On Winter
Winter feels like coming home to me.
It’s a place of safety and shelter. A place to rest, to nourish, to give and receive love. It’s warmth and slowness. It’s saturated with ease and familiarity. It’s a place that you know intimately. You know where everything is: Your favorite mug. Your book with the page marked. Your couch with the slightly hollowed out cushion where you fit perfectly. With winter we are given the chance to surrender our weight and sigh. Winter is a settling. A homecoming. A place for less doing and more being.
{To clarify, I’m talking about coming home to yourself. A turning inward to the quiet peacefulness within, untouched and unaffected by the external pressures and performances. If you also have a warm and safe physical home, know you are blessed.}
Winter has taken on a contradictory energy: We’re told it’s a time for expansion and growth. A time for setting goals, hitting the gym and dieting. This will finally be the year that you become the best version of yourself! New year, new you! — all while resisting the urge to eat a big bowl of hearty soup with buttered toast and then take a nap.
New year, new you never settled well with me. It certainly doesn’t feel like coming home. I’m a perfectionist. The pressure of new year goals would make my anxiety skyrocket, adding on to any leftover stress from the holiday season. It feels suffocating and like a set up for failure.
“Maybe in a few months. Or... maybe next year.” I think from the bottom of the pile of worries and to-do lists heaped on my shoulders, while I hit snooze and pull the covers back over my head.
What if instead of listening to external sources that promote success, perfectionism, competition and a short window to hit the ground running, we instead listen to our internal source?
What instead we come home in the winter? Home to ourselves.
Ayurveda and mindfulness practices have given me permission to live in a way that is more intuitive. Ayurveda teaches us how to move with the seasons and the elements instead of resisting them and causing ourselves stress, illness and dis-ease.
The shorter, darker days give us a chance to listen to take care, mend, heal and ask ourselves what we really want to do. Its a time to listen to music (or a podcast), to read the book we’ve been meaning to pick up, to cook ourselves a nourishing meal, to pick up an instrument or a pen or a paintbrush and rediscover our creativity for creativities sake alone and no one else’s.
The cold and dryness of the season request that we nourish and warm ourselves. Squash, carrots, sweet potatoes and beets are in season because they are the sweet and nourishing fuel our bodies need. Every season nature provides exactly what we need. Make a hearty soup topped with olive oil or ghee to hydrate your dry skin and joints. Drink plenty of warm beverages. Savor every sip. And if you dare step out into the cold, don’t forget your hat and scarf!
Winter gives us permission to slow down, heal and nourish. The door to return home to you is open, warm and inviting, encouraging you to put down that heavy load you’ve been carrying and rest, until that sweet, sunny spring day arrives and we throw the windows open and reemerge from our homes refreshed, vibrant and hopeful.
Winter is a time to pause and pay attention to the everyday, the simple and the seemingly mundane. A time for less doing and more being. To be present and focused on what we are doing in each moment, whether that's walking down the street, doing the dishes or enjoying a cup of tea.
With the passing of Thich Nhat Hanh this week, I’m reminded of a passage from his book, “The Miracle of Mindfulness:”
“Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the whole earth revolves-slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future. Live the actual moment. Only this actual moment is life. Don’t be attached to the future. Don’t worry about the things you have to do. Don’t think about getting up or taking off to do anything. Don’t think about ‘departing’.”
When we do accept winter’s gracious invitation to pause and turn in, we remember how it feels to let go and softly open to the life that's here. We remember ourselves home.
Journal Prompts:
How can you come home to yourself this winter? How can you get to know yourself better?
What have you felt pressured to do (in the way of success, growth, or outward appearance), but doesn’t quite feel right to you?
What have you been meaning to do just for you? How can you prioritize that?
