Welcome to Part 4 of Descending Into Darkness. Read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 here.

How are you journeying? How is your descent into the darkness and within? What have you discovered so far?

We are continuing on our journey towards the Winter Solstice as the darkness wraps itself closer and closer around our days and the cold climbs more easily into our bones.

This is a time of stillness, of cooling. Of slowing down your awareness and breathing deeply into your bones.

Like the trees retreat within, so we can metaphorically retreat within our own bones.

Recently I can’t help but be drawn to these amazing silhouettes: stark against the pale sky, looming from the mist, poignant in their emptiness. Don’t they resemble the skeleton and bones? The branches and twigs and connections. The funny little bends, bumps and breaks that have shaped the tree’s life, just as the body reflects our life experiences.

The bones hold so much of our experience - often deep, wordless experience.

As I wrote in Part 2, this is the season to rest, restore and replenish. To gaze inwardly. Let the trees show you how to do it, with ease, poise and stillness.

They stand proud, naked and beautiful. Resting. Appearing to do nothing. Except that secretly, furtively, they are in the midst of an enormous transformation - turning from one season of outward expression and creation, re-gathering and readying themselves for a future season.

This time of year is often associated with the Metal (autumn) and Water (winter) elements. But I love how other elements often show up unexpectedly, revealing the interplay between them as the great landscape of life. Trees, of course, are part of the Wood element - typically associated with Spring, and a place many people hope to jump to and bypass the freezing months. However, if we can be with the Wood element in winter time, we have an opportunity to see something of the vision and dream of our lives - from a different angle, with a different light.

We can go a step further and deeper on this descent, with guidance from the still, skeletal beings around us.

Where do you need to divert your attention from your doing to your being?

Where do you need to allow your body to guide you?

Where is the deep inner reserve of your energy and being?

What vision arises from this deep place of inner attention?

We need to know this place of our bare bones. The human equivalent: vulnerability, strength and authenticity.

There’s no hiding who we are, be it oak, beech, cherry, ash, willow.

The trees don’t disappear into the ground because we see their essence, their bare bones. We see them apparently motionless, unpretty, unguarded. Do they flinch? No. They show us how to be resilient, how to conserve our natural energy, and how to hold onto hope.

We can also look - really look - and see them from the outside, explore more than is possible when they are garnished and adorned in Spring and Summer. We can take time to examine the scars, the bountiful years, the scant years, the beauty of unique, living expression and the incorrigibility of reaching upwards.

The bones also hold the light, just as the goodness is held deep within the tree for another year.

The trees wait for the return of the light - and the warmth - to begin journeying back again. Excited to begin again, and keeping faith for a new season in their old bones.

Follow the wisdom of the trees:

• Spend time with them in nature. Admire their silhouettes, look closely at their story told through trunks, branches and the closed tips.

• Make time for stillness and simply being.

• Focus your energy inwards with gentle practices e.g. meditation, yoga

• Bring your awareness into your bones, become aware of them.

• Make a list, drawing or creative work of your own unique qualities, moments of joy and sadness that have shaped you. Moments that changed your direction or opened up a new path.

• Remind yourself how resilient you really are.

• Allow yourself to be in a dreaming state to dream in your future, and notice what arrives in your awareness without judgement.

Would you like a companion and witness to your journey of inner discovery? Email bryony@creativesoultherapies.com