February 1, 2022
Happy New Year!
February 1st marks the start of the Lunar New Year, celebrated by more than a billion people around the world, and ushering in the Year of the Tiger. We might just need some tiger energy to move the world into a new time.
I like following the Lunar calendar. To be honest, this feels like a better time in nature to honor the beginning of something, more in line with things being new. In early January, we are still deeply in the depths of winter. Just a month later, we can almost taste the beginning of spring. We are not quite there yet, but we catch a whiff of it – enough to know that we will make it through this long, dark time.
One of the students in my midday meditation class yesterday said she was feeling this pull forward – the anticipation of spring. She was feeling like she needed to remind her body and mind to stay in the present moment. Yes. We all have moments like this – all the time. The pull of our mind into the future: anticipation, worry, planning, fantasizing. It’s like subtly leaning forward. It’s easy to get ahead of ourselves, start wishing for warmer times, and lose sight of what is right here in front of us.
Or we might feel like we are leaning back into the past – remembering, replaying a conversation, regretting something, ruminating. Or simply letting our fears and past experiences hold us back from truly experiencing what is right here.
Here we are – in the promise of warmth to come, but not quite out of winter. It’s still dark, and damp, and foggy in the mornings. We are in between. It’s cold, but there are buds on the trees when you look closely. Little baby pinecones emerging from the boughs of evergreens.
We might feel like inside our own bodies and minds, we have been dormant for the winter too. That doesn’t have to be a thing to overcome. The energy of winter can be a welcome rest if we let it be. We can settle into a time that is slow moving, unhurried, steady. It’s okay, this is the pace of nature. As we gift ourselves the space to rest and be in a “wintering” time, we can know that the seeds of spring and renewal are just below the surface, waiting for the sun to emerge.
It can be challenging, I know, to be where we are instead of getting 5 steps ahead of ourselves. We are so conditioned to strive, to push, to always be growing, to measure our worth by what we accomplish. But we really don’t have to. We can make a different choice. We can live a different life, one that honors the rhythms of nature that beat within us, in our heart and in our breath, the tributaries of blood that flow beneath our skin, the structure and earth that are our bones.
Can we honor this space in between winter and spring? Letting ourselves bud slowly, and in our own time. And welcome ourselves to the New Year. Inviting ourselves to begin again, here, now.
With care,
Erin Joosse | she/her
Source Yoga | studio director
Upcoming:
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