Beneath the Surface

Image by Aaron Burden

A reflection on dormancy, slower energy, and letting winter be what it is

There is a certain point in winter where I stop trying to negotiate with it.

I sleep in more.
I move slower.
My workouts become suggestions instead of commitments.

And for the first time in my life, I am not particularly upset about it.

If you have followed my work for any length of time, you know I tend to understand life through the seasons. Not in a poetic or aesthetic way, but in a very practical one. Seasons have demands. They shape behavior. They ask different things of our bodies and our attention.

Winter, whether we like it or not, asks for less.

What is interesting is how quickly we push back against that.
How fast we label slower energy as a problem to solve.

For years, I did the same. Any dip in momentum triggered a quiet internal correction. I added structure. I recommitted to routines. I pushed myself back into motion as if stillness were something to apologize for.

Lately, something has shifted.

I started noticing the environment itself. The shorter days. The muted light. The way even the world outside seems to conserve. And it occurred to me that the season is not stalled. It is dormant.

And maybe, in quieter ways, I am too.

Dormancy has terrible branding.

We are much more comfortable with words like rest or recovery. Those imply usefulness. They suggest we are refueling for something productive just around the corner. Dormancy does not promise output. It does not announce timelines. It simply exists beneath the surface.

Culturally, we struggle with that.

We live in a world that equates movement with value. Producing, striving, and improving are treated as moral goods. So when energy pulls inward, when ambition softens, when clarity blurs, when the desire to do fades, we assume something must be wrong.

But nothing in nature works that way.

Seeds do not apologize for being underground. Trees do not rush their cycles. Fruit does not arrive without first passing through a period where nothing visible appears to be happening.

Not rest.
Not recovery.
Dormancy.

A state where things are forming quietly, without performance.

What I have been sitting with lately is this.
What if dormancy is not a detour from growth, but part of it.

What if slower energy is not something to override, but something to acknowledge without needing it to justify itself.

I have noticed how much energy I used to spend resisting these quieter stretches. How much effort went into proving I was still on track. And how much relief shows up when I stop narrating the process altogether.

Winter does not ask us to disappear.
It asks us to conserve.

To pull inward.
To simplify.
To let some things stay unfinished without explanation.

So if you find yourself moving more slowly than usual, needing fewer plans, less noise, more space, you are not broken. You might simply be in a legitimate state our culture does not talk about very often.

The question is not how to get out of dormancy.

The question is this.

What does dormancy look like when you do not try to fix it.

When you let it inform your pace, your expectations, and your relationship with yourself instead of something you rush through to get back to normal.

This season does not need your productivity.

It may simply be asking you to stay with what is forming beneath the surface.

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