Your Knife Era: Using Autumn’s Energy to Heal Burnout and Clear the Clutter

Clip Snip Clip.

Raise your hand if you’ve taken a walk recently and seen this image: an older lady with her sun hat on, on her hands and knees in her garden or yard, pulling out dried stalks and dead flowers. She looks up, sees you, smiles and waves. Then, back to work.

We literally saw this yesterday evening. What these old ladies (and gents…and younger ones too) know is that Pruning Season Has Begun! But don’t worry, this won’t be a blog about pruning your plants. However, learning from what these gardeners do each Fall is a perfect lesson for what the energy of Autumn invites us to do in our own lives and spirits each year this time.

Indulge me…

Clip, snip, clip.

So what exactly is your sweet neighbor doing? Well, if it’s September like it is now, she’s pulling out dried grasses, dead heading flowers and doing other light pruning work. Summer’s abundance has popped and bloomed, and now is letting go. She is gently clearing out what’s dead, diseased or needs to be removed. Typically, this type of pruning is easy because the dead branches & blossoms can be easily pulled out and/or are already falling off.

Sometimes what needs to be let go is very obvious. It’s dead, dry and falling off.

Wait until about mid-October, after the first frost, and you’ll see her out there again. That first frost, baby, is the talk of the town among two sets of people: weathermen and gardeners/farmers. Perennials (plants that sprout up year after year) are cut down to the ground, roses and shrubs are trimmed so snow/ice won’t break branches, vegetable gardens are cleared. This is when the plants begin to enter dormancy, pruning keeps disease from overwintering and clears space for healthy spring growth.

Sometimes pruning demands more effort. You need sharper, hardier tools and you need to cut back what looks healthy, knowing that it would harm the plant if it was kept over the winter.

But, why the need to actually prune? Can’t you just let it die and come back next year?

Well, sure you can, but you are not giving those plants their best chances of a thriving spring time. Dead leaves and stems can harbor fungi, bacteria, or insects over winter; cutting back keeps the plant healthier in spring. Pruning also is important for energy conservation: when dead or weak branches remain, the plant still tries to push resources toward them. Pruning directs all the plant’s energy to its roots. (Are we getting the metaphor?) Lastly, when it is time to sprout, instead of fighting through clutter and disease, the pruned plants can emerges fresh and healthy, with space to grow.

So, sure you can let it all die together, without pruning. But it will not come back stronger or healthier. On the contrary, it will struggle and get sick.

Sound like anyone we know?

Cut the Fat

So, one more Autumn image just to really stick the landing here:

Did you know that in Traditional Chinese Medicine, the element associated with the season of Autumn is metal and the image paired with it is a Knife? If you don’t know much about TCM, the lineage makes use of the 5 elements (air, wood, fire, metal and earth) and each of our bodily systems, along with each season carry the energy of one of these elements. (Similiar idea in Feng Shui!)

While we may think of Autumn as a warm and cosy time, this imagery of Autumn holding the energy of metal is significant. Think of metal things - they tend to be cold, sharp, sterile. If you walked into a home, and they had all metal side tables, coffee tables, mugs, mirrors and so on. That space would not feel cosy and warm. It would feel bare and cold.

That’s the energy of metal and, while not cosy, it is required at times to balance the fluff and the fat that we accumulate in our lives. Just like a knife can cut the fat off a piece of meat. You cannot use a wooden knife to do that. Only a metal knife has the sharpness to cut the fat.

So, we love metal for what it helps us do.

It trims, simplifies and clears away the crap.

Metal distills things down to essentials.

Like a knife. Like your neighbor pruning away. She is likely using a metal knife-like tool to tend her garden this Fall.

Your Knife Era

So my invitation to you is to reflect on these images - the gardener pruning and the knife/metal energy of Fall. Allow those pictures to swirl in your consciousness and see what they lift up in your mind’s eye. See what they suggest you prune, clip back and weed out this season.

The imagery is so clear that there isn’t much need for me to flesh it out much more.

Nature lets go of what is dead,

of what is past it’s prime,

of what will be too much of a burden to carry through winter,

of what will tend to make it sick,

of what is too much clutter to bloom later.

How about you?

• What is past it’s prime in your life?

• What is too much of a burden to carry through winter?

• What are you holding onto that will make you sick if you keep it in your life?

• What clutter can you clear so that, come spring, you have space to blossom?

Journal on these things. Make your to-do list from here and get to pruning, my friends. Tis the season and your winter into spring will be so much more restorative and life-giving if you do this work now. As the Garden Ladies know, there is a window of time when this work is best done.

Your winter can be truly restful and restorative.

Your schedule and mind-space can be more calm.

You do not have to end the year in burnout annually.

Attune to Autumn now. Get to pruning down your life now.

Be somewhat relentless about it and watch your life breath easier.

We can call it your Knife Era.

Deep Dive

If this hit you at just the right time and you’d like more of this type of work right at your fingertips to steep in, that’s why I turned my favorite course, Autumn Alignment, into a workbook + journal.

Autumn Alignment is an 8-lesson workbook and audio series designed to guide you through the natural rhythms of the fall season to support you in healing your cycles of burnout and taking steps towards creating a more spacious life (from within and without!) It is both reflective & packed with action steps.

With linked audio lessons, reflective prompts, and a fillable companion journal (that you can write in digitally or print out - your choice!), you’ll be supported in slowing down, letting go of what no longer serves you, and aligning your energy with the medicines of Autumn to set the tone for a more spacious life. Grab it here for only $27!

Happy Pruning, Friends! 🍁🍂