Ebb & Flow with the Seasons

 Our world is one of economic demands and pressures that prioritise action and achievement over health and happiness. Where an “it’s great to be busy” societal norm encourages us to maintain dizzying, relentless work schedules all year round. We are exhausted, disconnected and stuck. I hear this lament every week from the customers and students I meet in my wellbeing work.

We are always focused on moving away or towards, we rarely notice nor live in the present. Pause for a moment as you read and look outside - Spring is starting to peer out from the darkness of Winter and as a nation, we too are beginning to emerge from the dusk, after a long period of quiet punctuated by varying degrees of isolation and fear. The world came to a halt in 2020 and these last two years feel so linear as we attempt to move away from the past to a brighter future. In our modern world we have learned to see time as linear. However, time does not have to be viewed as such, but instead can be cyclical. Our Celtic and pre-Celtic ancestors viewed time as a spiral and understood that seasons of energy ebb and flow in and out of each other in a circular way along with each month and season of the year.

I grew up on a farm here in Kerry, a lifestyle where the seasons are the true master - life & work is defined by them. My father adjusts his habits and patterns according to the seasons. In Summer he wakes earlier and works long days until the sun melts west into the sea and sky’s afterglow lingers until almost midnight. Working long hours stacking rectangular bales of hay in the barn and hoisting silage into neat rows for the months ahead. In Autumn a new routine begins, cleaning yards and laying down beds of golden straw in the outhouses to become homes for the herd, feeding cattle closer to home and preparing them to winter in shelter. The smell of powdered milk tinges the air with sweetness as the calves jostle together to gulp buckets of warm sloshing milk. Spring brings new life and a nursery-like busyness when calves are born and take their first wobbling steps into a bright new world instinctively nuzzling their mothers’ under belly. Later still animals go to grass and it’s such a joy to watch them kicking and bucking with the delight of freedom once more. A relief to my Dad too no doubt! The intensity of his work varies according to the seasons and what the farm needs of him. He adjusts to these fluctuations and his energy levels shift gears too.

By contrast, most of us seem to have lost touch with this natural cadence of life. No longer adjusting our rhythm.  Research findings point to technological change as the explanation for our disconnect from nature, and in particular the burgeoning of indoor and virtual recreation options – TV, gaming, internet, phones, social media etc.  We are also unreasonably expected to maintain the same level of sociability 12 months of the year, leaving us drained.

We don’t tend to embrace all seasons equally either, for example, Winter is often viewed as a gloomy inconvenience and, rather than getting outside to reap what daylight there is, we switch on lights, heat and screens. In our busy lives where full diaries, wallets and fridges are worn as badges of honour, we have lost track of how to attune to seasons. Richard Louv, author of “The Nature Principle” writes, “Nature-deficit disorder describes the human costs of alienation from nature, among them: diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties, and higher rates of physical and emotional illnesses.” Without this connection to nature, people lose interest in protecting it and fail to see how connected it is to our lives — our food sources, our climate, our quality of life, our air, our water. Nature and her seasons directly impact our energy, health and wellbeing on every level.

But what if we change our frame of reference? What if we think and talk about work and life in a different way, informed not by corporations and marketing but by the language of nature? Living in close relationship to the seasons and the flowing of time allows us to (re)attune to the earth and teaches us to cooperate with the energy of that period rather than fighting against it. For example, January is Winter, a time to fallow – a conscious period of inaction and restoration. Nature is in hibernation, and we too should have been at rest. If we listen to our innate inner wisdom and remember we are part of nature, we would resist the January rush and the pressured advertising and instead recuperate to feel more energetic when Spring dawns and the days of light return.

I understand the impact of pushing myself, of being disconnected – I lived a busy urban life, commuted long hours, mornings were spent crawling after red taillights. Ten hours a day I sat in an airconditioned, artificially lit office. Saturday night blurred by teetering on bar stools and then cocooned on the couch all day Sunday cupping Dioralyte in my trembling hands, crippled by the ‘Sunday night fear’ and then……repeat…. I had what society says I ought to want – a Masters degree, a high paid managerial position in a multinational, two foreign holidays a year, I lived alone in a big house and paid a dog walker to ease my guilt. I was so focused on getting a personal best on the hamster wheel that I had no idea where I was running to or why. I kept moving to silence that quiet inner voice that persistently whispered – Is this really it? Surely there must be more than this?

Redundancy brought me home to Kerry in 2016, I set up Ebb & Flow Yoga and over the years that followed, I have finally begun to slow down and make small daily changes so I can live more in tune with the nature and her seasons. In Winter, I slept later, I journaled and ate warming, nourishing foods, I wrapped up and went for slow strolls through the bare trees and squelching fallen leaves carpeting the forest floor in golds, reds and browns. The first of February welcomes Spring and brings renewed energy, when I’ll change my exercise routine and up the tempo in my Yoga practice & the classes I teach.  I will start to take my first steps towards the goals I’ve set for my year ahead. I call these small, mindful habit changes – seasonal living.

My passion for seasonal living now has a home! I offer a 12-month program called Seasonal Soul. It’s for women who want to rewrite their story and the rules of business in relationship with nature and her seasons, all in community together. Visit www.ebbflowyoga.ie/seasonalsoul

I also offer monthly online masterclasses on how to connect to each month and I’m delighted to launch “A Natural Year” with a series of workshops in the forest and by the coast to immerse yourself in nature and reconnect to the cycle of the year. Information on all these is on my website www.ebbflowyoga.ie/events

I look forward to sharing monthly reflections with you and each seasons’ special energy. I’ll leave you a thought from a poem I wrote, “Life is unfolding now whilst you sit by a screen daydreaming of freedom……..The churn and turn of life goes on. Don't miss your time for being”