If the weather you are in is bringing thoughts of suicide or self-harm, please reach out before the practice.
US: 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (call or text 24/7) · Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741 · UK: 116 123 Samaritans · AU: 13 11 14 Lifeline · International: findahelpline.com. The practice below is a complement to clinical care, not a substitute.
Quick Answer
The Long Winter is the inner weather of chronic low mood and spiritual dryness, the practice that used to land now feels mechanical. Drawn from John of the Cross's Dark Night of the Soul (c. 1578) and Pema Chödrön's groundlessness work, the texts agree: stay. Pair with a clinical therapist.
What this weather looks like
The Long Winter is the season the contemplative traditions know best, the John of the Cross dark night, the Zen "great doubt," the Pema Chödrön groundlessness, the long stretch when the practice itself stops feeling like anything. The traditions agree on one teaching: this is not a sign you are doing it wrong. It is a sign you have arrived at the part of the path the brochures do not advertise. Stay.
Somatic markers
- A flatness that has outlasted whatever started it
- Things that used to be reliably good, arriving muted
- A general slowing, in moving, in speaking, in deciding
- Days whose shape has stopped varying much
Cognitive markers
- The practice that used to land now feels empty
- Sense that meaning has gone out of things that used to hold it
- Spiritual dryness, prayer or sitting feels mechanical
- Mild existential despair ("is this all there is?")
The primary practice
In the contemplative literature, this is the single practice the texts agree on for the long winter. The instruction is short on purpose, the practice itself is the teaching, not the description of it.
Tibetan Buddhist (Shambhala lineage, Western teaching)
Sitting With Groundlessness (Pema Chödrön)
Sit without trying to fix the dryness, the practice is to keep showing up, no agenda, for the duration you would have sat anyway; the willingness is the practice, not the experience.
Source
Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart (1997) and The Wisdom of No Escape (1991); Chödrön's teaching is the modern Western inheritance of the chod and tonglen lineages
Duration
20 to 45 minutes
→Read the full step-by-step instructions
Sit comfortably; eyes can be open or closed.
Set no agenda. The practice is to be there, not to do anything.
When the impulse to manage the practice arises, notice it and let it dissolve.
The classical instruction is to be like still water, undisturbed enough that the silt settles.
Stay for the duration you set, no more, no less.
Secondary practices
When the primary practice is not the right entry-point, or when you want a different shape of work, these are the alternatives the texts agree on for the same weather.
Christian apophatic / contemplative
The Dark Night Reading (John of the Cross)
Read one short passage from John of the Cross or May's commentary each morning, the apophatic tradition's contribution is the recognition that the dryness is itself a stage of the path.
Source: John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul (Noche Oscura del Alma, composed c. 1578-1585, after his escape from imprisonment in Toledo in August 1578, the poem and its commentary developed over those years) · 10 to 20 min
Ignatian Christian (adapted)
The Examen Prayer (Modern Secular Adaptation)
Each evening, name one moment of consolation (where energy returned) and one moment of desolation (where it left), the practice keeps the channel open even when the practice feels closed.
Source: Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises §43 (composed 1522-1524 at Manresa · 10 to 15 min
When NOT to do this practice
Signature breath
The breath is the only thing that lives in the present. Each weather has a signature breath, the pattern the traditions pair with this particular state.
Open the breath timer → for guided pacing of this pattern.
Crystal companion
In Crystal Cassandra's work, certain stones are the somatic companion to certain practices. The pairing is not magical; it is a steady weight in the palm that becomes part of the noticing.
Smoky Quartz
Smoky Quartz is the stone the modern Western canon names for grounding work during contemplative dryness, its dark translucent structure carries the symbolic resonance of staying with what is. Many practitioners hold it during long-form sitting through the Long Winter. The classical pairing makes it the natural cross-sell for chronic groundlessness work.
Adjacent weathers
The weathers nearest to The Long Winter on the wheel, often what shows up as runner-up in the assessment, and what the texts agree often follows or precedes this state.
Notes from Aria Stillwater
No schedule and no newsletter. Aria writes occasionally on practice, on attention, and on the days it is hardest to begin. One reply removes you.
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