How to Use Seasonal Transitions to Choose From Joy

Edited Sunday, 28 May 2023

Life is one great symphony of transitions. Transitions set the tone, prepare the elements, and lay the groundwork for success. In transitions, we build awareness, celebrate, realize, integrate, and renew, if we pay attention. If we speed through, we may end up feeling fractured, scattered or at sea.

The seasonal transition period called Rtu Sandhi in Sanskrit, or “the part where two seasons join together” happens in the last week of one season and the first of the next.

Why Rtusandhi — Seasonal Transitions — Are Worth Our Attention

Ayurveda and yoga both recognize transitions as the richest opportunity for creating healthy, self-reinforcing, and regenerative changes in habits, tissues, and tendencies. The yoga (Sanskrit) word for habits of body, mind, and heart is samskara — grooves, patterns, or tendencies. Often, I’ve heard this as a word for things we want to cease, change or judge, but they are actually the embodied memories of our repeated behaviors or inherited past — facts among other facts. Bringing them into awareness and consciousness without judgment or anticipation can initiate a new cycle of transformation into whatever we would value more, or refine and free the grooves more aligned with our values.