by Anna Nauka

Winter arrives quietly, often first in the body.


Energy lowers. Mornings feel heavier. The impulse to turn inward grows stronger. Yet many of us meet these changes with resistance—pushing ourselves to stay productive, cheerful, and unchanged by the season.

In Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, Katherine May offers a different invitation. She writes of winter as a time not to conquer, but to inhabit—a season for “slow replenishment,” reflection, and repair. Wintering, she suggests, is not a personal failure or a detour from life, but a necessary phase within it.

From a psychotherapeutic and somatic perspective, this idea makes deep sense.

Seasonal Low Mood as a Bodily Experience

Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and the more common “January blues” are often discussed in psychological terms, yet they are profoundly physiological experiences. Reduced daylight affects circadian rhythms, melatonin secretion, and serotonin regulation—systems that directly shape mood, sleep, appetite, and motivation (Rosenthal et al., 1984; Wirz-Justice et al., 2019).

In winter, the nervous system often shifts toward conservation. According to Polyvagal Theory (Porges, 2011), when resources feel scarce—whether due to cold, darkness, or cumulative stress—the body naturally moves toward lower-energy states. These states can feel like withdrawal, fatigue, or emotional flatness, but they are not inherently pathological. They are adaptive responses.

The difficulty arises when we judge these responses rather than listening to them.

January Blues and the Cost of Pushing Through

January can feel especially stark. After the intensity of the holidays—social demands, travel, emotional labor—the sudden quiet can expose exhaustion we’ve been carrying for weeks or months. Research on stress and recovery shows that without sufficient rest, the body struggles to return to baseline regulation (McEwen & Stellar, 1993).

From a somatic lens, the January blues may reflect not a lack of motivation, but a nervous system asking to downshift. When we respond by setting aggressive goals or demanding constant positivity, we risk deepening disconnection from the body’s needs.

Wintering as Somatic Permission

Katherine May writes, “We need to learn how to invite winter in.” Somatically, this means allowing the body to set the pace.

Wintering asks us to notice sensation before interpretation. To feel heaviness without immediately labeling it as depression. To recognize the desire for rest, warmth, and solitude as meaningful signals rather than obstacles to overcome.

Research on interoception—the ability to sense internal bodily states—shows that attuning to the body supports emotional regulation and psychological resilience (Farb et al., 2015). Healing, in this context, doesn’t come from forcing change, but from allowing the body to complete cycles of rest and integration.

Wintering may look like:

  • Slowing daily rhythms and reducing unnecessary demands

  • Choosing gentle, nourishing movement

  • Letting emotions be felt in the body without rushing to fix them

  • Creating small rituals of warmth and predictability

  • Seeking co-regulation through therapy, relationships, or community

As trauma research reminds us, emotional states are not just thoughts we think—they are experiences we live in the body (van der Kolk, 2014). Rest, then, is not the opposite of healing. It is often the condition that makes healing possible.

The Quiet Work of the Season

Nothing grows year-round. Roots deepen in the dark. Winter does not ask us to bloom—it asks us to listen, to tend, to conserve what is essential.

If you are feeling slower this season, it may not mean something is wrong. It may mean your body is wintering. And within that slowing, there is a quiet intelligence at work—preparing the ground for what comes next.