Intentions and Inspirations for Wintering Well this Year
Photo by Mira Kemppainen on Unsplash
December is here! The sun sets early and nights are long, with the shortest day of the year happening later this week. How are you feeling this season with the approaching winter solstice?
With snowflakes in Maryland and downy grey clouds, velvet cold mornings and stars that crystalize in the night chill, it feels like winter has already arrived. Everything in the natural world is furling inward, downward, to darkness and gestation. The landscape appears dormant, but important work is happening beneath the surface.
There may be ways for us to notice what might be happening under the surface for ourselves, too- that which is not yet ready to emerge in this low energy time.
And yet, these rhythms of slowing down are not supported by the many external activities this time of year. How many parties or holiday celebrations can you fit into four weekends? Add the frenzy of shopping, shlepping, end of year reviews, projects, exams, and finances, and it can feel like the absolute peak of activity. The volume turns up while everything around us, maybe including the preference of our bodies, is turning down.
You may love the glitter and light-filled holiday season with its festivity and cheer, or you may be waiting for the relative unassuming-ness of January because you’re tired and just want it all to be over; or you’re sober and there is a drinking event everywhere you turn; or you’re grieving a loss or difficult awareness for the first time or the twentieth; or you’re lonely, and painful reminders are everywhere.
When our own fields are bare and waiting for spring, we may be really longing for an opportunity to winter. This longing could be reflected in the abundance of memes on social media filled with images of little woodland creatures living in cozy below-ground homes, snow falling above. There is a reason The Celestial Sleepytime Tea Bear is a lifestyle icon on Instagram- who doesn’t want a long winter’s nap in a chair by the fire? It can’t just be me!
So how do we define Wintering? We could simplify it by distilling some essential qualities of Winter: coldness, stillness, darkness, silence.
How do we receive these qualities in a way that feels deeply nourishing while they are present?
Last year I read Katherine May’s excellent book Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times. In it, she shares about the regenerative benefits of truly embracing winter, both the season and our own personal winters or times that seem slow, still and quiet. May begins to describe Wintering by saying, “Winter is a season in the cold. It is a fallow period in life when you’re cut off from the world, feeling rejected, side-lined, blocked from progress, or cast into the role of an outsider.”
In the book, she found herself in a proverbial season of winter, needing to rest after a health incident, and set out on an exploration of ways to lean into the season including everything from viewing the northern lights to sauna to cold plunges to visiting Stonehenge on the Solstice. While a trip to Stonehenge may not be on your calendar for this week, Wintering can be an ethos easily accessible from home in between the energy and light-filled activities and socializing you may have on your plate.
Photo by Donnie Rosie on Unsplash
Journaling Practice
Journaling is a perfect companion for Wintering, so if you’d like to treat yourself to a Wintering experience, don your softest sweats and slippers, turn on the Netflix fireplace, curl up with some chamomile tea, light a candle (bonus points if you journal entirely by candlelight!), maybe with some evergreen essential oils or even real pine clippings for good measure, and settle in with these seasonal questions and themes:
What which of the four qualities of winter (stillness, darkness, cold, silence) speak to you as ways to cultivate rest and renewal? Hint: one or more of these are all present in meditating or nature.
Are there places in your life that feel like a personal winter right now?
Are there parts of you that might really dislike winter or the idea of wintering?
How can you be open to these parts of yourself just as they are, hear their concerns, and invite them to be with you in the warmth of the hearth you can tend to in your inner world?
What ideas might you be nurturing in the darkness, not yet fully formed?
The ideas that emerge for you may not be ready yet to see the light of conversation. Allow this time for things to just be in the fertility and darkness of your inner world and dream space, giving your reflections ample time to strengthen before the rising energy of spring carries us forward.
Winter Solstice Intentions
If a full year is like a complete breath cycle, the winter solstice is the pause between exhale and inhale, a true moment of stillness and rest before beginning to breathe in again. This moment of pure stillness makes it an excellent time for setting intentions before moving into the next cycle or inhale. Different than setting expectations or behavioral resolutions for the new year, you may land on a deeper intention for what you’d like to invite in for yourself in the coming months ahead as the light returns, and it’s perfectly timed after the letting go that came with fall.
For my own Wintering, I’ll be taking January and February off from the blog to give myself time to process and digest everything from the year. There are some new ideas percolating that I’ll be excited to share more about in the spring when I’m back in March! Wishing you deep peace and restoration this winter. As Katherine May says:
“Once we stop wishing it were summer, winter can be a glorious season in which the world takes on a sparse beauty and even the pavements sparkle. It’s a time for reflection and recuperation, for slow replenishment, for putting your house in order….It’s one of the most important choices you’ll ever make.”
Here’s some Wintering inspiration to close out your year with the gentleness you deserve:
What’s the difference between koselig and hygge? Find out more here, and you decide which speaks to you more.
Studies show that outdoor cold exposure reduces depression. Learn more here about an antidote to SAD.
Learn more about Katherine May’s book.
If you’re local to Maryland, check out the health and wellness offerings for winter programs at Irvine Nature Center, including Qigong and an Herbal Workshop for Winter Wellness in January.
Ritual pairs beautifully with intention setting for the Solstice or the new year, and this Flying Wish Paper could be a fun way to bring in the fire element, as long as it is safe to do so of course!
