Seasonal living is a way of being and engaging with the world that helps us make peace with the messiness and impermanence of life. It reminds us that life is more cyclical than linear. And it helps us mine for the beauty and wisdom in every season. Even the hardest of them.
It’s a practice that can greatly increase our inner peace and outer calm. It gives us permission to honour our unique wiring, own our strength and struggle, and recognize that we are all always in progress. One season is not better than another, they each come with their own gifts and challenges, though some may feel “easier” in some ways. When we do the work that each season invites us into, we’re equipped for what comes next.
A practice of seasonal living can help us lean into rather than resist the literal or climatic season I’m in and more importantly, for me and my clients, is that it helps us live present, whole, and brave in the emotional, energetic, creative, or spiritual season we’re in.
By befriending ourselves and becoming intimate with our deepest vulnerabilities, we create an opportunity for experiencing life fully.
Pema Chodron
Seasonal Living teaches us to befriend ourselves and open up to joy
There are many layers of seasonal living – many ways to explore, experiment, or play with this practice. For instance, Seasonal Living helps us tune into and make peace with the climatic season we’re in. We might explore how to leverage the creative season we’re in, learn to track mood and energy through lunar tracking, or practice self-acceptance through enlarging our understanding of the gifts and challenges of each season of our life cycle.
For the past 15 years I’ve woven a practice of Seasonal Living into my life and it’s had a significant positive impact on how I show up to my work, how I honour my wiring and care for my mind-emotion-physical health, how I navigate the incredibly hard seasons of life while living rooted and resilient, and how I spend my days.
It also helps me find peace and the courage to trust and wait as I walk through seasons of transition that can feel destabilizing or unmooring, scary and exciting.
dip your toe into seasonal living with these free resources
Sign up to access the Seasonal Living resource page. It includes four short videos with easy to implement strategies to help you befriend yourself, and an overview of the Layers of Winter, Spring, Summer, and Autumn to help you identify the season(s) you’re in – because we can be in different seasons in different aspects of our life – and then identify what you need in order to live fully present, whole, and brave exactly where you are.
LIVE MINDFULLY + SEASONALLY
Sign up for weekly hope and encouragement to help you befriend yourself and live whole and brave in every season along with access to the Seasonal Living Resource Page.
NOW WHAT? When you sign up for THE HOPE MAP, you will receive a short confirmation email and then a proper welcome email with a link and Password for the FREE GIFTS page so you can bookmark it. I recommend adding alifeinprogress@outlook.com to your contacts and if you don’t see both emails within a few minutes, please check your junk and spam folders and mark alifeinprogress@outlook.com as a safe sender. We take your privacy seriously.
*first photo by my friend, Jan Zinck