Healing Seasonally
I like to think of the healing process as being non-linear, spiralic, and very similar to the way seasons flow. This is fundamentally what holistic wellness entails - an alignment between nature and health. Seasonal cycles are just like the cycles of healing work - we invest resource into planting seeds of intention and tending them, ensuring our inner soil is as fertile and clean as possible in order to reap the benefits of an aligned life with less emotional baggage and limiting beliefs unconsciously shunted onto us at birth.
Flowing with Nature’s Rhythm
Growing up on the east coast of the United States, I had the privilege of experiencing four distinct (one might say extreme) seasons with unique weather, light, foliage, produce, and moods. Despite all the years I’ve lived in London, I’ve never quite gotten used to the blurred lines between the seasons. Cool, wet autumns seem to morph seamlessly into slightly colder and wetter winters. The only distinctive shift (in my view) occurring between the exceptionally short winter days and the phenomenon that is an English spring.
In one of my favorite books about the Celtic/Germanic Wheel of the Year, an ancient nature-based calendar that follows the lunar cycle and pre-dated our modern Gregorian calendar, author Temperance Alden describes (I believe anyway) the essence of what it means to live seasonally:
“Today is the first day of the rest of the year. Tomorrow will also be the first day of the rest of the year. Looking at the year in this fashion means stepping outside of calendars and events and intentionally becoming present in the moment.”
Living seasonally is more than a lifestyle; it’s honoring that as humans we flow in cycles and seasons as well. Working with nature doesn’t require a subscription any particular religion, creed, or philosophy. We don’t need to identify as ‘witches’ to observe the magic in nature just as we can call ourselves Catholics, pagans, or atheists regardless of whether we observe All Souls’ Day, Halloween, or Samhain depending on what feels right for us. Doing the inner work and healing is a non-linear process of unlearning, integrating, and realignment. Each Underworld Journey (what I call the healing journey) we take is a new cycle, a new season of our lives. Underworld Journeys mimic the natural cycles of Life, Death, and Rebirth.
When our Life cycle is fully harvested, we descend into a Death cycle of shedding and recovery, only to emerge in a cycle of Rebirth where our new seeds begin to sprout. In the summers of our lives we sow these seeds and watch them blossom in a Life cycle. Once we’ve extracted every bit of goodness that we can, our bounty is harvested before dying in the autumn while our spirits recover in the winter, preparing to begin the cycle all over again in the spring.
Living in Alignment
This is the cycle of nature, the cycle of life, and the cycle of personal evolution. The resurgence of the Celtic/Germanic Wheel of the Year - an ancient nature-based calendar that follows the lunar cycle and pre-dated our modern Gregorian calendar - is proof that we are craving alignment. Alignment with our ancestors; with our inner clocks; and with the earth. In a Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs way, when we’re in closer alignment with these fundamental things, alignment with a Spirit-led lifestyle ensues, whatever that looks like for us.
Why? Possibly because ritual and alignment mean we’re working with the flow of nature, not against it. There’s a reason we tend to feel better in nature; it’s our intrinsic state. It’s no different when we honor the cycles of our lives. In her book The Wheel of the Year, Fiona Cook says something I find quite beautiful:
“Wherever you may live, there’s a rhythm to the seasons, and forming a relationship with your home and its inhabitants is true magic.”
Forming a relationship with our inner world is just as magical and restorative as aligning with the seasons, plants, herbal medicine, and the sun and moon. Understanding our body’s cycles whether that refers to our moods; our hunger; menstruation; when we tend to get sick; whether our optimal productivity period is at sunrise or in the late hours; and in what situations or environments we’re most prone to melancholy or anxiety is all part of healing seasonally. Healing according to the seasons of our nature.
Nature - as with life, seasons, healing, our moods, and even the weather - is not linear. This is less esoteric than it sounds; in fact, it’s about as earthy as it gets. Nothing in this lifetime actually travels from point A to B to C and so forth, regardless of our human desperation for such linearity and predictability. In reality, things usually travel spiralically, from Point A to F back to B and then to X. Sometimes, we don’t even get to start at Point A. Sometimes the universe tosses us into the eye of the storm and makes us start at Point P with no warning or resources to cope.
Anyone who has ever been on a journey of recovery is familiar with this concept of non-linearity.
Seasons of Life
This is what I call healing seasonally, which means accepting that we travel through life in spirals, or cycles, during which we die, are reborn, and live, only to die again. Following nature’s rhythm is the clearest way to recognize Death, Rebirth, and Life cycles, but we don’t always travel according to this path. That would be way too linear! Working with nature’s flow means finding our own rhythm because we are nature, which is why the most important part of the healing process is identifying and acknowledging what is natural for us.
To learn more about how EFT ‘tapping’ therapy can help you on your healing journey, feel free to peruse my website and book a free, non-committal Discovery Session!