Navigating November: 8 Self-Care Tips for Early Winter

In the Northern Hemisphere, November can be a tough month. Things start to get colder and darker. Snow may or may not have arrived yet, but the trees are bare, seeming to shiver in the wind. The cheer and playfulness of Halloween is over, and we’re not yet into the holiday break, especially if you are in Canada, where Thanksgiving has already passed.

Ancient Wisdom for Resting During Winter

In ancient times, before our modern calendar, people tracked the time and seasons by the moon. November’s full moon has been called the Frost Moon by the Cree, the Freezing Moon by the Anishinaabe, the Dark Moon by the ancient Celts, and the Snow Moon by the Medieval English. November marks the true beginning of the cold season, and it can be a difficult one to get through.

In modern times, we tend to put a premium on productivity and expect ourselves to be able to get the same amount of work done when the days are short as we do in the spring and summer when there is more light to work by. Before electric light, of course, this would have been impossible—it would have been natural to slow down and rest more once the harvest is complete.

But today, many of us ramp up in November, in part because we’re trying to get things done before taking a break at the holidays. While our bodies and brains are receiving signals from nature to rest and sleep more, our work schedules tell us we have more to get done.

Fall as ‘Lung Season’

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, fall is also known as Lung Season. In November, especially, the cold winds tend to pick up, and it's very common to catch a cold or flu. The excess cold, wind, and dryness of fall can exacerbate sensitivities in the lungs. Our bodies also need to acclimatize to the different weather, especially if you live in a place of extremes (like I do) where the summers are quite hot and the winters are frigid. A cold can activate our immune systems, slow us down, and clear out our lungs for a new season. If we pre-empted the cold with more rest and warmth, would we still need to get sick?

The lungs are also associated with the emotion of grief in Traditional Chinese Medicine. The lungs surround the heart and control our breathing, which is automatically affected by our emotions. We can store grief in the lungs, so, again, a common cold can sometimes be a way of helping us express that grief and those tears without having to stop and cry.

Grieving in November

November is also naturally conducive to grief, which is something that used to be folded into our seasonal year. Halloween was once celebrated as Samhain, the Blood Harvest, the last of the Celtic harvest festivals when animals would be slaughtered for the winter. In a time when we were more connected to the land and how it provided us sustenance, we may have held a more reverential attitude toward those animals who were giving their lives so we could live.

In Celtic paganism and other ancient pagan traditions, Samhain was (and still is) understood to be the time when the veils between our world and the Otherworld thinned, making it easier to travel between these worlds. Mysterious things could happen to humans, and the fae, the beings of the Otherworld, could have appeared at our doorstep. For some, the Otherworld also encompasses the afterlife or the unseen world where our ancestors may reside, making it easier to contact them during this time.

There are still rituals around loss and death in some parts of the world. In Mexico, Dia De Los Muertos has a similarly playful mood to North American Halloween, but it is more explicitly about death. It’s traditional for families to put up pictures of loved ones who have passed away to honor and remember them. Offerings are sometimes left for these ancestors as it’s understood that they visit around this time.

November 1st and 2nd are All Saint’s Day and All Soul’s day, respectively, in Catholic tradition; days to honor and remember those who are now on the other side. Halloween traditions strangely play with concepts of death and loss, as we dress children up as skeletons and ghosts, but Halloween is not a time where we really slow down and feel our losses, nor do we tend to talk to our children about it.

Here in Canada, Remembrance Day falls on November 11th, and is similar to Memorial Day in the US. It is a day to remember the losses of the World Wars and commemorate those who have given their lives in service to the country. On this day, many communities gather together for a moment of silence, remembering together. It is a ritual that is meant to bring together a community that has suffered losses, allowing for some space to grieve and feel.

8 Ways to Lean into the Wisdom of November

Rather than resist November’s dark wisdom, we can lean into it instead. If we allow November to teach us its lessons, we may find our health and well-being is deeply supported by that wisdom. Here are some tips to work with, rather than against, November:

• Support your body with warm soups and teas, heating pads, and warm outdoor clothes, especially scarves and hats.

• Do what you can to slow down. See what you can do (if anything) about relieving pressure on deadlines.

• Prioritize sleep, rest, and recovery.

• Continue to exercise gently, but remember that it’s okay to slow down and rest more in this season.

• Take dedicated time to grieve your losses, whether they are recent or ancient. Take a day to bring up old photos, write letters, or share stories about loved ones that have passed away.

• Observe a few minutes of silence for whatever losses you wish to acknowledge.

• Remember that grieving and rest are important, valuable aspects of life, and that resisting them is often what creates more stress than allowing for them.

• If you find your creativity or motivation a little dried up, rest. Dream. Let the motivation come back when the energy shifts.