Winter flow 2:The Biological Switch That Keeps Animals Warm in winter

My second winter on the farm, something strange happened.

I stopped feeling cold.

Not that I didn't notice the temperature...it was still -20°C outside and I could feel it

But the resistence and the avoidance that used to make me miserable was almost completely gone

 Despite the -20°C on the outside.. On the inside, I felt... warm. 

I'd stand outside in a t-shirt collecting eggs, barefoot in the snow, and feel ALIVE

Not shivering. Not desperate to get back inside.

Meanwhile, my neighbor who'd lived in Canada his whole life was really sturggling. 

He spent his winters indoors in heated buildings. He would bundle up in tick jackets and still complain about being freezing.

We both existed in same temperature, and yet, had completely different experiences.

This led me to become really curious about the wild animals and I started watching  them more carefully.

I watched wild chickens, deer and moose thriving in -20°C  without heated shelters. And I asked the question that changes everything:

What do they know that we've forgotten?

It turns out they carry a cellular biological memory/ program that automatically adjusts everything: their metabolism, their body temperature, their energy production.

Those animals are automatically activating a program within,  that has all the codes needed to deal with winter gracefully.

They are activating their winter programming.

And here's what's absolutely shocking: Every mammal, every bird, every human INCLUDING YOU, has this built-in winter programming.

It turns out that WE all have two distinct metabolic programs built into our biology:

Summer Programming.

And Winter Programming.

And which program runs depends entirely on the signals your body receives from NATURE.

The wild chickens received clear winter signals: shorter days, cold temperatures, darkness at night, food from winter soil, direct contact with earth.

Every signal aligned. Every force pointed to winter.

So their bodies switched. Seamlessly. Completely.

The caged chickens under artificial lights 24/7? Their bodies never got the memo. Mixed signals. Confused biology. Struggling to survive.

My neighbor in his heated house? Stuck in summer mode. In December.

And me? After realigning with nature's forces of physics, I had finally switched to winter mode.

That's why I felt warm from the inside.

Your Two Internal Clocks

You've probably heard of circadian rhythm: your 24-hour clock that tells you when to wake and sleep.

But there's another clock running in your body that almost nobody talks about:

Your infradian rhythm: your seasonal clock operating on a yearly cycle.

Your Circadian Rhythm tells your body: "It's day" or "It's night"

Your Infradian Rhythm tells your body: "It's summer" or "It's winter"

Research from the University of Manchester published in Current Biology (2020) showed that mammals have built-in biological calendars that track the seasons.

Think about those deer I watched at the forest edge. They didn't need a calendar. Their bodies read the signals:

Days getting shorter

UV light decreasing

Temperature dropping

And their infradian rhythm responded: "Activate winter mode."

My body was doing the same thing.

After months of getting clear winter signals: cold exposure, real darkness, seasonal food, grounding, outdoors light exposure ==> my infradian rhythm finally made the switch to winter mode.

And everything changed.

How Your Mitochondria Switch Modes

Here's where it gets fascinating.

When those animals switched to winter mode, something changed at the cellular level.

Research on Siberian hamsters discovered that as day length shortened through seasonal changes, the hamsters' mitochondria completely changed how they produced energy.

Translation: Their cells literally burn the food they eat and the fat they stored to generate warmth from the inside out.

They become the heat source

That's what was happening to me standing barefoot in the snow.

After giving my body the right information from nature, I started warming up from the inside.

A cellular switch had occurred without me realizing it.

My mitochondria literally switched modes and started optimizing for heat production.

That inner fire? That's thermogenesis.

And that's what the wild chickens, the deers and countless mammals who live gracefully through the winter do all along.

They switch.

Modern humans? We've lost the ability to switch.

Not because we can't. But because we're not sending our bodies the right signals.

Summer Programming vs Winter Programming

Let me show you what each program does:

Two completely different survival strategies for two completely different environments.

Why Modern Humans Get Stuck

Here's the problem:

Your infradian rhythm needs clear, consistent signals to know which program to run.

When the signals align, the switch is seamless.

When the signals conflict, you get metabolic confusion.

Modern life sends you summer signals year-round:

Apartments heated to 28°C in December

Artificial lights mimicking summer all night

Tropical fruits in January

Avoiding cold like it's dangerous

Scrolling under LED lights until midnight

Every single signal screams: "It's summer!"

So your body tries to run summer programming. In December. In Canada.

Your mitochondria never switch to thermogenesis.

Your metabolism stays in high-energy activity mode when it should be in deep-repair mode.

You're trying to run summer software on winter hardware.

That's why you're cold. That's why you gain weight. That's why you're exhausted.

The Five Forces That Activate Winter Programming

Through years of observation and research, I discovered that your infradian rhythm relies on five physical forces to determine which program to run:

When animals receive clear signals from all five forces, their bodies switch seamlessly.

When modern humans receive mixed signals, we get stuck.

Over the next 9 blogs, we'll explore each force in detail. You'll learn exactly how to send your body the signals it needs to activate winter programming and thrive like those animals I watched on the farm.

What I Want You to Try This Week

Before we dive deep into each force, here are three simple things you can do today:

That's what changed everything for me.

Not avoiding cold. Not fleeing winter.

But giving my body clear signals so it could do what it was designed to do:

Switch.

See you in Blog 3, where we'll explore the first force: Light.

Here's to a winter filled with health, vitality, and the vibrancy of nature's wisdom.

— Roudy & Joy, VivaRays

Continue Your Winter Flow Journey