By Bren Leclerc | September 2, 2025
Since you’re a sensitive person, you’ve probably felt a shift in your energy when the seasons change. Perhaps during the height of summer you felt motivated, social, and busy, but now that we are transitioning out of summer you feel less social, more scattered, or even anxious. When you’re sensitive and self-aware, you will feel these seasonal shifts more strongly, and when you don’t know how to respond it can leave you feeling overwhelmed instead of grounded. Let’s explore why this happens and what you can do about it.
Why Seasonal Shifts Affect You
After all the activity of the hottest months, at the end of summer I used to feel scattered and restless. I always tried to push through, thinking it was just stress or circumstance, until I learned to map these patterns into the scope of the entire year and seasonal changes. In Daoist philosophy, this time of year between summer and autumn is called Harvest Season and relates to Earth Element. A time to ground, nourish yourself, practice gratitude, and come back to centre. Yin Yoga and learning about the Meridians has been my go-to way to shift smoothly between seasons rather than fight against them.
This bonus season between summer and autumn is called Harvest (or Late Summer) and is exactly that: a dedicated time to slow down from summer busy-ness, gather yourself and what you’ve grown so far this year, and take stock of what you will bring with you in the colder months ahead. When we don’t observe this essential time in the year, we can end up feeling burnt out from pressing forward with that high summer energy. Or it can feel jarring when autumn sets in but your body and mind are still running on summer energy.
Seasonal transitions (and especially this Earth Element season) can amplify the overwhelm that you’re already feeling for sensitive people. If you’ve been working to find your groove and then the environment shifts, that requires you to shift how you are being to maintain balance. This holistic way of living requires constant minor adjustments to keep returning to centre, rather than standing firm in one way of doing things all year round. Think of it like standing on a boat. If you stay rigid when the boat rocks, you’ll get knocked over. But if you bend your knees, shift with the motion, and keep adjusting, you’ll stay upright. If you commit to being one way consistently, seasonal changes can knock you down. Let’s develop your sea legs in relation to the flow of the seasons.
Earth Element and The Need for Grounding
Signs you may be out of balance during this time of year are increased restlessness, worry, fatigue, and poor digestion. These symptoms all come from the organ systems that relate to this time of year.
Quick recap if this is new to you: Yin Yoga, Acupuncture, Qi Gong, and Acupressure all use the Meridian System. This is a map of the body from Traditional Chinese Medicine that connects ‘energy lines’ in the body with pairs of organ systems. In Meridian-focused Yin Yoga, we use body positions (yin yoga poses) to stimulate (stretch, compress, or twist) areas of the body that contain the meridian we are working with. In the case of Harvest Season and Earth Element, the Spleen and Stomach Organ Systems are the main characters.
In the flow of these 5 seasons throughout the year, Harvest Season and Earth Element are associated with grounding, gratitude, and digestion. Steadiness, nourishment, and centredness are the qualities that represent a balanced person this time of year. And remember, in this holistic philosophy, balance = health.
Imbalance during this season brings excessive worrying and poor digestion.
After all the yang of summertime (heat, activity, and busy-ness), Harvest season asks us to come back to basics, reground, and move forward with intention into the more yin seasons coming up.
Yin/Yang Philosophy and Balance in Everyday Life
You’ve seen the yin and yang symbol. A black and white swirl within a circle, and each side with a dot of the opposite colour. Yin is the black side, representing dark, cool, dense, slow, calm. Yang is the white side, representing hot, bright, active, light, expansive. However, these characteristics are only ever relative. For example, a campfire is yang compared to a candle flame. But a campfire is yin compared to the sun. Nothing is inherently yin or yang, things are only ever yin or yang in comparison to something else.
In this system, health is when yin and yang are balanced.
Too much yang leaves sensitive folks feeling depleted. This is a go-go lifestyle, full calendar, all DOING and not enough BEING. (Most people in the West are very imbalanced with excess yang in their life.)
Cultivating more yin with practices that encourage stillness, slowness, and inward focus helps to restore balance. Hello Yin Yoga!!
When I added yin yoga practice to my life, I felt a moment of peace for the first time ever. I was so imbalanced with all yang and no yin that any amount of stillness felt extremely uncomfortable and inaccessible. When I settled into a yin yoga posture with enough physical sensation to keep my ‘doing’ mind occupied, I got a glimpse of what stillness and peace could feel like, and was able to feel an embodied experience of yin in my otherwise all yang lifestyle.
How Yin Yoga Supports Nervous System Regulation: A Modern Approach
These concepts of seasonal balance from Traditional Chinese Medicine and use of the Meridians were all mapped out as a way of explaining things before there was an understanding of nervous system function and modern anatomical knowledge. I’m not asking you to believe in magic, but consider another way of mapping body systems and how we respond to seasonal changes.
When coming to yin yoga from a modern, Western, scientific lens, consider the effect these slow practices have on the nervous system.
Practices from the Yin half of the yin/yang whole (like yin yoga, meditation, and other slow and calming activities) engage the parasympathetic nervous system – your rest and digest mode.
Being stuck in the Yang pattern of all DOING and not enough BEING uses the sympathetic nervous system – fight/flight mode.
Slow and grounding movement helps to quiet an overstimulated nervous system and bring you down from a hyperactivity high, back into balance.
Nervous system function uses a Window of Tolerance framework – the centre space where you can readily manage normal stressors and maintain your calm is the window of tolerance. This can be mapped directly onto the concept of yin and yang balance. When we move into sympathetic nervous system function, above our window of tolerance, we access that fight/flight mode and can be stuck up here if you aren’t regulating your nervous system. (All Yang, no Yin)
Moving below the window of tolerance is dorsal vagal shutdown, or the ‘freeze’ response. This is equally imbalanced and is when your body is all Yin and no Yang.
Most people are existing either in that fight/flight mode or at the high end of their window of tolerance, because society encourages a lot of Doing, and rewards Yang activities. Learning to regulate your nervous system by adding in some restful yin activities brings your body back to balance and health.
Seasonal Self-Management Practices to Try
Not only will adding yin yoga be good for you this time of year, but there are specific yin postures that relate to Harvest Season and Earth element. The Meridian lines associated with this time of year belong to Spleen and Stomach Organ Systems, which run along the inside of the legs and across the front of the hips (spleen meridian) and the front of the thighs, abdomen, chest, neck, and jaw (stomach meridian). Some yin postures that stimulate these meridians will be hip extensions and twists like Sphinx, Saddle, and Cat Pulling It’s Tail.
Lifestyle changes that can help bring balance as the seasons shift from yang to yin are eating warm, cooked foods (no more raw salads!), leaving more space in your social calendar, time in nature, and structured self reflection like gratitude journaling.
From Overwhelmed to Grounded
Your sensitivity is a strength when it’s managed with skill and intention. You have the power of noticing and self-awareness. Instead of letting that input overwhelm you, use that awareness to guide your choices and continue coming back to balance, back to centre.
Aligning your lifestyle with the seasons, like being active in the summer and quieter in the winter, will help you prevent burnout. Respect the changes you notice throughout the year and choose to adjust rather than push on through.
For an opportunity to deep dive into the seasonal philosophy of yin yoga, Daoism, and TCM, join me for my Seasonal Yin Yoga Workshops at PranaShanti in Ottawa. Info about the next session is below.
Seasonal Yin Yoga: Harvest Season and Earth Element
A two-hour workshop exploring the connection between Yin Yoga, Daoism, and Traditional Chinese Medicine.
This is an opportunity to align your body and mindset with the changing seasons while learning about the philosophy and history behind yin yoga. The workshop begins with a 40-min lecture followed by an 80-min meridian-focused yin practice. The physical practice will emphasize legs, hips, and twists. No previous knowledge of TCM or yin yoga is required to benefit from this workshop.
$60 per person in advance or $70 day-of.
At PranaShanti Yoga Centre, Soul Room. 950 Gladstone Ave, Ottawa.
