SANCTUARY REPLAY: Tiny Joys and Cosy Micro Rituals for the Winter Season with Leah
Find warmth, celebrate tiny seasonal joys, and create your own self-care winter ritual toolkit in community.
Monday, in Sanctuary Circle…
A small, cosy circle of us gathered inside The Nourished Sensitive Collective sanctuary for a winter-themed Sanctuary Circle.
We arrived laughing about glitchy virtual backgrounds and noticing how cozy everyone already looked. Wrapped in sweaters and blankets, tea mugs in hand as we shared about our weekends.
Lynn went with her mom to a holiday musical called Million Dollar Quartet Christmas, which she found surprisingly cheerful. Marina chimed in about her slow and restorative weekend, filled with crafting, napping, and having no plans at all. And I shared how I’d planned to attend a holiday spirit event at Oakland Cemetery after church but ended up staying home and resting instead.
From there, the space began to soften into our cosy theme.
Tiny Joys & Cosy Micro Rituals for Winter
This night’s theme was Tiny Joys and Cosy Micro Rituals for Sensitive Systems in Winter.
Winter naturally pulls energy inward. And for sensitive and neurodivergent systems, that inward pull can feel intense; more tenderness, more exhaustion, more need for warmth and gentleness.
The season often gets overtaken by “the holidays,” by urgency and productivity and expectations to keep moving — when what our bodies are actually asking for is to slow down.
This circle wasn’t about big routines or self-improvement.
It was about tiny rituals: small, doable gestures that create warmth, safety, and moments of joy without overwhelm.
By the end of the night, my hope as facilitator was that each of us would leave with a kind of personal winter nest — a simple toolkit we could return to when things feel cold, loud, or heavy.
As you sit with this moment — with winter, with yourself, with whatever is surfacing inside you — I’d love to hear:
what’s one tiny joy or cosy ritual you have in your winter self-care toolkit?
Opening Meditation: Wintry Nest Visualization
After catching up, we centered on a guided visualization practice to help create our personal “wintry nest”.
With slow breaths, we softened shoulders, jaws, bellies. We noticed warmth: fabric against skin, imagined candlelight, warm food, blood pulsing gently through the body.
Inside the visualization, we asked:
Where does my body want to nest?
What part of me is longing for warmth right now?
This helped to bring our winter nest to mind.
Here’s a short preview of Leah’s “Wintry Nest: Visual Meditation.
When we came back, the room felt noticeably quieter — like something had settled.
Lynn shared that she’d pictured herself as a little bird in her cosy winter nest. Marina laughed that after snuggling herself inside a tiny den under the base of a tree, she had basically become the Celestial Seasonings Sleepytime Tea Bear.(iykyk)
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Inside the Conversation
After the meditation, we returned to our anchor question:
What tiny winter joy is my nervous system craving — and what rituals could help me receive it?
A few powerful threads emerged from journaling and sharing:
💚 Rest without justification
Marina named how nourishing it was to have a weekend with no plans. The kind of rest that isn’t “earned” through sickness or exhaustion, but chosen simply because her system needed it. We reflected on how rare it can feel to let ourselves slow down when nothing is “wrong,” and how winter invites us to normalize rest as a form of devotion.
💚 Joyful jaunts & the magic of choice
One message that came through was a gentle nudge toward joyful jaunts — a reminder that winter doesn’t have to mean confinement. With the right clothes, we can still meet the season outside, take in nature, and let movement be a form of aliveness. We held the truth that we always have options: cozy inside, or crisp air outside — and both can be medicine.
💚 Sensory warmth as nervous system care
We shared how tiny sensory cues can shift everything: the crackling sound of a fireplace video, the weight of a blanket, the scent of a cookie candle, the glow of soft lighting. We talked about how these micro-rituals aren’t “extra” — they’re often the most direct path back to regulation for sensitive bodies.
💚 Winter awe & quiet beauty
Looking at the winter sky became its own form of ritual: vivid sunrises and sunsets, stars that seem brighter in cold darkness, and the hush that comes when leaves are down and the world feels quieter. Even crunchy snow underfoot was named as a grounding pleasure — part ASMR, part embodiment, part prayer.
Underneath every thread was the reminder that:
Winter rituals aren’t about building a perfect routine — they’re about creating tiny moments of safety and joy that your body can actually receive.
Member Intentions:
At the end of circle, we always share our intentions:
Marina: “To combine the word safety into my rest — what would it feel like to be rested and to remember it’s safe to rest? I’m sitting with that question.”
Lynn: “To move through my deadlines ‘bird by bird’ — staying present and gently chipping away without letting the pressure rattle me.”
Leah: “To practice intentional breathwork — especially during client sessions that feel ungrounding — and to take wintry walks to get oxygen and reset my nervous system.”
We’ll revisit these intentions in future Sensitive Sanctuary circles and see how they’ve unfolded.
What’s one intention you’d like to carry forward into this next stretch of your season — for your body, your heart, or your inner world?
Circle Activity: Create a Wintry Ritual Toolkit
After our group discussion, we spent some time creating our own wintry ritual toolkits — a simple, personal collection of small comforts and practices to support our sensitive systems through the season.
Here are a few creations shared in our private community Whatsapp Sanctuary chat after the circle.
Marina’s collage included the Harry Potter movies, and a full body-sized fleece Snuggie, while Leah’s included the sounds of Ella Fitzgerald, cookies, and a pair of embroidered floral slippers.
What’s one thing you’re putting on your creative wintry ritual toolkit collage to share with friends?
A Sanctuary to Ground, Connect, and Grow
If this kind of guided inner journey felt good to you to read, imagine having a place to return to twice a month.
A room of sensitive souls lying under blankets, eyes closed, relaxing into healing. A place where you can bring your questions, your tiredness, your shadow parts, and be met with belonging.
If that sounds like something you’ve been quietly longing for, you’re warmly invited to access the full archive of Sanctuary Circles and join us live for every gathering in sanctuary by upgrading your membership tier.
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Closing Blessing: Finding the Tiny Winter Joys
We closed the circle with a simple winter blessing — a reminder that the warmth and joy we create for ourselves in circle can become a steady companion in the days ahead.
May the warmth you created tonight stay with you
in the small, quiet moments of the days ahead.May your body feel supported, your heart feel softened,
and your spirit feel wrapped in a gentle winter glow.May tiny joys find you exactly where you are,
and may your rituals become small lanterns of peace
guiding you through the season.
We close the circle with breath and blessing.
Take three deep breath, and say:
Amen. Let it be. So it is. Or simply bow.
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Watch the Full Circle Replay
For those who’d like to revisit the circle or join us in spirit, here is the full recording of our time together along with the full circle meditation, journal prompts, conversation between friends, and the toolkit making & collage activity: