JOURNAL

Winter's alchemical medium

As we see these last weeks of Winter through we are reflecting on the medicine this incredible season has offered to us. Winter brings the opportunity to slow way down, it begs us to take stock... What can you let go of and what is needed? It asks us to lay down that which is no longer serving us into its rich alchemical soil to be transformed, composted into the rich life-giving nutrients needed for the season ahead. In Winter, all the energy descends down into soil, connecting us deeper to that primal realm of interconnectedness, interdependence, and of the internal. We see the soil as a great cauldron where all is welcomed, freed from its hard form and softened into that which is regenerative. It’s this internal garden, the soil of ourselves, that we call the body. The body holds the wisdom of repair, our innate regenerative capacity, that we call healing.

What we know about trauma and conditioning is that in the wise attempt to remain safe, we pull our roots up out of connection, both from our own soil and from the relational soil. When we have experiences too big for our minds to make sense of, these sensations of overwhelm, grief, pain, fear, etc. are stored inside our soil as pockets of energy or charge, waiting to be integrated and alchemized when we are safe to do so. What builds safety? How can we learn to put our roots back in the soil of connection and risk deeper intimacy?

ATTUNEMENT

Attunement is the sunlight that brings its warmth to the darkness, shedding its light on that which has yet to be seen, felt, or held. What is so magical and mystical about the healing journey is that it cannot happen in isolation. To quote Wendell Berry, "Healing is the opposite of loneliness." All healing is relational and ecological.

Safety is built through this cycle of sending sunlight into the darkness, and in allyship, letting oneself fully feel that which has been stored in our bodies. It's built in the process of gaining self trust through embodied experience that the pain won't kill us. That nothing is, in fact, too big or too much, and that once we do welcome that part to thaw in the sunlight of our awareness we have more of ourselves back home.

Accessing the body, feeling into our own capacity, knowing where our edges are, what our soil feels like, and what it needs is the very medicine Winter offers. The medicine is not “let's fix this” but just being with, noticing, and placing our attention there. While we can do this all year, cyclically, we see that this rhythm of descending into self is mirrored this time of year. From this noticing we can call in our allies. We have a map, each feeling, each sensation we feel in the body, is a portal to the next.

Allyship and attunement hold the values of welcoming, resource, connection, and mirroring of that innate healing capacity that is held in all living beings. When we can call in allyship, we are re-sourcing. These allies source us again, they guide us as we re-root, they show us how to see into the darkness. In our work, we hold this for our clients. We support their inner journey back to their own inner healer - that internal ally that can attune with their own needs.

While our bodies hold this innate wisdom, what we find to be so humbling about this fact, is that we need one another. And that’s a good thing! Not just our human kin but our plant kin, our animal kin, our elemental kin. This particular time of year is the ecotone, the boundary waters between the healing sunlight of spring and the fertile darkness of winter. As we lay nested deeply in the soil of winter, what has been composted? What have you noticed needs your attunement and what allyship are you calling in?

Allyship is a key nutrient on the healing path.


If you're feeling called to explore your own soil in the company of others, in ceremony with the medicine of winter, join us this coming Friday February 9th at 11am PST for our inaugural monthly gathering, Into The Garden.

Register here.