The Wild Within

Shedding Skins in the Year of the Snake: Soul Tools for Release and Completion

Kristen Yates

I am recording this episode as a soul-stream from the desert of Baja, reflecting on the endings, completions, and releases that I've been experiencing this year and that so many of us are moving through right now. As we step into the stillness of winter and prepare to close out 2025, we'll explore what it is to be in the tender liminal space as old identities and ways of being are shed away, how to navigate the process of release, and six tools to move through times of completion with grace, creating potent space for the next chapter to arise. If you’ve been feeling the old falling away in your life this year, you are definitely not alone - trust that it is paving the way for a personal and collective new beginning! 

In this episode we explore:

  • The collective theme of release and completion as we close out 2025
  • Why so many of us are shedding old identities, roles, and masks right now
  • How the Year of the Snake relates to shedding skin and returning to the earth
  • My personal season of endings, loss, and integration this year
  • How trying to “build” in a year meant for integration creates struggle and burnout
  • Moving from our default linear, productivity culture back into nature’s cyclical wisdom
  • Winter as a powerful portal for stillness, rest, and energetic rest
  • Six practices for moving through release and completion with more grace
  • Letting go by just “5%” and taking one stone out of your metaphorical backpack
  • Inviting more silence, stillness, and polarity between movement and rest
  • Emotional processing tools like breathwork, shaking, sound, and somatic practices
  • Finding a healthy balance between solitude and chosen community that supports your becoming
  • Using writing, creativity, and non-verbal expression as soul work in the liminal space
  • The power of ritual, ceremony, and nature as teachers of death, composting, and rebirth
  • Rewilding as a return to innate nature, instinct, and authenticity beneath the programming
  • A look ahead at the shift from a “9 year” of endings to a “1 year” and the Fire Horse energy of new beginnings