Currently living in California, and in other parts of the world of the Northern Hemisphere – when we look around our environment in this season of winter, things look empty, harsh, dry, and even dead. The nights are longer, leaving us in the dark for many of the hours. This seasonal impact can be pretty significant in a hard way, especially if we allow it to be. I have noticed, working with many of my clients (and myself), that the season of winter, when reframed in supportive way, can be reclaimed in a way that makes this time sacred.
This can be a time for unseen magic and growth! Think about the trees that look so empty and yet are they are prepping in massive ways to bloom in the spring. Just like that, our internal world is in a prepping to blossom. Reclaiming winter allows us to recognize the potency of self-presence and presence to our Beloved. Taking the time to reflect, to honor, to pause, to give ourselves permission to be in the presence of winter, like nature does naturally, allows us to Love winter.
In the sacred text of Sikhism, “Guru Nanak Sahib reminds us that in the changing seasons, nature takes its different forms. The Beloved is in all forms and is always present. Even in this long and harsh pause, the external environment is not dead, and neither is our internal environment. We can ask for presence!” (Quote from blog, Sikh Research Institute.)
The Heartwork also reminds us that our internal environment creates our external environment. So the season of winter, when reclaimed and loved, allows us to reset our internal environment: our thoughts, our beliefs, our energy, and beyond. No matter when winter is where you live, around the time of the Winter Solstice and the holidays, we are wildly growing in our pause. From the lens of working with my relationship coaching clients, personally, and seeing my loved ones around me – I’d say winter is one of the most important seasons for our development and for our intentional growth.
The Way to Practice
Pause
Take a moment to recognize how potent winter is. Walk around your neighborhood. Notice the trees and the plants that are empty, no blossoms, no leaves. Notice how the grass is dry, damp, frosted, or possibly buried under snow. Take a moment to remember spring and summer in your neighborhood and environment, how the same trees are full, rich, beautiful, colorful and blossoming. Just like that, you will return to that season as well, and with even more blooms than the last season of spring and summer. Right now give yourself permission to embrace, honor, and recognize this season of winter that is internal in you.
Reflect
Take the time to honor all that has been a part of your year, the different seasons, the different moments of growth, moments of hardship, moments of joy and victories. What went well this year? What shifted this year? My personal favorite practice, because I’m a visual person, a researcher and a documentarian, is to go through my phone and look at all my photos from January to December consecutively, acknowledging all of the big and small moments of magic, Love, heartbreak, growth, and beyond. This allows my heart to fill up and gives me richness in this season of winter when parts of me may have felt lower energy. This allows me to feel fullness again, and I’m reminded of all my victories, even through my hardships. Take time to reflect on your moments in your own way.
Give Gratitude
Once you’ve reflected, let’s tune in to offer gratitude. This is our fuel during our winter pause. Take a moment to offer appreciation for each and every moment that you’ve documented. Offer gratitude to yourself and others who were in the experience with you, allow this to be the medicine that nourishes you. Gratitude feels like a warm hug in the cold winter season. Appreciation and gratitude are essential human needs, so this recognition allows us to keep going, to let go, to be present, to be in awe of our journey, to connect the synchronicities and more. This gratitude is food for our intentions to be grown with immense power and grace as we move through the stillness of winter!
Create Intentions
Once our heart is full of this delicious rich gratitude (no matter what kind of year we’ve had) – our hearts are full, we are inspired, we feel more wholeness and truly uplifted. In the sacred pause of winter, we begin to receive guidance and clarity on our path forward. My personal favorite practice for intention setting is to create a mantra for my year that becomes my guiding light with every moment, with my imagination and with my actions – I lead with my mantra. With my relationship coaching and matchmaking clients, I do what honors them. Some people like mantras for the year, others like words of the year, and others like to set goals and intentions for the year and others quaterly.
The Invitation
The invitation is to feel into your intentions, and to do this practice in the way that works for you. Take a deep breath, tune in and ask yourself, how do I want to plant seeds for my upcoming year? I’ve found that intentions and goal-setting are very personal based on who we are. Some of us are high-functioning humans, some of us are on sabbaticals for different reasons, and everything in between that we can possibly imagine. So based on your circumstances and desires, give yourself the gift of setting your intentions in a way that supports you. Creating our map of desires allows us to know where we are headed, and to be surprised along the way with expected and unexpected magic to guide our journey.
The Magic of Winter
Hopefully, this shift in perspective around the darkness of winter gives you permission to access the magic and the joy of winter, both internally and externally. Although my personal favorite seasons are spring and fall, I have learned to love the potency of winter because it gives me and my own Heartwork the time to pause and reflect, and to intentionally step into the New Year.
An Invitation
If you would like to be supported on your path this upcoming year or if you are curious about the Heartwork and how Empowered Matchmaking and Relationship Coaching can support you, begin with a Discovery Session.
Together we will explore.
