Reflections on Change: Listening for What the Body Already Knows

The end of the calendar year often comes with a familiar pressure: New year, new goals, new you. CHANGE. I’m not one for making resolutions in December. Resolutions invite us to think our way into change. We analyze, decide, commit, override our bodies, and push forward. And yet, so many of us arrive here already tired. Burned out. Carrying more than words alone can hold. What if change doesn’t begin in January? What if it doesn’t begin in the mind?

In my work, as a somatic practitioner, I’ve come to trust the body as a primary source of wisdom. Long before we can articulate what needs to shift, the body is already responding. It tightens, it numbs, it aches, it holds the breath. Sometimes it doesn’t even want to get off the couch. These are not failures of willpower. They are forms of communication.

For many of us, talk therapy and exercise (for the sake of exercising) has been an important entry point to wellness and healing. We learn new skills, notice patterns, tell stories, and take steps forward. But for many of us seeking wholeness and a sense of wellness, this is rarely enough. Change requires intentional somatic and relational work: practices that engage the nervous system, the breath, movement, rhythm, and safe connection with others. Healing and wellness is experienced not just through understanding, but through felt experience.

None of this is new. In fact, it takes us to old ways of knowing and being. In Mesoamerican traditions, and many Indigenous and earth-based cultures, the new year does not begin in the dead of winter. It begins in spring. Renewal is tied to the land, to planting, to visible signs of life returning. Change follows cycles, not deadlines. Rest precedes growth. Stillness is not stagnation. It is preparation.

Winter, in this understanding, is not the time to reinvent ourselves. It is a time to listen. To conserve energy. To self-soothe. To notice what the body is asking for. Maybe you do need a run. Or maybe you need more rest, more warmth, more gentleness. Maybe you need more honesty about your habits. Or maybe you need more honesty about your limits.

When we move away from resolution culture, a different set of questions and possibilities emerges:

• What does my body need right now?

• Where am I holding more than is mine to carry?

• What kind of support—relational, body-based, communal—would actually sustain me?

This approach allows us to focus less on self-improvement and more on alignment. Less about pushing forward and more about coming home to the body, to values, and relationships. It asks us to lean in to ways of living that are more humane and more true.

As we move through this season, I invite us all to engage in a different reflection. One that honors community, ancestral wisdom, and embodied knowing.

Meaningful change unfolds in its own cyclical time. Not because we resolved to be different, but because we listened deeply enough to respond.