Celebrating Winter
As the holiday season approaches, I’m noticing a frenzied, bubbly energy in people around me. My daughter wakes up every morning saying how excited she is about Christmas. My email is bursting with holiday deals. My clients are stressed out about family plans, or the lack of it. Amazon orders are coming to the house everyday. I notice my urge to make plans. I’m a planner by nature, and this winter for the first time I’m going against my nature. I’m dreaming about hibernation.
Winter in Upstate NY can last a good 5 months. It usually starts in November, but this year started later. By the month of February everyone is tired of the cold and yearning for spring. When my daughter was born end of summer six years ago, I was happy to hibernate with a baby all winter. I would tuck her under my big winter coat and go for walks by the river. Since then, this is the first year that I’m feeling the pull of winter energy again. I had a very draining month of November that ended with a surgical procedure. Now I feel myself drawn to the premise of winter, longer nights to sleep, more time spent lying on my back to nourish kidneys, and living life in a slower pace.
Interestingly, I’m noticing how the mainstream culture is constantly sending us messages to go against this trend in Nature. There are so many light shows, gatherings and holiday events that push us in the opposite direction. I start to feel I’m going to miss out on them, if I don’t plan a train show, or a night in the city, a gathering with friends. But the gravity of winter is stronger still.
As I sit in front of a cozy fire, looking at the frosty backyard, I wonder why do so many animals hibernate in winter? I feel they are closer to the essence of winter as is handed down to us in the Chinese Medicine tradition.
In Chinese Medicine, winter is a time associated with the energy of kidneys and water element. The most dense energetic level of our body, our bones and marrow, our nervous system, our teeth, sense of hearing, our knees and lower back, salt and the black color are all associated with the water element and kidney energy. We replenish our hormones, nourish our fertility and balance our nervous system when we sleep, when we meditate and quiet our mind, when we sit by a body of water, or when we connect to Nature. The emotion that weakens the water element is fear. If we are in shock or processing trauma, we are shaken at a bone level. When we are scared our knees are shaking. After a surgery or a long illness that is a shock to the body, we need to replenish our kidney energy, our essence and deepest, densest level of being, by embracing stillness and lying on our back to support and nourish the kidneys.
According to Huangdi Neijing our foundational text from 200BC:
“During the Winter months, all things in nature wither, hide, return home, and enter a resting period…. This is a time when yin dominates yang. Therefore one should refrain from overusing the yang energy. Retire early and get up with the sunrise, which is later in Winter. Desires and mental activity should be kept quiet and subdued as if keeping a happy secret. Stay warm, avoid the cold, and keep the skin covered. Avoid sweating. The theory of the Winter season is one of conservation and storage. Without such practice, the result will be an injury to the Kidney energy. This will cause weakness, shrinking of muscles, and coldness; then the body loses its ability to open and move about in the Spring.”
Interestingly in the Persian culture we celebrate the winter Solstice as a tipping point in growing of the light. We try to stay up all night, on the longest darkness of the year, and fill it with company, food, light, music and poetry. Christmas is around the same time and again the idea is to stay up and sing at the church and celebrate all night. But why not give in to the darkness of the night? Why not just let ourselves sleep and restore our energy? What is the fear in staying still, connecting with the trees and many of the other animals? Why do we have to keep making plans and keep ourselves busy?
In Chinese Medicine the duality of yin and yang is the base of all creation and we don’t attach value to one over the other. Darkness and light, sleep and waking, female and male, soft and loud, water and fire, are all mutually dependent. As the tai chi symbol represents, from the abundance of one, the opposite arises. The longest night of the year is where the days start to get longer. So why not embrace the stillness and quietude as much as we celebrate the light and activity?
If we want to be agile and flexible, bursting with energy, in the spring, we need to embrace the yin months of winter. If we want to have a calm immune system and not to go crazy with allergies when spring blows its warm air, we have to take the time and be still, nourish our bones and have a deep sleep like a seed underground, in the quietude of the winter.