Stilling

On Winter Solstice

ICYMI my Winter Solstice workshop — a nourishing hour of yoga, writing, and rest with Alice Vincent and me — is available for members to use any time. Upgrade your subscription and enjoy offerings like this as part of the full Balance Practice experience. See you there!

---

The year is fading, and here we find ourselves on the shortest day. Something ending, something beginning. This moment itself a pause and, with it, an invitation to slow down, breathe deeply, pay attention… still yourself alongside the pause in daylight. 

The solstice is by definition a stilling; in Latin, solstice means “sun stand still.” Like your breath, this isn’t a fixed point. Instead, it represents a series of days when the sun rises around the same time before gradually waking a few minutes earlier each day. Time seems to stand still and there’s balance to be felt here, a steady beat, even in the accompanying imbalance between darkness and light.

Can you feel it?

I’ve thought a lot about moving with the breath this year, noticing the actions that accompany breathing in and breathing out…

Inhaling — extend…
Exhaling — retreat…

This is, of course, so much about balancing doing with being. And so this moment beckons us to tune in to the cyclical rhythm of resting and rising, and to feel winter’s stillness as the counterbalance to summer’s action.

Just as each exhale becomes and inhale, dark becomes light. Even the darkness will exhale, again.