Preparation for renewal
Seasonal living methodology
About 5 years ago I started applying greater consideration on how the seasons affected the type of work I should be engaging in and what my output should be. Planning my life activities seasonally has been a game changer for my productivity, wellbeing and sense of self. Though its challenging working with the seasons in our disconnected economic and work cycles. Our bodies automatically regulate themselves according to the environment they are in. So I figured if I could work with how my body was interpreting the environment and season then maybe I’d have an easier time. It takes a lot of time and attention to notice these changes and patterns without becoming overly conscious. I’ve written in a daily journal for over six years and have a substantial amount of data to work from to see how my seasonal habits affect my output. What I can do is break down seasonal work according to either agricultural concepts or animalistic patterns. Sort of like creating a personal almanac. I choose to look at the start of the year as being springtime. Why? Because nothing feels more depressing than being forced to start a new project during a time when things are meant to be slow, it's cold and there's less sunshine. Winter is a time for major stillness and minor action.
Spring is a time for new beginnings. We shake the cold off our bodies and maybe even a bit of winter weight. During the spring we should start new projects and plant seeds for peak energetic time in the following summer. Spring time is also the best time for movement. Travel, changing homes and joining new activities. We can grow new branches of our lived experiences along with the grass sprouting up from the ground. Stretching our limbs into eventual fixed positioning for our plans for the remainder of the year. Spring as a new beginning is my time for stakeholder engagement. I am able to better forecast what will be asked of me as I’m tapping into everyone else’s elevated seasonal creativity. I also am better able to understand what I’m able to and open to providing. Spring time doesn’t mean executing a full blast of energy. It is still an adjustment period. Our bodies must acclimate to higher temperatures, get used to pollen being released and fluctuating humidity which allows bacteria to grow and increase risk of sickness. We also have to shake off the winter cycle habits that I’ll discuss later.
Come summer time, people find themselves being able to do more than “usual". This is when people go to most concerts, engage existing relationships and spend time in the sun. Summer doesn’t always seem like a time for movement. The hot sun, depending on where you are, encourages stillness. But this stillness is best spent in community and high energy. There's not as much of a need for hibernation and being indoors like the winter. Go to a cookout. Share what you’ve been up to and use the high energy of the season to amplify ideas and connections seeking to be seen or felt. I plan for most of my marketing efforts to take off in the summertime. So my time is spent deepening customer relationships, executing workflows and maybe launching additional products. Summer is the heart of harvest season for many crops. Our ability to be in community during summer time is a direct result of the abundance and generosity that we are able to partake in during the summer harvest. There is more energy available to be exchanged in the most meaningful and impactful ways. As we all gather around the summer harvest table we are able to diversify our gains through exchange, sharing, bartering and commerce. Preparing us to have variety in our goods and knowledge as we transition into the next season.
Fall! Fall is our next transition season. We are coming in from the outside. Holding onto our precious tans and inner heat collected in the previous season. Falls' energetic transition is beautifully demonstrated by the leaves turning from green to red to orange. Fall is one of my favorite seasons. It gives us the reminder of the importance of a more intimate community. Cuffing season, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Dia De Muertos, Diwali, Rosh Hashanah and more. Fall is a time for gratitude and communion. The beginning of bulking season, It's the moment to increase calories(a unit of energy) in order to internally warm ourselves during the cold seasons; and provide our body ample fat to feed off of so it doesn’t nibble on our hard earned muscles for energy. Fall is still highly social as we come away from high energy summer. The transitory fall temperatures allow us to naturally engage in costume. The more layers we need to stay warm also allow us to convey values through our dress. These value demonstrations attract intimate community and partnership. Preparing us for the opportunity to huddle and cuddle together collectively, to retain heat in preparation for the winter. In the spirit of preparation it is also the time to plant our cool and cold weather crops as the ground is still warm. These crops and ideas(energetic seeds) probably should have been planned for in the previous seasons. Allowing minimal work of tilling the soil or activating the framework for production.
Collective work, that was planned prior to the beginning of the fall season, enables an ease of entering a season specific cycle of expressing gratitude, sharing resources and planning to ensure we make it further into the future of happy survival. We use the bit of caloric heat we have left after our fall meals to execute as much as we can to prepare for a still winter. This community work is easy. It just takes showing up consistently in order to establish a collective rhythm. My friend Noor Tasnim, who’ll appear in a later interview, is a neurologist who studies how dancing together causes couples and groups of people’s literal brain waves to move into sync. Using the framework of dance and neurology, community planning and engagement may function similarly. It requires a bit of a two step in order to get into rhythm. An observation of those around you. A bit of stutter and misstep in order to move into alignment with that electric slide. Then continued observation and synchronization and contribution of alignment in order to bring the next person into the collective movement. Basically, check on your homies. See what they’re doing, see what they need and do so regularly. We’ve all had a moment where someone asked us for something and one of two things happened. We decided to say no even if we were capable, which is okay but we can do better. Or we weren’t capable in the moment but later on we are; or we are able to refer them to someone else. But this is only possible if we know the need, get in rhythm of contributing what we can when we can, and have others we can rely on to do the same. Which is why I emphasize fall as a time for engaging intimate community. While a wide net community is great, information travels more meaningfully and qualitatively by word of mouth and act of hand. Holidays, informal and formal ceremonies and traditions create reminders for this so it's not as hard to remember what to do as an individual to engage community. I believe this topic deserves its own space but cultural practice preservation can be approached with an innovation mindset. If certain traditions don't sit well with you, transform it, but we cannot afford complete abandonment without innovation or functionality replication. Lest we lose opportunities to celebrate our wins and nurse the wounds of those in pain who tried, failed, but still deserve to be in our communities.
So here comes winter. Cold a** breezes, ice and snow. It's crazy to think that remembering the association between winter and snow with winter lowkey ages me. Climate action now! Anyway, Winter is a time for major stillness with minor actions. Major stillness looks like more time asleep, calorie increases, less major travel, limiting oneself to intentional physical movement for the sake of maintaining ability, and intimate community time. Minor actions look like writing, deep reflection, putting on additional body fat and acknowledging the accomplishments of ourselves and others. The fall harvest has been reaped, the ground is cold or frozen, and planting seeds won't be as effective. The plants around us don't die but they sink their energy into their roots to maintain their stillness and power throughout the season. The animals nibble on their preserves intermittently fasting in between. The bugs bury themselves deep underground. With everybody doing all of that [close to] nothing, why would you think now is a good time to plan the idea for new years resolutions? The ground is frozen! You will burn through your caloric preserves trying to dig into that ground. Not to mention you may damage the root systems and creature homes below that will be less likely to be able to repair themselves due to energetic concentration. Listen, our economic system is out of whack, our bills are due, our consumption habits are self destructive and our children may still be hungry. But you can’t fight against what was meant to be. And during winter we are meant to be still. It is a privilege to do nothing during this season. Which is why during the fall we should have made sure that those with less can reduce their need even if just in a small percentage.
When I teach movement classes, during the winter, one of my favorite ways to start is with a body scan. The class shares what they’re feeling and I do my best to create a Yin Yoga inspired movement session. This looks like maintaining certain positions for extended periods of time to address the bodies that need stretching. During this time we are silent, engaging our cores, and using the breath to internally push the stretch deeper. Winter doesn’t have to look like complete rest, it can look like moving through that which is happening internally in a progressive way. Progressive as in, not a time for planning, but a time for internal gratitude and an internal reminder of what it is that we are capable of. The habit of quickly transitioning from reflection to planning is a survival response. When we identify our fears and deficiencies, our human instinct is to address them as quickly as possible. But what if we sat with them? What if we took the time to go in and to be intimate with each version of ourselves that we have accomplished being? What if we took this time of major stillness and minor action to be more complete versions of ourselves through deep reflection? I theorize that with this work done, we better prepare ourselves to spring forward (see what I did there?) into action, more whole, more densely our authentic selves and using our reorganized and full mass to move into the next seasonal year with greater efficacy and grace of thought, movement and action.
Whatever season this text has found you in I encourage you to use the following action framework. Try it and let me know how it works!
Action Framework
Daily practice implementation
Seasonal transition preparations
Community engagement opportunities
Environmental impact monitoring
There is no particular order. Whatever works for you.
Thank you!