Winter Self-Care: How to surrender to being
Tending to yourself through Winter & harnessing the Water Element’s Wisdom
Dear Source,
These days leaving my lair in the morning, my button nose waters as Winter’s chill enters my nostrils, my breath comes out as a mist and my scalp and skin is starting to dry and become scaly like a dragon’s. Heeding your call and moving abroad to follow the impulse of life seven years ago, I eventually landed here in Turin.
I had never intended to leave Asia or arrive in a place with four seasons. It’s fresh in my memory as if yesterday, the first year as Winter’s embrace engulfed me and I slipped into deep denial and depression.
Winter Struggles: Denial & Depression
There was nothing to like about this season, when the sun would hide her face, when the days were gray, dark and gloomy and when it was incredibly tiring and cumbersome to dress to leave the house. Worst of all was how depressing the short days felt- often it felt like I was being sucked into a blackhole that I feared I would not be able to crawl out of.
Photo from The Dispatch
I’m sure you remember, when I bargained with myself, with those around me, with fate and you. Why do I have to be here? Do I really have to suffer this cold? This lack of sun? What do I do about this endless void and emptiness eating away at me that is growing exponentially as the nights get longer?
Initially I told myself I would escape the winter, using the lunar new year to visit family as a legitimate reason to avoid this frigid and foreign season. And yet, year after year, as the leaves turned dry and brown, fell from the branches, the darkness descended and the land became barren, something within me shifted. From denial, anger, bargaining, sadness, gradually acceptance came.
You revealed to me, through the Creative Cycle and the Five Elements that there is a time and place for everything. Each season, and each of the Five elements is associated with an essential quality, and that Winter was simply a part of the natural unfolding of each cycle:
- Winter 🌊 Water: Rest, Retreat, Treasure, Hiding and hibernation, Connecting with Self
- Spring 🌲 Wood: Birth, or rebirth, Initiation, Play & Creation
- Summer 🔥 Fire: Growth and flourishing, Action, Expression, Connecting with others
- Later Summer & Transitions 🌱 Earth: Transmutation, assimilation
- Autumn 🔩 Metal: Harvest, Refinement, sorting what to keep and what to let go of
Winter Self-Care: Nourishing the Body through food
I learnt that tending to myself through Winter Self-care started with nourishing my body. I discovered that chicken soup, cooked slowly over the stove, warmed not only my body but also my heart, and the bodies and hearts of others whom I loved. And freshly-made hot chocolate for breakfast with a dear friend was a well-deserved indulgence reserved only for this special time.
Photo from Bicierin
The Warmth of Water’s Womb: Winter Self-Care
I discovered when I felt contracted, fearful or alone, I could recreate the feeling that I had returned to the womb: safe, loved and held, by submerging myself in a bathtub of warm water, and I could cultivate the qualities of holding and mothering by offering aqua massage and cradling someone else in a a similarly safe, warm and welcoming environment of a heated pool.
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Rest, Retreat & Stillness: Yin Yoga & Yoga Nidra
In long dark nights of winter I discovered the magic that could be created through a string of glimmering fairy lights or a trio of flickering candles illuminating the room where I cocreated with you, magical Winter Self-care resources: talks on the Water Element’s wisdom, nourishing Yin Yoga practices to invite others to slow down and harness the power of interoception- listening inwards and Winter themed Yoga Nidras, to harness the power of rest, retreat, surrender and stillness.
From Human Doing to Human Being
In the same room, later after teaching I would heed the Water Element’s call to release the striving, efforting and doing, and engage in my own Winter Self-care by returning to ‘Human Being’. I would read aloud my teacher, Erich Schiffmann’s words from Moving into Stillness. I would journal and write to you, and connect to the Water element’s sense: sound, while allowing my soul to be soothed by the comforting melodies of FKJ’s piano.
Winter Self-Care: Being with myself
Most precious of all, was the Water Element’s invitation to dedicate time for Winter Self-care by being with this special person whom I had neglected for so long: myself.
Each Winter I heeded the invitation to surrender even more in Winter’s embrace, and she took me by hand as I descended deeper into myself. Each winter, I felt closer, and more intimate with not just myself, but with the pulsation and the flow of life itself: You. Through this connection, I started to feel a deep sense of unshakeable trust, and a strength and love from beyond my small self. I felt connected to something much greater.
Every time Zion T’s song plays in my headphones, I am reminded of a magical memory from two years ago, when, at the sight of the first snowfall, I dropped everything and went to Parco Valentino where I ran like a child in the snow. As the snow danced and gently landed on my face, my coat, my feet, it transformed into water, tears streamed down my face and my heart overflowed with joy as I realised that Water I had been missing all this time had come to me: It was snow.
Each Winter, you remind me to slow down, hide away from others, retreat within, and uncover the treasures that can be found only within myself.
Each Winter, you remind me that the emptiness I feel within me is a place of boundless potential. You help me realise I am never truly alone, but with this special person that is myself.
Each Winter, you invite me to revisit these precious questions, and listen patiently, inwards, for answers that surface in their own time:
What does winter bring up in me?
How would I like to Rest, Rest and Recover this Winter?
What would I do for this special person: myself, if I could make my private world a better place?
This is my journey with Winter and the water element, and it is still unfolding. Now, whenever someone speaks of Winter, and the Water element what often comes to mind, and to my heart, is this quote from Sufi poet and mystic Rumi, made famous by the movie, The Shape of Water
Unable to perceive the shape of You, I find you all around me.
Your presence fills my eyes with your love,
it humbles my heart, for you are everywhere.
What magic shall we cocreate together this winter?
Where and when will we dance together again?
I’m eagerly awaiting your reply,
Loving you always,
Wenlin
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