The days between Christmas and New Year often feel strangely flat. We are not festive anymore, not quite ready for fresh beginnings. The structure of routine has dissolved, but the energy for new intentions hasn’t arrived yet.
For many people, this stretch comes with low motivation, emotional heaviness, fatigue, or a sense of disconnection. We rarely talk about it, yet it shows up year after year.
Modern culture frames this time as a moment to reflect, reset, and prepare for transformation. But the body often tells a different story. One of depletion rather than readiness. Of pause rather than progress.
Yoga philosophy has long recognised this state, even if it didn’t name it "Twixmas."
A Natural Nervous System Dip
From a physiological perspective, this post-Christmas lull makes sense. December often demands heightened output, emotional labour, disrupted sleep, sensory overload, and social intensity. By the time the external noise subsides, the nervous system finally drops its guard.
What follows is not failure or lack of discipline, but release. Our cortisol levels fall, our energy dips and out bodies seeks stillness. This is the nervous system completing a stress cycle that has been running for weeks or months.
Yoga understood this long before productivity culture did.
The Yoga Sutras and the Space Between States
In the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Patanjali describes yoga not as constant effort, but as the settling of internal movement. The opening sutra defines yoga as the quieting of the fluctuations of the mind. Not the elimination of thought, but the softening of constant mental activity.
This is significant when we consider the space between Christmas and New Year. It is not a time of expansion. It is a time when the mind naturally loosens its grip on striving. In yogic terms, this is not stagnation. It is nirodha, a settling which allows our system to pause so that clarity can eventually arise.
Liminal Space and Yogic Wisdom
This time of year is a liminal space. Not one thing, not the next. Yoga philosophy does not rush these thresholds. Patanjali describes abhyasa (practice) and vairagya (non-attachment) as equal partners. Non-attachment allows us to release urgency and control.
Between Christmas and New Year, vairagya naturally rises. The drive to plan, achieve, or define meaning loosens. This is not something to correct. It is something to honour.
When we resist this phase, we often create more suffering. When we allow it, something subtle begins to reorganise beneath the surface.
Why Motivation Often Disappears
The Yoga Sutras also speak of tamas, one of the three gunas or qualities of nature. Tamas is often misunderstood as laziness, but it actually represents rest, heaviness, and withdrawal.
Tamas dominates winter. After intense stimulation, tamasic energy increases to restore balance. This is why energy feels lower, why movement feels slower, and why introspection deepens.
Yoga does not pathologise this. It simply reminds us that seasons move and qualities shift. Trying to impose rajasic energy (doing, pushing, planning) onto a tamasic phase creates friction. This is often what people feel as burnout or emotional flatness during this time.
What Yoga Invites Instead
Rather than forcing insight or intention, yoga encourages presence.
This might look like:
- shorter practices
- gentler movement
- quieter breath
- less mental analysis
- fewer expectations
In yoga therapy, this is a time for nervous system settling rather than transformation work. The body is not asking to be improved. It is asking to be heard. This might mean sitting on your comfiest chair with a mug of hot chocolate and reading your favourite book. It might be a leisurely walk in your favourite woods.
Clarity rarely arrives through effort in this phase. It emerges later, when the system has completed its rest.
Reframing the In-Between Days
What if the dip between Christmas and New Year is not something to push through, but something to pass through?
What if it is the closing chapter rather than the opening one?
Yoga teaches us that insight arises when conditions are right. Not when we demand it. Not when we rush. The quieter days after Christmas are not asking for answers. They are asking for space.
And space, in yogic philosophy, is never empty. It is preparatory.
A Gentle Closing Thought
If you find yourself slower, quieter, or less motivated during this time, nothing is wrong. You are not behind. You are not failing to begin again. You are in a natural pause, recognised by both biology and ancient wisdom. Yoga does not ask you to leap forward from here, t asks you to soften, settle, and trust that clarity will come when the body is ready.
