The Water Phase and the Deep Mystery of Wintering

To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight, and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings.

Wendell Berry

In this time of massive shifts in life on this planet, how can we orient ourselves in a way that not only benefits us as individuals, but is also nourishing to the Earth herself?   The Taoist philosophy of The Five Elements offers us a key.  Using nature as a guide, the ancient peoples from every corner of the world developed rituals and lifestyle practices to nourish and support themselves and their connection to the Earth through the cycle of the year.  The Taoist Five Element lens is one that is well documented and accessible to modern people and as it is an aspect of Chinese Medicine, one that I can share.   This is the lens through which I often offer ways to align ourselves with the seasons to support our health and wellbeing.  Each season emphasizes different aspects of the cycle of life which we can observe in the natural world around us.  If we align ourselves with the energetic cycles of nature it is like being picked up by a big swell that we can surf, nature is doing most of the work and we get to go along for the ride.    It is happening all around us, why not catch the wave?

We can know where we are on the cycle that generates all life on this planet by where we are relative to the movement of the earth around the sun.  This is, thankfully, not changing, so it offers us that still-point from which to orient ourselves.  We can see from the diagram that the season of winter extends from November 15th to January 27th.  In five element lingo, this is the time of the Water Phase in the cycle of life.  Each phase is essential for proper the proper development and unfolding of life.  If we look at the cycle as the life cycle of a human being, around 80 years, we can think of each phase lasting about 20 years.  To get a feel for the energetic nature of the phases, we can look at the life cycle of a human being.  The first 20 years is the phase of life in which there is rapid physical and intellectual growth and development, coming into oneself as an individual separate from the family of origin. 

A pdf of this chart can be found here: 4 Season Chart

It is the springtime of life or the Wood Phase with its explosive upward and outward energy.  In contrast, the wintertime, or Water Phase in a person’s life, is the time over 60, when the energy is receding, turning inward and wisdom is developed.  The energy is moving down and in.   These stages of development are the normal, essential stages in the life cycle of a human being.  They are windows of time in a person’s life where certain things need to happen or she will have missed the wave and it will be much harder if not impossible to catch up after the time has passed. For example, it is way easier to learn a language under the age of 8 than it is once you reach your 20’s.  The Water Phase of the cycle of the year is Winter and the gifts of this winter are only available now, next winter there will be different opportunities and those that are available this season will have passed. Just as when surfing, if you miss a wave, there is another, but it is not exactly the same.  Like the stages of development in life, if we miss the opportunity to take advantage of what this season offers, it is much harder to catch up once the sun comes back around to the lengthening days of spring in February when we will be in the Wood Phase of the yearly cycle.  

Winter, the Water Phase is the deepest yin. The winter solstice is at 6:00 on the tai ji tu, yin/yang symbol, the point of maximum darkness (yin, black). In a human being, this equates to the darkest, deepest, most inner aspects of ourselves.  It is the root or basis from which the yang energy of summer can grow us into a renewed version ourselves just as the garden is renewed each spring from its yin resting place underground.  We can see a little tail of yang (white) appears just at the moment of maximum yin (black).  Every year, the garden is a little different and every year, you are a little different.  The water phase is where the blueprint or template of you is stored (and restored from) so that when the time is right, growth can happen.  Just as an acorn has the whole blueprint of an oak tree stored in a tiny package, and year by year, given the right conditions, it will flourish and unfold according to that plan. The focus and opportunity of the water phase is to rest and go inward to gather the deep knowing and wisdom stored in your blueprint that you need to flourish and live into your fullest available potential for the coming year.  To consciously make the time to rest and restore so you have the wisdom to make choices that lead to the correct unfolding of your life according to your template.  Just like a daffodil must have the cold, dark, resting period of winter to gather that essential magic that allows it to bloom spectacularly in spring, so too do you.

In contemporary life, when we can find almost any food at any time of year because it is always blueberry season somewhere, we have electric lights to lengthen our days, and central heat so we are not intensely focused on keeping the fires burning as a matter of survival, it is trickier to feel the true intensity of drawing inward that is Winter.  When my father was growing up on dairy farm in Connecticut, the winter foods that were available were canned, either by the women in the family or at the local grocery store. They lived in a drafty 4 room house with an outhouse across the yard in the barn, a pump at the kitchen sink and evenings were spent around kerosene heater in the tiny sitting room.  It wasn’t that long ago that winter was a serious presence in everyday life.  Under those conditions, the natural movement of drawing our lives into a tighter circle happened automatically out of necessity.  Now, for those of us who are fortunate enough, we have the time and space to focus on the gifts of winter without the hardship.  Now, we have to make a conscious effort to draw our lives in. It helps to imagine the intense focus on what are to us now, small details of life, as the cold darkness descended followed by the joy of the lengthening days and having survived it.  This is why the emotion associated with the Water phase is fear.  It is the very question of survival.  Will we make it through the winter?

To align ourselves with the gifts of the Water phase, we have to dive deep, go inward, contract, conserve, get quiet, be still, and wait because the proper unfolding of your life depends on it.  This is the time to renew our reflective practices maybe in the form of meditation but also with indoor projects like knitting, cooking, or making art where the mind can wander.  It is the season for catching up on reading and mulling over the things you’d like to work on in the coming year.  It is a time for gathering the potential energy in the form of ideas and plans, not the time begin a new endeavor.  Now we wait. Quietly.

The necessity for quiet stillness that the very center of our beings is calling for is completely opposite to what the energy of the winter holiday season has become in our modern materialistic consumer culture.  A lot of running around, going to social events, spending time, money and energy at a rapid rate, eating and drinking too much, extroversion instead of introversion are the reasons that the holidays are often stressful.  Can you imagine conducting yourself in that way if you were worried about having enough food and fuel to make it through the winter? For most of human history and for many today, those are real concerns and at the core of our beings, we remember that.  The pandemic forced us to radically shift how we did the holidays last year and many people found they really liked many aspects of the quieter, less busy season.  Hopefully, some of that can be adopted as the new normal because it is way more in alignment with the season.

Wintering properly is less doing, and more being.  In our busy lives, most of us need to consciously make an effort to do less.  To set aside time for activities that let our minds wander and relax without the expectation of “a lot to show for it” outwardly because the work is happening deep within.  We can be assured that something essential is happening at these unseen depths because nature is showing us that it is at every turn.

Wintering Practices

·        Carefully choose how to allocate resources (time, money, socializing) in order maximize rest and restoration.  For example, when considering an invitation, maybe respond with “let me see how that will work and I’ll get back to you”.  That way, you can take a minute to imagine the event (or other resource demand) and see how it feels in your body.  Make the choice that is least stressful.

·        Choose warm, cooked food and drink.  Long cooked soups, stews, and meats as well as roasted veggies and whole grains are a good choice.  Time to put away the smoothies and if you need a drinkable breakfast on the go, consider warming up a blended soup like butternut squash.

·        Bone broth.  Can’t say enough about bone broth.  It comes from the deepest part of an animal to nourish the deepest part of you.  I use it as the cooking liquid for all kinds of things like rice or veggies as well as the basis for soups and stews.  I am a huge instant pot fan.  Put bones in the pot for, set for 90 minutes and go about your life.  It will be ready when you come back to it.

·        Make time for adequate sleep, try to be asleep by 10:30 at the latest.

·        Be mindful of refined carbs and alcohol.  They set you on a cycle of huge swings in blood sugar which leave you fatigued and craving more.

·        Include restorative exercise in your routine such as walking in nature, stretching or yoga.