Before You Crash into Christmas… Read This.

December as a psychological trap

December is the only month where you are culturally required to perform joy, whether or not you feel it. It demands celebration at the precise moment the human system is at its lowest energetic threshold — least daylight, least serotonin activation, highest emotional residue. It is a month constructed on ritualised distraction: spending, attending, smiling, conforming. You are expected to wear cheer like a costume, participate in traditions that drain rather than nourish, and call it “festive” while your body quietly enters dormancy and your mind begins the annual audit of everything that didn’t heal, didn’t close, didn’t resolve.

And this is where the trap tightens. Instead of allowing the psyche to descend into natural winter introspection — reflection, release, slowing, integration — December forces the opposite: acceleration, performance, consumption. It trains you to avoid your interior life exactly when it needs conscious presence.

The result is a psychological split — the external calendar pushing celebration while the internal calendar signals depletion. Most people mistake this misalignment for personal failure: “Why am I not happy? Why do I feel heavy?” when in truth, nothing is wrong with you. What’s wrong is the cultural override of an ancient biological and spiritual cycle that was never meant to be loud. December is not broken. The human system is not broken. What’s broken is the agreement to ignore what this time of year actually asks of us.

The 12 Days of Consciousness exist to restore December’s original inner‑reflection cycle; a rhythm that’s been buried beneath the cultural machinery of Christmas. Before lights and tinsel, before invented traditions and compulsory cheer, this portion of the year was understood as a descent into awareness: a period of quiet excavation, a recalibration of identity, a resetting of the nervous system before the return of light. What if, instead of overriding that ancient instinct yet again, you used these next twelve days to enter your life with presence rather than performance? Not improvement, not ambition, but presence.

Because what most people call “New Year intention” is usually just emotional debris carried forward with fresh stationery. What this season actually asks is simpler and more confronting: to stop. To unclench. To let the psyche complete its own winter sequence without interruption. To feel what has accumulated over the year without numbing it with celebration. The invitation is not to escape December, but to inhabit it fully, without distortion, without distraction, without needing to pretend you are brighter than the season itself. If you understand this, you don’t need persuading. You already know the work awaits.

If there is a quiet recognition stirring in you, a sense that this part of the year deserves to be met rather than rushed through, then the 12 Days of Consciousness opens on December 10th for exactly that moment. The work is steady, structured, and deeply interior. Tarun will move through the same rhythm alongside you, participating in every practice he facilitates. This is shared terrain, not a performance of guidance.

December, for most, becomes a blur of expectation and obligation before the psyche has even exhaled the year that came before it. To enter this window with awareness is to allow your system to reset on its own terms. To let your body slow at the precise time it is designed to. To let your emotional life be seen without forcing it to decorate itself for the season. This is the rarest offering December holds: an honest internal pace.

If these words feel like alignment rather than instruction, then enrol before December 10th. This isn’t about adding another activity to your month, it’s about creating the one space in it that belongs entirely to you. A space where the year can conclude cleanly, where your mind can soften, where your inner voice can become audible again. Tickets are open until the course begins. Nothing more needs to be said.

Begin with consciousness, or the year will begin for you.

— Tarun Hari Das

Transcending Matters