At 7.19pm on Monday we hit the Autumn Equinox: the moment when day-light hours even out with darkness. It's a balance point before the shift towards winter, a tipping point.

I've never really been one for spiritual thinking (I prefer to focus on the bones and muscles) but whilst I was on maternity leave, and I finally had time to really appreciate the change in seasons, I realised how we spend much of our working lives pressing ahead, no matter the weather, no matter the season.

The result is the incessant progress of days, weeks, months in a constant and continuous grind. If it weren't for the framing of time given us by school term dates and seasonal holidays, we might never stop... unless our body forced us to...which it has the habit of doing from time to time.

This year I'm mark this change of seasons, focusing on the tipping point of the breath.

For the last few weeks we've been working with the zone of apposition, deepening the out-breath and expanding the back of the ribs on the in-breath. Breathing seems to mirror the balance in energies that comes with the equinox: Inhaling energises and expands, exhaling releases and deepens. But what of that space in the middle? When does the in-breath become the out-breath, and vice-versa.

If we slow down, both our breathing and our moving, could we unlock a little more balance between the driving energy and the release? We need both...

And if all that breathing and pagan festival nonsense is a bit much for you, perhaps just focusing on the breath in some way, is enough.

I'll end with a quote from Dr Ken O'Halloran on the Inside Health podcast's 'Focus on Breathing' episode:

"If we take time out of our busy schedules to focus on our breathing, and to be a little bit more introspective, then this will have positive affect and can improve mind and body."