Seasonal Living: Earth as Teacher
Returning to the rhythm we were trained out of
We live in a culture that trains us out of our true nature.
We’re taught to override fatigue, push past intuition, ignore the seasons, and perform our way through everything from holidays to healing. Most of us don’t even realize how deeply we’ve internalized this “always summer” way of living: endless productivity, endless output, endless brightness.
But our bodies have never agreed to this.
Because beneath all the conditioning, we are still creatures of the earth.
Seasonal living isn’t an aesthetic.
It isn’t a cottage-core fantasy.
It isn’t about having the perfect morning ritual.
Seasonal living is the ancient remembering that our bodies mirror the earth, whether we allow it or not.
It is the slow re-learning that we are cyclical beings in a relational universe.
It is the truth that your body already knows what the season is asking of you; the question is whether you listen.
The Body Knows Before the Mind
As we enter winter, your body is already pulling you inward.
You may feel the desire to:
go to bed earlier
stay home more
crave warm foods and warm hands
drink more tea
seek quiet
feel less social
do less, feel more
This isn’t laziness.
This isn’t depression.
This isn’t losing momentum.
This is nature speaking through you.
It’s the same impulse that tells trees to drop their leaves, and animals to burrow, and tides to slow.
The earth is the original nervous system mentor. She shows us what resilience actually looks like. Not constant productivity, but rest followed by renewal. Roots deepening before new life emerges.
Earth as Teacher: How Nature Guides Us Back to Ourselves
When grief tore me open in my postpartum years, when I descended into the underworld of myself, nature was the only thing that made sense.
I watched tides move in and out, reminding me that nothing stays swollen forever.
I watched birds adjust their wings to the wind, teaching me how to surrender and how to fight, and how to know the difference.
I watched plants die back in the fall, decay in the winter, and come alive again without apology.
Nature became my teacher in how to live, how to grieve, and how to come home to myself.
It still is.
There is an endless communication loop between you and the natural world.
When you ask, she answers.
When you listen, she reveals.
When you lean in, she holds.
Seasonal living is simply remembering you belong to this loop.
Why Seasonal Living Feels So Hard
The hardest part is not the slowing down.
The hardest part is the fight with the culture that tells you slowing down is unacceptable.
Wintering is natural.
It takes zero effort.
What takes effort is resisting your nature.
We are taught to fear the quiet, fear the dark, fear the inward turn.
We are trained to feel wrong if we’re not “on.”
And in that training, we lose access to the deepest well of nourishment available to us.
Seasonal living is the rebellion, and the return.
A Lineage Older Than Language
When I teach about the seasons, it’s not theoretical.
It comes from:
my years of earth-wisdom practice
my descent and rise through postpartum unraveling
my Jewish lineage, which is profoundly seasonal
my priestess ancestry, forgotten but not lost
the somatic truth of being a body on a living earth
Earth is our first mother.
Our most steadfast guide.
The one teacher we cannot escape, and shouldn’t.
When we sync ourselves back to her rhythms, everything changes: our relationships, our nervous systems, our choices, our inner world.
Seasonal living is not a lifestyle.
It is an initiation.
Where to Begin: Practices for Returning to Rhythm
Here is how I guide my clients, community, and myself into seasonal attunement:
1. Awareness + Witnessing
Start noticing light, temperature, energy, and the behavior of the world around you.
Let the season tell you who to become.
2. Earth Connection
Feet on the ground.
Back against a tree.
Hands in water.
Let your nervous system borrow stability from the planet.
3. Journaling for Reflection
Ask:
What is this season asking of me?
What truth emerges when I’m quiet?
4. Ritual + Devotion
Small, simple, consistent acts: lighting a candle, steeping tea, greeting the morning light, change your physiology.
5. Somatic Listening
Your body has seasonal preferences.
Let it guide you.
Mine asks for warmth, slowness, and deep presence in winter.
These are not tasks.
These are invitations.
A Return to Your True Nature
If you are new to this, welcome.
This way of living will change your life: quietly, steadily, deeply.
Seasonal living is the most ancient truth in your body.
The truth that grief taught me.
The truth that winter teaches all of us.
The truth that will never stop calling you home.
If you want to live seasonally, start here:
unarmor: my free 7-part audio: unhook from urgency and return to your natural rhythm.
Join my email list: where I share seasonal teachings, rituals, and truth work.
Explore THE KEY: a collective, seasonal practice of being held as you be. Winter is her most powerful portal.
Winter is the season of letting the earth hold you in her cradle, and THE KEY offers the same.