Wintering with the Earth Element

The winter months are intended as a pause, to follow nature’s lead to slow down and ‘winter’. The season naturally invites us to deepen our understanding and relationship to the Earth element and to our roots, which we can think of as our needs and what helps us to feel nurtured and thrive in the year ahead.

Winter can be considered a sacred pause that leads us into deeper relationship with the Earth element and our roots/needs. It is a time that asks us to stop in our tracks and to notice the wisdom in our body and to stay present within this bardo, this in between period of pause that can be full of uncertainty and not knowing, which can feel disconcerting and even ‘unsafe’.

We live within a capitalist culture that values constant growth and momentum, so wintering can feel unfamiliar or unsafe when we are used to always moving and striving forward. Yet, if we attune ourselves with the Earth element we will notice it offers a different quality of safety, one that comes from being rooted in our body and in the cycles of the natural world.

The following is an extract from my forthcoming book exploring this quality of safety related to the Earth element and what the Earth can teach us about living in harmony with change:

“The quality of safety related to the Earth element is not the absence of the things that cause us fear such as uncertainty, change or death. When we connect to the Earth element it can help us feel grounded, still and stable, yet this is a sense of peace and safety is found in spite of groundlessness, change and constant movement around us. The Earth teaches us that everything is in constant flux. There is nothing still about the Earth. The planet is turning, seasons are cycling, and there is continual movement of birth, growth, pausing, fading, releasing, composting and rebirthing, all happening at different speeds around us.

The safety the Earth element helps us connect to is one that allows us to stay present and embodied with whatever is happening, rather than trying to stop movement or change. True safety can never be the absence of change and fighting against change drains our energy and creates more tension and suffering. Trees allow their leaves to change colour and fall because it is only through these cycles of releasing that they can live, grow and bloom again. Nature trusts the constant change it is part of and acts in accord with it. It is only human beings who live and act out of sync with nature and their own needs as nature beings

I believe that if we deepen our connection to and understanding of the Earth element, it will lead us to looking at how our societal systems are built and notice that they don’t reflect the same rhythms and sustaining limits we see in nature. When we begin to trust the kind of safety of the Earth element, we can learn to live in true alignment and relationship with change and the Earth’s natural rhythms, rather than resisting the necessary changes of cycles and forcing perpetual growth. Through embracing alignment with the ebb and flow of nature, we could begin to reshape how we organise our lives, our work and our societal systems including our economy.

Imagine an economic model that allowed for natural pauses and declines, rather than only pushing growth. Imagine shareholders (if we had to keep that aspect of the model,) knowing that dividends came only during harvest seasons, not every season, allowing finances to be ploughed back into slow, sustainable growth and into supporting workers and infrastructure. Imagine business owners knowing that enough is as good as a feast, that enough sustains, so they never take more than is needed at the expense of their workforce or society. An economy and workforce acting in harmony with nature would transform our lives, our society and the planet. Nature is already teaching us the blueprint for how things are meant to be if we could only embrace and embody its wisdom. 

Earth Element Affirmation and Prayer for Safety: 

Cycles and change are a natural state of being, I am the Earth, I am safety.

Mother Earth, thank you for holding my roots down deep as I bend and flow through these hardships like my sister and brother trees.”