Winter Solstice: Emanations from a Point of Stillness

Editor’s note: Over the course of 2023, at the eight stations in the Wheel of the Year, Bart Everson has shared with the Gaian community eight guided, breath-based meditations. It is our hope that these meditations will help you to observe and to celebrate Gaia’s journey around the Sun, and to explore possible meanings embedded in various parts of the cycle. The particular meditation featured here is appropriate for the winter solstice, which comes in late December in the Northern Hemisphere and late June in the Southern Hemisphere. If you’re in the Southern Hemisphere, you may wish to listen instead to the summer solstice meditation. Also, a reminder that if you value these meditations and the broader work of the Gaian Way, please consider giving an annual end-of-the-year donation here.

This meditation is dedicated to Gaia, Mother Earth, the mother of all, and to the winter solstice. This is a particular moment that falls usually on or around the 21st of December in the northern hemisphere or the 21st of June in the southern hemisphere.

It’s also sometimes known by the name of Yule or Midwinter, and it’s associated with any number of much more prominent holidays of various religious traditions, at least in the northern hemisphere.

For this meditation, it’s best if you can sit comfortably, with an erect spine. You’re invited to just notice what it’s like in this present moment, for you, wherever you may be. Setting aside any tasks or responsibilities that you may have, settling in to your present moment, noticing the bodily sensations of how and where you are.

You’re invited to bring your attention to lie lightly on your breath. Again, just noticing what it’s like, with minimal judgment. Just observing the cycle of your breath: breathing in and breathing out.

And you’re invited to make that cycle of breathing just a little bit bigger, deeper. Slow, gentle breathing. Not anything uncomfortable. But maybe a slightly more rounded breath cycle.

You can visualize it, if you like, as a wheel, a great wheel.

Breathing in, go up the wheel. Breathing out, go back down the wheel.

If you’d like, you can even count. Breathing in, you can count up, 1-2-3-4, and breathing out, counting back down, 3-2-1-0. And you can time it, so that you have the four at the crest of the breath cycle and the zero after the exhalation is finished, but before the next breath begins.

So on the one, the breath inhalation begins, 2-3-4, breath is full, 3-2-1, the breath ends, and zero again, the space between breaths. So, let’s try breathing together at our own pace. You can count if you like.

Notice how as you count up, the breath is born, it takes shape, it reaches its fullness, and then as you breathe out, you let go, it recedes. And at zero, it’s that special place, where you’re done breathing out, but the new breath has not begun. A little space, a little moment of stillness. Let’s zero in on that zero. It seems like a fitting symbol. We can imagine ourselves resting or residing in that space, that stillness between breaths, as we continue to breathe. From the point of zero, you can observe this great wheel going up on one side 1-2-3, four at the top, 3-2-1 down again. Here we are, at the bottom, observing this greater wheel from this moment of stillness, between the breaths. Continuing to breathe, but identifying with that space between breaths at zero.

Notice how the desire to breathe leads to the fullness and then to the letting go and back to this little moment of stillness, this zero point on the wheel. And, as you continue to breathe, notice how this cycle, this circle, is like so many other cycles and circles that we see all around us and within us, small and large, including especially the cycle of the seasons. Notice how we can map this wheel of our breath onto the Wheel of the Year. From this moment of stillness at the bottom of the wheel, we can imagine the entire year. Breathing in 1-2-3, four in the fullness of the breath, 3-2-1, and back to zero. As we count up, it’s like the light rising throughout the first half of the year, reaching its peak, and then the light recedes and diminishes, until again we reach this zero point, this point of stillness, the winter solstice, where indeed the sun seems to stand still in its movement across the sky.

From this point of stillness, we’re well situated to apprehend the whole, to see the whole wheel. And in the same way, we can imagine that from our point of stillness, we can apprehend the whole of Gaia.

I say imagination, because I’m not sure we really can. But from this point of stillness, where we’re sitting right now, we can imagine the larger life-cycles that sustain us. We can imagine the ecosystems unfurling around us. We can imagine the land and the waters spreading out from our point, the point where we are, the point of stillness, where you exist right now. The atmosphere above, the soil below, the lands and waters around you, the other living beings who all constitute the greater being of Gaia.

And as our thoughts spread out to apprehend this whole, from our point of stillness and peace, we’re aware of many conflicts, stresses, disturbances, and suffering — most of which, it has to be acknowledged, is very human: suffering in the human realm, caused by human actions, wars, conflicts, the degradation of ecosystems, the devastation of habitats.

If we can feel a little peace and stillness where we are, we can also wish it for the greater world, and let this wish guide our actions, after our meditation is over.

So, as you continue the cycle of the breath, send out a wish, just a little wish to the world, that all beings may be happier, healthier, and more peaceful, and that we may have the strength to help make that wish into a reality. With a final note of gratitude, we receive this moment, this breath, this day, this life, and this wheel, as a gift. May we honor her with our actions. Thank you.