Recently, my yoga teacher commented that "Fall is a windy time of year." Depending on where you live, the cool wind may pick up or briskness cut the air. This seasonal shift can feel energizing, or rev up your anxiety.

But my yoga teacher was not just talking about the external weather forecast. She was also talking about the shift of weather inside of each of us; that is, a feeling of worry, frenzy, and overwhelm that ramps up quite predictably each fall. Not coincidentally, these freshly stirred up feelings might bear relation to the weather around us; after all, we're intimately connected to what philosopher David Abrams calls the "more than human world."

A favorite ice-breaker in a group that I used to run with teenage girls was: "What's your internal weather report?" "Thunderstorms," "cloudy skies," and "bright and sunny" were all common responses. This question is a great place to check in on your emotional state.

Fall coincides with many transitions: back-to-school, back-to-work, changing bathing suits for sweaters in a closet, crop rotations in a garden, etc. For many folks, there's a ramped-up pace of life every September, October, and November: more events, activities, work, social engagements — and the challenge of juggling and multitasking to meet so many demands.

Pile on top of that a huge heaping of today's looming existential burdens, be it on the personal level (i.e., health issue) or global level (political unrest).

Indeed, there's a strong current of unease and worry that's pervasive and visceral — and, for many folks, it is haunting their bodies with stress accumulation. We can intellectualize this all day long and call it "chronic stress," "collective

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