I don’t know about you, but I love the seasons; well NOW I do. I used to go into fall and winter kicking and screaming, because the joy and warmth of summer was gone, and all there was to look forward to was long months of cold, dead, nothingness.
(cue the emo music) 😔
BUT I started to tune into my natural inclination to slow down and go inward this time of year. I let myself retreat without feeling like a total waste of life. Okay I couldn’t completely hibernate, because you know jobs and stuff. However, I leaned into taking some stuff off my plate, staying in more, journaling, dreaming, taking more bubble baths.
It was there I learned a great lesson: When I stoped resisting and leaned into what my natural instinct was telling me to do, I learned that there is actually a productive purpose in slowing down.
Yes, my friends, Winter actually has a purpose! I’ll get to that in a minute.
From there I began to tune into the energy of all seasons, so that I may better align my self-care with what I needed during a specific time of year. This is when I first created the Seasonal Self-Care Guides.
Everything has a cycle; the seasons, the moon, our bodies, and our lives as a whole.
Let me illustrate.
Everything has its Winter; a period of no growth, dormancy, where it feels like things are going nowhere, and we may feel even a bit depressed. Following periods of Winter we have our Spring, where we finally feel like we’re coming out of the darkness, and begin to take small actions with intention to create new growth in our lives. Then we experience the fruits of planting those seeds and we get results. This is our Summer. Where we are energized from the rest we took in our Winter, and reap the benefits of the seeds we planted in our Spring. Naturally following any arch of expansion is the turn downward, finishing projects, having chapters come to a close, and preparing to take a rest. This is our Fall.
Without each cycle the next one wouldn’t be able to follow, and something would get stuck.
Now nature is smart. It doesn’t get stuck. Nature always spends the right amount of time in each phase, in preparation for the next, without rushing things along. *Can you imagine mother nature being like “Come on Winter, WON’T YOU JUST END ALREADY, WTF!?”*
So when we are out of tune with the phases playing out in our own lives, and trying to be perfect and productive 100% of the time, we may start to feel a bit stuck, or just burnt out AF.
I see these cycles play out with the phases of the moon. If you follow lunar rituals you know that we set release things that are no longer serving us and set intentions for growth on the new moon, watch them slowly come to fruition as we take intuitive action, finally experiencing the manifestation and high energy during the full moon, which winds down again as we approach the next new moon.
Our bodies play out this same cycle. When we ladies have our period we kinda want to hide away from the world and just be alone. You tune inward, and experience the darker aspects of yourself, which is actually a good thing because it allows your shadows to be exposed so they can be healed and make room for the new things that we are cultivating in our lives. Following that, the cycles of our hormones take us into a phase of high energy, creation, and inspiration during ovulation, and then back down again, in preparation for the next cycle.
Lastly, the grand arc of our lives mimic these cycles. Childhood and adolescence are like our Spring, where we are learning, growing into ourselves, and planting the seeds for who we will become. Adulthood is our Summer, where we are out in the world making things happen, doing the jobs, raising the kids, always going. Later adulthood imitates the energy of Fall, where we begin to wind down, sell the house, retire, take afternoon naps with golf on in the background. Then finally the elderly years are like Winter. No expansive growth is taking place, and things are beginning to shut down. I don’t mean to make it sad because there’s something so beautiful in the energy of being still and slow, preparing for the next phase, whatever that will be. And though we don’t know for sure what comes next, by looking at every cycle in nature there’s always rebirth after death. I find comfort in that, and use it almost as evidence that we don’t just evaporate when we die.
When I realized that not only do all these aspects of our lives have a beautiful synchronicity to them, mirroring each other, but they can also be USED TO OUR BENEFIT!
Instead of living this linear existence, where every day we are expected to feel, think, and perform exactly the same way, what if we used the downward cycles to rest up, look at our lives, and clear out what’s not serving us? That way we could harness the energy already present in the earth and in our bodies to ride the upward cycles toward greater health, clarity, abundance, and productivity?
Would you like to learn about how the cycles of nature impact your performance, and how you can use them to your benefit to get more satisfaction and peace in all aspects of your life?
I’ll be doing a live training on this topic on December 21st 2017, so bring your cozy slippers and a pen, because you don’t want to go into the new year without this information. It has changed my life! Click here to get access to the FREE live training.
