The winter season is the yin time of the year according to Chinese Medicine. Nature sleeps and goes undercover, inside, and underground.
Using this theme of the internal yin season, what is the best way to look at our New Year’s resolutions? It is to ask if it is an internal or external goal. If it is internal, then it is perfect for the energy of this season and nature’s energy will support you in accomplishing the goal without the force or will power that is required if you were to pick a more yang or external goal.
For example: A common resolution is to lose weight. In just this form, it is totally external – you would see the weight loss on your physical body. But are you doing the internal, spiritual, emotional work necessary to support the external work. Let me suggest a switch in vision for this New Year’s resolution.
During the winter months, set a goal for increasing your connection to God, to your own spiritual practice. Strengthen your inner resources, the same way that nature protects and gathers its resources during the winter months. Cultivate gratitude, and inner vision. Evaluate beliefs, thoughts and emotions that contribute to excess weight or body clutter. Heal the emotions of loneliness, bitterness, unforgiveness thru your own religious or spiritual practice. Create the vision you want in your mind and heart first during this yin season. Use the time wisely during winter for this internal and spiritual work.
Then when spring is eminent, you will be ready and motivated and supported with your inner strength and vision to bring the goal outward into the external world. Just like nature takes its stored water, roots, and seeds from the ground below into the sunshine and above ground for all to see. Then it will be the time to set the goal for weight loss for your external body. It will be easier to accomplish and will require less willpower and internal fighting and frustration. Your inner body and spirit will already be what you want and will manifest into the outer body with ease.
Evaluate all your resolutions in the same way: Here are some of the top resolutions around the country: Spending more time with family or friends, fitness and weight loss, quit smoking or drinking, get out of debt, get organized, enjoy life more, reduce stress, travel. More than half of these are external goals that could be accomplished successfully if the emotional and spiritual work is done first.
Nature has given us the guide on how to grow and improve – from the inside, the spirit, the yin first.
