Seasons

We're already in a new season. Depending on which hemisphere you're in, autumn or spring arrive with their own colours, temperatures and rhythms.

I realise that the very word ‘season’ reveals a human tendency to compartmentalise what is, by nature, fluid. It is impossible to fix the boundaries of natural processes in absolute terms. We choose reference points and establish collective conventions that there is a beginning and an end to what, in truth, occurs continuously. Nature knows no rigid boundaries; it undergoes transitions.

These transitions are not empty. At the boundaries between one season and another, something important happens: the organism reorganises itself, the landscape is reshaped, balance is restored under new conditions. Change is not a rupture; it is continuity in another form.

It is worth embracing this same logic in our own lives. On a physical level, transitions offer us the opportunity to respect our individual constitution whilst optimising our condition at a specific moment. It is in this space — between what we were and what we can be — that the most elegant and efficient movements emerge. Without forcing, but in a flow arising from an honest and conscious foundation.

Just as nature does not leap from one season to another, our body does not move from a crude effort to technical refinement without passing through intermediate stages. Each phase has its own character, its demands and its results. Trying to skip stages is, in practice, to disregard the process, and it is precisely within the process that everything happens.

The suggestion I offer is simple, but it requires diligence to sustain.

Start with a genuinely personal motivation, one that does not depend on external approval to exist and that remains alive even when no one is watching. This motivation is the soil in which the practice takes root.

Next, proceed with manageable steps, which allow for consistency and are worth more than intensity. A modest daily practice builds more than an occasional, grandiose effort.

Observe your current condition in a relaxed and lucid manner, without the inflexible judgement of criticism or the complacency of self-indulgence. Seeing clearly what is, without dramatising or idealising, is the first gesture of respect in any physical practice.

Keep your movements in a state of presence. Conscious breathing is, in this sense, much more than a technique; it is a method of connecting with the act itself. When breathing serves as a reference point, the mind can free itself from fixation on future results. And this is precisely how results manifest: not as forced achievements, but as the natural consequences of a well-guided process.

Remember that, whatever the season, there will be variations in the weather. Some days will be more pleasant, others less so. Phases of growth and phases of consolidation. All of this is part of the same cycle, in which no moment will be wasted if there is perseverance, discipline and the wisdom to accept the natural rhythm. Other seasons will come. And you will be different then.