I like crisp, bright Novembers and whispering promise of pure white winters. But at the moment all we have is rain and more rain. It makes me want to hibernate. I’ve retreated to the living room with books and candles and sashiko sewing.
The science bit
A lack of sunlight has always been associated with sad emotions, but only over the last few decades has research been able to better explain why this is. Our bodies are built with an internal clock that has been conditioned through evolution to coincide with the rotation of night and day. In other words, we are programmed to feel alert when the sun is up, and drowsy after it goes down. During the winter months, when days become shorter and it may become dark when you get up and dark before you get home, this internal clock (the circadian rhythm) causes some recognisable effects. A lack of sunlight prompts the body to produce melatonin, the hormone that induces sleep. At the same time, your brain begins to produce less serotonin which regulates mood and appetite. Without adequate amounts of serotonin while awake, it can be difficult to experience a sense of wellbeing.
I think it’s fair to say most of us feel buoyant when it’s sunny and a bit more despondent when it rains. Although extreme weathers bring out extremes in people. Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is a very real kind of depressive disorder of course, well documented.
I was reflecting on how weather can affect our moods.
Personal preference also has much to do with how the weather affects you. According to research that involved 497 adolescents, people tend to fall into one of four categories:
Summer lovers: Your mood improves in warm and sunny weather.
Summer haters: Your mood declines in warm and sunny weather.
Rain haters: Your mood declines on rainy days.
Unaffected: Weather doesn’t affect your mood much.
Individual differences aside, weather and climate do affect people in a few main ways.
Our internal weather
This notion of internal weather is often used in meditation. I use it to teach meditation to kids, it’s a metaphor we can all understand, especially as our inner states and moods can sometimes be tricky to identify. Often we are in these states without realising it. Our internal weather comes and goes. Clouds come across, storms arise and pass, the sun shines. Do you know what triggers these changes in you?
Maybe some of these descriptions can be helpful.
Cloudy - low mood
Clear - still mind
Cold - detached
Foggy - distracted, indecisive, lost in thoughts
Overcast - gloomy, blue, down
Sunny - positive mood
Windy - proliferating and chattering mind
Stormy - moody, short tempered, angry
Beginning to recognise our internal weather can help us be more aware of our mental states, understand what causes them and help us find ways to work with them.
Here’s the meditation I recorded for teaching mindfulness for kids on internal weather. (It’s good for grown ups too!)
Lucy Williams wrote a tender collection of poetry - called Internal Weather- dealing with those four fundamental things: birth, childhood, love and death. There is an emotional honesty and a lyric strength that is deeply moving. Here is one of her poems, Hope.
hope floats in her coffeepot placed in the middle of the
blue-tiled bench the way the table is wiped clean after
every meal how routine gets under your nails like dirt and
won’t wash out she tidies each small room vacuums the
floor in case of friends watches the book she is reading
and knows that it goes on without her through her large
windows winter skates the neighbourhood her television
set is a lie asleep and dreaming of truth she likes the
people on TV breaks hearts with them over a meal
understands the love she craves could not be good for
her the words she waits for are slow in coming she
constructs a letter from these slow words all winter the
letter makes the hard slog to the end of the page she
checks her age like a watch can’t understand how it got
so late how rough the past kissed her always trying it on
it is a letter to herself remember it tells her where you are
right now how your daughter laughs in this house with
her birth-tree outside how your husband’s arm anchors
you at night to every possibility and the good side of your
heart is a river of blood moving fast and the bad side is
the stone that comes to land there.
A winter read
Lastly, I’m on the search for an evocative winter read. Not the schalmtzy Christmas chick-lit stuff. But something which captures winter landscapes and moods. Last year I read Wintering: the power of rest and retreat in difficult times by Katherine May. But this year I’m on the look out for some fiction. So if you have any recommendations for me do send them my way.
Thank you for reading. If you can’t afford to subscribe why not buy me a coffee?
I’m planning on reading ‘Small Things Like These’ by Claire Keegan this December as so many have recommended it as the perfect Christmassy (but not cringey) read