By some miracle my fingers have risen to type across this page, despite my body wailing with fatigue, like a bear waking from hibernation too soon before spring. The new year glow and affirmations, the heightened reverence and seed planting have passed, leaving me to realize I am still in the middle of winter. After swallowing so many seeds, my body craves to wrap itself around the love nestled in my belly and fall asleep. A dimly lit, quiet room for gestation and growth. This step is often overlooked or avoided. Lately, I have been letting fatigue lead the way. It is in this place, I want to hold my body gently for once, and not live as if it is spring or summer. I refuse to live as if I don't have dreams that need space to be dreamed in quiet solitude. I refuse to live as if I don’t have a body that needs the darkness. Don't force a smile or a bright demeanour. Instead, you can roll over on your side and growl at anything that steals this precious time from you.
I remember crawling half way into a slash pile while lying on my belly in the snow. There was a sleeping brown bear curled up inside for the winter. She must have smelled me in her den and lunged forward with her eyes half closed, as her adrenaline surged. Her body awoke to defend itself, but she remained asleep. In a haze. At the moment, I am feeling a lot like her, in need of rest and sleep(like many of us likely are). The world, however, keeps knocking at our den and waking us up, groggy and full of fight.We are meant to grow a thick band of fat around our bellies and nurse ourselves with warmth and comfort. There are rhythms and cycles in our world that aren't honoured. I am finding it is possible to find time in our day to collapse into ourselves and stare at the ceiling, if we want to. There has never been a better time for inactivity than now. Time has been set aside for me to do nothing, name anything, write anything, love anything, or embrace anything else. Let the snow cover the outside world for a while. It is essential for us to live close to the ground and to find our way to that deep, shallow breath almost impossible to feel. It is the slow and low sound of a body in torpor, our sacred and holy time of rest.
To honor winter and the need for rest and gestation, I offer you this short poem and meditation. I offer it to you as a permission, as an invitation, as a bridge to help you cross the moat of avoidance. We can skip this step, but sometimes it's best to go toward rest willingly, knowing you aren't a failure. Over the years, I have realized how much I enjoy being useless from time to time. In fact, i’ve come to crave it. It is from a deeply rested body and heart that some ancient meaningful function within me shines through in the spring.
I think it is important for us to remind eachother to take advantage of the colder months, the fallow seasons. If we deepened into this intentionally quiet time, into the necessity of winter, maybe our world wouldn't warm so quickly. Maybe if we slow down, everything around us will slow down with us. We need to go easy every now and then, to honour our rhythms and cycles, and to be like a tree in winter.
«I invite you to listen to the audio for the short guided meditation that accompanies this piece»