Hello again, dear ones. Welcome back (or for the first time, for those who have recently joined) to the monthly Resourcing the Revolution newsletter.
I had originally intended for this month’s edition to be themed “the leap” — new year, leaping into the unknown, into what’s next.
And then, the more I sat with the idea, the more it started to chafe.
It felt like reliving an old pattern. Trying to force. And pretzeling myself into what society expects, consequences be damned.
When I look out my windows, I don’t see nature leaping into the new. There’s no new growth pushing through the frozen ground. No growth at all. No, indeed.
What’s she doing instead?
Hibernating. Composting. Taking what died and dropped in the autumn and breaking it down. In preparation for spring, yes. But not ready to make that leap.
The leap will come. Just not yet — not until the time is right.
So if January isn’t made for leaping onto the “new year, new you” bandwagon, what’s calling instead?
What I’m experimenting with this month is this:
Before we decide what comes next, we notice what’s here. Without urgency. Without judgment.
Without needing to fix, change, or optimize anything.
Just notice.
And there's a part we don’t always name.
I’ve been a big participant in the personal development field for a long time now. And stepping away from self-improvement and hustle culture (even temporarily) is a quiet but powerful reorientation. Not just for our minds, but for our nervous systems.
But guess what? Society isn’t going to be happy about it.
And maybe, just maybe, the people who count on you, who are expecting things from you… won’t be either.
This kind of pause rarely gets applause. More often, it gets the side-eye. Or outright resistance.
When we slow down like this, something becomes clear: the pressure to leap isn’t neutral. It’s a call — and it’s one we should consider carefully before answering.
So for this month’s edition, we’re diving into what it looks like to take a seasonally and somatically appropriate approach to January, and to resist the pull of false urgency along the way.
Let’s begin.
Quote of the Month: Nature's Pause
There’s a moment when we realize how out of step we’ve become with the natural world. And winter is the season when I feel that tension most clearly.
Rilke named this dissonance over a century ago, and it feels just as true now.
“Oh trees of life, when will your winter come?
We're not in tune. Not like migratory birds.
Outmoded, late, in haste, we force ourselves on winds
which let us down upon indifferent ponds.”
— Rainer Maria Rilke, from the “Fourth Elegy,” Duino Elegies
Here, Rilke names what happens when we refuse or become out of tune with winter — the way rushing leaves us stranded, unmoored, and blaming ourselves for terrain that was never meant to support haste.
Idea of the Month: Pausing Productivity
As I was preparing to lead my Winter Solstice yoga class back in December, the universe smacked me across the back of the head and laid a phrase at my feet:
Resist the siren’s song of productivity.
In Greek mythology, the Sirens (or Seirênes) were beings of enchantment. Those who heard their song were drawn off course, often crashing on the rocks, their ships destroyed.
That phrase, the resistance, landed with immediate clarity. We’re being sold the idea that for life to be worth it, we have to be doing something. All. The. Time.
And January brings “fresh starts” galore. The call to begin again shouts from every corner.
New year. New habits. New goals! New you!!
Underneath it all, a quieter but more dangerous message threads its way through the noise — if you’re not moving forward, you’re falling behind.
This is the siren song of productivity.
The call that pulls us off course. The story that convinces us our worth is conditional on output, effort, and momentum.
It doesn’t just come from headlines or planners. It can also show up as restlessness in the body. As an itch to fill the quiet, to justify the pause, or to earn the right to stop.
The most dangerous part of this particular call is that it sounds reasonable. Even responsible.
Let me be very clear: I’m not shaming productivity. (At least not productivity in right timing.)
Winter itself asks for something radically different than what society demands in January. It asks us to listen. To compost. To grieve what didn’t survive the year. To face what’s been released without immediately trying to alchemize it into a vision board.
Before we leap, we reflect. We acknowledge the toll. And we (hopefully) stop pretending we can manifest our way out of exhaustion.
Resisting the siren song doesn’t mean doing nothing forever.
It means choosing not to sprint while the ground is still frozen beneath us.
Photo of the Month: Winter Says Pause
Winter, doing exactly what winter does.
Short Practice of the Month: Pause After the Exhale
This month’s practice continues our series of small-but-mighty tools to add to your nervous system regulating toolbox.
Like every single one that has come before it, there is nothing to optimize or get “right.” Just presence and breath.
Today, we’ll sit in the pause at the end of the exhale — a place the body naturally settles when it feels safe enough to let go — and allow whatever arises with the release of breath.
How to do it:
Sit quietly with your hands on your heart or your belly.
Pause and take one slow inhale.
Exhale fully. And before you inhale again, linger for just a moment.
Listen within, and ask: What does my body say is true today?
That’s it.
Taking a pause. Sitting with the spaciousness without trying to fill it. No journaling required. No insights demanded.
Let January be a listening post.
Post of the Month: Pause With What Is
Before I had language for this kind of seasonal pacing, I was already circling a particular kind of truth:
In every moment, we have the opportunity to practice acceptance. Not optimization or improvement. Just showing up real and raw (and honest).
“Every time we step on to our mats, it provides an opportunity for us to practice being okay with both where and who we are at this moment.
It’s an opportunity to give ourselves permission to be okay, to take a look at ourselves (bumps, bruises, rough edges and all) and honor that this is the very best version of ourselves that we can achieve in this moment.
There is nowhere else we have to be, there is nothing else we should be doing, and to expect more is doing ourselves a disservice.”
Reading this now, years later, I can feel how much of my work has been an extended meditation on this same invitation.
The siren song tells us we must become someone else to be worthy. This season asks something braver:
Can you be here without trying to justify it?
Song of the Month: Pause and Be Here
This month’s song danced its way into my ears while I was vacuuming the house. It holds the same tension we’re practicing — the ability to stay present without pretending everything is fine.
Despite everything going on in the world “out there,” Wookiefoot invites us to just be Happy to Be Here.
I'm so happy to be here, yeah I'm just happy to be here Still, I know the world's on fire The situation's dire A lot of work and courage gonna be required, but I'm just happy to be here (yeah, yeah)
Both-and. Sounds good to me.
Mindset of the Month: Pause at the Bottom
If the winter months were a yoga posture, it wouldn’t be a power pose. No pretzels, inversions, sweaty vinyasa flows, or “advanced” anything.
Instead, it would be more like the pause at the bottom of the exhale. You know the one. That moment after the breath leaves the body, before the next inhale arrives.
If you’ve ever sat (consciously) with that brief, suspended stillness, your body probably already knows the space well.
Modern society hasn’t exactly taught us to trust the exhale.
We’re trained to chase the inhale — the expansion, the forward motion, the next thing, the bigger-better-brighter.
But the exhale has its own intelligence.
It releases. It clears. It tells the truth about what’s no longer sustainable.
And even when we are taught to honor the exhale, it often comes with an extractive edge.
Pause so you can come back stronger, clearer, or more productive. Mine the moment for insight. Use the space as a holding pattern while you figure out what to do next.
What if, instead, we treated the bottom of the exhale as exactly what it is? Nothing more, nothing less.
The place where nothing is being added. An actual pause, to be enjoyed for the lack of, well, anything.
I have a sneaking suspicion the reason we don’t do that is because for a lot of us, that pause feels deeply uncomfortable.
The mind wants to rush through and just get to the inhale already. And the body wants, sometimes desperately, to fill with that yummy yummy oxygen.
Or… maybe it’s become way too comfortable.
What I find particularly amusing is that I’m actually fine sitting in the depth of the exhale. Where I run into trouble is after a full inhale, when I try to stay there.
Sound familiar to anyone else? Like, strip me down and force-march me through the wilderness without any resources, and I’ll be okay. But give me everything — let me be fully resourced — and my nervous system is like:
“No, nope, not a chance, no no no, get me the heck out of here!!”
Either way, sitting in the pause can stir something deep: that sense that the other shoe is about to drop, or that the stillness can’t possibly last.
But this is the work.
The bottom of the breath can be where we stop rehearsing the future long enough to hear what’s actually here. (Not what “should” be here or what we wish were true.)
Just what is.
So while we practice getting more comfortable in the pause, let’s let January support that.
No planning. No breakthroughs or big visions or personal reinvention arcs or rushing to fill the space.
Just sitting in the stillness, with what is. Giving ourselves permission to stay still long enough for the next inhale to arrive on its own.
Rather than succumbing to the tempo we’ve been trained to obey, what if we sat in the pause? On purpose. (With a do not disturb sign on the door.)
We are not behind. We are in winter.
Let’s act like it.
Pause Before What’s Next
If you take nothing else from this month, let it be this:
January isn’t (really) asking you to leap. Instead, it’s gently reminding you to listen.
Winter is spacious. It’s a clearing ground. And while the world around you rushes toward the starting line, there’s wisdom in remembering that nothing in the natural world is growing (not yet).
While the world is loud (so loud) outside the door, you are allowed to move at the pace of your own nervous system, to protect your attention, and to let things unfold in right timing.
We can use this time to notice what’s tender, acknowledge what’s tired, and name what no longer fits — without needing to change or fix anything right now.
If that feels edgy or uncomfortable, you’re not doing it wrong. Taking time to regulate your own nervous system is “doing something,” especially in a moment like this. We all have roles to play, and not everyone is meant to be a warrior on the front lines.
I recently read someone describing the next six months as “being inside a washing machine flying through turbulence.” Which… feels oddly accurate, and also explains why so many of us are exhausted.
So as we head off into the rest of our ride through 2026, we can let January be our buffer in the storm.
Let the pause be real. Let the exhale finish.
We’ll talk about what comes next, when the time is right.
Until next time: rest, then rise.
P.S. If part of what’s been tugging at you this month is a sense of too much noise — too many emails, too many expectations, too many pulls on your attention — you’re not imagining it.
Next weekend, I’m hosting The Unsubscribe Party: a live, gentle, slightly irreverent space to unsubscribe from what’s draining you and reclaim a bit of breathing room.
We’ll start with inboxes, but don’t be surprised if other things quietly fall away too. No productivity hacks or inbox-zero heroics. Just intention, humor, and a shared pause.
If January is your buffer in the storm, this is one way to protect it.
You’ve tried so hard. You’ve held it all… the family, the work, the world… and somewhere along the way, you started to disappear. You move through your days shadowed by exhaustion, haunted by the quiet ache of Who am I, anymore? This is where you begin to remember. Resourcing the Revolution is a quiet space for those ready to rebuild from the inside out. One breath, one story, one truth at a time. Each week, you’ll receive a grounded reflection to help you slow down, reconnect, and reclaim your energy, your voice, and your sense of self. The real revolution isn’t out there. It’s inside. In the pause. In the breath. In the remembering.
