peaches, patchouli,
blackberries, bullfrogs,
crickets and card games.

Summer’s creeping molasses, not-in-a-hurry pace captured in sensory-rich pixels. You probably have your own summery words, defined by your experience of living outside the workaday mentality that keeps us all in line the rest of the year.

If they don’t immediately come to mind, try using the yogic practice of sensory awareness (pratyahara) to connect with them. This low-profile fifth limb of yoga makes us aware of sensory perceptions so that we can eventually detach from them.

While you’re still in the season’s warm grasp—before the full force of back-to-school frenzy, fall breezes, the first thoughts of the impending holidays that come unbidden in October—stop and breathe them in. Listen to the sounds around you (waves, birds or a welcome decrease in the hum of traffic). Taste what’s growing around you (in your yard, garden or at the local farmer’s market). Look at Mother Nature showing off with abundant greenery, clear that she’s not yet concerned about autumn’s steadfast approach.

I post this a bit reflectively, as I sit here in Houston looking back wistfully on my summer in the North Carolina mountains. I navigate the stifling heat, straddling summer and fall—one child back in school, the other one still running wild and barefoot through days of bike-riding, swimming and card games. A bit in both worlds, I already feel an autumnal undertow pulling me toward responsibility and a scheduled life of bedtimes, alarm clocks and carpools. I have an olfactory memory of the tranquilizing pachouli scented candles and bath oils I use in the mountains, and it struck me how different they are from the stimulating ginger scented ones I’ve opted for here at home.

I am oddly surprised by how I seemed to match the scents around me to the rhythm of the season without realizing it. Suddenly, I am overcome by the desire to go out and buy some patchouli. To sneak it into fall’s unrelenting quest for productiveness. To subvert the season with this bohemian smell. To tuck a bit of summer into my fall.

That is my wish for you—that you can find a way to carry some of your favorite summer sensory experiences into this season that can feel so very serious, lightening and livening your experience of it.

Namaste.