Solstice & Yule: A Space for the Root Chakra
Finding trust through darkness, letting light in by letting go of old internal dependencies for good.
Welcome to a my seasonal posts on the Wheel of the Year. These posts are free and provide traditional insight, ways to work with the season, and reflections in the collective. Tuning into these seasonal celebrations gives a sense of relationship to this planet and the grounding sense of biophilic connection providing a platform to relate, root, and grow as a human on the spiritual journey.
Solstice & Yule
The December Solstice marks the end of fall and the start of winter in the Northern Hemisphere; it is known as the darkest day of the year. Simultaneously, in the Southern Hemisphere it’s the end of spring and the start of summer known as the longest light-day of the year.
In regard to the Pagan Wheel of the Year, this time is considered the Winter Solstice. My lineage is of Irish and Lithuanian descent, I feel ancestrally close to the Pagan traditions in the Northern Hemisphere and you’ll find that perspective here.
Yule is also traditionally a Pagan ceremony that started with the Vikings further north in Scandinavia where it’s dark nearly all hours of the day at the peak of winter. Yule is the celebration for the return of more daylight. This celebration typically starts at solstice and ends three days later, near what we know in modern time as Christmas.
Wintering the Darkness
Loving Winter’s Quiet to Actualize Your Light
While many are talking about the increase of light this Solstice, I want to highlight and discuss the importance of the darkness. The darkness deserves to be honored. Much of winter here in the Northern Hemisphere is still to come. So yes, light is on its way, but let’s truly honor right where we are in order to lay the foundation for light to arrive.
The darkness is so rich with inner resources in order to find light. In the process of truly living with the seasons, your comfort in the darkness is what allows you to trust the coming of the light. The darkness, without the sight of light, gives permission to utilize your other senses to feel into what’s possible on the other side of it. The darkness offers an opportunity to rely on and develop an inner trust that creates a light to spans its worth.
The low sunlight through the winter is often a time of external quiet and stillness, it provides the opportunity to tune deeper into yourself. Part of your inner resources may include your connection to your ancestors; with the small whispers of wisdom which they bear and grace you. The connection with them, with spirit, with your life-force within, requires attunement through your innate senses. The winter is an essential season to observe with these senses to see not only with your eyes but your perception, to feel with your bones, and to hear your inner wisdom. In the depths of tuning in, you may realize the Veil is quite thin—similar to Samhain—we connect with spirit within and all around us. Among the Vikings, Yule was a time to remember and call upon past loved ones on the other side of the flesh.
“All times of changing tend to be liminal times when the doors between different worlds open up. The dead and the living blend together.”
Professor Terry Gunnel, University of Iceland
In the same hand, connecting with your loved ones is connecting through yourself. When you’re moving forward on your path, connecting with yourself in all realms of who you are is powerful for your evolution. Engaging with yourself, fully, requires you to hold your darkness or shadows and know that your light is not only possible but fully capable and worthy of being seen. When you see yourself in wholeness, with compassion—just as your ancestors, God, and spirit do, you have the chance to actualize the capability of evolving your light.
My soapbox is to find love for the quiet space granted during the darkness of winter. In this space, sense into what has been incubating within you that wants to continue to shine on. Sense into what is no longer of service to or even wastes your light. Find safety in knowing that your light has been shining and trust that whatever doesn’t serve it can be let go from the forefront. Like winter, what doesn’t serve you may always be a small part of you and your story, but it doesn’t control you. This is a time for your personal and natural light to be in the liminal with opportunity to grow. As in Winter Solstice, your trust and safety in your wholeness is the light dawning more often in each new day.
The Energetics of Solstice—The Root
Guidance from the Studio: Perspective of a Reiki Energy Practitioner and Coach
Trusting in yourself and your path requires the innate belief that you are safe in your worthiness. This safety provides inner knowing and strength which carve a path for actualizing who you believe you are in your light. Taking deliberate action is the creative endeavor for integrating light into your darkness throughout your evolution.
Energetically in the body, safety comes from the Root Chakra—this space is the psychosomatic wheelhouse or center in our vessel that is closest to the earth and certainly the most deep and private. The Root Chakra represents connections to our physical reality including basic needs to live like food, shelter, water, and safety. As human beings, these basic needs are often trained through our familial ties and conditionings. When we feel safe with our basic needs met, we are rooted or connected to our reality and inspired to create and take action. However, the Root Chakra and the ability to trust and feel safe is often compromised by conditioning in how we relate to our basic needs and resources. The Root can hold darkness of fear, feeling: un-resourced, in lack, anxiousness, or insecure.
In the studio, with coaching and Reiki energy healing clients, a major theme leading up to Winter Solstice was within the Root Center. Clients were unknowingly looking to find trust and safety in the continued embodiment of their light. I say unknowingly because they’re already living their light but their challenges were in grappling with their shadow or darker parts—the Old Self. They were struggling with the release process of letting go of their old survival tactics to run, to remain dependent, hold back from being more. But it was vital to realize that it all had purpose at one point or another. The darkness of winter is providing space for this Old Self to be known in order to be integrated, in order to be loved and seen, so that the light and New Skin is actualize instead.
The Old Self, which I wrote about over my Fall Equinox post, consists of patterns that we used to depend on for survival (Root energy). My clients have been well on their evolutionary path, they’re deeply invested actually. However, the Old Self, is leaving or has been shed and the grief process of letting go is starting it’s descend. Since Equinox, as the days have gotten darker, the shedding is calling us forward. It’s scary to step into the light sometimes—it’s scary to be seen and feel good about it, especially when you lived conditioning to feel the opposite. Clients grieved this fear naturally because it has been such a part of who they were. It’s how they survived, it’s what they’ve known. It’s powerful to let it go and to see yourself in new light.
The antidote to shedding this fear is finding peace within who you actually are as a whole person not just your survival tactics. We are being called to stabilize our wholeness into the Root and actualize this stability into our realities. We are being called to support the safety of our wholeness within and around us in order to lead the next state for the collective journey. In doing so, we must honor the work we’ve done. We must simply rest this winter in order to sense into the light, in order to draw upon it. This process allows us to refrain from acting out of fear so that we can resume stepping into love, in order to safely hold all the versions of ourselves, knowing that each has value and service.
The Winter Solstice is here to remind us that being in the darkness is a natural, normal part of the process. The darkness is the space in which we find the light through our senses, not just our vision. The coming light is a token to trust the letting go of the consuming darkness and to come into the safety of who you are as a whole person.
We acknowledge what once was, but we trust that our whole self is just as worthy as the best parts.
We acknowledge that the darkness has value, that the change of season is just as worthy as the longer more vibrant day-light.
To support the evolution of your journey and maintain your safety in your wholeness, book a Coaching Call or Reiki and Energy Healing Session.
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Rest More
I am not offering journal prompts or traditional practices in this post as I believe it is more conducive to enjoy the liminal space between Solstice and January 1st.
Otherwise:
Spend time with your family, or don’t
Make plans, or don’t
Make lots of tea or drink more water
Catch lots of 2:30pm sunshine
Consider what part of yourself you’ve relied on for so long to keep you safe. Consider how it’s no longer of service to you. Consider loving it and saying thank you to it. Consider stepping into your true light.
February 1st, known as Imbolc, is what I consider a start to a new season for setting goals. The time between now and then is about reflection, rest, LISTENING to your inner senses and practice following them.
I’m Currently Enjoying
The Song ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Faries’ from The Nutcracker
An allergen friendly banana bread: link to recipe
Aryuvedic Date Balls
20 dates, 1 cup of almonds, 1/4 cup of coconut oil, 1 tsp vanilla extract, and cinnamon and cardamom for seasoning. Blend into a blender, roll into balls, stock in the fridge and snack throughout the week.
Thanks for making time for me in your inbox or in general. I’m wishing you peace for the end of your year and grounded actualized living for the year to come.
E
Thank you for this great reminder that going into the dark and quiet can be energising and empowering for the foundation of self.