Winter Solstice as Teacher: Darkness, Dormancy, and Healing

what can the winter solstice teach us?

Today is the 21st of December when those of us in the northern hemisphere arrive at the winter solstice—the longest night, the shortest day, the moment when the Earth tilts furthest from the sun. For thousands of years, humans have marked this threshold with fire and ceremony, from Stonehenge to the kivas of the Hopi pueblos. Yet in our modern, artificially-lit world, we often rush past this turning point, missing what it might offer us, an opportunity to slow down and consider: what might the solstice teach us about healing?

The solstice arrives at what we might call the hinge of the year. The weeks preceding it carry a quality of descent—shorter days, longer shadows, a gradual withdrawal of light and warmth. For many people, this is simply difficult. Seasonal affective disorder is widely recognised and many of us just feel the heaviness that comes with darkness. We sleep longer, move less, and can feel a sluggishness that resists the demands of modern productivity. There's a sense in which our bodies are designed to hibernate, even if our lives refuse to acknowledge it.

And yet we might approach this descent differently—not as something to endure or medicate away, but as an invitation. The poet David Whyte speaks of "sweet darkness," and the ecotherapist Andy Fisher writes about "endarkenment" as an essential complement to enlightenment. What might it mean to befriend the dark rather than flee it?

Consider what happens in nature during this time. Seeds lie dormant in the soil, drinking from the darkness, waiting. Trees stand stripped bare, their leafless limbs lifted upward and the fields lie fallow. Everything that grew with vigour in summer has either died back or entered a state of profound rest. This is not emptiness—it is active dormancy, a gathering of energy for what comes next.

And we can reflect on this natural cycle as a mirror for our own process. Just as the seed requires darkness to germinate, so too might we require periods of withdrawal and apparent stillness for genuine transformation. The winter solstice marks the moment when the descent bottoms out—when the darkness reaches its fullness and, having reached it, begins to turn. There is something profoundly hopeful in this, not despite the darkness but because of it. The light returns precisely because the darkness has been honoured, has been allowed to complete itself.

Our culture tends to pathologise darkness and the psychological states we associate with it such as depression, grief, and withdrawal as problems to be solved as quickly as possible. But the winter solstice reminds us that some experiences need to be moved through rather than around. The darkness that precedes dawn is not an obstacle to the light—it is its necessary condition.

Our ancestors understood this intuitively. The ceremonial practices of the Native American Zuni people for instance, centre their Shalako celebration on the winter solstice, recognising this as a sacred threshold. Ancient Celtic peoples kept fires burning through the longest night, not to banish the darkness but to companion it, to hold faith that the sun would return. These practices acknowledge something modern culture often misses: that there is wisdom in the dark, and that healing sometimes requires us to sit with what we cannot immediately transform.

For nature-allied therapy the winter solstice offers a natural anchor for exploring themes of surrender, trust, and cyclical renewal. We might invite a noticing of what wants to die back, what is asking to lie fallow. We might create space for the kind of stripping down that winter enacts—releasing what no longer serves, allowing ourselves to be simplified and quieted. And we might hold, together, the faith that even in the deepest darkness, something is gathering itself for return.

The solstice teaches us that growth is not linear but cyclical. After every descent comes an ascent. After every death, decomposition—and then, new life. This is not mere optimism but ecological fact, woven into the fabric of the living world. When we align ourselves with this rhythm, we discover that the darkness is not our enemy. It is, as our ancestors knew, a doorway.