The time between Christmas and New Year has a special magic. I’ve seen it described as “the cosy nook of the year”. No need to celebrate anything, work is often slow. Waiting until the New Year to start any new and exciting adventures. Slow time, to just… be.
If you’re seeking slowness in the busy festive period, your body is a good place to start. My experience is that bodies live stubbornly in the present. So wherever your mind is off to, tuning into your body can ease you back into the slow, serene time of the present moment. Mindfulness, qigong, yoga, tai chi, Hanna somatics exercises and meditation are all interesting places to start. And so is a deep sigh, a stretch and a wiggle while the kettle boils.
My new exciting adventure for 2026 is to try to bring the spirit of the “cosy nook” into my massage practice. The idea is create a “s l o w massage” held within a more spacious appointment time. There would be time at the beginning for us to really ground and connect, and time afterwards to slowly come back and integrate the benefits of the treatment. The massage itself would use lots of gorgeous slow myofascial techniques.
This idea partly came from a workshop I attended where the first 30 minutes was spent on creating a safe container for us. It felt like a lot of time, but… it worked! I felt significantly safer than I usually would in a group of relative strangers. And I thought that if feeling safe and connected takes 30 minutes, then let’s spend the 30 minutes.