Sliding into the End-of-Year Wall

On inertia, snow hills, and aligning ourselves with saner rhythms

Happy Solstice!

Tonight we rest in Nidra together on the Zooms. If you’ve already registered, see you there. If you still want to register, you can do that HERE.

Illustration by Rizki Ardia

When I was in grade 3, just before winter break, my classmates and I built the most epic snowslide. It stretched from the top of the hill our school sat on, down a ridiculously steep incline, and ended in the football field below. Every recess, we’d line up, shouting for our turns, sliding down the icy slope into the growing, rock-solid mound of packed snow at the bottom. Then we’d barely scramble out of the way in time for the next kid to launch themselves down. This is where we got our first hard lesson in the realities of momentum.

One particularly icy day, my friend Rahim shot down the hill ahead of me at full speed and slammed into the ice mound at the bottom with a yelp. As the rhythm of the hill dictated, I was next. So, without hesitation, I sprinted, threw myself onto the slope, and started my descent, expecting Rahim to hobble out of the way before I reached the bottom. But halfway down, I realized—that wasn’t happening. He sat down there, gripping a freshly broken leg, wailing for me to stop barrelling towards him.

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And I tried. With my whole tiny body, I tried to roll sideways off the path, or come to a miraculous full stop, or fly up and over him to safety. But the laws of motion had other plans. All the warning cries from the top of the hill and Rahim’s screams at the bottom couldn’t stop me. I slammed into him hard. Eight-year-olds — meet inertia.

I can still hear the thud of the impact, the crunch of kid bones. I can still feel the cringe of shame and bewilderment that came from learning the limits of control over my own trajectory. That same unstoppable trajectory I learned about as a kid feels eerily familiar as an adult. It’s a pattern that shows up everywhere—especially in how we approach the passage of time.

In the decades since, this whole memory has become a morbid metaphor for how we often experience the momentum of the year:

January hits and we take a running leap into our New Year’s resolutions, drop our butts down, and sail through spring. Wind whips through our hair as summer speeds up our plans, and our projects, and our hopes and dreams. But by fall, we start noticing how fast everything is flying by, how terrifyingly close the end of the year is… so we try to correct course—Fix a habit! Lose the weight! Reorganize my life! But just like that, we slam into the icy wall of December. Momentum has dictated our course again, and we wonder, Where in the living fuck did this year go???

The calendar year, with all its sharp edges, can make life feel like an endless cycle: launch, velocity, inertia, hard stop. Rinse, repeat. Sometimes, it feels like you’re just a helpless, five-foot projectile in snow pants, barrelling through the cosmos toward impact.

But underneath the rigidity of dates and deadlines, a quieter rhythm is pulsing—one that moves with much more grace. The sun doesn’t slam to a halt on the solstice; it ebbs, little by little, until we reach the stillness of the longest night. It’s not a hard stop; it’s a rounded nadir. And then, just as gently, the light returns, inch by inch, flowing outward again toward the apex of summer.

This, of course, is the spirit behind New Year’s resolutions—a natural end to one cycle, a reorientation toward the next. But in our fast-paced, all-or-nothing way, we try to make those changes happen now. We demand that January 1 is a 90-degree turn off a snow hill.

If, instead, we can attune ourselves to this more natural rhythm—through intentional rest, meditation, or ritual—we move differently. We don’t crash into the end of the year. We unwind with it. We reach a zero point, a moment of least momentum and least resistance. From here, it’s easier to change direction.

The solstice is one of those awesome times when nature invites us to hitch our wild nervous systems to a saner rhythm. Today is a chance to rest with the Earth, let the last of this year’s momentum unwind itself, and in that liminal zero-point, plant the seeds of whatever magic could come next. So as the world pauses, let yourself pause too—because in the quiet, there’s room to dream a softer, saner way forward.

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Tonight’s Meditation

Winter Solstice Practice

TIME: Dec 21 @ 8 PM EST

DEETS: Let's rest together on this longest night of the year with a practice of Clear Light Yoga Nidra. This is a practice of deep rest that expands awareness into the liminal — between wake and sleep, self and no-self, is and is not. It’s an opportunity to plant seeds of intention that can germinate quietly through the stillness of winter and bloom into the light of the new year.

COST: This session is open to everyone. If you’d like to share gratitude & generosity for this practice, you can offer dana here.

REGISTER HERE ✨

See you tonight :)

❤️ Tasha