Winter flow 4: The Winter Solstice Secret Indigenous People Never Forgot

Welcome Back, Beautiful Light Being

In our last blog, we discovered how morning and midday light set your daily and seasonal clocks. You learned why that first signal from the sun matters, and why missing it keeps you cold, tired, and gaining weight.

Today, we're exploring the other half of the equation.

Darkness.

My First Winter Solstice

It's December 21st, 2018, the longest night of the year.

Here I'm on a farm in northern Canada, celebrating the winter solstice with indigenous families who've lived on this land for generations.

It's my first time honoring this day. My first time understanding what it means.

Earlier that afternoon, one of the elders, a farmer named Hunt whose family had worked this land for over 200 years, sat with me by the wood stove.

He places his warm hand on my shoulder, looks me in the eye with his gentle, glowing eyes, and starts sharing a story I will never forget:

"10 years ago, my daughter Kaya moved to the city. Toronto.

She got a good job in a corporate office. For the first time in her life, she was under fluorescent lights day and night.

She'd call us every few weeks. Always tired. Always stressed. Couldn't sleep. Gaining weight. Getting sick constantly.

Doctors gave her pills for anxiety. Pills for sleep. Pills for her thyroid.

One December, Kaya came home for the solstice. She looked... grey. Depleted. Like something inside her had dimmed.

Her grandmother, Nokomis, took one look at her and said: 'You've forgotten the way back to... yourself.'"

Hunt pauses, adding a log to the fire.

"Nokomis means 'wisdom keeper.' It symbolizes the feminine power.

The name was given to my mother by her grandmother, acknowledging her role as the holder of ancient knowledge. The keeper of balance.

In our tradition, the feminine represents receptivity. Stillness. The inward journey. Rest.

This is the energy of winter itself.

While summer is yang—active, bright, outward, doing—winter is yin: restful, dark, inward, being.

The solstice marks the peak of this feminine power. The deepest darkness. The most profound rest.

Nokomis understood this deeply.

Every year from the winter solstice until the spring equinox, she followed what her grandmother had taught her:

Every evening, as the sun set, she would light a small fire.

This little ceremony became a keystone habit, symbolizing the end of the active day.

No more knitting. No more cooking. No more preserving food. No more work of any kind.

From that moment on, she would simply sit by the fire.

Watching the flames flicker.

Listening to the wood crackle.

Doing nothing.

Just sitting in stillness, honoring the deep wisdom of nature. The same wisdom that makes the trees drop their leaves, the bears retreat to their dens, the land itself go dormant and quiet.

Nokomis knew something most humans today have forgotten:

We are part of nature. We follow the same cycle.

When we're in sync with the cycle, we thrive.

When we move away from our roots, we suffer.

When darkness came, she let her body follow what the earth was already doing.

Resting. Restoring. Preparing for spring's return.

She told Kaya: 'Stay with me. Do what I do. Just this once.'"

Hunt's voice softens.

"Kaya was desperate. Desperate to find her way back to herself.

And she knew her grandmother carried deep wisdom.

So for three months, she lived the old way.

Every evening, she helped Nokomis light the fire at sunset.

And from that moment on, no activity. No screens. No lights.

Just firelight and stillness.

At first, she'd sit there restless. Her mind racing. Her body twitching with the need to do something.

Her whole life had been about productivity. Movement. Constant activity.

Sitting still felt unbearable. Like she was 'wasting' her time.

But Nokomis would just smile and say: 'Give it time. You will naturally return to balance.'

And slowly, night by night, something shifted.

The restlessness began to fade.

Kaya started noticing things she'd never noticed before: the way the firelight danced on the walls, the rhythm of her own breathing, the heaviness in her body that signaled true tiredness.

Not exhaustion. Not depletion.

Natural tiredness.

The kind that comes when darkness tells your body it's time to rest.

She'd go to bed when the fire died down. Sometimes 8 PM. Sometimes 9 PM.

And she'd sleep 10, 11, sometimes 12 hours on the longest nights.

Waking naturally with the sunrise. no alarm. Her body naturally saying: 'It's time.'

Within weeks, her face started to change.

The grey pallor faded. Color returned to her cheeks.

Her eyes,which had been dull and lifeless, began to clear.

The inflammation in her joints decreased. The brain fog lifted. The weight started coming off without any diet changes.

Her anxiety... disappeared.

By the spring equinox, she looked like a different person.

Alive. Vibrant. Glowing.

Like she'd come back to herself.''

Hunt looks at me directly now.

"The doctors who have been prescribing anxiety and thyroid medication couldn't explain it. They said the medication must have finally kicked in.

But we knew what had happened.

She'd stopped fighting nature's rhythm

She'd stopped trying to live in summer mode during winter.

She'd let winter do what winter is meant to do: restore her.

She once again returned to balance, rhythm and ultimately to… herself

Our people have always honored the winter solstice. The longest darkness. The deepest night.

We knew that darkness was not the enemy. It is the medicine.

We knew that after this night, the light would slowly return.

But we also knew something modern people have forgotten:

It's winter darkness that makes it possible for us to withstand the strong summer light.

Without deep rest in winter, you can't sustain the long active days of summer.

Without the restoration that darkness brings, you burn out under the brightness.

Winter doesn't just heal what summer depleted.

Winter prepares you for what summer demands.

Modern people fight this. They stay in yang mode all year long,active, under static artificial lights that never change, doing, producing, 14 hours a day, every day, no matter the season.

The never sync with nature's rhythm

They never rest.

They never restore.

And when summer comes, they have nothing left to give.

That's why they're exhausted. Depressed. Sick.

Not because of winter.

Because they refused winter's gift.

He stands up, adding another log to the fire.

"Tonight, we honor the solstice the way our grandparents did. The way their grandparents did.

No electric lights. Just fire and candles.

When this fire is lit at sunset, the active day ends.

Let your body remember what it's supposed to do when darkness comes."

What That Night Taught Me

The sun sets at 4:30 PM.

I'm sitting across from Hunt by the wood stove, watching him add another log to the fire.

As he tells me this story: Nokomis, Kaya, the fire ceremony, the return to balance…I find myself mesmerized.

Not just by the story….

By the stillness.

The long pauses he takes between sentences.

The silence that feels... full.

On this night, I feel something I've never felt before on December 21st of the year

I feel deep reverence and gratitude…

For nature. For the seasons. For the cycles that govern all of life.

For the ancestors who lived in tune with these rhythms, who didn't fight them, but flowed with them.

For the first time in my life, I see the darkness of the winter solstice in a completely new light.

I realize that I have been running away from the very thing that would heal me…

And in that moment, I make a commitment to myself:

This ritual, passed from Nokomis's grandmother to Nokomis, from Nokomis to Hunt, from Hunt to Kaya, and now offered to me…would become part of who I am.

Part of how I honor the seasons.

The beginnings and the endings.

The rhythmic interchange of light and dark, activity and rest, that is the core essence of all nature.

That night, I naturally drift off to bed at 8:00 PM.

And I sleep like I haven't slept in years.

The next morning, I wake at 5:45 AM. No alarm. Fully rested. Alert. Energized.

Being on this farm without artificial lights, honoring the solstice the way humans had for thousands of years, my body is remembering something it had forgotten.

It remembers how to rest.

It remembers how to come back to balance.

How to come back to the roots.

When the Pendulum Swings Toward Winter

As we come closer to December 21st, have you noticed how the days get shorter?

In some places, darkness arrives by 4:30 PM. In others, by 3 PM.

Your body notices this too.

Specifically, a tiny pine-cone-shaped gland deep in your brain: your pineal gland.

From July 21st to December 21st, as the days grow progressively shorter, your pineal gland tracks this change.

It notices darkness arriving earlier each day.

And it responds by releasing melatonin, your sleep hormone, a little earlier each evening.

Day by day, minute by minute, your melatonin cycle lengthens.

By December 21st, the winter solstice, something profound happens:

The longest night.

The deepest darkness.

The longest melatonin cycle of the entire year.

This is the night when your body spends the most hours in deep repair and rejuvenation.

The night when cellular restoration reaches its peak.

The night when your immune system does its deepest work.

But when artificial light floods your evenings, your pineal gland never gets the message.

Your melatonin cycle stays locked in summer mode: short cycle

You never experience the deep restoration December 21st is designed to give you.

And you wonder why winter feels so hard.

Melatonin Is Far More Than a Sleep Hormone

Here's what most people don't know:

Melatonin isn't just about making you sleepy.

It's your body's master regeneration signal.

When darkness triggers melatonin production, here's what happens:

The Solution: Protect Your Darkness

The good news?

The solution is simpler than you think.

We can get back on track by managing artificial light better after sunset.

By giving your body the darkness it needs, you protect your melatonin cycle and restore your natural rhythm.

Think about those wild chickens.

They didn't need advanced science.

They just followed nature's rhythm: light during the day, darkness at night.

You can do the same.

5 Actions to Reclaim Winter's Darkness

Start with one.

Maybe it's downloading the app.

Maybe it's wearing Evening Lenses tonight.

Maybe it's lighting a candle instead of turning on the overhead lights.

One action creates momentum.

The Science Behind This Blog

Continue Your Winter Flow Journey