Honoring Life's Seasons: We Can't Have Spring Without Winter
Happy Equinox, Happy Spring (for my Northern Hemisphere folks) Happy Fall (for my Southern Hemisphere folks)!
I just love this astronomical marker of the change of season. Whether it’s the equinox of fall or of spring, they are points in the year that, to me, symbolize both balance and transition.
A moment of perfect balance
I mean balance quite literally. Today, (technically late last night in my time zone), the axis of the earth isn’t tilted in relation to the sun, both the Northern and Southern Hemisphere receive an equal amount of sunlight, and days and nights are approximately equal in length. (Fun fact: The few days surrounding the equinoxes are the only times of year that both poles are in daylight simultaneously. After March 22nd, the South Pole will remain completely dark until the next equinox.)
The start of spring and fall represent that moment where the energy of change reaches escape velocity. In the Northern Hemisphere, the ice is thawing, and people’s minds are turning toward thoughts of summer. In the Southern Hemisphere, the cold is building, and winter is clearly on the horizon. What has been building slowly since the solstice is now manifesting into a defined outer expression. We are not yet where we’re going, but it’s now clear that we are no longer where we were.
Transitioning seasons (and my own personal winter)
Today, we move into spring where I’m located. I also can feel myself (finally!) moving into a ‘springtime’ period in life. I spent this past fall and winter digesting, pondering, percolating over not just 2023, but my journey over the past two years, and my professional journey over the past five. I started this business in 2019 while I was still completing my yoga therapy program, so I didn’t REALLY hit the ground running on it until the beginning of 2020. Which means that the infancy of my business was spent in ‘EMERGENCY, PIVOT, WTF IS HAPPENING, OKAY LET’S JUST GO WITH IT’ mode. Prana Clinic’s infancy was characterized by the need to adapt, adjust, and be resilient. What’s often not discussed when we talk about resilience during difficult times, however, is that it is just one stage in the cycle. Not all of the tools and skills and adaptations that helped you through the challenge are optimal for the stages that come after. Resilience is a beautiful, necessary, and important skill. But it’s not the only skill. And when we rely on resilience as our only tool, or rely on it for too long, depletion and burnout are certain to follow.
Nature understands this needed balance between growth and rest. Leaves fall in autumn so trees can conserve their energy. Those same leaves create insulation from the cold for the roots and bulbs underground. As they decompose, the roots and bulbs absorb their nutrients to rebuild their energy reserves in preparation for growth that will come in the spring. In summer, we enjoy the fruits of abundance that this labor cultivated for us. And then again in fall, nature turns inward, making the shift back to rest.
Overfarming
As humans, we often try to supersede this unavoidable rhythm in so many areas of our lives. We want to go straight from harvest to planting and growth and back to harvest again. We skip taking time for recovery, integration, and digestion after periods of large energetic output, instead trying to extend the productivity cycle for as long as possible.
Farmers know that this approach isn’t sustainable. After a few years of continuous harvests, soil gets depleted, the growth gets weaker, the harvests decrease. Over farming gives the opposite of its intended results. When this happens, farmers have a number of tools at their disposal to repair and replenish. One of those is to build in cycles of rest between seasons
Like farmland, we also need time for recovery, integration, and digestion after times of large energetic output. It is an essential prerequisite for future seasons of growth. This is true even when our energy was expended on things we loved or enjoyed. It is especially true if the output was driven by a need to respond to challenging external forces.
Choosing to Flow
The past two years brought me a new set of personal challenges. But this time, the journey and the lessons were different. The actions taken looked less like the expansion and resilience of spring or summer, and much more like fall and winter: releasing, exhaling, quiet, rest. It was a much needed period of internal exploration, curiosity, and finding acceptance. One that I had likely skipped over when it was needed in the past.
To a lot of people around me, it may have looked like I was frozen, resistant, or stuck. Sometimes it felt that way to me, too. But I have been in all those places before, and in truth I knew that this time was different. Life happened and provided me with the opportunity I needed to process the experiences, digest and integrate the learnings, and clear out what was dead or dying to make space for new growth. I’ve been ‘gifted’ opportunities like this before and resisted them. This time, I did my best to let life flow, allow winter to be winter, and not force spring to come early.
Spring Always Comes
It certainly didn’t look like I was growing during the past two years, just like plants don’t look like they’re growing in the winter. It was often icky and messy and stagnant and nearly unbearable. No one likes to see things in their life, or aspects of themselves, wither and fall away. But SO much building and preparing was happening underneath the surface, preparing me to step into a new season. And now, I can feel myself in that moment of perfect balance, about to move from the internal focus of winter to the external expression of spring. My vision and purpose are refreshed and redirected toward the future. I’m creative again, and new projects are underway.
A new season always comes, but what it brings us will depend on how we moved through seasons prior. By trusting the flow of life, seeking and accepting support when I needed it, and leaning on the infinite resource of my practice, I’ve been able to move through winter with less resistance, and prepare for a fruitful and abundant spring and summer.
Regardless of the personal season you’re in, there are times when it feels important to walk the path alone, and times when support can be helpful. If this is one of those times for you, consider booking some time with me. Some things we may be able to shift together, and for those that we can’t, I’ll walk beside you and share tools that can help you weather the storm. Support can help cut out some of the confusion and fear, and the human connection can co-regulate your nervous system as you move back into expansion.