Last night I celebrated Nollaig na bhan in a beautiful, understated way. Initial plans to host a pre-emptive soiree on Saturday evening hadn’t materialised, so instead, a friend and I opted for ‘Mellow and Mindful’ yoga with Carla in Studio 52 in Hill Street. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the building, but it’s a gem in the Cathedral Quarter, and we practised on the top floor in a candle-lit room with creamy walls and dark beams.
The session focused on floor work with low lunges and lizard and pigeon poses and the occasional downward dog: it wasn’t the night for warriors and balances. As we stretched out on our mats for savasana at the end, I could hear the soft padding of Carla’s feet on the wooden floor, as she came around and dabbed our wrists with a drop of sweet-smelling oil- a fusion of lavender, eucalyptus and bergamot.
It felt like the wisest thing I’d done in a long time, to allow myself to lie in the company of other women and melt into forgiving poses. ‘Thank you’ said my aching muscles after a gym session that almost killed me last week.
‘Push. Push. Push. Keep going, just get the through the week.’ That’s like the mantra of modern living, isn’t it? Diaries bulging with targets and deadlines, endless chores and commitments. And inevitably we get sick, and then we feel bad and guilty for falling behind and ‘letting people down.’ We can’t even recuperate in peace.
Surely it’s basic biology, that in the cold our bodies have to work harder, and in the absence of daylight our rhythms naturally want to slow down. Then comes Christmas, with its heady mixture of adrenaline, expectations and over-indulgence which can drain us further.
And then, just when should be nourishing ourselves as we face three more months of could weather, we are hit with the usual January shite of ‘New year new me!’ Well, excuse me when I say, Fuck that. I’m not even sorry. In the words of Anne Lamott, ‘It’s hard out there.’ And she lives in sunny California!
Now is the time to cultivate warmth, to go slowly, reflect. Sleep like a squirrel. Doze like a dormouse. Hibernate like a hedgehog, and should you be disturbed, feel free to fire up those prickles.
“Plants and animals don’t fight the winter; they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives that they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through. Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximising scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sight; but that’s where the transformation occurs. Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible.”
― Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
Over the holidays I had plans to write; to pick up after a fallow period. But the more I forced it, the less it came. I wrote NOTHING. This was exacerbated by LSB gifting me a new laptop since my older one was banjaxed, with a battery life even flatter than mine. ‘Now you can write,’ he said gleefully. Oh the pressure! And then the negative self-talk came in- you’re useless, you haven’t a creative thought in your head… on and on it went. I wasn’t very nice to myself. So instead of feeling relaxed and rejuvenated after the break, I fell a bit miserable.
But I wasn’t producing anything because I felt like I had to, trying to tick boxes before I went back to work. What I wasn’t acknowledging was that I had to release the pressure before I could flow, which sounds a bit new-agey but I don’t care. The writer Katherine May sums up my feeling in her words below:
On Sunday I took myself to The Black Box to hear Stuart Murdock from Belle and Sebastian in conversation with Wendy Erskine. He suffers from ME, a condition for which he is now an ambassador. But he recognises that were it not for the disease and the enforced periods of incapacity, that he would never have become the songwriter that he is today. The time spent alone in a room, made him more introspective, and this lent itself to the creation of some of his most memorable lyrics.
Surrender has been a word which kept appearing in Miranda Hart’s recent book. She too has endured long bouts of illness, but having recently discovered the root of it, she has learned to live, and to live better. By acknowledging her limitations and not just doggedly ‘pushing through’ she has found peace and acceptance. I don’t think she’d be having any truck with this ‘New You’ bollocks, unless it’s about self-kindness, making better decisions and reflecting what it is you really need.
So I leave you with this today- what does ‘wintering’ mean to you, and how are you going to prioritise your needs when the ground is icy and the sun resolutely sets before five pm? Take care of your lovely selves, and it is so good to be back on here with you.
