Let’s explore how winter’s quiet energy is not just about stillness, but a powerful catalyst for personal growth and clarity.

We’ll touch on the themes, invitations, and energies of winter, as well as how to develop your own soul-nourishing rituals to receive the wisdom winter has to offer, and how to carve out special quiet moments for yourself.

We’ll also touch briefly on some common winter wellness myths and what to do instead to ensure you’re setting yourself up with a solid, healthy foundation for the year to come.

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The Wisdom of Winter’s Stillness

As we are settling into early winter, what are you noticing? What are you noticing in your body, emotions, energy, mind?

This time of stillness and quiet offers us a wonderful opportunity to receive – receive insight, clarity, and the visions we have for ourselves for the year ahead and beyond.

This is an ideal time for introspection and listening inward, resting, being, receiving, healing.

In the wheel of the year that I have created, InnerSpark’s Wheel, we see each of the eight seasons as an archetypal energy. Early winter, the period between yule or winter solstice and Imbolc or what we refer to now has groundhog day, is referred to as The Void.

This is the only one of the eight archetypes that’s not actually a thing, but simply an abstract space of nothingness and potentiality, because that’s exactly what winter is!

This is an in-between time. In-between the major shedding and release and metaphorical deaths we experienced during late autumn and yet we’re not quite to the rebirth time of late winter. This is emptiness, darkness, formlessness, potential, nothing but pure awareness, pure consciousness.

Yet, many of us don’t like this time. We are afraid of its power and potential because we’ve been taught to overlook it, override it, bypass it.

Our culture shuns rest and darkness and quiet. We are artificially lit, overcaffeinated, and demand productivity and outward expression at all times!

We come to fear being still, fear the darkness, fear the quiet, yet it’s only in stillness, darkness, and silence that we can truly feel, hear, and see within ourselves!

Without this clarity and insight, we walk around feeling lost, anxious, unsettled, ungrounded and constantly seeking something outside of ourselves for the answers we already have inside.

Everything seamlessly weaves and spirals into the next thing. Your ability to have energy later is dependent upon your ability to restore now. This is true for ANYTHING – this is why we sleep at night, this is why we rest between projects and tasks, and this is why we rest in winter so that we may keep up in summer.

I love reminding people that Summer Bodies are Built in Winter. No, I am not talking about bikinis or any of that other nonsense. I’m talking about your ability to have an energized, vital, healthy, radiant, extraverted time when the energies are supporting it, such as during summer.

Additionally, this is the prime time to use the stillness of winter to receive visions and guidance for the year ahead and beyond, as I shared in the previous episode.

This can look like turning to your dreams, a regular practice of yoga nidra, or simply making a practice out of seeing how quiet and still you can become. Ever try that out? It’s a beautiful mindful somatic practice.

Seek to really nourish your soul and support your system in slowing down to receive the deep rest, clarity, and healing that’s available right now by carving out your very own winter rituals.

Some ginger and cinnamon tea is delicious, walking through the bare trees and letting the cold invigorate you and work on you.   

The ritualistic aspect of these practices contribute to mental and emotional well-being during the colder months and set you up for a resilient year ahead.

Let yourself move slowly and intentionally through your days, focus on warming from the inside out with moist, nourishing foods, and resist the urge to fall into the hyperactive trap that January seems to do to people. There’s no need to act yet. There’s o need to set unrealistic resolutions or intentions for yourself. There’s no need to jump into action simply because the calendar has turned over a new year.

There’s no need to defer your own innate instincts and natural rhythms to the harmful and behaviors of mainstream society. There’s no need to ever outsource your own wisdom and natural intelligence to some shaming bully outside of yourself. This is counter to your well-being and Nature.

I’d love to hear how you are implementing these and other nature-based practices into your own life! Come hang out with on social media or book a private consultation or coaching and mentoring session.

Thanks for listening! I am so excited for the journey ahead in the new year. Let nature continue to be your framework, your blueprint for a life of joy, vitality, and resilience. See you next time!