Transitions are rarely tidy.

I know this in my bones—literally. When I gave birth at home, I learned that transition was the most intense, painful, and bewildering stage of labor. It wasn’t graceful. It wasn’t predictable. It was raw, overwhelming, and absolutely necessary to bring new life forward.

That moment imprinted something in me: transitions are the threshold between the known and the unknown.

There is a quiet truth I return to again and again in my work with singers, somatic students, public speakers, and seekers of all kinds:
You cannot think your way into wholeness.
You have to feel your way there.

In a culture that rewards hyper-productivity, perfectionism, and mental overdrive, we’ve been taught to treat the body like a machine—or worse, a problem to fix or a vessel to ignore. We learn to push through, to override the messages of fatigue, tension, anxiety, or numbness in service of getting things done.

But the body never lies.

This is the dream time. When the darkness outlasts the light, we tend to turn inward. For some that is a welcome respite from a busy world and the demands we face every day. For others such solitude is loneliness, and isolation. The darkness can be overwhelming. We can easily focus on our shortcomings and weaknesses. Especially when the cold is accompanied by aches reminding us of old wounds of the body or heart, and places that didn't heal quite right. Whether it's an old sports injury or an unresolved conflict with a loved one, this time of cold and dark brings it forth. Sometimes we aren't even aware of what is causing our distress. But we know it's there.