Ending the Year in Conversation with Your Body: An Embodied New Year Practice

Starting a new year often brings a desire to pause and reflect on the months behind us and ahead of us. This can be a heavy mental exercise which can create a space of judgment of our past, or anxiety about our future. Either one of these can leave us disconnected from ourselves, which can end up having the opposite effect to how we want to start the new cycle.

The mind wants to create a story about the year—did we succeed or fail, grow or stagnate, get it right or wrong. But the body doesn't traffic in those binaries. It holds something else entirely.

At our recent Wholly Woman gathering, we invited slowness to check in with the body, this ally that accompanies us day in and out, with its own experience that can sometimes be drowned out by the loudness of the mind. We gave the body a role in that moment of reflection. Hands on hearts. Breath in our bellies. Feet remembering what they carried. We broke it down to different areas of the body, attuning, listening, feeling, sensing into each part's experience of the past year. Allowing for the body to tell its own tale of 2025.

What I noticed from this reflection was a group of women tapped into their contentment, gratitude, and satisfaction. Organically. Notably missing were shame, judgment, or anxiety.

Not one woman arrived at shame through her body. Not one landed in anxiety. The body, when we actually listen, doesn't deal in those currencies. It deals in sensation, truth, and the patient wisdom of what is.

Instead, there was a sense of contentment and trust in the natural unfolding of their lives. I noticed clarity around what they feel is theirs to claim by nature, and how time is a natural aid to the unfoldment of the seed of who they are.

We're heading into a new season, and perhaps you're not closing a chapter just yet. Regardless, I invite you to let the body have an intentional role in your reflections about your life. Let your turning towards this ally that is your body start a conversation. This word "conversation" literally means to turn towards and be with. How about we end 2025 and start 2026 in conversation with the ally of our body.

Right now, if you're willing, try this embodied new year practice: Place one hand on your heart. One on your belly. Close your eyes if that feels right. Ask your body: What do you know about this year that my mind has been too loud to hear?

Don't think the answer. Feel it. Let it arise as sensation, as image, as knowing that doesn't need words yet.

Have an experience with your body today, tomorrow, and as often as you can, where you turn towards, where you can be with. See how the powerful choice to converse with your body starts to shift how you see your life—your past, your present, your future.

I believe my body is faithful to the current of life, to Eros. It is a solid ally and guide when I want to digest experience, or when I want to envision new horizons.

This is the work we do in Wholly Woman—not analyzing ourselves into clarity, but listening ourselves into wholeness. Your body is waiting for you. The conversation can start with one breath, one hand on your heart, one moment of genuine listening. It's that simple. That accessible. And if you want to practice this alongside other women, come join us.

With Love,

Raisa