Good Wintering: How EFT Helps Us Align with the Season of Rest

December 1, 2025

We often treat December as a performance. More socialising. More spending. More doing. More ‘getting it right’. But nature, meanwhile, is whispering something very different: Winter is telling us to slow down… rest… turn inward … connect.

This is where the idea of Good Wintering begins.

As we move through the darker months, I want to offer a gentle invitation: What if this winter, instead of bracing, resisting, or pushing through, you surrendered - just a little - to the season’s natural rhythm? What if you approached the festive period itself with more ease, more softness, more honesty about what you actually need?

Winter in History, Folklore, and Nature

Across cultures, winter has long symbolised death and rebirth, hardship and resilience, and the essential need for a pause before new growth.

In nature, winter is the season of dormancy. Plants stop growing. Animals hibernate. The landscape quietens into conservation mode. It’s nature’s rest mode; a fallow period without which spring simply wouldn’t happen.

Historically, winter was met with both fear and respect. Communities faced real hardship. Food scarcity, bitter temperatures, and genuine threats to survival. It’s no surprise that folklore is full of frost giants, winter witches, and spirits of the cold.

Yet winter also carried a sense of renewal and hope. Festivals like Yule and Saturnalia marked the Solstice and the sun’s slow return. Evergreens, candles, and bonfires symbolised life and light continuing even in the depths of darkness.

Crucially, winter was also a time of reflection and connection. Long nights drove people indoors, where they shared stories, passed on knowledge, and strengthened their bonds, a rhythm echoed today in the Scandinavian concept of hygge.

Winter, in every sense, is the season that teaches the power of rest.

The Human Task in Winter

If we follow nature’s lead, winter isn’t a mistake or an inconvenience. It’s a message and an invitation to:

Pause. Breathe. Reorient. Digest. Prepare.

Winter asks humans to stop pretending we are separate from the natural cycles we live in.

Many traditions, particularly shamanic ones, frame winter as the season of going into the cave, of listening, healing, and meeting the unseen parts of ourselves. Shamans and therapists share a surprising overlap here: both are companions in the dark, uncertain places where transformation begins.

Winter represents rest, but it also represents death. The falling leaves, the rot, the composting of what’s no longer needed. The yoga posture Shavasana, the “corpse pose,” perfectly captures this: a conscious, embodied surrender.

And humans, as Ernest Becker famously argued in The Denial of Death, tend to resist this surrender. We push away endings, stillness, and anything that threatens our sense of control and immortality (Becker, 1973).

In Eastern philosophy, winter is the deep Yin; the dark, cool, slow, inward energy that balances Yang. Without Yin, Yang becomes frantic, brittle, and unsustainable.

So what if we didn’t resist it? What if we embraced it? What if we wintered well?

Winter as Rest, Digestion, and Integration

Winter can be a time for processing. For digesting. For consolidating.

Nature forces a shift into ‘rest and digest’ mode with longer nights and colder temperatures. In the language of the nervous system, this is an invitation for the parasympathetic system to take the steering wheel.

We need this. After a full year of stressors, achievements, conflicts, changes, griefs, joys and surprises… winter says:

“Pause. Let me help you integrate this.”

Even Christmas, beneath the tinsel and the noise, is traditionally a time of reflection. A time to gather, remember, take stock, and gently acknowledge what the year has taught us.

This is where EFT fits beautifully.

Where EFT Comes In

EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) is, in many ways, a practice of winter.

1. Tapping on Hardship (the winter of experience)

Just as winter historically represented hardship and survival, EFT helps us meet the difficult things that have accumulated in our year. EFT aims for the negative and taps into the negative. We tap with the discomfort, not against it. We acknowledge it. We sit with it. We let it thaw.

Instead of trying to force ourselves into the bright Summer-energy of productivity or positivity, EFT allows us to be honest about our internal Winter, whatever that looks like.

2. Renewal and Hope (the return of the light)

Aiming for the negative, sitting with and processing the hardship, the natural, authentic  positives begin to emerge like the new promise of Spring. Cognitive and emotional shifts occur, quite naturally, and people often describe a feeling of lightness, space, or possibility. This mirrors the Winter Solstice: darkness slowly giving way to light. Winter clears the debris; tapping clears the emotional debris. Love re-appears.

3. Reflection and Connection

During tapping, the amygdala calms down significantly - a finding supported by neuroimaging research showing reduced amygdala activation after EFT (Stapleton et al., 2022). With the amygdala calmer, and the pre-frontal cortex coming back online, we can reflect with more clarity and compassion.

We reconnect with ourselves. And from that place of self-connection, quite naturally, we reconnect with others.

We become safe and social in Polyvagal terms. Ventral vagal functioning is restored. We co-regulate (Porges, 2022).

And by going within and connecting with ourselves, we connect with the vast wisdom and resources of the Unconscious. And beyond the personal unconscious, Carl Jung described the collective unconscious as a shared realm of universal human experience that connects us all (Jung, 1964). When we soften our inner world, that sense of connection becomes more available, and that’s helpful, whether we’re navigating tricky family dynamics, or simply trying to be kinder to ourselves.

An Invitation to Winter Well

So as you step into this season, perhaps take a moment to consider:

What if you allowed yourself to slow down to a pace that feels right for you? What if this year, you let winter do what winter is meant to do? What if, instead of pushing you allowed yourself to process, digest, and rest?

Whether you’re spending time with challenging relatives, navigating old emotional patterns, or simply wanting to reconnect with yourself, regular tapping can be a gentle yet powerful way to support your own ‘good wintering.’

May this winter bring you rest where you need it, clarity where you seek it, and connection where you long for it.

References:

Becker, E. (1973) “The Denial of Death”, New York: Free Press, pp. 1-285.

Jung, C. G. (1964) “Man and His Symbols”. New York: Aldus Books, pp. 1 - 310.

Porges, S. (2022) “Polyvagal Theory: A Science of Safety”, Front. Integr. Neurosci., 16, doi: 10.3389/fnint.2022.871227.

Stapleton, P.B., Baumann, O., O'Keefe, T., Bhuta, S. (2022) “Neural changes after Emotional Freedom Techniques treatment for chronic pain sufferers”, Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice, 49, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ctcp.2022.101653.