Our calendars may have started over but nature is still in the grips of winter. We are still wrapped in this season of rest, replenishment and renewal, the nights are still long, though growing ever shorter, and perhaps our bodies are still calling out for slowness, sleep and rest.
There is something special about the changing of a year, a chance to step out of old skins, an invitation to start over, but it should be just that… an invitation. And perhaps you quite like the skin you’re in or maybe you need to hear and to know that you are enough already exactly as you are and that always have been, you might prefer to choose to live in the question, to be perfectly ok with not knowing, with letting life unfold at its own pace, letting purpose and direction mean more than just goals, letting ideas and plans incubate a little longer. Perhaps you feel deep in your bones that your emergence comes with that of spring.
Or perhaps exactly what you deeply crave at this time of year is an opportunity to start over, to take this clean slate and drop all that came before, choosing to walk a different path, to see with new eyes, to feel with new skin.
There are animals still in hibernation, plants still under the earth, trees still dormant and bare and we as human animals are invited to join them. To harness this turning of a new year however feels natural, however feels right.
And on that note I step away from my laptop and climb into bed for a deep and long yoga nidra (and maybe even a nap) before teaching tonight. I hope you are able to carve out the time to do something similar soon.
Carly x
Photo: Josh Chandler Morris, Whinlatter Forest, Lake District December 2018