Winter Solstice to waxing crescent · Five Sundays · June 21 - July 19, 2026 · 5–6:30pm AEST · Online, live
Winter asks something of us that no other season does. It asks us to stop. To go inward. To follow the dark rather than resist it.
In Daoist cosmology, winter belongs to the Water element - to the Kidneys and Bladder, to zhi, the deep will that lives not in striving but in stillness. It is the season of jing - ancestral essence, the intelligence the body carries before memory, before language. The seed underground. The root in the dark.
In the oldest myths, this journey has a name. Persephone descends. She crosses the threshold and enters the underworld, and she does not return the same. What goes down is transformed by the going.
This five-week Yin container follows that arc through the terrain of your own body.
Each session moves along the Water meridian lines - Kidney, Bladder, and the extraordinary vessels of the deep body - with Qi Gong to cultivate and circulate jing, Yin poses held long enough to reach the connective tissue, the fascia, the places where we store what we have not yet processed. Daoist philosophy and mythic narrative provide the thread. The body provides the ground.
This is not metaphor. The body is the terrain. The descent is literal - into the connective tissue, the fascia, the Kidney line, the ancestral essence stored in the marrow.
The container is structured as a mythic arc - five sessions, five thresholds, the descent and the return held across the arc of winter.
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June 21, Winter Solstice, Week One
The longest night. The earth at its deepest point of darkness, and no more precise moment to begin.
We open with tea. Both hands around the cup. The steam. The intention to surrender what is already loosening.
Then the body, the Kidney-Bladder axis, the seat of will and of fear, the organ that holds both the hesitation at the threshold and the knowing that we must cross it regardless.
The narcissus opens. The ground splits. We agree to go down.
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June 28, Week Two
The descent is not dramatic once you are in it, it is slow, cold, and dark.
This session moves along the river of the spine, the Bladder meridian releasing what has calcified in the back body. Wu wei as embodied practice: doing by not-doing, yielding as intelligence.
Hecate appears here with her torches, not to rescue but to accompany, illuminating just enough.
The full moon rises two days later, cold and sourceless, the underground lamp of the deep.
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July 5, Week Three
Jing the deep essence stored in the Kidneys, is not personal. It is inherited, ancestral, older than this life.
This session goes into the body's lowest registers: the sacrum, the inner leg lines, the sole of the foot. Kidney 1, Yongquan, the body's deepest earthing point.
We open with the Qi Gong practice of bone marrow washing - cultivating jing at its deepest register, the body remembering what it carries in the marrow.
In the Orphic tradition, the initiate descending is offered two springs: Lethe, forgetting, and Mnemosyne, remembering. We drink from the one that remembers. The body holds what the mind releases.
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July 12, Week Four
The pomegranate seed. A small act with permanent consequence.
This session holds voluntary and involuntary surrender what we release consciously and what is taken from us.
The Lung-Large Intestine axis alongside the Kidney line: grief and will in the same body, the chest that holds what we cannot carry further.
Inanna arrives at the seventh gate and leaves the last thing behind.
The session closes with a Yoga Nidra - enlightened sleep, the body dissolving at the threshold between waking and the dark.
The new moon falls the following morning. The sky confirms it.
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July 19, Week Five
This is not spring. It is the seed feeling warmth for the first time, still underground, still in the dark, but the direction has changed.
Persephone walks back toward the light carrying the knowledge that she is also Queen of the Dead. The dragon raises its head.
The Water element hands the thread to Wood - the first upward movement of jing into Liver qi, the first stirring of what was refined in the deep.
We close with tea. The last cup, held in both hands, the ritual frame of return.
The waxing crescent is visible in the sky. The container is complete.
What each session holds
We open and close with tea - a quiet threshold ritual, an invitation to arrive before we begin. The first cup on the Winter Solstice. The last as we return.
Week Three opens with the Qi Gong practice of bone marrow washing, cultivating jing at its deepest register. Week Four falls on the eve of the new moon dark and closes with a Yoga Nidra: the body enacting what the sky confirms.
Each Sunday is 90 minutes, live on Zoom. Sessions are recorded and available for seven days following each class - long enough to catch what you missed, true to the nature of a passage rather than a permanent archive.
Yin yoga · Qi Gong · Cha Dao · TCM meridian theory · Daoist philosophy · Meditation · Myth
This is not a yoga class. It is a passage.
Investment
Early bird, five sessions — $155 AUD (until June 1) Full container, five sessions — $185 AUD Single session drop-in — $50 AUD
After purchasing you will receive a welcome email within 24 hours with everything you need to prepare.
Recordings available for seven days after each session for those who cannot attend live.
Drop-in participants are warmly welcome. Some mythic and somatic context will build across the five weeks - a brief orientation note will be included in your welcome email for whichever session you join.
Questions? sarah@sarahandrijcich.com
Winter Solstice to waxing crescent. Five Sundays. June 21 -July 19, 2026. 5-6:30pm AEST. Online via Zoom.
A five-week Yin container following the arc of descent and return through the terrain of the winter body. Through the Kidney and Bladder meridians, ancestral essence, and Daoist philosophy - woven through with the oldest stories we have - of descent, of unmaking, and of what is carried back into the light.
We travel through five thresholds:
The Gate · The River · The Root Chamber · The Unmaking · The Return
Each session is 90 minutes, live on Zoom. Recordings available for seven days after each class.
We open and close the container with tea. A simple threshold ritual. An invitation to arrive before we begin. Week Four closes with Yoga Nidra on the eve of the new moon dark.
Early bird pricing - available until June 1st.
After purchasing you will receive a welcome email within 24 hours with your Zoom link and everything you need to prepare.
Questions? sarah@sarahandrijcich.com
One session. One threshold. 5–6:30pm AEST. Online via Zoom.
Select your session below.
Each Sunday holds its own mythic and somatic focus, you are welcome to drop into whichever threshold calls you.
June 21 — The Gate · Winter Solstice. Crossing the threshold. The Kidney-Bladder axis. Cha Dao opening ritual.
June 28 — The River · Moving through stillness. The spine as waterway. Hecate's cold lamp.
July 5 — The Root Chamber · Ancestral essence. Jing. What the body remembers when the mind cannot.
July 12 — The Unmaking · The pomegranate seed. Grief and surrender. Closes with Yoga Nidra on the eve of the new moon.
July 19 — The Return · The first breath upward. Water into Wood. Tea closing ritual.
Each session is 90 minutes, live on Zoom. Recording available for seven days after the session.
After purchasing you will receive a confirmation email within 24 hours with your Zoom link and session details.
Note: drop-in participants are warmly welcome. Some mythic and somatic context will build across the five weeks, a brief orientation note will be included in your confirmation for whichever session you join.
Questions? sarah@sarahandrijcich.com
Sarah Andrijcich has been guiding people in Yin yoga and contemplative practice for over a decade. Her teaching draws from Yoga, Daoist philosophy, TCM meridian theory, Qi Gong, Cha Dao, and the mythologies that have always known: what goes down is transformed by the going. The Underworld is her first online container, and the beginning of The Vessel as a living body of work.
The Vessel · a practice in stillness, at the threshold, rooted in Yin yoga, Chandra Vinyasa, Qi Gong, Cha Dao, TCM meridian theory, Daoist philosophy, meditation, and myth.