Rethink Movement: Align Your Body With Winter’s Rhythm

The calendar flips, the days stay short, and motivation slips right along with the light. So we reframe winter fitness: not as penance after the holidays, but as a softer, smarter way to care for our bodies when energy runs low and schedules wobble.  We return to our Winter Well Being series to explore how movement can feel supportive, not punishing, during the coldest stretch of the year.

We start by naming the real barriers—dark evenings, sick kids, and the biological pull toward more sleep—and then design around them. You’ll hear practical ideas for streamable home workouts, how to set up a simple space that invites action, and why a low-pressure yoga night with close friends can deliver both accountability and joy. We dig into stretching routines that ease stiffness, habit stacking tricks that make movement unavoidable, and tiny interval “movement snacks” that build stamina without stealing your whole evening.

From there, we turn to the nervous system. Somatic movement takes center stage as a tool to unwind habitual tension—tight jaws, hunched shoulders, shallow breathing—so your body can finally exhale. We close with a brief guided breathing practice anchored in release and trust, offering a calm reset when worry tries to take the wheel. Expect a mindset shift from all-or-nothing to always-something, with strategies you can start today and sustain until spring.

If you’re ready to embrace gentle, consistent movement that fits real winter life—indoor workouts, stretching flows, somatic resets, and community support—this is your warm invitation. Listen now, share it with a friend who needs a lift, and leave a quick review so more people can find Create Harmony.

To learn more, go to mycreateharmony.com

Transcript

Why Winter Movement Feels Different

Constraints: Darkness, Sickness, Low Energy

Home Workouts And Social Motivation

Stretching Routines And Habit Stacking

Bursts, Intervals, And Somatic Movement

Mindset Shift And Gentle Goals

Guided Breathing: Release Burdens

Subscription Box And Closing

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome back to the Create Harmony Podcast. So this is a place where we celebrate our everyday joys and we really try to pay special attention to the good things that are happening all around us. We take our inspiration from nature and all of its glory and we relish the changes that it brings with each season. So this is a place that you can find creativity and introspection, and sometimes we blend the two. But don't worry, everyone is welcome to join in, and you can find your place here. And you can also take a few minutes to lift your spirits and find some fun in your everyday routine. So this is episode 158, and I'm your host, Sally Burlington, and we're continuing through a series that we do every winter called Winter Well Being. So I've shared before that winter is not my favorite season. It's cold and it's dark and we get sick all that often. And even though I like to be cozy, I just feel more energetic and more at ease when we have longer, lighter days. So winter well-being is our collective attempt to shift our focus to things that make us feel tucked in and shored up during this more harsh season of the year. So in the past few weeks, some of the stuff we've been talking about during winter well-being is we talked about all the things we want to capture and release, and that's a good thing to consider at the start of a new year. We've shared lots of ways that we at our house create a cozy atmosphere, some ideas that maybe you wanted to take into your life. And we discussed how to find a new vibe for your winter gatherings, how to change up your winter gatherings to make them a little more in line with the season. So this week we're gonna talk about winter movement. And we knew that if you if we're gonna lean into the maximum amount of well-being, this is something that can't be missed. So we've got to incorporate some kind of movement for your body. Now, as we've discussed in the past, winter is a season where nature rests. And we like to take inspiration from nature. So we are going to operate our lives in more gentle ways in the winter. And the same thing applies to winter movement. So it's tempting if you are like me, if you've done thing things the way I've done it in the past. You get done with the holidays, you've been to lots of parties, you've maybe eaten things that you didn't need to, maybe you drank things that you didn't need to, and you think to yourself, New Year, fresh start, I am gonna launch my exercise routine, I'm gonna eat so many plants, it's gonna be amazing. And then you start doing that, and maybe it doesn't exactly go as planned. It doesn't exactly align for you. Maybe it did, maybe it did go as planned. And if that works for you, that is great. You do you. But for most of us, that's a little harder in the winter season. And there's a couple things I want to point out that make winter fitness a little different than the rest of the year. So winter fitness might look different because we're not able to get outside as much as we do the rest of the year. It's cold, the days are short. So we don't get to go on as many walks. We don't get to play outside in the yard with the kids. We don't run around with the dog as much as we maybe would have if the weather is different and the days are longer. So at our house, we have this rhythm where we go on a walk right after dinner. We eat dinner a little on the early end and then we go for a walk, take our dog around the neighborhood. And we do still do it in the winter. We do still bundle up and we go out in the dark, but we're just not as regular about it. We don't do it as frequently because it's harder when it is really, really dark and rainy or cold or whatever, it's just harder to do it. So I don't need to expound on that anymore. So that's one way that winter fitness is different. Winter fitness might be different because you and the people in your household, like for example, if you have children, they might get sick and then you have to be at home. You don't get to go to the gym as you regularly would. You have to break up your rhythm a little bit because either you're not feeling well or they're not feeling well. So winter fitness is different in that way. Winter fitness is different when our bodies need more sleep and are less vigorous. So we tend to have less energy when we get less light in the day. This is not about us being not not having willpower, not pushing through. It's about us needing to respond to our circumstances and recognize there's less light in the day, therefore we need a little bit more sleep. We're not gonna have the same kind of energy that we would have when the days are really, really long. Some of us might struggle with seasonal affective disorder, so it's just not as easy to take the world on by storm in a physical sense. But I have some ideas. I have some ideas that you can use to adapt your winter movement routines. So you are still getting the movement, you are still really being good to your body and finding well-being, but you are not necessarily gonna do it at a you know, for a marathon training. So just like we did it during COVID, you can always stream a workout. Don't forget that there are so many great workouts out there. You could do an indoor walking challenge, you could try a new style of workout. Maybe you've been curious about Pilates or you wanted to try out some yoga, you wanted to do Zumba, and you you listen, you can save yourself the embarrassment that you might feel when you're a beginner in a class at the gym, and you could just do that right at home. Or if you are one of those people, which most of us are, who need other people to inspire you to move so that you know you feel more vigorous and you want to move when there's other people. Remember that last week we talked about hosting a winter gathering, inviting friends over for yoga night or any other type of workout. Invite some trusted friends that you won't feel embarrassed about if you're gonna try some new style of movement. And to the extent you have space, just set up that area of your house, make it like a little mini gym. Maybe you put out some towels, some water bottles, get a few friends to join. And the great thing about this, you're gonna uh kill two birds with one stone because you're gonna accomplish a connection with other people and physical fitness at the same time. So another idea for winter movement is to add more stretching into your routine. I love to stretch. Stretching is yoga, is one of my big things. But some of us are not as stretchy and bendy. But this would be a good way to just loosen up your joints a little bit, get your body moving. Doesn't have to be super complex. Give it a try. I have created like this little series of stretches that feels good to me. And I try I've been trying to do it every day. I've been challenging myself to get this done every day. Maybe you want to do that. You can also find lots of ideas online, Pinterest or YouTube or other places on the internet, and create a little series of of stretches for yourself, and maybe you're gonna do that every morning when you get up, or you're gonna do it every night right before you go to bed, attach it to something else that you do in your rhythm each day. You could do it every morning and every night. I mean, whoa, you would just be t really taking the world by storm there, and it would still be in line with winter movement because it's gentle and it's easygoing. Sometimes it helps in the winter if you do little bursts of movement. So it does not have to always be so, you know, zen and pilates and yoga. It can be bursts of movement, it can be like interval type training. You're maybe not gonna have the kind of energy that would say, you know, today I'm gonna launch my marathon training routine. But you could do some births of movement. You could stack that habit onto some other habit that you're doing while your coffee is brewing in the morning. Maybe you want to do some jumping jacks, or while your water for your shower is heating up, you're gonna jog in place. Just little bursts of movement. And the more of those you add into your day, the more you are being good to your body and moving around. So maybe you want to consider, or if you want to really be good to your body, you can consider some somatic movements. So somatic movement is something that helps reset your nervous system. And after we've been through a really busy season, it's a good idea to want to reset your nervous system. It helps your bring or it helps you bring your body out of habitual tension patterns. So many of us we get into these patterns. We get on autopilot and maybe we are holding our breath when we're moving around. Maybe we're bracing our shoulders, maybe we're tightening our jaw. I certainly am doing that all the time. And when you move somatically, you begin to sense those patterns within your body and you offer your body a new option. And then your body begins to learn that there's a way to be more at ease, more safe, that there are some other choices for how you can respond to your circumstances. So you can find plenty of somatic options online to fold into your winter movement routine. And that would be a really, really nice way to, you know, come out of the holidays, reset your nervous system, and you'll be ready for spring. The main thing is, the main idea here is take a moment to think differently about how you move your body in the winter. Just think about am I doing what works for me? Don't set up a pattern for yourself that then later you're like, well, that was a fail. Come up with some little tiny ways, baby steps towards some gentleness with yourself. Give yourself some grace, connect more deeply with the rhythms of nature, and I know you will find something that resonates deeply, and that's how you'll know that you've stumbled upon just the right thing. So now for our closing today, we are gonna walk through a breathing exercise. It's from a book called Breath as Prayer. And it's called You Can Give God Your Burdens, and it goes like this. Breathe deep and know you can let go of the burdens you're holding. You can trust God to take care of you. Very often, anxiety is directly tied to the burdens and worries we're carrying. You know that feeling. When circumstances are out of your control, uncertainty is pressing in, and the future is unclear. It's so easy to worry about and let the weight of that worry weigh you down. It often feels like an instinct that is hard to control, like worry is just an automatic response to stress. But the truth is, no amount of worry does us any good. We may feel like we are taking action when we worry, but worrying has never solved a problem, predicted an outcome, or calmed a heavy heart. In fact, worry often leads to anxiety, which activates our stress response and dysregulates our bodies. And for believers, worry ultimately reflects our doubt in the care and provision of God. Instead, the Bible tells us don't worry about anything. Instead, pray about everything, and tell God what you need and thank God for all that God has done. Give your burdens to the Lord, and God will take care of you. He will not permit the godly to slip and fall. Psalm 55, 22. So now we're to our breathing part of the exercise. And what we're going to do together is that we're going to breathe three times. We will inhale and exhale. When we are inhaling, we will say to ourselves, I give my burdens to you. And when we exhale, we will say to ourselves, you will take care of me. So here we go. Inhale, I give my burdens to you. And exhale, you will take care of me. And now, next breath, inhale, I give my burdens to you. And then exhale, you will take care of me. And then third and final breath, I give my burdens to you, and then exhale, you will take care of me. May it be so. We'll be back next week with a few more discussions about winter well-being. We've got a couple more weeks on this topic. So hope you'll join then too. Share it with a friend. Hopefully, you can pass these ideas forward. We would love it if you would give us a quick review. We love that. I'm gonna remind you one more time of something we've got going on. We have a seasonal subscription box. So, speaking of noticing the seasons, these boxes happen four times a year: winter, spring, summer, and fall. And what's in each box are a link to five guided meditations. They're very calming and very immersive. It gives you a chance to really step into an experience and step away from your life. And in addition to that, there are mental wellness items in the boxes that are um given to us or collaborated with us from Petal and Pink Mental Wellness Boutique. In the winter box that we're doing right now, there's a candle making kit, there's some cozy socks, there's a cute um hand warming mug, and some tea. So these just really reinforce your calming and stress-relieving um responses if you get this box. So if you want more information about that, you can go to mycreateharmony.com and find out more about how you can subscribe. And we hope you'll come back next week. And until next time, peace.