Living Seasonally: Winter
The natural world is withdrawing and embracing a long, dark season of dormancy. There is a particular stillness that characterizes winter, and with it comes a subtle invitation to redirect our own energies. The winter season holds the perfect antidote to the fast-paced mobility of the summer and fall. This is a time to rest, reflect, hold space, vision, hibernate, and withdraw some of your outwardly-focused energy and redirect it inward.
However, the calm, peaceful nature of the winter can also leave us feeling weighed down, stagnant, or uninspired, which is why is important to learn how to achieve balance. When winter arrives, it’s time to reassess how we’re living and make small, simple changes to live in alignment with what this season calls for. Seasonal living can help us maintain vibrancy and health throughout the entire year, and as you’ll discover, tuning into the seasons is one of the most intuitive and natural practices we can adopt.
Slow Down
This is the season for less doing and more being. Finish up projects, plan some time off, switch your emails to out of office mode, and look at your phone a little less. Resting and taking a step back from constant productivity is vital for every aspect of our wellbeing, and can have a very positive impact on what we’re able to produce when spring arrives. If we push ourselves to be in a constant state of doing and generally ticking boxes and completing to-do lists, this can be incredibly fatiguing, and eventually makes us less imaginative.
Giving yourself more time to just — whether it’s going for walks in nature without your headphones, reading fiction, playing a musical instrument, painting or engaging in an activity that relaxes you — helps rejuvenate the mind and enhances creativity. When we’re in a relaxed state, this is often when the more creative, innovative ideas come to us, and it’s also when our minds are better able to come up with solutions to nagging problems.
Try putting a lot less on your to-do list, scheduling less throughout the week, saying ‘no’ to demands or invitations you’d rather not accept, and purposefully living life at a slower pace.
Connect to Sunlight
Even if it’s cloudy outside, try to get out there as close to sunrise as you can for a short walk. Sunlight is information, telling our bodies what time of day it is and how to function. After lunch, take a short walk outside so your body knows it’s still daytime, which will also help optimise your digestion. When it gets to night time, dim all your overhead lights after sunset or opt in for candlelight, and try to switch off your screens at least an hour before going to bed, because the bright light emitted from the screen can prevent the release of melatonin — a hormone we require in order to sleep. Instead of watching TV, perhaps listen to music, read, chat or play board games with your partner or family.
Winter Doshas
Ayurveda is the ancient knowledge of life where everything consists of three energy types or doshas: vata (made of air, wind), pitta (made of fire) and kapha (made of water and earth). Ayurveda recognises the winter season as a kapha season with strong vata undertones. It is characterized by cold weather, a sense of heaviness, increased moisture (usually in the form of rain or snow), cloud-covered days, and the grounded, slow feeling that sends many animals into hibernation. These are all qualities shared by kapha dosha, which is why winter is considered—primarily—a kapha season. During the winter period it’s important to find balance between the messy, allover-the-place vata and a stagnant, heavy mood of kapha through food and daily routine.
Winter Diet
Seasonal foods are good for us and for the planet. The more we’re able to eat locally, the more we contribute to a more sustainable future and a healthier planet. Another reason seasonal eating is important is because – just like sunlight – food is information for our cells. The warm, long, bright days of summer allow our bodies to digest fruits and naturally sugary foods easier, but when the days become shorter, the delicate juicy fruits are no longer what we need. In the colder months of winter, this is a time to focus more on healthy fats, proteins and root vegetables.
Seasonal eating is one of the most simple practices we can start bringing into our lives; just look at the foods in season in your country, and fill your fridge and cupboards with them. A pineapple in December isn’t going to give the body what it really needs. But a sweet potato – full of vitamin A, B vitamins, vitamin D, C, potassium and magnesium – all give us exactly what we need when we’re living our winter lifestyle in terms of immune-boosting nutrients, energy, and muscle-maintaining vitamins.
What I also like to use to orientate myself around seasonal produce are these calendars. In a few images they show the most abundant produce in each month. As for seasonal recipes inspirations, I warmly recommend this whole food plant based recipe website The First Mess. Its author also has a cookbook with delicios recipes that you should put on your kitchen bookshelf.
Winter is the season when the digestive fire is strongest. The body requires more fuel to stay warm and healthy in the winter months, and the cold weather forces the fire principle deep into the core of the body—igniting the digestive capacity. Our bodies, therefore, crave a more substantial, nutritive diet at this time of year, and you will likely find yourself eating larger quantities of food.
A supportive winter diet will be aimed at pacifying kapha without increasing vata or vice versa.
You’ll want to focus on eating warm, cooked, slightly oily, well-spiced foods.
Drink room temperature, warm, or hot beverages and avoid iced or chilled drinks, if possible. You can increase heat and circulation while encouraging clean and clear respiratory passages by drinking a tea boiled for five minutes with ½ teaspoon each of dried ginger, cinnamon, and clove.
Hearty, heating vegetables like radishes, cooked spinach, onions, carrots, and other root vegetables are well-received this time of year, as are hot spices like garlic, ginger, black pepper, cayenne, and chili peppers.
Cooked grains like oatmeal, cornmeal, barley, tapioca, rice, or kitchari make a terrific breakfast, and lunches and dinners of steamed vegetables, whole wheat breads, and mushy soups are ideal.
Legumes are usually good for kapha, but they should be well-cooked, well-spiced so as not to aggravate vata.
It is best to reduce or avoid frozen foods, as well as foods that are cold, damp, or excessively sweet, heavy, or oily.
Daily Routine
Maintaining a predictable daily routine will help keep vata in balance this winter and kapha will benefit from keeping things fresh and a bit unpredictable.
Certain parts of your day—like the times that you rise, work, eat, and sleep—can easily be consistent from one day to the next, while other times of day can provide for some variation and spontaneity.
Start your day with a short but invigorating morning routine. Sleeping in a little later is somewhat permissible in the winter, but you will feel fresher and more motivated if you are up by about 7 a.m.
Brush your teeth, scrape your tongue, follow with a warm shower.
After that, you can drink some warm water to activate the digestive system.
Shake off any sluggishness with some yoga.
If vata is strong in the atmosphere or if you feel stressed and depleted, move at a slow and gentle pace. If kapha is a stronger influence or if you feel unmotivated and lethargic, move at a faster pace.
Either way, practice with purpose and invite precision into your poses.
Welcome to join one of the weekly classes for some extra motivation.
Dress in bright, warm colours and always cover your ears, neck, and head with a scarf or hat if you are outside in the cold.
Skip daytime naps; the long, dark, evening hours provide a perfect atmosphere for you to relax and unwind.
Your body may also tolerate a little more nighttime sleep through the winter months. Plan on retiring around 10 p.m. or 11 p.m.
I hope these tips will inspire you to live more seasonally this winter. Start making more space in your schedule, live life a little slower, enjoy those seasonal foods, and take time to care for yourself. By bringing these rituals and routines into your day, you’ll be supporting yourself to spring back into life when the seasonal cycle starts all over again.
Namaste ✨