Happy Winter Solstice to everyone. As we close another season, and another year, I can’t help think of the challenges we’ve faced this year and how that has affected our well being. This past year has been a very different one for sure, and I look forward to welcoming in a New Year filled with hope as this Winter Solstice period helps us to continue to connect with our hearts.
Honouring and celebrating the change of seasons is something people have been doing for centuries. Even still, today its significance is just as important. Taking time to acknowledge the transition into the Solstice helps you transition into a period of taking time to rest, and reflect, and to remember how essential this is for your overall wellbeing. A time to pause, your own personal hibernation. Sit back, take a deep breath and rest. Give thanks for all the good work you’ve accomplished this year, allowing for the pause to help you be restored for what work may lay ahead. Without discounting the strain and challenge of 2020, take time to reflect on all the good and the silver linings. For me, it’s the continued good health of our family, close friends and loved ones; the engagement of our eldest daughter, which makes us so happy and gives us something to look forward to; the sense of pride I have in all my kids as they continue to grow into their careers and themselves; and a big one for me personally – together with all my students, we continue to practice yoga together as we’ve successfully taken our classes into the world of Zoom. We did it!!
An added bonus for this year’s winter solstice is the appearance of a “Christmas Star”. As the bright planets of Saturn and Juniper come closer and closer together, their closest alignment culminates on Dec. 21st. – winter solstice. And with these planetary shifts, our feelings will be amplified as these two planets nearly “kiss” in the sky. Planets regularly appear to pass each other in the solar system, with the positions of Jupiter and Saturn being aligned in the sky about once every 20 years. Nicknamed the Great Conjunction, what makes this year’s spectacle so special is that it’s been nearly 400 years since the planets have passed this close to each other, and nearly 800 years since their alignment has occurred at night, as it will this year – making this celestial event appear closer in the night sky than it has since 1226 A.D.! Nearly everyone around the world will be able to witness this great Christmas Star. What a beautiful reminder to each of us to shed light on our selves, and to allow your “star” of light to shine brightly.
Etherically speaking, the meaning of this conjunction is much more powerful, as it is a reminder to literally “sieze” the moment – a precipice for change. What are the changes you want to see in yourself? In your life? Is it in the way you choose to live or the attitudes you hold? Perhaps the need to build your inner strength and learn to express your truth in a healthier way? Or is it time to let your creativity shine? Does your body need tending to or time to heal? Don’t procrastinate on this one. Do you need to strengthen your boundaries? Do you need to make time for a spiritual practice? Now is the time to take charge, with no excuses. The Great Conjunction then, aligned with the winter solstice, marks your time for new beginnings, but more than that, its a strong reminder that you are the master of your soul and of the temple that houses it, and you have the power to move forward in your life. As the old saying goes “Be the change you want to see”. *
And so at the close of another year and at the change of seasons, I’d like to send my warmest wishes to you for a holiday season that will be a little different for all of us this year as we continue to connect with loved ones, stay safe and healthy, and for a New Year filled with good intentions to manifest peace, health, and unity, and the changes you want to see in yourself.
The Winter Solstice, like all solstice and equinox transitions, is a cycle of change, allowing for the transition of starting out again. A day to mark new beginnings. You reach this place by first taking time to turn inward. Silently attuning to your self. A time to pause and reflect so you can move forward. Take this time to reconnect with yourself, to move into your body, connecting a little deeper to have more balance. Take the time in your everyday to make an inner connection, accessing your depths, honouring your heart as well as your mind.
The shortest day of the year. It’s here that we pause and reflect. Time for an inward spiral of movement to help propel us forward. But first, we must let go of who it is we were this past year. All those things that no longer serve our highest good. Lay it down, let it go, like peeling the layers away, allowing yourself to come closer to the centre of who you are. Your essence. Give yourself a moment to rest. If you don’t take the time to stop and breathe, then how are you able to draw wisdom for all you’ve experienced throughout this year? Stillness is the place that all we create comes from. Amidst the turmoil, I invite you to experience the silence and allow yourself to complete. At this time that Mother Earth lets herself rest, let yourself rest as well, so you can begin again, fresh and new. Let yourself stand still, even for a moment, to pause. It’s in the pause that you bring awareness back to your self.
So on this day of celebration, we take a moment to balance both the light and the darkness that is found in this rest cycle of winter. Take a deep breath and then just like the earth in her cycle where she reaches the furthest point in her journey, she pauses for a moment, then turns back to her days of longer sunshine.
Believe, because you are placing yourself in alignment to Universal Law and to your True Self.
Peace on Earth
Namaste,
Jacine
* Etherical meaning of the Junipter/Saturn alignment adapted from Weekly Energy Updates, Kathy Roseborough, Dec 2020