Winter - Ayurveda, or balance in the face of the Gunas, Part 1

Winter sadness isn’t a pathology. It’s a reasonable nervous system response to cold, dark, contraction, and reduced sensory input. Less light literally changes serotonin and melatonin. Less movement means less circulation. The world gets quieter, smaller, more internal. Of course mood drops. Of course energy pools instead of rises.

From an Ayurvedic lens, this is Vata and Kapha teaming up:

Vata brings the low mood, worry, fragility, and drifting.

Kapha brings the heaviness, inertia, and “I just want to stay here forever.”

So the system slows. And then something very modern happens.

We sergeant ourselves.

We notice the sadness or flatness and immediately bring in an inner drill instructor:

“Get up.”

“Try harder.”

“Go for a run.”

“Fix your mindset.”

“Be productive.”

This is where it quietly goes wrong.

Because now there are two layers of suffering:

1. the original winter state (low light, low energy, contraction)
2. the relational injury — we turn against ourselves

So we’re not just sad.

We’re sad and being bullied.

And the body reads that as threat.

From a nervous system perspective, self-coercion increases sympathetic tone — more cortisol, more bracing, more internal friction. Which ironically makes movement harder, not easier. It deepens inertia instead of resolving it.

This is the pendulum swing.

We feel inert → we yank hard toward discipline → the system resists → we feel like failures → we double down → collapse again.

Ayurveda would say: you can’t move a cold, heavy system with force.

You move it with invitation and warmth.

Not “go for a 60-minute workout.”

More like:

• stand in sunlight for 3 minutes
• make warm tea
• sway instead of stretch
• walk to the end of the street, not around the block
• breathe with long exhalations
• put on music and let the body choose one movement

This is the difference between:

mobilizing energy

versus

commanding energy

One creates circulation.

The other creates compliance and resentment.

The responsive core only emerges when the system feels safe enough to respond. Not when it’s being whipped into shape.

Winter sadness needs:

• warmth
• light
• contact
• gentle rhythm
• kindness

Not pep talks.

In winter especially, I keep coming back to something my teacher Mona Warner often called low-hanging fruit: doing what you can do this minute, and being open to the possibility that it might naturally change into something more later—or not. It’s a gentle way of being with yourself without bullying yourself into effort you don’t actually have.

Being OK with not being OK sometimes is part of the practice. Some days my low-hanging fruit is simply going to my studio and lying on my back, or resting over a bolster, or just slowly shifting my weight from foot to foot. I don’t do this as a strategy to “get myself to do more,” but very often it quietly morphs into a fuller yoga practice anyway. And when it doesn’t, that’s still enough.

I’ve learned the hard way that when I push myself into a stronger practice while my mind, body, and breath aren’t working in a coordinated, responsive way, I tend to get injured—and I don’t feel good, physically or emotionally.

What we’re really doing here, in our yoga practice, is learning to know ourselves and to listen. When we push from the outside and override our own felt experience, we often end up feeling sad or disconnected, instead of cultivating what my teacher Orit Sen-Gupta calls the “good mood of the mind.” The paradox is that listening creates more movement, more ease, and more life than forcing ever does.

So instead of “what’s wrong with me that I don’t want to move?”

The more intelligent question is:

“What quality is missing right now that would make movement feel possible?”

That question alone dissolves the bully and turns it into a collaborator.

Which might be the most Ayurvedic move of all:

not fixing the mood,

but changing the relationship to the mood.

And suddenly even winter becomes workable. Not bright. Not perfect. But humane. Coherent. Kind enough that motion can reappear on its own terms.