We Were Never Meant to Live the Same Way All Year

Seasonality, the body, and remembering how to live in rhythm

For most of human history, life changed with the seasons.

What we ate changed. What was available changed. The length of the day changed. Our work changed. Our clothing changed. Our movement changed. There were periods of abundance and periods of scarcity, periods of activity and periods of rest.

The world around us was constantly changing — and we changed with it.

Modern life has made it remarkably easy to forget this.

We can illuminate a room at midnight. Cool a building in summer. Heat it in winter. Eat strawberries in December and apples in spring. Work at exactly the same pace in January as we do in June.

We have created environments designed to remove seasonality.

And yet our bodies are still rhythmic.

The body keeps time

There are rhythms operating inside us constantly.

The most familiar is our circadian rhythm — the approximately 24-hour biological cycle influenced strongly by light and darkness. Sleep, alertness, body temperature, digestion and hormone signalling all participate in this daily pattern.

But the day is not the only rhythm we live within.

The amount and timing of daylight change through the year. Temperature changes. Humidity changes. Rainfall changes. Plants flower and fruit. Animals migrate and reproduce. Landscapes move between dormancy, emergence, abundance and decay.

Even close to the equator, where the four-season model of spring, summer, autumn and winter may make little sense, there are rhythms: wet and dry, flowering and fruiting, hurricane and calm, heat and relative cool.

Nature is not static. It pulses.

Perhaps vitality depends, at least partly, on learning to notice those pulses again.

Seasonality is not only about weather

When I think about seasonality, I don't only think about winter coats and summer dresses.

I think about attention.

What is happening outside?

What is happening inside my body?

What does my body need more of now?

What does it need less of?

There are moments when we naturally feel expansive, social and energetic. There are others when we want quiet, warmth, sleep and retreat.

Not every fluctuation in mood or energy can be explained by a season, of course. Emotional and physical health are far more complex than that.

But I think we lose something important when we expect ourselves to perform identically every day of the year.

Nature doesn't.

Why should we?

There are seasons within us, too

I am increasingly interested in the idea that seasonality exists at several scales simultaneously.

There is the rhythm of a day: wake, activate, work, soften, sleep.

There is the rhythm of a year: emergence, abundance, harvest, retreat.

There are rhythms within our bodies.

And then there are the larger cycles we observe in the world around us — tides, lunar cycles, planetary movements and the changing relationship between the Earth and Sun.

I don't think we need to claim that every cosmic movement directly controls our emotional lives in order to feel something profound in this.

We live on a rotating planet orbiting a star.

The seasons themselves are cosmic.

Our experience of light and darkness is cosmic.

The rhythms that structure life on Earth emerge from that relationship.

We are not separate from the universe. We are biological life occurring within it.

Health may be partly about rhythm

We often talk about health through individual things.

Nutrition. Exercise. Sleep. Stress. Hormones. Mental health. Environment.

But underneath many of these is another idea:

timing.

When do we eat?

When do we sleep?

When do we encounter daylight?

When do we move?

When do we concentrate?

When do we stop?

When do we allow ourselves to recover?

A healthy life may not only depend on what we do, but on whether our behaviour has some relationship with the rhythms our biology expects.

This doesn't mean returning to some romanticized version of ancestral life. Electricity, medicine, refrigeration, climate control and technology have transformed human wellbeing in enormously valuable ways.

It means asking whether convenience has unintentionally flattened rhythms that were once important signals to the body.

Emotional health has seasons too

I think this is equally important emotionally.

We live in a culture that often celebrates permanent expansion.

More productivity. More growth. More output. More visibility. More experiences.

But no living system expands continuously.

Plants flower and then withdraw.

Trees fruit and then rest.

Land needs periods in which very little appears to be happening.

Those periods are not necessarily failures of productivity.

They are part of the cycle that makes the next period possible.

Perhaps we could extend the same compassion to ourselves.

There can be seasons for creating and seasons for integrating. Seasons for being deeply social and seasons for solitude. Seasons for beginning and seasons for letting go.

Emotional vitality doesn't necessarily mean feeling good all the time.

Sometimes vitality may mean having enough sensitivity to recognize what season we are actually in.

Designing with the season rather than against it

This is where seasonality becomes particularly interesting for Design for Vitality.

If the body changes with its environment, why do we design as though it doesn't?

A bedroom in Tulum during the humid rainy season has different requirements from the same bedroom during a drier period.

A body sleeping through a hot tropical night needs different support from a body experiencing a cold highland night in Oaxaca.

Textile weight can change.

Air movement can change.

Bedding can change.

Food changes.

Light changes.

Rituals can change.

Even the way we arrange and inhabit a home can change.

Instead of creating one perfectly controlled environment and maintaining it 365 days a year, perhaps our homes could become more responsive.

Curtains open and close differently.

Beds gain or lose layers.

Rooms change purpose.

Materials breathe, age and respond.

Meals follow what is growing nearby.

Rituals acknowledge the arrival of rain, heat, harvest, darkness or abundance.

The home becomes less like a sealed machine and more like a living interface between BODY × MATERIAL × CLIMATE × TIME.

From bioclimatic design to temporal design

This adds another dimension to the work we are exploring at Design for Vitality.

We already ask:

What does this body need in this place?

Perhaps we also need to ask:

What does this body need in this place, at this moment in time?

Because place isn't fixed.

Bodies aren't fixed.

Climate isn't fixed.

Life isn't fixed.

A material that feels wonderful in February may feel completely different in August humidity.

A room that receives beautiful winter sun may need deep shade six months later.

A ritual that supports us during an energetic period may become exhausting during a period of recovery.

Good design therefore cannot only respond to place.

It must learn to respond to change.

Remembering how to notice

Maybe seasonality begins with something extraordinarily simple.

Pay attention.

Notice when the light changes.

Notice which plants appear.

Notice when the rain arrives.

Notice what foods enter the market.

Notice your sleep.

Notice your appetite.

Notice your energy.

Notice what your skin wants to touch.

Notice when you want company.

Notice when you need quiet.

Not because every feeling needs to be interpreted as a cosmic message.

But because attention reconnects us with the environment in which our bodies are actually living.

And that, to me, is part of vitality.

We don't exist outside nature looking in.

We are inside its cycles.

Inside its days.

Inside its seasons.

Inside its periods of activity, decay, rest and renewal.

Perhaps living well isn't about maintaining one perfect state.

Perhaps it is about becoming responsive enough to move with change.

To know when to expand.
When to soften.
When to shed.
When to rest.
And when to begin again.

That is seasonality.

And perhaps it is one of the oldest forms of intelligence we have.

<3 with gratitude! Maz