One of the themes that has come up in the conversations I’ve had this past week with clients and friends has been that they just can’t seem to get anything done. There is a real sense of lethargy and inertia in the air – not useful in the busy, stressful, party season! I have found myself really struggling to do my work this week particularly – my body seems to be crying out to be cocooned in blankets and sleep.
I just don’t want to be intelligent and creative and work and ‘do’. I want to rest. And on Monday evening, after a day of resisting how I felt, I realised: It is against nature to be so busy at this time of year. It is truly ‘the dark time’ of the year – the night’s are the longest they are all year, and winter has set in. Nature understands this and the trees, plants and animals hibernate, withdraw, rest, fly south, become sluggish and slow.
As many of us do…or we would if we allowed ourselves to honour the energy of the season, instead of pushing out to ‘do more, be more, have more’ and be busier than at any other time of year. In my heart, I feel it is going against nature to be so busy and hustling when the natural world cries out for downtime, dreaminess, naps and peace. Today I’ve been ‘forced’ to pull back and rest because I cricked my neck last night and barely got a wink of sleep – and as regular readers will know, no sleep renders me useless!
But the joy in resting, in being quiet, in pulling back, in slowness is so exquisite, I could feel my heart sigh with relief…this is it, this is what I need to be doing right now. Not everyone is affected by the energy of the season…I am. I first noticed it in 2010 when I was extremely grumpy from the end of my holiday in November up until 22 December, when My Mojo Came Back! It was so sudden, after weeks of lethargy and grouchiness, that I knew a change of energy had occurred.
The Winter Solstice – celebrated in some cultures as heralding the return of spring and the sun – was on the 21st. It felt to me as if nature had ‘woken up’ from her winter sleep and poured energy back into the world, and into me. The energy of the world around me had changed, and with it, I felt renewed. Since then, I have tried to honour the energy of the season…this year, I didn’t do too well – going on holiday for the first week of the month put me ‘behind’ in my work and made me pack a months’ worth of work into about 9 days! It seemed like a good idea at the time, but on reflection, perhaps it wasn’t?
So today at least I am trying to honour the energy of the season and rest…until tonight when I go out to a gig and dance and probably crick my neck again! That’s the thing, isn’t it? Life gets in the way sometimes, unless we are vigilant and guard our boundaries fiercely, we find ourselves with a diary full to overflowing, and no time to honour the energy. We can only do the best we can with what we have, and in my case, write in my diary for December 2013 “Keep clear for hibernation”!