Hello, lovely listeners, and welcome to Backyard Magic. I'm your host, Nicole Berrios, and when this episode comes out, we will be less than two weeks away from the fall or autumnal equinox. Yay! Happy fall equinox! Almost fall equinox, everybody. Oh, I'm very, very grateful. It's almost here. And for my lovely Southern Hemisphere listeners, you guys are heading into the spring. It's almost the vernal equinox for you guys. So this episode probably won't apply too much to you. However, I think like we're able now to go back into the podcast history and you guys can listen to the spring equinox episode. So yay, I have something to offer you guys today. That being said, I suppose the equinoxes are all about balance and duality. It's a little bit different, like different flavors from spring and fall. So maybe it'll be a little bit different. But maybe if you do listen to this episode and you live in Australia, you might get something out of it. I don't know. You guys will have to let me know. But we're talking all about the fall equinox today. What's in my mug? You guys, I still haven't gone to the herb shop. We're gonna talk about this today as part of like the balance that needs to be happening for this time of year because there has been such a lack of balance in my life. I still haven't gone to the herb shop, but I do have some tea. I have managed to grab a couple of uh boxes of tea from sprouts lately that have been holding me over until I can finally get to the herb shop. It's the traditional medicinals brand of tea, which I think is a fabulous brand. It's all organic. It is let me see, they're org, yeah, organically sourced and farmed. Uh they I feel like there's more to this brand. I feel like it's uh fair, is it fair trade? I feel like they seek out farmers who are doing good things with their their product, basically. So as far as like just getting a box of tea from the store is concerned, traditional medicinals is a pretty good brand to go with. So I'm not knocking them at all. But that being said, I really do miss going to the herb shop because I can get some more custom things there. Oh, it's happening. It's happening soon. I will go to the herb shop because I still don't have any of my local honey. I miss it. So miss it. So what I have today is from traditional medicinals, it is called belly comfort, and it's got peppermint as one of the main ingredients in it. So this blend is peppermint, fennel, ginger, rose hip, papaya leaf, alfalfa, and cinnamon bark. Typically, I don't really have too much of an issue with digestion. However, you know, I actually got this a couple months ago, now that I think about it. I can't believe like it's already been a couple of months. I got this around my birthday. My birthday's in June. I don't know what was happening at my birthday. I was having like crazy heartburn, just really, really weird digestive stuff. I've never had heartburn in my life ever. I think I might have had it one day when I was pregnant, and and even then I was like, is this heartburn? Because I'd never experienced it before. But I had it for like days around my birthday this year, and it was very discouraging because I like couldn't eat normal birthday food. My uh we we have a tradition in my house that we get birth, you know, birthday dinner, which can be either you have a special dinner made for you or you get to go out to eat, and you get to choose whatever you want. It could be any crazy thing. You can have mashed potatoes and pancakes as your birthday dinner, which honestly that sounds pretty gross and very carb heavy. So that that was not my birthday dinner, but I was feeling so crummy just with my stomach and everything that my birthday dinner was chicken noodle soup. Or it was like chicken and rice soup because I can't eat wheat. It was very, very good. I loved that soup. I've been asking my husband if he can make that for me again sometime soon because it was really, really good. So, anyways, that's what I had for birthday dinner in back in June. And I also had some of this belly comfort tea because I was just having a having a hard time, and I had it in my cupboard. So I I made a cup of it. I've actually had a couple of cups of this recently. It's really nice. It's really nice. It's well, I mean, it's belly comfort, it's for digestion, but I feel that it's like a gentle type of digestive aid, it kind of just gets things moving a little bit. And peppermint in Chinese medicine is actually an we call it an herb that releases exterior wind heat because peppermint or mint is cool in nature, and so you can you can use it to help alleviate symptoms that have heat as the predominant the predominant symptom. So you would you can take something like peppermint when you're at the onset of like a cold or a flu when heat is predominant. So this can be like if you're starting to get a fever or if you're just starting to run hot, that's when you would take something like peppermint. However, in Western herbalism, you can use the same herb for digestive help. So it's interesting how like the different different cultures can have overlap in their Materia Medica for their herbs and use them for slightly different purposes. So it's it's interesting knowing a little bit about both. I mean, I know a lot about Chinese herbs because I I got a degree in it, I specialize in it, and I you know, dabbling a little bit in the the Western way of doing herbs, it's it's just interesting to see how they overlap, how they're different. Yeah, and that like cinnamon bark is one of the one of the herbs in here. And cinnamon bark is an interior warmer in Chinese medicine, so that's an herb that you would take when you need to like heat somebody up. That's if they're having something like what we would call yang deficiency. And not a lot of people show up as yang deficient, especially where I live, because it's a very hot climate and there's just not a lot of cold going on here. That being said, this is the last herb listed in the blend. So I'm assuming because it's the last listed, it means that's the one that's it's got like the least amount. It's probably just a little splash of cinnamon bark. I'm assuming it's not overpowering at all when I drink it. That makes me think that, yeah, it's it's just added in there as a little like pick me up. It's pretty good. I like it. It'd be better with local honey. Soon, soon I will get some soon. Okay, so that's what's in my mug today. Mostly because it's just what I had in my cupboard. And also, I I like to think of digestive herbs not just for helping improve your physical digestion, but also your mental and emotional digestion too. So I think that this blend helps with that. Even if it's all just in my head, you know, like if it's a mental thing, I think it's doing that, so it does that. It works. I'm okay. I'm okay with all of this. All right. This episode is gonna be all about balance magic for the fall equinox. This episode is coming out, like I said, almost two weeks before before the the equinox is actually set to arrive. And I know that this is like a little bit early, but just the way since I'm releasing episodes bi-weekly, the way that it worked out, if I had released this episode for the next go-rounds, it would have been after the equinox. So this gives you guys time to kind of do some mental preparation if you would like to do your own little bit of balance magic for the equinox. So let's kind of dive into this a little bit. What is the equinox? So, excuse me. I'm getting over a little sinus-y thing. So there's a little bit more phlegm than usual. I'm out of my my sniffles be gone tea because I haven't gone to the herb shop. Honestly, if I had any of that, that's what I would be drinking right now. So, but I digress. And then the equinoxes, there's two of them, one in the spring, one in the fall. This is the like the halfway point. It's where we have equal amount of daylight and night. And like I said, they happen twice a year. We've been heading towards this point since the summer solstice. The summer solstice is the peak young energy of the year. Like I said, the most sunlight. And then as soon as it's over, we slowly start to tip into the days getting a little bit shorter every day. And so we hit this time of year where it's equal. It's equal daytime, equal nighttime. And then after the equinox, then we're going, we're going to really start to notice that it gets dark way earlier now, and that the sun doesn't come up as early in the morning until we hit the winter solstice in December, when it's it's just dark. It is just dark. What's interesting, and I don't think this is any coincidence, is that the first day of the autumn or the day of the autumn equinox is also the first day of Libra season. And Libra in in astrology, the symbol of Libra is the scales. This is all about balance. Balance, equality, harmony. It's it's a cardinal sign, it ushers in the season, the season of autumn. And it's all about balance. So that's what I wanted to talk about for this episode, because uh in my life, anyways, things have gotten really, really out of balance. And I am very much looking forward to working with the energy that's coming in right now. You could already kind of feel it happening now, but it'll be peak on the equinox, on the day of the equinox, and I plan on capitalizing on that energy for sure, and making sure that I do some what I'm hoping to be potent magic, potent but simple magic, to help me usher in a period of more balance and harmony in my life. If you guys have ever seen a yin yang symbol before, I'm sure you have. It's the circle that's got the wavy line down the middle, half of it is black, half of it is white, there's a white dot in the black half, and a black dot in the white half. A yin yang symbol is like the epitome of the equinoxes. It's where everything is in balance. The black half represents yin, which is feminine cooling, soft energy. The white half is yang, which is more masculine, more energetic, more hot, dominant type energy. And in the yin-yang symbol, they're equal. They're equal. But there's also the little the little dots. So the dot of white inside the black, that is there's yang within yin, and the black dot inside of the white is yin within yang. When you go to acupuncture school in your theory class, you have to take a whole bunch of theory classes so you can wrap your brain around the whole system of Chinese medicine because it's a different way of thinking. Learning yin-yang theory is the very first thing that you learn. That's like your very first lesson. You learn everything about a yin yang symbol and what it means, how it applies to the medicine, and ultimately how it applies to all of life, because you can apply yin yang theory to everything. What I like about yin yang theory is that there's yin within yang, yang within yin, like you can't have one without the other. They are interchangeable. When one gets out of balance, the other one is a or like when one gets becomes less, the other one becomes predominant, and then it like kind of fluctuates back, and one becomes predominant, the other one less so. And it's just like a constant balancing act. I like to I like the word harmony here because sometimes you're going to have times where there's more yin or you know, just a little less activity in your life. And sometimes there's going to be more young where things are a little bit more, you know, frantic, energetic, like more, just like more big energy. And then something like the fall equinox happens, and then we can kind of get back to a set point, and we can kind of reassess things. That's where we're at right now. I love yin-yang theory so much. I'm looking at one right now. I have one in my office. So I'm staring at it right now, and I'm like, I just I love yin yang theory, and it sometimes, a lot of the time actually, I forget all about it. I see it in my office every time that I'm working, and it's always just kind of at the back of my mind, usually not at the forefront. So it's nice to have a moment to just bring it to the forefront. Like, oh yeah, remember yin yang theory? Let's strive for that. I did want to say though, that I don't think there's any such thing as everything being perfectly in balance and perfectly in alignment. That's why I like the word harmony. Because what even is balance? That's like assuming that, you know, you've got like everything is perfectly lined up and life never happens, essentially, I think, is what that is saying. Whereas harmony is more like an orchestra. You know, there's moments in the piece of music where there's more strings and less horns, and then there's other parts of the song where there's more horns and less strings, but it's all harmonious, it all works together. That's what I like to think of as the more attainable goal for not just humans, but all of existence, really, is just to find harmony. Less about like everything being equal and balanced, and more about can we be harmonious? And that that's Libra season. Libra's all about harmony. So we are going to tap into this energy for this time of year. So, what we're gonna do, we're gonna take some time to take stock and see where things have gotten off track. My last episode was all about staying grounded during chaotic times. Dang, eclipse season. I'm so glad that it's over. How are you guys holding up? Eclipse season was hard. It just was. There was so much. And what it what is today? I'm recording this early, you know, in September. I feel like August completely just disappeared. It was like I had a cup of water, like August was water that I tried to hold in my hand, and then it just, you know what happens to water when you hold it in your hand? That was August. I have no idea what happened to August, where it went. I'm pretty sure that was the month of the refrigerator debacle, and school started, martial arts. It was just a chaos month, and then the eclipses and a lot of my clients having really hard times. Just a crazy, crazy, crazy month. And then I got a little thick, like a little sinus-y thing, because my body was just like, you're done. Time out, take a break. And I did a little candle ritual that I talked about in my last episode where I lit a blue candle and I just kind of meditated on things being calm and there being more peace in my life. And it could have just been coincidental that this was happening, anyways, but magic is magic. You know, you put your intention into something and you get an outcome. So the outcome for me was yes, things have slowed down, finally, finally slowed down. And I've I'm reclaiming more of my time and my energy. However, I'm still like backlogged from the mess that was August. Things have gotten off track and out of balance. I still like have work that I need to do at home that will make my life easier. That's another theme that I thought was important, was going to be important to address in this episode is what can you do in your life to make things easier for yourself? For me, what I've been noticing is I and I've always noticed this about myself. I don't like being rushed. I don't like feeling like I'm running around frazzled like a chicken with its head cut off, especially in the mornings when everyone's got to get ready. I want like lunches to be made, I want breakfast to be already prepared. I want like backpacks, bags, everything. Car cleaned out, like packs ready to go, so that it's smooth and streamlined. And that has not been the case recently. There's just been dishes everywhere. None of the containers are clean. I don't have any, like, I need to get new lunch stuff, like a bento box, bento boxes or something. Like, we don't have any lunch containers. It's just been it's been a frantic mess. And it does not set the tone for a good day. I mean, it's not a bad day, but it I feel like it starts me off on the wrong foot because I already begin my day feeling frazzled, and I feel like it's hard for me to come out of that and to calm down and feel more balanced and harmonious. So I'm just what I'm doing, and I encourage you guys to do this too. This is mundane magic, but it is magic nonetheless, because it's going to help you balance things in your life. I want you guys to take stock of what is working in your life and what is not working. Are there simple little things like you need you need different lunch containers to make your life easier? Do you need to make sure that your bag is packed before you leave for the day? Do you need to make sure that your car is cleaned out the day before so that you're not rushing around looking for something that is probably in your car? Set yourself up for success for the day. That's what's been going wrong in my life. It's just too crazy, too, too frantic. I haven't been home enough, like haven't got caught up on laundry. Ugh. I don't want to, I don't want to like keep spiraling about this. You can kind of hear it in my voice. When I when I talk faster, it's like, oh, you can feel the frantic energy. Oh. Watch me ground. Luckily, I'm at the point in my journey where I can do it very quickly. I just have to remind myself, hey girl, you're getting a little out of control here. Let's bring it back down. Okay, we're good. Back down to Earth. Take stock of the things that aren't working in your life and make a plan to make things easier for yourself so that things can be more in balance for you. That is one thing that I will be doing for the fall equinox. I have already started that. I'm currently looking at lunchboxes, trying to figure out what would work for everybody and their different needs. Another thing that I will be that I already started to address this morning actually was going back to time management. Again, mundane magic, but incredibly potent magic because time is everything. I feel like if you if you don't like time is all we have, you know, or don't have. We all have the same amount of time. You can't expand time, you can't have more time, but you can learn to manage the time that you have more better. Yes, that was that's not good English, I know. More better, more efficiently. A couple years ago, I signed up for a time management class with a woman named Megan Summerl. Life changing. And I feel like this was earlier in the year. I revisited the time management class. I did a time audit, I got things back on track for myself, and then summer happened, and then just things shift. Your life shifts. This morning, when I was feeling frazzled and crazy because I couldn't find any Tupperware for the lunches, I realized I need to revisit. Time management. I don't need to take the class again because I already have the knowledge. I just need to actually do the work. I needed to take a moment to sit down and do the work. I know how to manage my schedule. I just have to actually do it. And what I love about Megan Sumrell's class and the way that she teaches time management is that it's all about working with the time that you actually have available. And she prioritizes self-care. She's not about hustle culture. And you know, wake up at 3 a.m. so that you can, you know, do all do a bunch of stuff. No, she prioritizes self-care. Those are the things that get plugged into your calendar first, aside from actual appointments. So I sat down, I pulled out my planner. I have an actual paper planner. If you take Megan's class, you will learn how to do this too. It's very, very efficient. You just, I have, for me anyways, I have to remind myself remember to actually do that. Sit down with your erasable pen, those are super cool, by the way, and do your plan for the week. Because it's very, very helpful. So that's what I did this morning. I had a little extra time for it, just my schedule worked out that way. Had a little extra time this morning. I sat down and I did my plan for the week. And I said, okay, cool. These are the little chunks of time that I have left to work with. Oh, it made me feel a lot more grounded. And then I also was able to kind of map out like I got to take care of the things that are not working in my life. Like I got to figure out this lunchbox situation. It sounds so ridiculous to like have lunch boxes throw your entire day off, but that's where we are. So I found new lunchboxes. Cool. Check, got that done. These are all things that are going to make my life easier and more harmonious because that's the energy of the season, and this is the epitome of Libra energy. I want to feel more harmonious. Another thing that's interesting about the fall season is that in Chinese medicine five-element theory, we are heading into the metal time of year. Metal is an interesting energy. It's a contracting sort of energy. If you are sensitive or just in tune with this sort of thing, you have been able to feel this probably. I've been feeling it pretty much as I feel like I start to feel this at Lunasa actually around August 1st. But really starting in September, I can feel the contracting energy where I can feel that summer is waning. We are on the last little legs of summer, heading quickly into the fall season where there's less light, things are less intense, the heat will start to ebb. It already has. It's not as hot as it was. Still hot, but it's not as terrible. And things start to slow down. It's a contracting energy, it's a going within energy, more reflective, that sort of thing. Metal is also organized, methodical, get shit done kind of energy. I don't know about you, but I could definitely use a little metal energy right now. I'm very much looking forward to embracing this. There is also emotions associated with each of the five elements. Metal is grief and sadness. I'm actually gonna do my next episode all about that aspect of the metal element. But for today, we're just gonna focus on the contracting energy, the slowing down, getting organized, methodical, get your ducks in a row, sort of energy, lining things up. Basically, making things that will make your life more harmonious and easier and just flow better with more ease and grace. So welcoming in the metal, the metal season. And you know what's interesting in Chinese element or Chinese medicine five element theory. You can get really complex with this, but like each element generates another one, is controlled by another one, controls another one. When you see like a pentagram or a pentacle in Chinese medicine, it's talking about the five elements. That's what the star is. Like it connects the elements to each other, and you could see which one controls the other. It's it's a pretty cool system. It's kind of hard to describe without actually visually showing you, but it it looks like it looks like a star or a pentacle. But in in this system, the element that controls metal is fire. We are just coming out of fire season, and this is the year of the fire horse. I feel like it's been triple fire for everybody. Well, maybe like double fire for everybody, like summertime is the fire season, the fire horse. Oh no, it is triple because the the fire, like it's a fire year, and the horse is a fire animal. So that's that's triple, triple fire. God, no wonder August just disappeared. Like it was, it just burned away too much fire. And then when you live somewhere like where I live, it's insanely hot. So I feel like there's the added element of actual heat and fire. So, like quadruple fire, so much fire. Fire controls metal. If you want to make a sword or do anything with metal, you have to heat it up to extremely hot temperatures. That's when it becomes malleable and when you can do something with it, shape it into something. We had so much fire over the course of the summer. I feel like the metal is just melted into a pile of melted metal into a puddle. It's melted into a metal puddle. Oh, it's melted into a pile of melted metal. Well said, Nicole. No wonder I am feeling so off balance. The metal element within me has been melted into smithereens. Therefore, I am very much looking forward to this fire energy ebbing. It's already ebbing, thank goodness, and the metal can finally start to solidify and become something usable, a usable tool that you can utilize to get yourself organized, be methodical, go within, be reflective, slow down, and find the harmony in your life. That sounds fantastic to me. Part of what I wanted to do with this fall energy, because I've been talking about harmony a lot, is I wanted things to feel more harmonious with my family. In particular, harmonious with contribution and equality. Things have also gotten really off track there, just with house duties, who's doing what. Like, is it equal? I don't really know who's doing what. I feel like maybe it's equal, but it feels so chaotic, it's hard to tell. So I'm gonna sit down and make things harmonious with the people in my house so that it feels like the you know the responsibilities of maintaining the household are a little bit more balanced and equal. Sounds good to me. And honestly, when you take care of all of this mundane stuff, everything else becomes easier. I know I've mentioned that already in this episode, but everything does become easier and makes your heart your relationships feel easier because you're not stressed and frazzled and wondering what are you going to put your sandwich in because there's no Tupperware available. And then everybody's stressed and rushed and snipping at each other, and it's just not good. None of it is harmonious. So get get the stuff done that needs to get done so that your life can just flow better. That's what I'm calling in. And the way that I'm going to do that, it's going to be really, really simple. Here is my ritual that I'm going to be doing. You guys can totally use this if you want, modify it any way you see fit. Here's my ritual that I'm going to do to call in balance magic for the fall equinox. I'm going to get two candles. You know, I love my candle magic, it's simple. I'm going to get two candles, one black, one white. I'm also not big on correspondences, so if you don't have a black and white candle, doesn't matter. Get two candles. Two candles of any color that to you represent duality. Like the yin-yang, black and white. It doesn't have to be black, black and white though. Whatever colors you want, whatever colors you have, don't make this complicated. Life is already complicated. I might dress the candles in an essential oil. It'll depend on what I've got in my stock. But if I do dress them, it'll be one in an oil that's like more grounding, and the other one in an oil that's a little bit more like invigorating, right? To represent yin and yang. I'm going to sit at my altar and I am just going to ground, center, meditate for a few minutes, call in the directions if I want to go a little bit more fancy with it. And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to light the candles and I'm going to focus on harmony. I'm not going to worry so much about the word balance, but more just harmony. Like feeling at peace and in flow between the duality of the yin and the yang. And I'm going to do this on the day of the equinox because that's when the energy is the most potent. And then I'm just going to sit there and I'm going to meditate on these candles until those suckers burn down. So I'm going to carve out a good chunk of time, even though they're chime candles, they don't take that long to burn, but still I'll I'll have at least a good half hour to do this, which means I have to pre-plan, which is partly why I'm giving you guys this episode well before the fall equinox, so that you've got time to prep too, and if you have family and you need somebody to make sure that you know your your kids are being watched while you're doing your ritual. Because I want for me, and I would encourage this for you too, I want to make sure I've got enough time to do this because I got so frantic and frazzled over the summer. I need to ground right now. I so need it, and I need to call in, like I said, this more harmonious, calm energy as we head into the dark half of the year or the dark darkest part of the year. So that's what I'm gonna do. That's it. Super, super simple. I'm also going to, when I get up in the morning, I'm gonna go stand outside and watch the sunrise come up. I should be able to do that with my schedule. And then at the end of the day, when the sun is going down, I'm just going to go out and watch the sun go down and feel myself being influenced by the seasonal influence that's happening around me by just observing it, pausing, taking stock, and just allowing whatever happens to happen. I might do some journaling, I might pull some tarot cards, but otherwise that's it. Like that is all I'm going to be doing. And it sounds fabulous. Like I can't wait to do this ritual because it just sounds like it's going to be so peaceful and calming and grounding. And from there, then we're gonna we're gonna like really get into this metal energy that's coming in hot, extra hot puddle of melted metal for from this fire season. And then I will just put the energy out there that things will feel harmonious in my life and harmonious with my family and the people around me and my business and all the things. Harmony for all the things. So that's all I got for you guys today. Happy fall. I hope this was helpful. Honestly, I feel like this was cathartic just talking about it, and I feel grounded just talking about it. Like I'm so looking forward to the fall season. So so glad that it's here. We made it through summer. We made it through summer. Yay! When you live in the desert, this is something worth celebrating. Maybe I'll have some sort of a little party. Maybe I'll go buy some cupcakes and we can celebrate the summer is over. Although it won't stop being hot until sometime in October, but it'll be here before you know it. Happy fall, everybody. Happy spring to the Southern Hemisphere listeners. I hope you have a great week, and I'll catch you guys in the next episode. Bye.