Here in the Southern Hemisphere, the Winter Solstice is almost upon us. The darkest, shortest day of the year. In Melbourne, although it will get progressively lighter after that, the coldest months are still to come.

But I find that there is something about the cold and the darkness together. Something introspective. Something powerful. I got the Yoga Concepts newsletter the other day and Jane was talking about how, in Winter, our energy draws into Anahata Chakra, the Heart.

Image courtesy of jpythias on Flickr

According to WIkipedia,

Anahata is associated with the ability to make decisions outside of the realm of karma. In Manipura and below, man is bound by the laws of karma, and the fate he has in store for him. In Anahata, one is making decisions, ‘following your heart’, based upon one’s higher self, and not from the unfulfilled emotions and desires of lower nature. The Anahata seed sound is yam. The wish-fulfilling tree, kalpa taru, resides here, symbolizing the ability to manifest whatever you wish to happen in the world.

And then I read this amazing blog post written around the time of the solstice in the Northern Hemisphere:

We are fast approaching what could easily be the most important of all the times in the year. The Winter Solstice is both a point of changelessness and a time when all changes. Of course the Summer Solstice is this too but I would argue that the darkness of Winter adds its own special magic that cannot be matched in the intense light of Summer. Our ancestors built many fine stone structures carefully aligned to the Winter Solstice. So it must have been a time of great importance for them also. Some have argued that they did this because they were fearful that the declining sun would set for ever bringing eternal darkness on the world. Personally I find this hard to believe for they must have known that the wheel of the year turns with utter constancy. Earlier still our distant grandmothers must have seen the faithful cycles of the sun and the moon carrying on through the dramatic climate change and floods of the ending ice-age.

I would guess that the Winter Solstice is important because it combines a moment of poise and stillness – that only the dark can provide – with a real change of direction. Everything goes on but nothing is quite the same again. This echoes our experience of those Solstice moments of life; birth, menarch, leaving home and cleaving to another, death … Womb moments…

The more we listen, the more we open to touch, the more frequent such Solstice moments become. Utter life changing Solstice moments are rare magical events but every day has its little Solstice moments. In the darkness we process them in our dreams and a new day dawns like no other. This is how the Goddess loves, nurtures and tests us. This is what makes life such an amazing journey.

It is quiet, in the Heart, no chatter from the ego. Perhaps, sometimes, in times of change and transformation, it is dark, in the heart. It is where above and below meet. It is where exhale gives way to inhale, and inhale to exhale. It is our centre. The meeting point of heaven and earth, mind and body.

It was sort of unplanned that my openhearted workshop falls on the weekend of the solstice, just as it was sort of unplanned that it is heart-centred, but really, it seems there is a Plan. It is in moments like these, moments of unusual synchronicity, that the hand of the Universe becomes apparent. That Heart’s desires are revealed.