The Nervous System Has Seasons

On the slow turn from summer into autumn

The strangeness of September…summer hasn’t exactly left. Especially here in Texas, where the heat has very little respect for the calendar. And still, something is changing. The sun disappears a little earlier. Mornings arrive differently. Plants begin responding to changes we may not consciously notice yet. The living world is already reading the shift. Our bodies are reading it, too.

I’ve been thinking about this as we move from summer toward autumn: how much of nature is organized around rhythm rather than consistency, and how often we expect the opposite from ourselves.

We want steady energy. Steady motivation. Steady moods. Steady productivity. Steady access to creativity, connection, desire, movement, clarity. We find a version of ourselves that feels good and quietly decide this must be the version we are supposed to maintain. Then the season changes.

Summer carries a particular kind of outwardness. Longer days give us more light to move inside of. There is travel, gathering, heat, play, activity, social energy. Gardens become unruly. Fruit swells. Everything seems to be reaching outward, upward, toward the sun.

Autumn begins another conversation. Energy starts moving differently. Days shorten. Growth slows. What has been produced begins to be gathered. Plants start directing resources elsewhere. The work becomes less visible.

This is where I think the nervous system gives us such beautiful language. Because our nervous systems were never designed for sameness either.

They move through states. Green. Red. Blue. Purple. I use these colors in some of the nervous system work I teach because they give us a simple way to name what can otherwise feel enormously complicated. They aren't personality types, diagnoses, or levels we pass through. They are a map for noticing how energy is moving through us.

Green holds enough safety for connection, curiosity, presence, play, digestion, creativity. We can meet what is happening while maintaining access to ourselves.

Red brings mobilization. More energy becomes available. Heart rate can increase, muscles prepare, attention narrows. We might experience urgency, anxiety, anger, excitement, determination, the impulse to move toward or away.

Blue moves toward conservation. Energy decreases. The world may feel farther away. We can become tired, quiet, numb, foggy, withdrawn, heavy. The system is pulling resources inward.

And purple can hold qualities of activation and shutdown at once - the strange experience of being exhausted and wired, wanting to move and feeling frozen, craving connection and wanting everyone to leave you alone.

When we understand these as states rather than identities, something changes. I am anxious becomes there is a lot of mobilizing energy here. I am lazy might become my system has very little energy available right now. I don't know what is wrong with me can become there are several states moving through me at once.

Language gives us somewhere to stand. And then we can become curious.

Summer asks a lot of our red.

This is where the transition into autumn gets particularly interesting to me. Summer can contain enormous amounts of mobilizing energy. Travel. Heat. Longer days. Socializing. Events. Movement. Saying yes. Being outside. Going somewhere. Doing something. Red isn't inherently distress. Red is energy. It is the sympathetic energy that helps us run, dance, create, teach, travel, speak, organize, protect, flirt, play, accomplish, adventure. There can be so much aliveness in red.But energy has a cost. A tree cannot endlessly produce fruit. A body cannot endlessly mobilize. Eventually, something has to be gathered back in. And autumn begins to whisper that before many of us are ready to hear it.

Autumn changes the direction of energy.

I've become fascinated by what happens when the world around us begins moving inward while our human schedules move in the opposite direction. September arrives and suddenly everything starts again. School. Work. Programming. Events. Classes. Projects. Planning. Our calendars become more demanding precisely as the natural world begins reducing light. There is an interesting contradiction there. Perhaps some of what we experience as I should have more energy right now is actually a body negotiating multiple rhythms at once.

There may still be red from summer. There may be green in the excitement of reconnecting and returning to community. There may be blue asking us to conserve after months of movement. There may be purple because all of those things are happening in the same damn body. That feels very September to me. A nervous system at the threshold. Part of us still turned toward summer. Part of us already sensing autumn.

The living world does not confuse inward movement with failure.

This is perhaps the seasonal teaching I want to carry most deeply. When a plant begins pulling resources inward, we don't accuse it of losing motivation. When daylight decreases, we don't tell the sun to work on its consistency. When growth becomes less visible, we understand that another process has begun. Humans are harder on ourselves.

Blue arrives and we immediately want green back. Red arrives and we try to calm it. Purple arrives and we want to understand it immediately. Green arrives and, instead of enjoying the experience of having access to connection and capacity, we often use it to get more done. We have somehow turned regulation into another productivity project. But nervous system regulation isn't the ability to stay green. Regulation is movement.

It is having enough flexibility to mobilize when something requires energy, settle when the demand has passed, move inward when resources are depleted, reach toward relationship when support is needed, and eventually find our way somewhere else. Nature understands this kind of regulation beautifully. Expansion. Contraction. Expression. Conservation. Movement. Stillness. None is asked to become permanent.

Maybe the equinox isn't teaching balance.

Every autumn we arrive at the equinox and begin talking about balance. Equal light. Equal darkness. Balance your life. Balance your energy. Find equilibrium. And I wonder if we've missed the more interesting teaching.

The equinox is a crossing. The moment of near-equal light and darkness doesn't hold. The relationship immediately continues changing. Nature doesn't arrive at balance and stay there. It passes through.

That feels much closer to what nervous system health actually asks of us. The capacity to pass through states. To experience red without believing we will always be activated. To meet blue without immediately forcing ourselves toward energy. To recognize purple as complexity rather than failure. To experience green without gripping it and demanding that our bodies remain there.

Maybe balance is less about maintaining the middle and more about developing enough relationship with ourselves to travel through change.

A different question for September

So as summer begins handing itself to autumn, I am less interested in asking: How do I stay regulated?

I want to ask: What direction is my energy moving?

Is it reaching outward? Gathering inward? Preparing to move? Trying to protect? Looking for relationship? Asking for less? Holding two contradictory impulses at once?

And perhaps underneath all of those questions: Is there enough choice here? Because choice is one of the places I recognize regulation. Maybe I still feel anxious, but I can choose whether to leave the room. Maybe I am tired and can decide whether I need rest or gentle movement. Maybe anger is here and I can feel its heat without immediately acting from it. Maybe I want connection and solitude at the same time, and I can honor some of each. We don't have to force ourselves into another season. We can increase the amount of choice available inside the one we're actually inhabiting.

A PRACTICE FOR THE TURNING

Sometime this September, go outside without headphones. Leave your phone behind if you can. Spend a few minutes looking for evidence that the season is changing. Look closely. The quality of light. The time the sun disappears. The temperature of the air against your skin. What is flowering. What is drying. What is still wildly alive. What has begun turning inward.

Then notice your own system. Where is there green - connection, curiosity, enough space to receive what is around you? Where is there red - heat, movement, urgency, desire, momentum? Where is there blue - heaviness, tiredness, quiet, a wish to conserve? Where is there purple - contradiction, activation tangled with exhaustion, wanting two seemingly opposite things?

You may find more than one. Of course you do. A landscape can hold fruit and decay at the same time. A September afternoon can feel like July while the sun sets earlier. Transition does not require everything to change at once.

Ask your body: What am I still carrying from summer? What am I ready to gather back toward myself? Where is my energy asking to go now? What would give me a little more choice in how I meet this next season?

Then listen without demanding an immediate answer. Perhaps that is the practice September offers us. To become students of transition. To notice that the light has changed before demanding that we change with it. To allow summer and autumn to coexist for a while. To recognize our own red, green, blue, and purple as movements rather than problems. To remember that inward does not mean backward, activation does not mean broken, and rest does not erase everything that grew while we were reaching toward the sun.

The season turns slowly. So can we.