Vulnerability - the Precursor to Change

My experience is that vulnerability is not weakness, it is the precursor to courage, creativity, change & innovation.

Sarah Howard and guest teacher Kat Keelan preparing for the Samhain Yoga Retreat on 1st November 2025

Autum and winter are the seasons when we turn inwards. An opportunity to look at where we are out of balance. To consider what small changes we can make to bring more creativity, change & innovation into our lives. This natural cycle is well researched and documented by Elizabeth Kubler Ross in her 5 stages of grief model. Her change curve is often cited by business consultants proposing organisational change.

Adapting the curve for the seasonal astronomical winter transition and Celtic cross quarter seasonal festivals between autumn and spring, the change curve looks like this:

Autumn and wintering require courage. Looking inwards and feeling vulnerable may have been an indigenous practice of our ancestors, but it is not something that most of us are familiar with now. On 1st November 2025, Synthesis held its Samhain mini yoga retreat in the Eleven yurt in St Brelade. The perfect environment to turn inwards and reconnect to nature.

"I loved being cocooned in the yurt, it felt comforting and surrounded by other women felt sort of powerful in a way. Leading a busy lifestyle, this was of great value to me as I could completely switch off from the outside world."

In traditional tantra Shakti, the creative force, is represented by ten archetypes - Das Mahavidyas. As guest teacher Kat Keelan and I welcomed attendees into the yurt, the blue skies and sunshine that we had set up under were replaced with rumbles of thunder, heavy downpours of rain, hail and completed by a beautiful rainbow. It was the perfect opening. Shakti, in the form of Goddess Bhuvanesvari, was making herself present.

The sound of the downpour in the yurt as we started the retreat.

The smell inside the yurt was earthy and the symbology painted onto the floor reflected the theme of decay, composting and transmutation.

The cross-quarter festival of Samhain has been absorbed into the later Christian calendar. All Souls Day and All Saints Day are still celebrated on

November 1st and 2nd. Similarly, Diwali and Day of the Dead are celebrated on the same days in Indian and Mexican cultures. The modern festival of Halloween has its origins in Samhain. Like the Greek mythology of Persephone, this is a time when the lifeforce is drawing inward and descending back into the deep earth. Samhain is a point in time where the veil is thin, honouring the ancestors was at the heart of the celebrations. The Cailleach, the hag, the crone, the dark goddess, or the witch comes and puts her cold hand of death on us. She demands that we let go of anything that is not serving us. The cauldron is the great metaphor of transformation in the Celtic tradition. All that needs to die is placed in the cauldron for transformation through the alchemy of fire and water.

Sarah explaining the origins of Halloween and the mythologies of the season.

So, we welcomed our ancestors and invited their ingrained patterns in our lives to become conscious as we sat and talked in women's circle in the yurt. We moved through yoga, descending into the felt senses in the body. We used energy practices and mindfulness to feel our discomfort and vulnerability, and we started the process of understanding what may be out of balance in our lives.

"It was a new and powerful experience. I was taken by surprise at how it brought together a clearer realisation of where I am and where I need to be."

Slow gentle yoga flows took attendees out of our head and into our body

Autumn and wintering bring us back into balance in a new way, enabling our shakti, our creative force, to strengthen and move more freely through us. Changing us from the inside out.

"I made a strong connection with how my body and mind can use that information and relax some of my barriers. It always surprises me the random choices we make and the impact they can have. I loved the mix of movement and more mystical thank you for a lovely very different afternoon where I processed stuff away from the event as much as whilst there so has had a positive impact going forward."

The yurt centrepiece as the retreat came to a close in darkness

Autumn and wintering takes time. It doesn't happen in one 3-hour retreat. We have all season to process, move through and down to the bottom of the Kubler Ross curve. Inevitably in the process we will touch our vulnerability. These uncomfortable feelings can make us want to move back up the curve, pull out our step ladder and bridge the ravine! Pushing down uncomfortable feelings will not result in change. It results in us continuing to circle around our old inherited ancestral patterns.

At Synthesis, the weekly 60-minute classes call you back to the sensory awareness of the body. The yurt retreats and new moon classes introduce you to the seasonal material. Weekly classes support further deepening into and processing through your autumn and wintering process. As we work our way through our vulnerability, our physical, mental and emotional health improve.

"I’ve been trying to think of the right words for yesterday’s weekly class. I know not everyone likes seated flow, I haven’t always been a fan, but yesterday, wow. It really touched me. I woke up this morning feeling like Winter. As I drove to class, running late and flustered as always, I thought maybe I was more Autumn-Winter…I’ve always got some Autumn in there somewhere! As the seated flow progressed I felt more and more empowered, ‘quietly empowered’ - Strong, confident and reaffirmed in my body. By the third round, I didn’t want to leave each asana. I wasn’t pushing or wanting to push, very relaxed and comfortable in myself and embracing a sense of being alive and free. I left the class and spent the rest of the day grounded and the happiest and calmest Autumn (with a touch of Spring-Summer) I have ever known. "

As we continue on, our personal and professional relationships improve. Our creativity increases and our external life changes for the better. In a way that we could never have imagined. Autumn and wintering is the way that we can influence global change for good.

Interested in finding out more about my work and what I can do to help you? Please feel free to book a 20 minute complimentary 1:1 here.

Sarah is a Psychosynthesis Embodied Supervisor, Executive Leadership Coach with further qualifications in systemic and embodiment disciplines. Her coaching clients are women, located in Jersey, France and London, in senior leadership roles, who are responsible for innovative change. Find out more about Sarah.