Where will your road take you this year? Where do you want it to take you?
It’s January! If you’ve come this far, you’ve made it through the rush of the holidays. Though they were joyful and filled with adventure, you likely heaved a sigh of relief now that they’ve wound down and the austere, beautiful, lovely month of January has begun.
Welcome to Winter’s Retreat.
Winter draws you inward to your most ancient self. Of all the seasons, winter with its inescapable chill, snow, and simple beauty pulls you closer to the way ancestral life was in the past. Honor that, and you can waken some very ancient wisdom within you that can help you understand your own special foundations for achievement.
First, understand the solitude of the season. The Winter Solstice marks the end of autumn and the beginning of winter’s deep introspection. For those in your past lineage, it was also a time of endurance, survival, and tempering the body against the chill. If you’ve noticed you feel a little more withdrawn around Christmastime, realize that this is the natural flow of the season. It’s darker, energies are slower and drawn deeply inward to replenish themselves silently through the long nights. You may sense that Christmas parties feel a bit jangly, or the merriment a touch forced. Those have passed. January’s come. Now you can hibernate, a bit like a bear.
Understand too the bareness has its purpose. It’s a pared-down time, stripping away everything down to the bones. You can perceive the contours of the land, see the branchlike structures of the trees as they sleep in the season. Give yourself a walk in the woods, or a park, and appreciate the astonishing beauty that underlies the riotous greenwood of the spring and summer. Realize that all this landscape is resting — and you should too.
Ways to Create Winter’s Rest
In daily life, bring all your resources inward like the trees have. Honor the natural flow of the season by retiring earlier in these days, if you can. Turn the unnaturally stimulating electric lights off, and light a candle as your ancestors did. To do so reaches back into humankind’s most satisfying and rejuvenating experiences from ancient times, that of watching flame flicker, resting your eyes in its gentle glow. It also can be a key stress reliever.
Go to bed earlier to honor the deep need for rest. Traditionally in the winter season, the dark nights meant longer sleep. See how it feels to change your daily clock to be more in tune with the seasons.
Try to see as many winter sunrises and sunsets as you can. Set up your journal table facing a window and observe the ever-so-gradual rising from obscure darkness into light. In the evening, watch the dimming light turn to gold and pink, then away into darkness again. Realize that you are reconnecting with a miracle your primal ancestors, and even your more recent and not-so-primal ancestors before gaslight and electric light, witnessed every day.
Winter is a time of gentle isolation and retreat. If you need solitude, now is an especially good time to seek it out. It’s particularly good if you’re a walker or runner who loves being out in the weather — with most people staying in, you can experience the glory of sun, snow, bare trees, whether in city or country.
Winter’s Rest and Finding Your Winter Road
The cycles of the seasons represent important psychological cycles. From our earliest days, human beings evolved in tune with the seasons of the year. Ebbing and flowing, rising and receding, each cycle preparing us for the next. To withdraw in winter is to reconnect with the natural flow of deeper energies that allow you to restore yourself, in preparation for spring’s growth.
Winter’s rest allows you to find your winter road — that road for the first few months of the year, that will prepare you for the growth you desire in spring, your adventures in the summer, and your harvest of achievements in the fall. In the mornings, wake and light a candle.
The New Year has begun. The road leads forward out of the past year, and into the now. Its way is laid out before you, stretching into the distance and disappearing around the first bend. Where do you want it to take you this year? Write it out in your journal and begin to make your first plans.
Find your winter’s road by reflecting, observing, and letting solitude give your dreams and goals insights, foundations, and footing.
What's the secret? This is really all about achievement and realizing your potential. Realize that the MORE you connect naturally with these ancient rhythms, and understand who you are within each season, the better you will be at achieving all you desire.
Much modern stress comes from our belief that man is a machine, pounding out the same 8-hour days like widgets in a factory, one after another. It's not so. Step out of that self-defeating flow — and rest.
How will you give yourself Winter’s Rest today? What will you walk as your Winter Road?
Keep Growing,
