Perhaps you’ve seen newsletters or entries I’ve written in the past about preserving health in the winter months. Somehow I always end up writing the most about this season. I suppose it’s party due to the curious relationship I have with Winter. In the past I used to absolutely hate it. Part of me still does. I’ve often slipped into some kind of seasonal depression where any projects I was working on in the fall going into the winter managed to get completely abandoned, and the passage of time became difficult to track or even relate to. I’d get swallowed up in my apartment and go about my life cowering from the cold and letting it emotionally offend me. Growing up in New Hampshire, I don’t remember having this kind of unhealthy relationship with any time of year. Recently, I’ve been revisiting the way I relate to Winter, and I remember really loving it as a child. I think partly it might have been due to the prevalence of winter sports, the accessibility of sunlight, even on overcast days due to the openness of the landscape, and having access to windows on all 4 sides of the house I grew up in. Also, while technically it reads colder on a thermometer, somehow I find the brisk cold is less penetrating than the dampness and wind off the rivers here in New York, and sometimes in the winter the streets of Manhattan can feel like you’re at the bottom of a ravine, and you know the sun is shining up there somewhere, but you’re stuck down in the shadows cast by all the buildings.
In the past when I’ve written about winter health, I’ve referenced the advice given in the Huang Di Nei Jing, the foundational text of Chinese Medicine from about 5,000 years ago. It advises to stay indoors and keep activity to a minimum in the winter. It advises to avoid sweating and to keep the pores closed. (see more about this in my previous entry “Living with the Seasons: Winter Health Tips from an Ancient Sage” here http://www.karencarlsonacupuncture.com/blog/) The idea behind this is both to conserve energy and to prevent from getting sick. Precious yang energy and yin fluids are lost in the sweat, and by letting the pores open, especially outdoors in the cold, we expose ourselves to wind invasion, i.e. cold or flu, or maybe sore throat, stiff neck or headache (this is why acupuncturists are always advising to keep the back of your neck protected with a scarf).
Living this way is completely common sense. This is what all the other creatures who live in this area are doing (and they don’t even have exposed skin like us!). It’s what all the plants are doing too. Granted they aren’t blessed with a building to take shelter in, and indoor lights and heat. These modern advances have made remaining active and productive in the winter months possible for us, but perhaps they distract us from what our bodies and Nature are asking us to do. So much of what we all (all us species) are trying to conserve is not just energy that it takes to keep warm, but also energy that we can only get from the sun. I’m not just talking vitamin D here. Most people find it more difficult to get out of bed in the winter. Especially when it’s still dark out. Also most people feel like heading home and curling up on the couch at the end of the day in the winter, and feel too excited and energized to go home early in the summer. I think it was in Michael Pollan’s book Omnivore’s Dilemma where he talks about how pretty much all of us (beings) are basically trying to convert the Sun’s energy into our own. Plants happen to be the most efficient at it, but all of us do it to some degree, and the less able we are to convert that energy directly, the more we have to get it from eating something that’s already harnessed that energy. I’m not so interested in the biophysics, or biochemistry of the process right now, but the experience of the effect on us as humans and individuals. I’m only trying to point out the obvious fact that we routinely overlook, which is that modern life makes winter a little stressful on us. Sure, we might not be as stressed about finding food and shelter as people may have been in the past. But today, societal expectations of our daily lives demand that we be just as productive in January as in June, yet we have half of the sun’s yang energy propelling us. Instead of keeping our activity to a minimum in the winter, we fight against what our bodies are calling us to do, dragging ourselves out of bed long before the sun has risen. In June, I find I can be amazingly productive, finish projects I started, effortlessly keep things in order, eat very little, and have plenty of energy to stay out late, then get up at 5am the next day and do it all over again. In January I have a full list of things to do for the day that keeps carrying on to the next day and the next, and I’ve only just got going when suddenly it’s about to get dark and I feel like winding down again. If I stay out late I sleep till noon the next day. I become ravenous and crave heavy foods and lots of coffee. The sun makes one feel optimistic. It’s both comforting and energizing. My cats follow the sun around the apartment, blissfully dozing away without any guilt. They get up, romp around a bit, scratch the couch to relieve some pent up frustration, maybe knock a few things off the desk with satisfaction, spend some time gazing out the window, and take another nap. They seem to be masters at balancing adequate rest with healthy activity. They spend the day conserving and storing energy while gathering some new from the sun, interspersed with activity, moving stuck energy through their bodies and getting a little exercise.
So here’s where I admit some sinful behavior I’ve been engaging in this winter -as a practitioner of Chinese Medicine, and an advocate for living with the seasons and the teachings of the Huang Di Nei Jing- and then try to rationalize it. I’m far from an old wise man with a long beard living in a temple on a mountaintop in China and I fully acknowledge my limited understanding of life and my infancy on the path to wisdom. But here goes… I’ve been training for a half marathon on January 25th. Yes I’ve been pushing myself to run long distances in the bitter cold, burning up precious yang energy, exposing open pores to the wind, wasting my sweat, which is the humor of the Heart! That means I’m losing heart yin, qi AND blood. I ran 11 miles the other day in 23 degree weather with vicious wind… yes that’s also wind! which damages the fluids even more in addition to exposing myself to everything I mentioned earlier. I’m spending the jing of my Kidneys. Which manifests as will, reproductive energy and longevity. We’re meant to be conserving Kidney energy now especially as Winter corresponds with the Water element, which is the element of the Kidneys.
Obviously, I’m finding an internal conflict here. Now, I realize how ridiculous it might sound probably to most people to be talking about feeling guilty for running too much. Maybe even a little backwards. Then there are some who would find running long distances insane no matter how warm or cold it is outdoors. (These people are actually smart.)
Last year I was determined to maintain being physically active throughout the season, and to get as much sunlight as I could. I made an investment in what I call my “polar vortex coat” and bundled up on cold days and took long walks. I also kept running, although not nearly as much as I had the rest of the year, but enough so I didn't have to start all over again in the Spring like I did every other year. Moving my body and increasing my metabolism does give me overall more energy and has made me more focused and optimistic. I feel less affected by the cold and less emotionally insulted by it. But I can also feel the adverse effects of training this hard this time of year. Subtle, for sure, but I notice little things that I can see and feel in my body, which are definitely minor and manageable now. But that’s the point of health preservation and preventative medicine that these principles are meant to teach. They aren’t always about things that will make you sick today, but rather may effect you down the road. And even if they won’t shave years off the end of my life, how comfortable those years will be may depend on the choices I make along the way.
Maybe all this running I’m doing this year is actually be serving me a purpose right now and I’m sure I’ll be totally fine, but maybe if I ran like this for 10 years or 20 years, the damage to the fluids of my body would be more substantial, predisposing me to inconveniences in middle age. Some resources and fluids of the body are not so easily replaced. Obviously water is important, but Chinese medicine places a great deal of value on all fluids of the body, called Jin Ye. The Jin are the thinner, watery fluids, and the Ye, the thicker, denser fluids. They include lymph, tears, saliva, synovial fluid, cerebral spinal fluid, marrow, interstitial fluids, reproductive fluids, etc., all of which require the body’s resources to make. Because body fluids and blood are both the yin of the body, loss of substantial fluids can be seen as akin to excessive blood loss in Chinese medicine, more of a long-term, chronic kind of situation leading to dryness of the body, and under-nourished sinews, skin, joints, hair, nails, etc., rather than a life-threatening, emergency case, because of the body’s resources that are required to replenish what was lost through the pores. But at the same time, getting outdoors and engaging in physical activity in the sun does help to move stuck energy and engage yang energy, required to move and metabolize the fluids, but we should also preserve this yang energy with yin time, quiet, stillness, rest etc. So here we’re back to the basic concept of balance, of everything written in that simple, yet dynamic symbol of yin and yang, and a perfectly illustrated relationship to the Kidneys and the Water element this time of year. Kidney yin is the fluids and moisture of the body, while Kidney yang is the energy required to metabolize and process those fluids, and both are resources being called on to sustain the body for endurance training, while the Will of the Kidneys is what’s required to propel one to run 13 miles in 20 degree weather.
Next week I’ll share more of my own experiences of Winter and my break-through understanding of the Kidneys, Will and Jing.
