Autumn and Digestion: The Season of Letting Go

Autumn is the year’s long exhale.

The harvest is in, the light is shortening, and something in us knows it’s time to slow down and take stock.

All year we’ve been taking things in: the wins, the losses, the conversations that kept us up at night. Now comes the slower work of absorbing it all, of finding the hidden gifts tucked inside the year before winter wipes the slate clean.

Autumn is when the year sits down to digest itself.

And yet, we so easily forget that the last act of digestion isn’t taking in—it’s letting go.

What the old maps say

Long before anyone wired a stomach to a recorder, the physicians of classical Chinese medicine mapped resonance inside the body with the outer turning of the seasons. This ancient lineage believed that autumn connects to the metal element, and to two organs that work as a pair: the lungs (yin) and the large intestine (yang).

The lungs are called the minister of exchanges, the minister-mentor, or the prime minister. They govern breath and voice, the ever-flowing giving and receiving between the world outside us and the world inside us through every breath.

The large intestine is the minister of transmission, or the organ of release: letting go of what’s finished, of what we no longer need, and, in some readings of the tradition, of a stream of forgiveness towards ourselves and for others.

Life is a series of patterns, many of which can be charted. And much like reading a map, we have the opportunity to more deeply perceive life from these charts of patterns. Read the seasons like you might a map: they are a series of pathways you will move through to reach your destination.

Perhaps the oldest of life’s maps is the seasons: from the newness of birth to the final days of death and ultimately rebirth as the cycle begins anew. If you could bundle your breath, voice, and the art of letting go into one season, it would be autumn. As someone who has spent her life making music on the exhale (singing), I find that more than a little poetic.

The blueprint of the trees

Observe any tree this season. It isn’t hoarding its leaves. It lets go of what it can’t carry into winter. It’s unburdening by simplifying its foliage; it’s part of how the tree survives the coldest months. The fallen leaves return to the soil below the tree, ultimately providing nourishment that the tree will draw from come spring.

I wish more of us were like these elegant trees.

Instead, we so often yoke ourselves to the burdens of the year: the unfinished arguments, the plan that didn’t go as we hoped, the grief we haven’t allowed ourselves to fully process or even feel. We keep chewing on previous seasons long after their nourishment is gone.

My father passed away in 2023, and to this day, I still find myself processing the grief and mourning and loss that I feel from his absence. Sometimes, it feels like this season will never end.

Yet, I know that it will. In its perfect time.

Release rides the exhale

The ultimate lesson of life’s seasons is fairly straightforward and can be summed up in the phrase, “This too shall pass.”

All of it. The good. The bad. The pain. The pleasure. It all will pass, for it all has a season, mapped out inside the patterns of life.

Here is where yesterday’s map collides with today’s research. The lungs, autumn’s organ in the ancient Chinese tradition, are where breath and voice are born. And modern science keeps returning us to a simple truth: a long exhale is the part of the breath that helps us soften.

Every sigh of relief is an exhale. Every sound you’ll ever make rides on an exhalation. A hum, a toned vowel, a song sung in the shower. Your voice floats on the waves of your breath.

Maybe that’s why so many lullabies often end on a sustained, descending note. Intuitively, we know our bodies let go with each breath out… each letting go breath.

Letting go, in the research

There’s a subtle finding I return to often, especially when it comes to a healthy and vital digestion.

When researchers compared three different psychological treatments for IBS (irritable bowel syndrome), they wanted to understand what type of intervention actually helped. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three programs, each with 10 sessions. Program 1 activated interoceptive exposures, deliberately activating discomfort signals then sitting with the gut sensations instead of avoiding them. Program 2 centered on stress management. Program 3 met just as often but offered no specific technique to try; researchers call this an “attention control.”

In all three, including the control condition, the answer was the same: the people who improved were the ones who began to release their fear of their own gut’s sensations. The technique wasn’t the deciding factor. Perhaps it was the participants’ choice to release fear and change how they felt about the sensation.

Simply, they let go.

When we loosen our grip on life, life’s grip on us loosens as well. It’s in the release where flow begins.

Try this: the Autumn Exhale

Sit somewhere near a window from which you can see a tree. Breathe in naturally. On the exhale, let a soft hum ride out until your breath is finished—let your sound float all the way to the end of your breath. Do this three times. On the final exhalation and hum, silently call to mind one thing from this year you’re ready to set down and release.

You don’t have to know how this letting go will come to pass. All you have to do is make a choice… and exhale.

Carry the season with you

Watch the full-moon Grace Note session, part of my Your Gut Is Listening livestream series. Or start from the beginning with the full series →

To start with the science, read Can Sound Help Digestion?, and for the practice behind the pause, The Pause Before You Eat.

And for your next meal, Grace Note is a free three-minute sound ritual for the pause before you eat. Listen free →

For ritual beyond the meal, read Healing Rituals: Why the Frame Around the Sound Matters.

Let the year go the way the end of a song fades: fully sounded, then released into the beauty of silence.

Questions people ask about autumn and letting go