What is winter time? It’s a space that can be a barren landscape. Covered in a kinda quiet boredom with children watching films. January- a month where boundaries are drawn after fun and holiday madness. Even if you didn't participate in holiday rush to and fro, and it's too warm to snow, winter is still a season that sometimes feels filled with getting over colds and metaphorically cold.
To a bored mind, it could simply be a temporary void in the cycles and seasons. Just vast off beige or grey on grey ocean landscapes- with the sun going down before it feels like you've woken! Winter can seriously seem as lonely as bare alder limbs dark and lifeless columns stretching up for hope, only to be met with a sunless sky. Too old to grieve, too cold to care. Reminiscing the past year of butterflies and rainfalls, just barely holding on, waiting for the spring colours. Wondering if there's any point in planning anything for the new year.
Neither here nor there. Dead.
What's the point in winter?
How does one relate to winter, when there's no red breasted robins and Christmas carols swimming below porches? How does one find engaging things to do when there doesn't seem like a whole lot is going on after holiday cheer?
It feels like a good place to start would be to intimately meet winter and to find out what it's true power can be for you and your family. One way is to look within indigenous cultures who connect with winter in their medicine wheels. What does winter signify to these wheels?
North. Dream Time. Wisdom. Spirituality. The Elder. A time to look within our dreams for wisdom and without to ancestors wisdom..This symbolism can be creatively brought to life by visualization, story telling, art, song- through stoking the internal fire and imagination.
So how can you use your imagination to connect to winter?
Here is a fun invitation for you to meet winter with a guided visualization.
First remember your physical senses and breath are a magical gateway to being present. Remember all life is present with conscious breathe. All great imagination starts with being present with your self and soul as you breathe intentionally. So let's body move and breathe! Please first connect with your body- wiggle your toes, fingers if sat down or move in any other way that wakes your body up and flows. Notice your body is present with you. Notice your breath, the sound of it, the pace, the fullness and release in your diaphragm as you simply breathe in and out. Relax into a pleasurable rhythm. Close your eyes if you need. There is no rush, there is here and now. Every time you read imagine in the next paragraph, feel free to wave your hands like a magic wand or click your fingers to activate it like a movement stimulus. It's time to relax and let the silliness be a tool.
Now imagine breathing in a new experience, imagine you’re inhaling the fresh forest scents, imagine their scents as they flow to you. On the exhale imagine your energy lean into the Earth’s magnificent presence, flowing through grass and into rivers. Give yourself a minute of deep relaxed intentional breaths, and perhaps hand waving.
Deep slow breaths allows you to also ground to living Earth as well as your self.
Now imagine you have a root, one tap root drop down from you, connected and anchored to Earth. Feel your grounding into the Earth, strong and living as this unique root that shoots out from under you.
What does your root feel/sense/colours look like? Hairy/smooth, big or small tingly or ruby rose petalled, can you reach down and touch it? Go wild with your living imagination to create this grounding moving living root chord! Decorate it how you like. Then with your root, draw the Earth’s love up to your heart centre, feel the sensation of love coming up like a plant absorbing water and extend it up through your spine/stem to your branches/hands and released up your crown/flower head to the stars. And just like a plant transpiring, receive back love down through your crown to your leaves, to your heart, roots and down to Earth's heart.
Remember you are a living connection of love with the Earth below and the Stars above.
Let your breath allow you to draw up love all the way up from Earth and back down to her core, peacefully radiating through your heart.... expanding out to the universe, receiving it back in.
Try this for a minute or two.
When you feel comfortable, soft and relaxed, feeling like a happy grounded being, wizard or plant,
I invite you to now enter into a further active visualization and meet your winter guide.
Please close your eyes at any point if it helps this imagination. Let's begin
First remember to breathe, comfortable, relaxed and grounded. Now imagine swishing on a cloak- what colour is it? Then place a nature crown on your head weaved from natural materials/plants of your choice. What leaves and textures is it made from? Next put on some super warm cosy slippers. Aren't they comfy?
Now feeling warm and anointed Come place your feet one by one outside, under snow covered trees. Wiggle your toes, feel the ground. Imagine lighting a yellow candle in your hand. And take a good look around.
What do you see? What do you hear? What do you feel?
What is the sky, earth, animals around you? Can you describe it while being connected to your breath? ....
Is winter a bare place, just another winter,
Or is there something something palpable under the snow blanket, something else in the air….
Perhaps
You are looking at a new canvas.
What will winter’s canvas invite you to create?
Let's take a further walk to an archway covered in curly vines and find out.
Remember you are always anchored to the Earth and your heart and the stars through your breathe, and comfy slippers!
A winter guide is now present to greet you by a gate.
Imagine any guide you are comfortable with.
Mine is an elder with gnarly tree bark skin, wise eyes, with wrinkled smile lines like my Chinese grandmothers in a mossy silken jacket. She has one hand on an arbutus cane, one hand on a wooden gate.
Slowly,
Your guide leans in closer to you,
with one time immemorial eye fixed on you- staring at you, like an owl observing,
They ask, in a voice your imagination creates with aliveness and invitation,
“Dearest, Will you enter into your winter dream seed hearth?"
You nod gracefully.
They then ask "How can you enter into the gateway of winter? Will it be with purpose, honour for the elder wisdom, and with best designed seed dreams?”
They wait for you state your intention.
All is quiet and snow flakes fall.
Beyond the gate they guard, you see a fire place on the snow in the opening of a tall forest. Imagine you know this hearth. What do the seats, tea cups or blankets look like? A circle of white speckled trees surrounds the hearth.
Imagine one beautiful tree gazing at you. What does it's presence feel like? Does it draw you toward it?Decorated on a tree swishing in the wind are some pouches.
These are your dream seed pouches!
Now as you have acknowledged your destiny, your guide opens the gate. Thank them and enter. Walk closer into the hearth and stand before your magnificent dream seed tree. Reach up to greet it's branches. How do the pouches feel like? Soft/textured? Do they smell of any plants you know? Can you describe the dreams they contain? Pluck down the seed pouches. They are yours to label and design! Now imagine sitting down by the fire, begin to draw your dreams on them for 2025 filling them in with care.
Knowing you belong here with courage, gratitude and reverence.
Thank you for visualizing walking into your unique winter’s powerful hearth!
As you now slowly close the visualization give a thank you to the Earth and your winter guide. Imagine blowing out the candle at the beginning. When inspired, please feel free to light a candle at home and take a pen and begin to draw your dream seed tree. A reflective note around the hearth:
Every seasonal check point we get to feels like a reminder of a moment of standing on the threshold of fully belonging here and not belonging.
In winter, when you remember who you are as a dreamer, a dream seed planter and tender, as a worthy creature of belonging in this web of life, you may walk through with grace.
To a closed heart this season can be a harsh unknown landscape. But to one who walks through with curiosity and purpose, you can start to imagine the landscape beneath the snow, and dream out what the new dawn brings when the metaphorical snow melts.
To the wise one, winter is not dead after the holidays. It is a place of potent dream time. A preparation for rebirth.
Now is time to choose where your seeds will land, when all is quiet, and when you can hear, see and feel yourself.
Here 3 activities to do to encourage day dreaming/visualization with the family
1. Draw, or write about, your a dream seed tree.
My daughter and I are focusing on the garden, and so we collaborated in day dreaming and drew our own dream seed trees for the garden as in the photo below.
Storytelling - Engage in day dreaming, while relaxed together on the couch, reminiscing about either happy memories, or wouldn’t it be amazing if this happened memories! Or try story telling in a circle taking turns to fill in the next part of the story.
Movement visualization! Playing charades/acting out activities stories. Make it a fun body movement or dance game to guess what is inside your dream packets for 2025, and share together after why you would love to grow these dreams!
Remember,
Winter is not empty
But a
place of invisible but visceral potency, a space of knowing the ground under and around you is where things will rise from
A time of honouring the tallness of the bare limbed trees,
and the courage it took them to grow.
They are our ancestors
It is
A time of inward imagining
a space where you will plant seeds, some round, speckled and fluffy All are worthy
a space where dreams are tucked in and blanketed All are safe and treasured
This is your dream seed time
to continue your legacy as a seed dream tree keeper,
a sacred seed of the Earth.
Happy winter and Chinese new year 2025!
Love Jackie from Aliannah Earth

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