Winter is the season when Nature is guiding us into the fertile darkness of winter’s deep restorative rest and magick. 

This is the lunar time of the year with the most yin energy. The nights are the longest of the year. Everything slows down including our metabolism and the growth of plants around us. The Earth may be covered by a blanket of snow, and in the soil, seeds dream and plants conserve their vitality in their roots, waiting patiently for the quickening
  of Spring before extending their energy out once more.

By practicing what Winter is modeling, we learn to cultivate deep, restorative practices such as yin yoga, meditation, shamanic journeying, dreamwork. 

The herbs that can support us in this time are consciousness-shifting herbs, nervines and herbs for sleep, relaxation and dreaming so our brain waves can slow as we sleep deeply, repairing and rejuvenating our bodies.

We may have healing work to do in these months as many of us have been conditioned to attribute our self worth to our productivity. Notice any resistance or anxiety that comes up around your rest practice and lovingly lean deeper into it. It is time to unravel the old stories of modern culture that capitalize on our sense of urgency and not enoughness.

You are enough. There is nothing you need to do. You can rest. Rest is sacred. Like the Earth, there is a time when we need to lay fallow. Our creativity needs the darkness of the void. Our culture needs us to say no. Our Earth needs us to slow. Our souls bloom when we can just be.

In these months, we realize that rest is a revolutionary act. That rest is a form of resistance against capitalism. That rest is also non linear and poetic. That rest is physiologically healing and spiritually renewing.

While this is our time to push past the resistance and go into the darkness, we must also be aware that our guiding lantern inside needs not be forgotten. This small light in the dark is illustrated in the symbol of the yin yang, in the thin sliver of a crescent moon or a starlit dark sky, in the flickering candle that illuminates the dark.