Alchemy with Bronwyn

A Winter Solstice Ritual: Embracing Yin, Quiet, and Stillness

• Bronwyn Ayla

Share episode

✨ Join me Thursdays for a live session—tap here to join us!

What if embracing darkness could lead to a more profound sense of peace and purpose? During this episode, we challenge the typical winter focus on light and festivities, suggesting an alternative approach that honors the quiet beauty of darkness. By turning away from the bright lights of the holiday season, we offer insights into how the winter solstice can serve as a time for deep reflection and stillness. Discover how engaging in retreat-like behaviors and rituals can help you nourish those often-overlooked parts of yourself, fostering an atmosphere of tranquility amidst the seasonal chaos.

Join us for an enlightening discussion as we share a special winter solstice ritual, inviting you to experience the power of silence and stillness by turning off all the lights and simply being present. We explore the value of postponing new intentions, allowing a deeper sense of purpose to naturally emerge from the silence. Enhance your winter with practices like meditative reflection, qigong, and dreaming, tapping into the yin energy of the season. Embrace this opportunity to quiet your mind and let the darker days guide you to a place of inner calm and clarity.

Send Bronwyn a message!

Speaker 1:

this is a time when many traditions celebrate the light. We light candles, we put up Christmas tree lights and there's Kwanzaa a big tendency towards celebrating the light. And the counsel would be why not celebrate the dark? We certainly don't spend our summer solstice celebrating the dark. We celebrate the light and then midwinter we go to celebrate the light. And the question is what is it that we skip when we don't also celebrate the dark?

Speaker 1:

This is a very yin time of year where we have a chance to slow down and to nourish those deeper asks of ourselves that aren't nourished by doing an activity. So going on retreat is very beneficial and there's a way where we can incorporate retreat-like behavior and conduct into our winter daily rituals and also if we want to do a specific ritual in the winter solstice. So I'm going to describe a ritual that I like to do during the winter is to turn off all the lights. Let it be at dark time, in the night time, make sure everything is as dark and dark as possible, and to simply sit in that darkness by yourself, with family, with friends, and feel into the stillness and the rest, with the time to be, with not knowing being in the quiet.

Speaker 1:

Many people set intentions this time of year as to what they want to do for the new year and kind of thinking of this time as a new beginning. But that council is also instead, maybe use this time as not as a new beginning but as a nothingness, and wait a month or two to set the intentions. When we allow ourselves to deeply be in not knowing and stillness, a deeper sense of what it is that will nourish our lives emerges. But I don't think we can get to knowing what it is we want without entering into deep silence. This is the time of year when we can deepen our meditative practices, our qigong and our dreaming. Thank you for listening. I hope your winter is deep and quiet.