Premenstrual syndrome, premenstrual symptoms. This is a symptom of this energy yearning to be freed up. So imagine seeing a child, or you're a child and you hit your knee on something, you cry and you scream and you call for your mom and you breathe.

And then the energy starts to settle, the tears begin to fade away, and you feel good and you get up and you go do the same thing you were doing that you did when you hit your knee and you just go along your way and it's over. That's energy in motion, emotion energy in motion. That's energy just flowing and just happening.

So imagine you are a child, or you see a child and you hit your knee on something and you start crying and someone comes up to you and says, don't cry, don't do that, don't be upset. It's not that bad. That doesn't really hurt. Oh, don't be a big baby. And you freeze and you gulp that energy down. You withhold those tears. You try and not cry, but some of you is like, kind of crying. And you certainly don't wail and be like, oh, you just kind of. And you just hold it in.

That's a repressed energy.

That's repressed emotion. And you hold it in and where does it go? It stays with you. You put it in your body, you put it in your. Where do we tuck this one down? Oh, we put this one in our chest and maybe a fragment of it gets put in our low back. So there's that energy, that's repressed energy. And this energy. So this has happened like how many times in your lifetime? I don't know, Once, twice, a thousand, a million, a billion, a gajillion. Like, how many times have. Has this happened?

How many times have you repressed something about yourself that you didn't say, something you wanted to say? Maybe you wanted to say thank you and you didn't. Maybe you wanted to say, I fucking love you and you didn't. Maybe you wanted to say, fuck, that hurt. Ouch. That, that thing you just said really fucking stings.

Like, how many times and how many times were you told that whatever you were feeling, experiencing wasn't okay and you needed to fucking lock it down and keep it fucking together, keep it to yourself? That's not appropriate. So many times, right? So it's just happened a lot in this time of the year. And this time of the menstrual cycle is the time when this energy is rising to the surface. And it is rising to the surface because it's an opportunity. I'm going to repeat this.

It's an opportunity for this energy to be in motion. And there are two options here. One is to allow it to come to the surface, to be felt, to be seen, to be acknowledged, to be tended to in whatever way that it needs to be tended to.

Or the other option is to continue to ignore it, suppress it, and just let it be in the background, continuously running the show and operating and creating all sorts of things like fear and anxiety and stress and low back pain and jaw tightness and headaches and bloating and irritable bowel and insomnia and repetitive patterns in our relationships and not feeling met and seen and heard in our relationships and romantic relationships, friendships and family members.

And just, just imagine anything that seems like, uncomfortable and frustrating and Scary. And all that is that congested energy. So it is just here as an opportunity to be tended to. And it is just so prevalent at this phase because winter is not the place to tend to this energy. That is not what winter is here for. Winter is the big rest. It's the rejuvenation, it's the reflection. It is not outward energy of tending two things.

It is this space to literally evaluate, to bleed on it, to be in the silence with it, to take an inventory, to reflect. And how's that? How's. How are things been going? Everything's been going for me. It's reflective. It's not the time to take the awareness from the reflection and do something with it.

No, that's reserved for spring energy. Spring energy is that awakening from the slumber. And then there starts to become the energy to then take that wisdom that we've gained and accessed within winter, to then start allowing it to infiltrate, integrate into our life. This is the time to tend to the energy that's been consuming us, the repressed energy that has literally been like eating us alive. Because winter is about conserving energy.

And if we're taking a big old backpack of repressed shit, which takes a lot of fucking energy, consumes a lot of our energy. So if you experience a lot of chronic fatigue, hint, hint, there's something going on with the backpack reserve of repressed energy at play. So since winter is about conserving, it makes sense that we need to tend to that which is not serving, that which will consume so much energy that we won't be able to rest.

We'll have to be foraging for more food, tending to all these things. So late fall, late luteal is in the energetic alignment. So the harvesting. So much of the harvesting has already happened, the tending, tying up loose ends, so much of that has already happened. And then now it's the time to really make sure the space is set, that there's a safe environment that's conducive to rest and reflection, one that's free of distractions, external energies, demands. This is about our environment.

And what are we going to need to set the stage for this time of reflection, for this time of stillness. We're gonna need some cozy blankets, warm pillows. What does your environment need? This is the time just before the winter solstice. This is the time just before the bleed. Just before. So what, what do you need at this time? Maybe there's like some special books, maybe there's some food prepared.

Maybe this is an aspect of like making Some batches of bone broth, making sure your solar lights are all charged up, or you got plenty of candles for the 12 hours of darkness. What does that look like emotionally? Do you need emotionally, an emotionally safe space that might look like communicating or knowing that you have specific people who, you know can hold you, that you can connect with if you need to. It's really just about, like, the last finishing touches.

And this is the energies that are present when we're in alignment with these energies and when we're tending to it. And if we haven't tended to that, that's when.

This time is pretty gnarly. It's because we haven't been honoring the energy that's present. And if you're a woman and you're in your late luteal phase in the late fall time, it's super heightened. It's just like double luteal energy. And it's an opportunity to be with the energies that are easily readily available to be attended to. So that's what's so really beautiful, is that if something is coming up for you at this time, it's because it's ready.

I mean, I was gonna say energy is not really ever not ready. But maybe another way I could say that is it's just not, like, super buried. Like, there's a. There's an aspect of it being readily accessible to you. It's present. It's what's here. It's like somebody at your front door knocking, like, hello, I'm here. Hi. Can I come in? I'd love to see you. I'm here. I'm accessible. Hi, I'm here. Please hug me. I'd love to come in. Is it warm in there?

This is just some aspect of you that is here saying, hello, please tend to me. It's like ripe fruit, ripe for the picking. So talking about all this energy, you know, there's another aspect of this conversation that's like, how do we do that? You know, how do you. How do you sit with something that's here readily available? And there's so many ways that that can be done. So so many nuances about that. But it's a tricky.

It can be tricky to be with the how, because sometimes in the how, maybe all. I don't know, maybe all. All the time in the how, we get lost because we think it's supposed to look and be a certain way. How do I do that? What just popped in is we stopped doing the things that inhibit us from. Inhibit that thing from happening, inhibit ourselves from feeling but there is no magic antidote to the how. There are many pathways. But this particular episode isn't really about the how.

But maybe you might find the how is discovered revealed in the listening, in the listening of yourself, in the illumination, in the awareness of the connection. And maybe the how might look like just becoming more aware and noticing. Oh, this is. Oh, I'm. I'm. I'm needing to tie up some loose ends right now. I feel that energy. Okay. Yeah. I've been feeling like I need to, you know, share this thing with Tom. That it just been. Keeps popping up in my awareness. And you know what?

I never did tell Susan I wasn't gonna come. I need to do that. I need to tell her I'm not going to be attending that party. And you know what? I just feel like I need to tell my mom sorry for that thing I said like 14 years ago. And fuck, it's just been looming around in my awareness.

Like, that's tying up loose ends. Loose ends is like, hey, I told you I'd get back to you about this thing, and I never did. And I know it's been weeks, and I'm just. I'm here to, you know, clean up this energy. And, you know, I just been kind of feeling irritated when I've been with you lately. And I think it's because I was frustrated about that thing that happened at dinner two weeks ago. And it fucking sucks carrying this around.

And I just want to share this with you and connect with you about this. And, you know, I felt stifled because I couldn't share this thing when we were at dinner. That's the how. The how is that space of our intuition that's guiding us. We already know. We already know what needs to be done. And we can call on the energies of this time of year. We can call on the energies of the earth, of fall, the energies of our body, our luteal phase. We can call on the wisdom of ourselves in these ways.

We can ask earth, ask fall, ask the coldness, ask the shift in energy to help guide us in this time can go to the trees, the leaves on the ground, the snowflake, the wind. And we can ask for help. Dear Fall, thank you for your divine guidance, love, wisdom, healing and protection as we navigate this time in the season of my life, of my body, of my human experience.

I ask for your continued guidance and wisdom and support and helping me tie up any loose ends that need tending to, to harvest and prepare in any ways that need harvesting and preparing and to help me create a safe space so that I may honor my winter. And of course, you can insert anything that specifically relates to you. And for now, this conversation is complete. May you joy enjoy the Medicine of Fall and the Luteal phase.

Thank you for tuning your consciousness to this episode of the Naked Human. However you find yourself, whether it's relieved, enlightened, true trigger, or as if the past minutes were a complete waste of your time, it's perfect. Be present to it and allow it to be the medicine you need. I welcome your feedback and heartfelt reflections of how this episode impacted you.

You can share with me online@thenakedhumanpodcast.com and if you're feeling called for a more personalized experience into your nakedness, I invite you to join our community of wild women in person or online. You can find more specifics at the naked human podcast.com and until next time, bye.