Intentional Wintering: Finding Peace, Purpose, and Presence in Winter
When the Light Fades
Many of us feel at least a little anxious as the nights get longer and darker (it seems).
Are you someone who shies away from winter?
Fall is gloriously colored in the Midwestern United States. Where I live, sun sparkles on leaf-covered paths and streams and through the emptying branches of the majestic oaks and maples.
But Fall/Autumn leads us into winter.
And we often experience winter as drab and colorless, ominously dark.
The Beauty Beneath the Gray
We know in our heads that the world beneath our feet is very busy even in its quietness.
We know in our heads that the seed that will spring into its beauty a few months from now needs absolutely the quiet, the dark, the stillness
to gather itself
so that it may, indeed, burst through the earth and out into the sunshine.
But the gray skies loom over us and into our hearts.
Several years ago, I overheard a woman say that she never goes into the nearby woods in winter because it’s gray and boring and…depressing.
I made it my mission to show her and anyone else who thought this
just how beautiful the woods are when you open your heart to the possibility of their beauty in a drab world.
Photograph after photograph illustrated the nuances of brown and green and cream in the winter woods, demonstrated the many textures of the tree bark and splashed red into the scenes of drying foliage.
These reminded me to remember two important things:
When you’re looking for beauty, you’ll find it.
The stillness and the stark appearance of the surface belies amazing Beauty beneath.
And to recognize how strongly we fight this quiet, this stillness…and, ultimately, how we fight the growth and expansion that comes from beneath and within.
Inspired by “Wintering” by Katherine May
In 2020, a book was placed in my path that helped me rethink my approach to winter and how I behave in this traditionally (in my area of the world) cold and foreboding world.
Wintering by Katherine May was the author’s personal story of transformation through very dark times in her life.
Living through and with life-altering events led her deep into herself where she discovered that the darkness can well be a source of growth and recovery and life.
I read and I embraced the shift she wrote about.
After years of studying yoga and Ayurveda, I deeply appreciate the position that what we intend for ourself to live is how and what we live.
Our inner experience relies on quiet time in order to blossom.
Our inner experience unfolds into an outer experience of our making and our outer experience and environment supports and nurtures or undermines our inner life and how we want to live it out loud.
Katherine May’s book made it even more alive for me.
Choosing Intentional Wintering
So when I found myself floundering and resisting a winter that felt thrust upon me a couple of years ago, I was reminded of the essence of the book, Wintering, and I recognized that fighting it was actually extending the season instead of alleviating its challenges.
I needed to step out of that habit of fighting.
Setting intentions for everything in my life is a huge and lifelong practice for me.
In this case, I was inspired to begin Intentional Wintering, an approach to the normally unnerving, over-busy season that set me up for the rest of the year of feeling behind and of “catching up.”
My Intentional Wintering began with the intention to receive the season as it unfolded and to sit with ALL the feelings that accompanied the darkness of the days and the seemingly endless nights superimposed on running around, trying to do everything all the time.
The Gift in the Darkness
We tend to focus on the fears that the dark stir in us.
We tend to hone in on the expectation of bad, of pain.
We neglect our own knowledge that the seed needs dark and quiet in order to germinate.
We neglect our own need for quiet and stillness.
We neglect our needs and our feelings.
The intention to receive the season as it unfolded and to sit with my feelings filtered into my ability to unearth practices and re-apply them to my wintering, to my season (whenever it occurred) of fear, loathing, discomfort, grief, anger.
Resisting only amplified my discomfort.
Receiving and practicing curiosity about what all was going on inside me proved to be far more helpful, far more soothing than fighting it.
Instead of pushing the season away, I paused.
I noticed.
I grew into welcoming it.
Learning to Welcome Winter
How, you might well ask? Because, who wants winter?
Well, I learned to raise my hand and proclaim, “Me! Pick me!”
I learned to welcome (a lot of the time) the quiet, the dark, even the not knowing that comes with all of it.
I learned to sink into the mantra of “I’ve reserved this space and time for me to breathe and be and feel” and to allow these words to take over from my ongoing, non-stop-thinking, over-worrying mind.
I learned to listen to my inner songs and to ask for assistance along the way.
Practices for Intentional Wintering
Here are brief descriptions of a few of the practices I’ve created and acquired to help me embrace any winter that arrives whenever it arrives, to welcome it as it is, to welcome myself as I am in it.
Please let me know which you find most helpful to you.
Set the Intentions
Set the intentions to receive the winter as it comes and to sit with our feelings as they arise without judging or criticizing or shaming ourself for having them.
Often wintering flies at us seemingly out of nowhere.
Even the physical season of nature seems to descend as a surprise.
We know it’s coming.
We prepare ourself.
But, in the moment, we lose our way.
When we set these intentions, we acquire the ability to hold them as our anchors to our heart, to our center.
We then can keep coming back to them when we find ourself floating away, feeling anxiety take over.
Our intentions tether us to the Earth.
Cultivate Awareness
It’s scary and unnerving to feel at wit’s end.
Until and unless we can notice it’s happening, we continue to spin off into space.
Awareness of any kind and to any degree reminds us to remember to come back to our intentions.
And to not judge ourself for being human in our spinning off and spiraling out of control!
Use the Practices of Ayurveda
Use the practices of Ayurveda to protect us, to soothe us, and to cultivate our connection to the grounding powers of the Earth.
There are many and many sources of little things you can do to help you in the drying-out and windiness of fall and the even more drying-out and windiness of winter.
Here are but a couple:
Cover your head, your ears, and your throat.
Drink warm drinks.
Use oil on your skin after your shower/bath.
Sprinkle spices that aid digestion onto your food or in your drinks (a wonderful concoction is cinnamon, nutmeg and cardamom with or without a sprinkle of ginger).
Allow yourself any amount of time to sit quietly each day, and visualize the Earth supporting you, welcoming you so that you can truly land and stand on the Earth instead of feeling like you’re being blown away.
Grant Yourself the Grace of Radical Rest
Grant yourself the grace of radical rest where you begin to and deepen your appreciation that you don’t need to earn rest.
Move Each Day with Love
Move each day any amount in a way that you love—dance, walk in the woods, walk around the block, do a sweaty, intense yoga practice (if that’s your thing!).
Before each thing you do, set the intention that you are doing it as a way of caring for yourself in this season.
Embrace Your Own Intentional Wintering
Let me know how I may support you as you embrace your own “Intentional Wintering.”
About Paula
