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Tips: Winter Kindness
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Winter Kindness
During harsh winter weather it is important to be aware of what your body is telling you. As it is the most yin time of year our bodies usually crave a bit more rest, warming foods, and additional sleep. Of course it is important to remain active and not hibernate. As always balance is the challenge! I encourage you to use the below suggestions for ways to honour this time of year:
- Take a strike day. A strike day is the antithesis of being over scheduled. Read in bed, watch a movie during the day, drink warming teas, and take an afternoon nap. You could also choose to go ice skating and then hit your favourite coffee shop with a juicy magazine. The idea is to rest. It is completely appropriate to do so this time of year.
- Invite some friends or family to your home and make a good meal to share together (see lentil soup recipe below for a nutritious, easy meal to share). Socializing is important to good mental and physical health, and in winter we can feel like staying home and nesting. Compromise by staying in, enjoying your home, and sharing it.
- Get outside. Especially if the sun is shining as natural light helps seasonal depression. Dress in layers to make sure you are warm and then go outside and play. If you need any motivation to do this notice children in the winter. Dressed in snow suits they play and get excited every time it snows. They don’t have to shovel of course or make it to work on time, but they have a lot to teach us about the joy of winter. Have a snowball fight, go sledding, go skating, take a long walk to explore a different part of your city, go to the country and experience the wondrous silence of a snow covered forest, bring some stale bread to the park and feed the birds.
- Try to sleep regularly. You may need 8 hours in the winter and only 7 hours in the summer. This is part of the natural rhythm of the seasons, and our internal rhythms correspond to this cycle. That said, it is important to try to go to bed and get up at around the same time everyday.
- If you’ve made a New Year’s Resolution or you want to change a habit plan a way to help you stick to it. I’m a big believer in lists that I can cross things out on, other people may choose a reward (I will save the money I used to spend on cigarettes and buy those boots), tell someone you are close to your goal and the steps you are using to reach it (sometimes being accountable to someone else is a big motivator), plan out the steps of your journey in a journal and write about your progress.
- Treat yourself to a shiatsu treatment, a facial, a bubble bath, a new magazine. Be KIND to yourself, you deserve your own kindness. Usually we are harder on ourselves than we are on others, so consider the advice you would give to a friend or loved one in your own situation and then take it yourself.
The Carol Culhane, Shiatsu Therapist
website is intended as a reference
and information source only, and not
as medical advice. This site is not
a substitute for professional care,
and must not be used for self
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