Winter Solstice: Finding Light in the Dark
Winter Solstice, Water Element, and the Birth of Yang
This is a companion article for the Winter Solstice Horary Treatment on December 21, 2025.
3-5pm (Please arrive 15 minutes early)
$22.22 Venmo (@darlingmeyer) or Cash
Trauma-Informed Care & Consent
This treatment is rooted in trauma-informed practice.
You are always in choice.
If at any point you need to:
Pause
Move
Take space
Step outside
Please do so.
You may choose one of the following options:
Acupuncture
Acu-seeds (small seeds gently taped to acupuncture points—no needles)
No touch (points are activated through intention only, which is equally valid)
Please let me know before the treatment which option you prefer.
You are held, respected, and supported—exactly as you are.
Finding Light in the Dark · The Medicine of Return
The Winter Solstice (Dongzhi) marks the darkest, yin-iest point of the year. In classical Chinese cosmology, this is not seen as something to bypass or overcome, but something that must be fully entered. The most contracted, quiet, inward point of the year. And yet, it is also the beginning of the return.
Winter Solstice corresponds to Fu 復 Hexagram 24: “Return, Renewal, The Return of Light” —the moment when yang is born within yin. The light does not arrive after the darkness; it arrives inside it. Without darkness, there is no return. Without stillness, there is no movement. Without descent, there is no emergence.
This seasonal teaching applies not only to the cosmos, but to our inner world. What happens in the sky is mirrored within us—physically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually. There are times in life when clarity, hope, or direction cannot be forced. They can only be found by staying present in the dark long enough for something subtle to appear.
A flicker of light. A barely perceptible shift. The promise of movement that has not yet taken form.
The Value of the Dark
This season asks us to rest, conserve, and contain, protecting the deep reserves of Kidney Qi, the root of vitality, endurance, and life force. Rather than striving for illumination, winter teaches us to trust what is gestating in the unseen.
Before a butterfly emerges, the caterpillar does not simply grow wings. It dissolves. It becomes formless. It turns to literal mush. There is a necessary phase where the old breaks down before something new can be.
Many of us try to skip this stage. We rush toward answers, insight, or resolution. Winter reminds us that clarity often comes only after we allow ourselves to not know, to be unformed, to stay with uncertainty without forcing meaning.
In order to see the North Star, the sky must be dark.
In order to find light, we must be willing to be in the dark.
Return, Not Reinvention
This treatment is not about becoming someone new. It is about returning. Returning to what is essential, honest, and quietly alive beneath the noise. The light we are tending is not dramatic or blinding. It is small, steady, and resilient.
By honoring the darkness rather than resisting it, we create the conditions for hope to arise. Something within you knows the way forward, even if it cannot yet be named.
This is the medicine of the Winter Solstice.
This is the work of finding light in the dark.
Horary Tx
For the past year, I’ve been offering Horary treatments in small group settings at my home. Meeting on the Summer and Winter Solstices and the Spring and Fall Equinoxes. These sessions often take place at odd times of day that correspond with the element of the season. The timing matters. Winter Solstice happens to be very friendly, in the afternoon.
Although simple, the results are often subtle, deep, and powerful.
Horary treatments work with the energetics of seasonal shifts, aligning time, cosmology, and the body’s meridian systems. This tradition dates back to the Han Dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE), when cosmological observation was directly applied to medicine and healing.
Winter, Water, and Rest
Winter Solstice / Dongzhi is a time to protect and store Kidney Qi, the deep essence that supports life, resilience, and regeneration. This season asks for rest, conservation, return, and gentleness.
Rather than pushing forward, winter invites us to support the emerging yang nested within yin, without forcing it.
Think:
Cozy comfort
Stillness before movement
The caterpillar turning into formless “mush” before becoming a butterfly
The North Star only visible in complete darkness
Across cultures, winter solstice has always been marked with ritual, reverence, and ceremony.
This is an invitation to let its meaning unfold within you. Quiet non-judgmental observation, with a little dash of WTF am I doing, somatic intuitiion, and in your own way.
Preparation Practice (Optional)
An important theme of winter and the Water element is resources—the inner things that help us continue when energy feels limited.
These are often intangible:
A sense of inner knowing
A feeling of truth without words
A memory, image, color, person, pet, or place
A quiet sense of “I can keep going”
Warm Up:
When you can, find a cozy, supported place.
Notice the chair, bed, or ground beneath you.
Say a gentle “hello” to your body.
This is a feeling-based practice, not a thinking one.
Simply notice sensations, emotions, or images. Allowing them to rise and fall with your breath.
If something bubbles up, say ‘hello’.
If nothing arises, that’s completely okay too.
2. Letting Go:
Winter also asks us to look at what no longer serves us.
In Chinese medicine there is a saying:
“Which prisoners must die for the village to survive?”
It’s a strong metaphor, but an important one. Not everything can come with us into the next cycle. As we move from Fall (Metal) into Winter (Water), we are invited to release what has completed its role.
Just like the caterpillar cannot carry all of itself into becoming a butterfly, we too may need to let some parts go.
You’re invited—g e n t l y—to reflect:
What no longer serves me?
What am I ready to release?
No force. Just noticing.
3. “I Don’t Know”
My favorite phrase.
One of the most important parts of this work is remembering that “I don’t know” is a full and complete answer.
To “know” something is to put it in a container.
To not know is to remain open to the vastness of how life unfolds.
When we allow “I don’t know,” it can become a guiding light, like the North Star.
We are explorers, working with finite energy, yet capable of profound inner change.
4. Resources: What Sustains You
In Chinese medicine, the Water element teaches us about resources—the inner reserves that allow us to endure, adapt, and continue.
Chinese Medicine Author, Lonny Jarrett uses the metaphor of a 15-round boxing match to describe Water’s resource:
You don’t win by throwing harder punches. You don’t win by hiding in a corner. You win by knowing how to pace yourself, knowing how much energy to exert, learned cleverness, and drawing from what sustains you with each breath.
And even more importantly, we fight without the certainty of winning. Confronted with the unknown, we must continue without attachment to the result. Where fighting is elevated into sophisticated art form, a dance, a way of being.
Connecting with our resources allows us to connect to the wisdom of the fight. Where truth and knowing returns to the center. Ebbing and flowing.
This is the same ebb and flow of the ‘perpetual return’. A state of supreme being in tandem with the mysterious workings of the eternal dao.
Resources may be:
A memory, image, or color (mine is the color green!)
A person, pet, or place
A feeling of truth or quiet knowing
Rest, warmth, stillness
Prompt:
What are my resources right now—especially the subtle or easily overlooked ones?
Though the grease burns out of the torch, the fire passes on, and no one knows where it ends.
- Zhuangzi
Gate of Birth
In conclusion, let this be a reminder of the magic of the winter solstice, which permeates every aspect of the micro and macro nature, to assist and inspire this “inner return”.
This cosmological cycle is a promise that never fails.
The heart of heaven and earth.
An eternity filled with new beginning.
