Welcoming the Winter Solstice

“I have faith in the night” Rainer Maria Rilke

Welcome to winter’s depths beloved. 

We are safest with the ones that have bravely and openly contended with their shadow selves. With the ones that are willing turn again and again towards their darkness.

We are safest with the ones that know intimately the underworld and the depths. They are the ones with the courage to hold your stories. 

The ones that do not turn away from themselves are the ones with a net of compassion that is wide enough to hold it all. They have no malnourished parts of themselves that aren't being tended to and they will lovingly hold space for your starving parts too. 

My teacher Dr Douglas Brooks has always said to me "be mindful of the ones that say they're "over" it. They don't don't know a demon is close by...be grateful when the demons announce themselves."

Let's examine that a little closer. 

In the yoga tradition demons aren't like the demons of Judeo Christianity. The āsuras are insufferable beings driven by their own bad habits and appetites. They're keen for instant gratification. They're contrary to your Highest purpose.

Sound like anything familiar? Perhaps a little like the rebel parts of ourselves that choose things that move us away instead of towards our heart's desires?

In the yoga mythos and dialogue we are every character in the story. We are every "demon." Yoga teaches us that when we turn towards our shadows and know them intimately we can keep them at bay from doing us or others harm.

When you're aware of your shadow you can diminish their proclivities by starving them. How? 

When you're in unhealthy competition, greed, coveting, envy, contempt you can actively turn to what is kind and tender and imprint something new in your neurology with tender repetition. 

This is what the ever fruitful darkness offers us if we make it so. 

It is an invitation to plumb the depths and alchemize what was for our destruction into a wisdom that brings tolerance and forbearance for other's suffering. 

Winter is a time for darkness and depths. For entering the cave of introspection with gentle curiosity and tenderness. In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) It is ruled by the water element which is our kidneys, our fear, our emotions, and our ancestry.

Kidneys in TCM are the producers of the vital life energies (qi, prana...) that sustain growth and courage, willpower, and alignment with life's purpose. They're your emotions and lunar nature. They're your kindness, your fluency, and your stability. 

Fall, the season we bid farewell is ruled by metal element.  Metal is known as the killing energy. Trees pulling their nourishment back to their roots. Metal is your lungs which nourish the kidneys in this esoteric dialogue. Lungs in TCM feed the kidney. Lungs are your courage, your grief. 

Winter which we welcome in this dark day is water element. These brief and silent days and nights cloaked in a sea of ice. Water is the most nourishing of the elements in Chinese Medicine. It's the wisdom of flow, forbearance, and inner strength. It's ease and receptivity. It's emotion and the healthy sensical kind of fear. The kind that leads to care. When we're in debilitating fear or phobias the Chinese say our Water element is out of balance. Creating internal conditions of safety and security in the face of the uncertainty of life is how we care for water element. 

Winter is the zenith of the yin energy. It's stillness, quiet, and steadiness. It's a time to connect with your preciousness and your personal nature.

There is an invitation to dive into unprocessed emotions and untouched feeling with care. To befriend the shadow. To mine the depths. To go bravely into your personal underworld and see what treasures you might find. To clear away what will not lead to new growth and to clear  the way. 

Winter is the time of the seedling. Everything is concentrated and tucked in and it is the internal work of winter that allows for the breaking forth and the dawning that arises every spring.

Lean into it. 

Winter appears silent and empty but it is underground work. It is not the noisy outward growth and stimulation of shiny apples and ripe tomatoes it is something more sustaining.

It is desires unfulfilled and in motion. It is the growth of embodiment and materializing a vision. Winter is the time for gathering your courage to tend to our starving parts with loving care so you can emerge with renewed wholeness and remembrance come spring.  With a gathered tenacity for forward motion. 

You are invited in winter to touch what was untouchable. To make loving contact with your inner world. Take time to reflect, to journal, to peer into your depths. 

This is difficult work, personal work is demanding and so in this season you are also called to replenish your resources. You are called to deep rest and to turning all of your resources inward so that what is left is a nourished little seedling ready to produce again come spring. 

The thing about the solstice is that though it is the darkest day it is the returning of the light. That is what we're celebrating, the seedling of renewed light. Little by little. As you cross into the shadows keep one eye on the dim but glowing light. It's your hope. Not in any specific outcome but a more general hope in goodness. 

The light is coming, take courage and have hope on your passage through the darkness. 

Spring always rises. We can hold this. This is the kind of remembrance that gets us through a dark night of the soul. 

Great Nature is asking you to be with the darkness even when it is a little or a lot uncomfortable. To rest and nourish yourself deeply as you do so. To put aside achievement and move into a rhythm of stillness and being. To enter into the unseen. 

Leaning into Great Nature aligns us and harmonizes with forces greater than ourselves and reminds us that we are part of a greater whole. 

As you transition into winter's quiet I invite you to journal today about something with in you that needs replenished. In the coming days hold that thing close, trust and prepare to receive. Yield. Be like water. Water flows and molds, sometimes it carves out space with a slow and steady movement, sometimes it simply goes around. There's wisdom in the dark waters. They're a little mysterious and that uncertainty too is a lesson. 

The shadow places can feel scary, but not all fear is negative. Shadow fear is simply asking you to take great care. Not to go in ready to fight but to walk up to your shadow parts with an open heart, generosity, and tenderness. My hope for all of us is that this season is a fruitful darkness from which we all emerge a little more gentle. 

"water conquers by yielding; it never attacks but always wins the last battle. The sage who makes himself as water is distinguished for his humility, he embraces passivity, acts from nonaction and conquers the world." Tao Cheng 11th CE

 Welcome to winter's darkness.

A closing blessing...

May it bring you vision, embodiment, roots to sustain you, and an expanded net of compassion. May you awaken to your habits so you can breathe life into your possibilities. 

Love,

Selena