Sexual Winter: Stillness & Rest
The Winter Season of Sexuality: Stillness & Rest
Winter is the season of deep rest—of silence, slowness, and returning to your core. Like snow blanketing the earth, it offers a sense of pause, spaciousness, and mystery. In the arc of sexuality, winter can be fleeting like post-climax or months and years of dormancy. It is not a lack of desire—it is desire turned inward, preparing for renewal.
tldr;
- When you don't feel like the most sexual version of yourself, it's your body's signal to pause, slow down, and rest
- A season of winter can happen anytime of year and be any length of time, it's dependent on how much rest you need
- Rest is welcomes periods of deeply generative and creative states
Note this is best read after full context from Seasons of Sexuality →
✦ Yin Yang in Sexual Winter
In Traditional Chinese Medicine, winter is governed by the Water element—deep, cool, and wise. It is the most yin time of year: still, reflective, inward. While yang is the fire of movement and arousal, yin is the receptive depth where energy is conserved, not expended.
Sexually, this mirrors:
- The body’s hourly, daily, or weekly rest after climax or emotional intensity
- A withdrawal from stimulation to replenish essence (jing)
- Emotional intimacy without performance—quiet touch, co-regulation, closeness
- A time to nurture boundaries, tend to fatigue, or simply enjoy non-sexual intimacy
This is the phase of integration. Like seeds beneath snow, your erotic energy is not gone—it’s gathering strength in the dark. Trust that desire will return. But for now, it's enough to breathe, hold, and be held.
✹ Discovering Origins of Sexuality
Sexuality evolved as opposites in the Eastern and Western worlds. Eastern sexuality was spiritual, whereas Western was sinful.
In many Eastern traditions—especially in early China, India, and Japan—sexuality was seen as an essential force of nature and even a pathway to spiritual enlightenment. Whether through Daoist energy cultivation, Tantric rituals, or Shinto fertility rites, sex was woven into the rhythms of health, harmony, and cosmic balance. Desire was not something to be repressed but respected and refined. In the East pleasure was celebrated—including pleasure for women.
On the other side of the world, Western traditions positioned sexuality as something to be controlled, confessed, or denied. Rooted in original sin and the fall of man, sexual pleasure (especially outside of marriage) was viewed as a moral failing, a test of discipline, or a threat to spiritual purity. Over centuries, this gave rise to strict codes of modesty, shame-based education, and gendered double standards. In the West sexuality was demonized.
Figure 2: Centuries of Sexual Evolution
To begin again, let's return to the old. Discover foundations of pleasure and sex, created in a world without shame. Answer questions like: Why do I associate sexual conservatism with Eastern cultures? What if I'm not religious, does this matter to me? How does learning about the past help me have an orgasm now?
✹ Discovering Origins and Roots of our Modern Patterns
Feeling frustrated, stuck, overwhelmed, avoidant, or afraid are usually symptoms of not knowing. When you have more information, you can see the full picture, form new opinions, change your emotions, and take different actions.
While understanding sex from 2,000 years ago won't change patterns in your bedroom tomorrow, it can give you perspective into the root of your stress. Maybe sex makes you feel obligated, disconnected, or rejected from your partner. Or, you get angry when your partner flirts with someone else. Or, you hate having boring sex. Our modern day problems, can be traced back to patterns from different eras, regions, and religions across the world.
There is another way, it just takes curiosity and effort to discover it.
Sexuality Through Eras, Regions, Religions
Unsurprising, sex means different things to different people. Each culture has it's own set of values, sex included. For example, in the West we value individuality and freedom, in the East they prioritize family network and others above self. Throughout eras values shift. The swirling mix of political climates, economic resources, disease, and information access all contribute to human behavior, patterns, social structures, and priorities.
Rediscover the sexual patterns and behaviors that shape us today:
China
- Daoism → YIN
- Confucian → YANG
-
Buddhism → Yin
Japan
India
The West
- Rome & Greece → YANGish
- Christianity → YANG
- Renaissance → YANG
- Victorian → YANG
- Puritan → YANG
- 20th Century → YIN
- Feminism→ YIN
Rediscovering East+West
What happens when cultures mix? How are patterns, values, and behaviors shared? Why has the East recently become so sexually conservative? How does any of this help me?
- Opposite Roots of Sexuality in Religion →
- Blending Sexual Cultures →
- How do roots of century-old values blossom in modern culture →
- Why do societal values flip flop →
Learning about traditional sexual philosophies offers more than historical insight—it gives us the option of new choices. When we understand the complicated history of sex, we can start to question the shame we've inherited.
You don't know what you don't know—but once you do, you have the power to choose differently.
✹ Practices of Play to Get Unstuck
Most times, I don't want to put in the work for a big fix, I want an immediate one. We have that too. Try some of these practices of play to sink into Winter and rest your body and mind:
Rest your mind
✹ What Rest is—and Isn't
It's easy to misinterpret practices and concepts. Winter and rest might be one of the seasons with the most misunderstandings—it's at least a season we feel anxious about. When you can't find rest, especially after trying, check out these common misconceptions.
- Myth: Rest is the same as sleep.
Truth: While sleep is vital, it's not the only form of rest.
Rest is giving your senses a break—at the same time or different times. It means slowing down and nourishing your mind and body. For example, if you do a 'digital detox' by turning your phone off, yet your mind can't stop thinking about what you are missing then you swapped stimulation. You are practicing something new, which can turn into a form of rest but is not yet restful. Similar to how yoga initially effortful, then after you've practiced it becomes restorative.
Discover other ways to turn off your senses →
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Myth: Rest means doing nothing.
Truth: Rest is not the absence of activity—it’s the presence of restoration.
Walking outside, making yourself a nourishing meal, listening to music, observing your emotions, or even daydreaming can all be restful. What matters is whether the activity replenishes your energy and reconnects you with yourself. Often when you are 'doing nothing' you let your mind wander, anxieties stir, and turn to social media for a false sense of connection—none of which are actually restful.
- Myth: Rest isn't possible.
Truth: Even busy parents can find impactful rest (even when it's imperfect).
When your nervous system is locked in overdrive and you have negative time, rest feels inaccessible. You are in survival mode with no visible end. Micro-rests, sensory pauses, and small acts of stillness can have an outsized impact. For example, ending each evening with a note of gratitude will restore mental fortitude and resilience for the chaos of life. Feeding yourself with healthy, even if it's more expensive food, will help your cells help you. Stepping outside of the home for a yoga class or dinner with friends will change your baseline nervous system.
- Myth: You have to earn rest by being productive.
Truth: Rest is not a prize—it’s a biological necessity.
You don’t have to burn out before taking a break. In fact, sustainable creativity, emotional regulation, and sexual receptivity all rely on regular rhythms of rest. When your body does not rest your body rebels with disease and symptoms.
- Myth: Rest means isolation or withdrawal.
Truth: Some rest is solitary, but rest can also happen in connection.
Being held, laughing with a friend, or resting in shared silence with a partner can be deeply nourishing. Rest is about restoring your energy, not disappearing from life. Rest can be play, reading, dimming the lights in the evening, or going to a concert. If you have certain senses that are being over used (like staring at a screen), rest can be going to a walk in a garden.
- Myth: You should feel energized immediately after resting.
Truth: Rest doesn’t always give you a quick “boost.”
Sometimes it stirs up emotions, reveals unmet needs, or invites a slower pace. True rest often feels like softness, not a jolt of motivation. Energy returns over time, not on demand. Resting allows your body shift into restoration. You may need to complete the stress cycle to actually trigger and enter stress. Triggering this might look like physically pushing your self, crying, or dancing. After your pent up emotion and stress is released, then your body can enter a state of rest.
Learn more about the stress cycle from PhD Emily Nagoski →
- Myth: Rest is passive and uncreative.
Truth: Rest is deeply generative.
It makes space for insight, imagination, and inspiration to arise. Like letting cloudy water settle, many breakthroughs—emotional, sexual, or artistic—happen after periods of doing less. Stillness is fertile ground, not emptiness.
- Myth: Rest is selfish.
Truth: Rest is what allows you to show up fully—for yourself and others.
When you honor your limits and rhythms, you model permission for others to do the same. You become a healthier version of yourself that can show up for the world. Far from selfish, rest can be one of the most selfless choices you make.
✹ Final Thoughts
Your body and mind cannot always be on. When we override our signals for rest, our bodies does keep score and will rebel with diseases when we don't get it. Winter seasons require us to be off—with intention. To quiet the noise, not as an escape, but as a return. To remember that sexuality isn’t just about friction and fire—it’s also about water and waiting.
Let this be the season you tend to the roots, not the flowers. That you trust in your body’s wisdom. That you believe in the power of stillness to bring you back to yourself.
Because sometimes, the most erotic thing you can do is rest.
Return to Sexual Autumn →
Keep unearthing Seasonal Sexuality →
Diniz G, Korkes L, Tristão LS, Pelegrini R, Bellodi PL, Bernardo WM. The effects of gratitude interventions: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Einstein (Sao Paulo). 2023 Aug 11