A Glimpse at Winter
We all feel a sense of inertia and stillness in the winter. Nature's sleep creates a similar desire for sleep within us—the leaves have gone, the trees stand bare. Our sweet melancholies… getting used to the cold, longing for the sun, and the body’s constant search for warmth.
We can compare the winter season to our menstrual cycle, the month we bleed. It’s a time for turning inward and cleansing, for slowing down, delegating excessive movement, and entering a period of stillness. But if the season is winter, does that mean we should stop moving altogether and surrender ourselves to stillness? Of course not.
Winter teaches us patience. We must layer ourselves in clothes, make an effort to stay warm, brew tea… We need to be more attentive in winter to avoid getting sick, and it asks for a bit more willpower to fully engage with life. The body switches to energy-saving mode, and while we don’t hibernate like animals, we are not filled with the chirpiness of spring or the fire of summer.
Some call it winter depression, but I prefer to call it winter melancholy. As I mentioned in my writing, "Is Melancholy Feminine?," if we can understand the boundaries between depression and melancholy, we might stop labeling ourselves as depressed. There’s a clear artistic side to melancholy and stillness. Our melancholy doesn’t want a lot of movement, but it doesn’t want to be still either. To stop is to die. We find freedom when we discover slowness within movement. In that moment, movement no longer exhausts us; we discover the places where movement meets stillness. We learn to rest within the movement and find ways to write poetry with our bodies, without rushing.
Reaching the body in winter may be a bit more difficult, as muscles tend to be more contracted, and the body has a greater tendency to turn inward. These things may seem negative, but they can also be seen as a gift—an opportunity to connect with our body more deeply.
When we're too warm, when the fire element is too active, we can become superficial. Cold demands that we gradually and genuinely enter our bodies, warming ourselves from the inside out.
Winter begins to teach the body stillness. Give it time… Don’t rush into movement, let the movement start itself. Let it begin very slowly, and once you are warmed from the inside, allow it to grow; don’t let it scatter. Because if you scatter, you’ll get cold. You must maintain the friction inside, keep the connective tissues engaged.
Winter forces us to center ourselves. It sheds the excess, leaving us with only the essentials. What we long for becomes clearer, and old problems come into view during this period of slowness.
We never know…
Perhaps, in the end, what we’ve always longed for is ourselves.