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As the days grow colder and shorter and we stand on the threshold between fall and winter, there is a great longing in me to put everything down, to stop doing ten thousand things and to venture inward. 

Sipping my tea here in the dark hours of the early morning, in the stillness of a quiet slumbering house, I am deeply aware of the need for pause, to pull up a chair near to the fire, and to wrap myself in something soft and warm. I am always grateful for this season when it comes, calling me to rest, to slow, to sit a while. And even if my mind says it must be otherwise, my body knows this truth. There is some cellular intelligence inherited from countless generations of farming people, that says, “winter is a time of rest."

And yesterday morning, on a walk in the woods, the dogs running ahead of me, while a honking chorus of Canada geese flew south overhead, I came upon the theme for the winter session. It swooped in and landed in my heart, and since then, I have thought of little else. 

For one long moment beneath the alder trees, I stood still and I imagined a blanket, intricately woven from the Threads of Winter. It was made of threads of story and stillness, myth and poetry, songs and dreams. It was blue and white and black and gold. I heard the words, “soul blanket” whispered from a secret place beyond the seen world. I saw it being woven through the dance and on the loom of the dance practice. I saw us gathering the coloured threads of our lives, of the last season and the season to come, and weaving them through our bodies, through our hands and our hearts and our minds. I imagined the ways in which women have always sat together, through dark wintry days and nights, spinning and weaving and making fabric for warmth, for ceremony, for life. 

And just as we are the weavers, we are also the woven, our lives shaping us as we shape them. So perhaps we can take the Threads of Winter, as they take us, and dance the paradox of weaver and woven. 

If this metaphor speaks to you, I invite you to join me for a 4 week mini-session, between Samhain (Celtic New-Year, around Halloween) and the Winter Solstice, entitled, Threads of Winter—Weaving the Soul Blanket. Together, we will follow the metaphor of Weaving into the dance. For one moon cycle, we will gather threads of story, poetry and song and through the dance, weave them into a blanket for the soul.

Marion Woodman once said, “Metaphor is the language of the soul. Through a physical image, metaphor reveals a spiritual truth or condition… for soul is the meeting place of spirit and body, the eternal part of us that lives in body while we are on Earth.”

Let us then take this image of a soul blanket, lovingly woven with the threads of the dark season. Let us weave it together under starlight and moonlight, by the fireside, and in the company of one another, so that we might wrap it around ourselves this winter, to rest and dream and heal in its soft folds. 

Threads of Winter~ Weaving the Soul Blanket

Class 1: Weaving the Wind

Class 2: Weaving the Flame

Class 3: Weaving the Land

Class 4: Weaving the Rain