Stillness is Complete
Your Yule Journey Reflection
We’ve reached the end of the Yule cycle. The three days of solstice darkness have passed, the light is returning lumen by lumen, and Imbolc approaches on 1st February. This moment offers a perfect opportunity to pause and reflect on the journey through rest and dreaming we’ve taken together.
When I began writing this cycle, I knew that stillness would be one of the hardest practices to articulate for ChangeMakers. We’re so conditioned by the Activity Vortex that the very idea of not working feels like failure. But as we’ve explored, genuine rest isn’t failure. It’s the foundation for everything that follows.
What We’ve Explored
Over the past weeks, we’ve journeyed through Yule across all Four Homes.
Body Home took us into the somatic reality of rest - the crucial difference between collapse and genuine parasympathetic activation. We learned that true rest requires safety, and that safety is a feeling, not an idea. The three techniques - Take a Breath, Find Your Feet, Change Your Mind - offer simple entry points into that practice.
Community Home expanded that work into the collective realm, asking how we create cultures of wellbeing in our ChangeMaking organisations. The Eat, Make, Play framework offers practical ways to co-regulate. But the real challenge lies in coordination - building the choir that never stops singing because members take individual breaths at different times.
Planet Home offered the wisdom of lying fallow. Nature shows us that soil needs time untouched to repair, that dormancy is not death but a different kind of work. Applied to our ChangeMaking, this means building mechanisms for projects to rest whilst the mycelial work happens quietly. It means tending rather than controlling.
Cosmos Home brought us to the sacred work of dreaming. We explored what it means to fight FOR something rather than just AGAINST - to build cathedrals rather than simply topple towers. We learned that a Dream is a destination whilst Strategy is a roadmap, and that Yule is for dreaming whilst Imbolc is for strategy.
The Challenges of Stillness
I’ve really enjoyed this cycle, but I won’t pretend that it has always been easy. I find it just as hard to come to a complete stop as anyone else. There’s guilt. The “I should be doing something” voice. There’s the piling up of tasks for ongoing projects. There’s fear that stepping back means abandoning those who need you.
And of course, there’s writing these articles.
But what distinguishes Yule rest from the Avoidance pattern we explored at Mabon is that it’s conscious. It’s bounded. It’s ritualised. It has thresholds. I delineated the protected time and therefore made myself accountable for respecting it. Writing these articles has made me hyper aware that if I don’t walk my talk, then why should you?
It also made me recognise the need to share more of what I’m doing myself on this ChangeMaking journey, so expect more Notes from me about my own projects and challenges to accompany the seasonal pathway we’re all on. I hope to find more opportunities for actual contact with you as the year progresses.
The Return of the Light
As I write this, we’re well past the solstice. Each day brings perceptibly more light. And this is instructive. Vision doesn’t arrive complete. It emerges gradually, like Hanukkah candles - one more light each day until full illumination. We don’t need the whole cathedral blueprint today. Just the first candle’s worth of clarity.
This is why January can be loved rather than dreaded. January - supposedly miserable January - is when we get to fall in love with the impossible. When we remember we’re not just fighting against what’s broken but building castles in the air that will become tomorrow’s cathedrals.
Your rest during this cycle doesn’t stop the work. It sustains it. The choir keeps singing. What you’ve done is invest in your own capacity to keep going over the long term that regenerative change requires. And as the year opens up we’re really going to need the reserves we’ve built up now!
Reflecting on Your Journey
To help you integrate this cycle’s wisdom, take a look at the Yule evaluation form. This isn’t a test - it’s a 3 minute structured space for reflection on what you’ve learned, what you’ve practised, and what you’ll carry forward.
The form asks about your engagement with each of the Four Homes, your experiences with specific practices, and the barriers you’ve encountered. Your responses remain confidential, but the patterns across all responses help shape future Spiralling Home content.
Link to Yule Evaluation Form here - https://form.jotform.com/abrahamsdarren/spiralling-home-yule-evaluation
Reminder: If you haven’t already taken the baseline assessment, you might like to complete that first before doing this cycle evaluation. The baseline helps us track your development across multiple cycles. This one only takes 5 minutes to complete.
Link to Baseline Assessment - https://form.jotform.com/abrahamsdarren/spiralling-home-baseline
Looking Ahead to Imbolc
Soon we move into Imbolc, the festival of first light. The first stirrings of spring. The moment when we begin to transition from dreaming to planning, from vision to action. At Imbolc we’ll explore how to move from rest back into action without losing what we’ve gained. How to take those castles in the air and begin to sketch the roadmap.
But that’s for 1st February. For now, if you haven’t yet taken your three days of stillness, there’s still time. Protect your dreaming time. Let your visions solidify like the butterfly’s wings before launch.
Thank you for hibernating and dreaming through Yule with me.
I look forward to the next stage in our journey.
See you next week!
