Autumn to Winter: Break out of your Slump

The autumn-winter period is a time of drawing inwards, resting and recuperating. Recently, in a bid   to stay healthy, happy, and energised over the winter months, I've been meditating on the following seasonal meditation questions:

• How will I go about nurturing and nourishing myself over the winter?
• Which yoga practices will energise me and help to banish the winter blues?
• Which activities nourish me, and which deplete me? How can I increase the nourishing activities and reduce the depleting ones.

My favourite way of working with the meditation questions is to start with a ten minute walking meditation, turning the questions over in my mind as I walk. Then I follow this with a twenty minute writing meditation. (How to use walking and writing meditations with the seasonal meditation questions is explained fully in my forthcoming book Yoga Through the Year). 

Whilst pondering on the question "Which yoga practices will energise me and help to banish the winter blues?", it popped in to my mind that a few years ago I'd spent a whole term teaching yoga inspired by the theme: Break out of your Slump​. So later I tracked down a slightly dusty, bright pink folder of my Break out of your Slump teaching notes. Below you'll find one of the practices from the folder, I've been using it as my early morning yoga practice over the past few days. I've found it perfect for this autumn-winter time as its gentleness honours my natural tendency to want to hibernate at this time of year, whilst at the same time it includes chest opening poses to avoid the winter slump and keep my heart open. 

Here are my teaching notes/aide memoire for the practice. Excuse their unpolished nature, but they were originally intended for my eyes only, but they'll give you an idea of what the practice is like.

Here's a link to the Julie Gudmestad Break out of your Slump article that originally inspired me to create a series of practices around this theme.

​For more of my teaching handouts and resources on the theme of avoiding the winter slump, please visit Jilly's Yoga Blog.​