Healing Winter Blues With Palo Santo Wood

How do we make peace with the darkening afternoon skies?

The frosty bite of air, the murky clouds of grey. Some of us find ourselves saddled with lethargy, sadness and anxiety in winter climes. For those who recognize the passing essence of this phenomenon known as Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), there is hope. There are strategies to ride it out with peacefulness and acknowledgment. Tomorrow will come, but for now, we do the work to feel centred within the winter blues, and discover joy. We do so with the aid of Palo Santo wood.

It's important to see this work as healing for the occasional presence of winter blues, and not as a therapeutic strategy for those who are feeling hopeless or in deep despair. If you are experiencing a heaviness that makes it hard to function at home or work, seek help from your trusted health practitioner. Palo Santo wood will always be in your toolbox, but depression is not a fight to take on alone.

Palo Santo wood and its healing properties

Besides the practical uses of Palo Santo wood towards physical ailments, including common colds and flus, it also possesses healing properties for mitigating anxiety and depression. Through smudging or consumption in a warm tea, your body and soul takes up its natural goodness and is nourished with a sense of warm potential.

Light, warmth and the scent of Palo Santo wood

For a winter evening full of light and promise, bring candles into your space and a stick of Palo Santo wood to burn while you spend time on a project or pleasure you love. Read on a topic that interests you, or call a close friend. Listen to a new record or just lay on the ground and stretch. Indulge in the moving light and the sweetness in the shadows.

Meditations with focus and intention

We think you need to listen to everything psychologist, author and teacher of meditation Tara Brach has to offer. Her website is a rich and powerful resource for guided meditations that call attention to mindfulness, reduction of stress and anxiety, and full engagement with this beautiful world. Choose a meditation, light a stick of Palo Santo wood, and sit down in a comfortable position where you can bliss out with Brach for an hour. Your soul with thank you for the rest of the day.

Seek and define the goodness in the blue

There are so many blessings to receive in the colder, darker winter months. It's OK to feel down - it comes with the territory of lower access to Vitamin D - but we are open to goodness when we find the joy in our now.

Spend a couple of minutes each day (that's all you'll need, we promise), to mark down a single blessing you received from the winter world around you. Was it the softness of your scarf on your cheek? The frost on the breath of a loved one? As you make this discovery part of your daily work, you will find pleasure in the seeking; you will find more to be joyful for every day.