Springtime Stuck-ness

Stuck-ness in the Springtime...

It’s actually April!  I’m still not sure if I think that March went out like a lamb, but I’m certain April showers will bring May flowers.  I see a lot of flowers coming up already, which is exciting!  I have to say though, I still feel this kind of lingering stuck-ness that March seems to produce.  I was talking about it with one of my acupuncture patients the other day and he really made me realize how weird and confusing March really is.                                                                                  

Especially this year.  There’s an energy that’s reawakened and asking you to burst out of the winter stuck-ness, but then there’s this cold that you keep thinking is gone for some reason but it’s still going to be hanging around for a little while.  A lot of people have been feeling this, myself included.  It’s almost like an impatience for Spring that generates stagnation because we’re not really going anywhere.  At least that’s what it feels like.  It’s probably just not as fast as we want it to be or think it should move.  But it’s the way it should be I suppose.  It’s almost like the feeling when you're lined up to run a race with thousands of other people and you hear the starting gun go off and you have been psyching yourself up to take off and run, but then you are actually standing still for several minutes, then finally slowly walking, and then quicker and quicker until you start to approach the actual start line and eventually you can start to run, but you still can’t run as fast as you want to because of all the people in front of you, and you get kind of antsy or frustrated, you start trying to dart in and out and around other runners.  Eventually you reach a place where you can go your own speed with out stepping on anyone’s heels.  But to get to that point you had to go through all this start-stop, in and out, thinking you're on your way but then being held up.  I guess traffic jams on the highway are like that too.  It’s frustrating and there’s nothing you can do about it.  Well you can do something about it.  You just have to let go of your impatience and expectations and flow with the natural pace of things.  But sometimes I find this is easier said than done.

This is exactly what is known in Chinese medicine as "Liver qi stagnation," which is fitting as Spring is the Liver time of year and Wood element.  I'm feeling that very strongly this year.  I think a lot of people are.  I have some acupuncture patients that tell me Spring is not their favorite season and they feel very frustrated and stagnant.  Usually I'm just so looking forward to Spring (actually Summer) that I don't even notice it, but this year it is hitting me hard.

This past weekend I went up to my mother's house to spend Easter with our family.  I was feeling so stuck in my body after the trip up there. I felt tired and lazy any antsy and bored all at once. I had thought I would go for a run in the morning but it turned out to be pretty cold and I was enjoying having an easy morning catching up with my grandmother.  Then my mother was excited to show me the results of all of her hard work these last several weeks to get her greenhouse full of beautiful plants and flowers for the season.  

The walkway to the greenhouse was all mud lined with piles and piles of snow slowly melting.  There were a lot of recent developments since I had been up there. She has a big chicken coop with lots of happy chickens and a couple of rabbits too… a joint effort between her and some other residents of the house.  The chickens were standing ankle deep in mud happily soaking up some sun and hoping for some food, and in the meantime have been busy laying eggs and making then difficult to find. (How appropriate for Easter!)

We had fun together out there; I helped her upgrade some little seedlings to 6 packs ready to be sold and planted in the ground.   (Actually, I pretty much watched her).  It was a beautiful, vibrant oasis of color and growth in the middle of a snow-covered, gray field.  There were thousands of little baby plants growing. We went out there dressed for the cold but in the greenhouse the sun suddenly came out and it immediately became so hot we began to sweat. 

We went back inside and after a little while I felt this incredible stuck-ness return.  I was stiff, achey, cranky and didn't have enough brain energy to focus on anything productive, or even want to do anything like watch tv or read a book. I kept saying I was going for a run soon but I didn't have the energy or interest to get dressed up for a run in the cold. 

My mother Anna in her greenhouse at Liliana  Flower Farm

I just really needed to get out of the house.  My mother lives on a dirt road and it feels like the middle of nowhere, even though you can hop in the car and be downtown with access to everything you need in 15 minutes… it's still not just outside the door like here in New York, and it can feel a bit isolated.  But what is outside the door is a nice quiet walk.  I said to my mother "I want to get out!" thinking maybe we could go into town with no real reason, and she said "why don't you go walk up the hill?"  It was really not what I had in mind and was totally resistant to the idea, so I knew it was probably what I needed to do.

Actually I had options; A walk up the hill through a farm with cows and horses to go visit, or a walk through the swampy woods on an old, rustic road built by the Shakers in the 1700's, now only passible by snow mobiles and dirt bikes.  I didn't come prepared to go hiking in mud and snow, in fact I wasn't even prepared to walk around in the mud in my mother's yard, but I took off headed up the hill.  I had to drag myself out and force myself to go on this walk.  All the stuck-ness I was feeling made me me feel angsty and lazy and all I wanted to do was go hide.  But I knew I'd feel better if I got outside and moved.  Cranky and dragging my feet, I set off telling myself it was too cold and taking a walk in the wind was insane.  But after a few minutes of walking I started feeling lighter and noticing all of the inspiring activity going on outdoors, while noticing at the same time a profound and assuring sense of stillness.  Just being outdoors and moving, my stuck-ness started to move.  I started getting nostalgic and remembering being a kid, going out exploring in the woods.  I began to take pictures of all of my new rediscoveries and remembered being a teenager exploring with my camera.  I used to go all around the woods taking pictures of nature, of old abandoned car remains you could find in the middle of the woods, and ruins of foundations and other structures, stone walls that once marked the edge of a pasture which was now a thick forest.   But the stillness was what I noticed the most.  The the busy growth and activity among the stillness, or maybe it was the stillness within all the bustling activity and growth.  Either way, stillness versus stuck-nesss is a profound, familiar sense and energetic experience that I was accustomed to growing up but now have mostly forgotten exists.  Instead I've become accustomed to a sense of buzzing, whirring energy around me that I operate in spite of.  On that walk I felt renewed, inspired, optimistic and engaged.  Here I feel a frenetic movement on the inside from the outside.  I'm not saying I didn't create any of it on my own when I was a kid, but I think it was kept in balance by the time I'd spend communing with nature.  I used to say you have to get back to nature a few years ago, a bit mockingly- knowing it was important, but saying it half joking the way you do when you're feeling a little sheepish when new concepts seem foreign and awkward, but also speak to you.  Like you're trying on something new you're drawn to, but your not sure what everyone will think.  Now I understand the concept in a deeper and practical level.  When you're in the middle of Manhattan you really can't remember what that energy and stillness feel like, and when you're on a quiet hill top with only the wind and birds and farm animals around, you can't really remember that Manhattan even exists.

I lived in Prague teaching English for a year or so after living in New York for about 5 or 6 years.  The Czechs I knew would always tell me "you have to go to the nature."  And that city is actually dead quiet on the weekends.  In the center where there are tourist sights to see it feels busy, but the rest of the city is deserted because most everyone has a "cottage" somewhere outside the city they flee to for the weekend, or they go on little day-time outings.  There was a pub where EFL teachers would go on Wednesday nights and Czechs who wanted to practice their conversational English would meet.  One of the older gentlemen Jiri (who liked to go by George at the pub, the English version of his name), started an outing club there and every weekend he organized a hike, or a nature walk, or even a rafting trip, always beginning and ending with a stop at a local pub in the area.  We'd all meet at the train station in the morning and share slivovice, a kind of Czech brandy, and have a great time getting out to where we were going and then follow George to the pub for some morning soup and beer before we headed off on our adventure.  

After a year in Prague and another year between New Hampshire and California, I was feeling the best I ever had, maybe in my life.  All these digestive issues I had and frequent colds and flus, mental fogginess and difficulty focusing and remembering things and all these other issues were completely gone.  I was energetic, happy, healthy and clear.  I thought I had healed myself, which I had, but after several months of being back in the city, all of those things started to creep back up.   I know that meditation, acupuncture and a regular exercise routine or yoga practice really help to keep all those things in check, and my body balanced, but I just realized this weekend they really can't actually replace getting outside and communing with nature.  It's essential to have a health maintenance routine, especially in the absence of that accessibility, but there is still a unique basic need that only the quiet of the forest, or maybe the beach, or even desert can meet.  There's something essential going on around us which gets drowned out by modern life and the hustle.  Czechs and other Europeans seem to recognize this as an important ritual for maintaining health and happiness, but for whatever reason, in New York, and probably a lot of American cities, on the East coast at least, we seem to have forgotten it.  Maybe we're too busy or focused on achieving things we think are important.  Life seems to go by a lot quicker in a fast paced city like this, and I always hear this quote I heard from Rabbi Harold Kuchner in my head, "no body on their deathbed has ever said 'I wish I had spent more time at the office.'"  It's like when you're entrenched in all of it, you forget what else is there.  But it's an important connection to maintain.

...So I had a nostalgic walk up the hill.

I tried to get the attention of a horse who was peering out from behind a stone wall. He was perfectly content where he was and simply looked at me without moving. I strolled on and noticed some skulls of steers on a shelf, an open, uninhabited rabbit cage, then a single hen roaming around pecking at things on the ground, and a holding pen with young looking calves.  I walked on along the road that wraps around to the right.  It's part of the original road but it gets interrupted by a gate and eventually a housing development (which wasn't there when I was a child, in fact it was only the road and the old house and barn).  On the left is an old cemetery where the original inabitants of that land are said to be burried.  Actually my mother just told me that the man who owned the house before us is burried there now.  But all lined up along the wall of the old cemetery were all the rest of the cows, standing and laying at the edge of the snow in the sun.  They were all looking at me.  Immersed in the stillness.  As I walked along the road they calmly kept their eyes on me, interested enough to observe me but not enough to be bothered to come over towards me (or run in the opposite direction for that matter).  I spoke to them, but honestly I was quite happy that they remained where they were… they're quite imposing!  And that little wire doesn't looks like much of a deterrent.  They're so sweet and gentle, but the thought of being charged by an angry bull or defensive mother is always at the back of my mind when they fix their eyes on me like that. 

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And check out my mother's selection of Daylillies and other plants on her Facebook  page, and at her website www.lilianaflowerfarm.com 

 

What Am I Supposed to Wear?

A seasonal couture conundrum.

It's well into March and I'm so excited about Spring!   But.... this late-winter/early-spring transitional time can be a bit anxiety producing for me.  I can never figure out what to wear!  No matter what I decide on I always seem to get it wrong.  Either I overdress or underdress. Not only that but it always seems to spring up on me and catch me unawares.  I've never been the type to buy warm weather clothes when it's still cold out, or have them on hand if I hear the report of warmer weather on the way, (or really plan in advance for anything, despite one of my father's many famous iterations, "proper prior planning prevents poor performance!") .  So I'm rummaging through the closet usually when I don't have time to be pulling all of my summer clothes out of storage,  trying to make an outfit out of some kind of summer dress/winter legging fusion, while not being able to remember what 55 degrees feels like and either wearing a coat I was wearing when it was 25, or a light sweater that the wind goes right through, and meanwhile making the place look like it was ransacked by thieves after changing my clothes 17 times.  Either way, I end up getting chilled because I got all sweaty from over dressing, or chilled because I dressed like an idiot getting a little too prematurely excited for Summer.  And as far as the fashion goes, it's a bit clunky for a few weeks.  It's a transitional season, change is tough, and I forget what warm weather is like.  I absolutely love summer wear, but I find it weird to transition to.  Fall is a bit tricky too, but it never seems as awkward.  Maybe it's because at first you just start by throwing something over what you've already been wearing and it organically develops from there.  But this past week it felt like suddenly the clothes I'd been use to wearing were completely inappropriate and I couldn't figure out what to substitute them with.  Maybe last year's clothes aren't speaking to me anymore.  And let's not even talk about  the state of the coat rack.  I think every coat, hoodie and shawl I own has been in circulation this week.

If you're as sensitive to external temperatures as I am, it can become so distressing.  I get hot really easily and cold really easily, and can get really uncomfortable if I don't get it right .  I try to dress responsibly for health reasons too.  In the theory of pathogenesis in Chinese medicine, "wind cold invasion" comes in through the back of the neck and exposes the body to illness if the pores are open (i.e. sweating).  That's why so many people get sick this time of year. The temperature fluctuates, we're either too exposed or our pores are open from sweating and the cold wind hits us in the back of the neck and we get stiff there and then our defenses slightly weakened so opportunistic viruses or bacteria get the better of us and the next thing you know we have a little cold.

The channels of the legs are vulnerable too and are especially important for women to keep covered and warm.  Exposed ankles allow the cold to enter the channels at a vulnerable area and it can travel up the leg channels, predisposing us to menstrual cramps and other "cold" conditions of the uterus and reproductive system.  Chinese medicine is incredibly concerned with "cold" as a pathogenic factor.  When you hear acupuncturist speak about it it can sound a little esoteric, metaphorical and odd at first, but the more you understand it, the more you see how literal it really is.  Stick your hand in a bucket of ice water for a few minutes and it eventually starts to hurt and you can't really bend you fingers.  That cold is penetrating the tissue and slowing things down.  We are all made of fluid and the fluid of the body and the blood congeals in the cold and the flow of blood and fluids slow down.  Modern medicine uses this technique to achieve certain effects, and I'm sure the concept is not foreign to most people.  Everyone knows someone who's joint pain, or arthritis gets worse in the cold weather.  In the West we don't even give it a thought, we drink ice water all year round and ice joints that don't need icing.  Actually it ends up stagnating the channels and causes fluid accumulation, impairing joint mobility to make things stiff and achy.  Often times I'll find people who have chronic knee pain, for example, and have knees that are literally cold to the touch.  So obviously the blood flow to the area is impeded, and if the blood flow to that area is impeded, chances are there's another area that's not getting adequate supply of blood and fluid as well, causing another accumulation of cold.  This is why we say it can travel up through the channels.  Every part of our body is connected.  Literally.  We have networks of fasica that traverse our entire body and wrap around muscle bundles and fibers and this network extends all the way to the infrastructure of the cell.  The flow of interstitial fluid through these spaces is how things like "cold" can effect another part of the body. Or an otherwise impinged area like an adhesion causing tendonitis at the attachment site at the joint (perhaps leading to inflammation, or "heat").

Fortunately we can rest assured that soon, the temperatures will hold a little more steady and figuring out what to wear won't require so much consideration.  Our outfits will easily satisfy all the requirements of fashion and function.

Spring Is Springing!!

We Love Spring!


Whether or not your convinced that Spring is here for sure, one thing I'm certain of is the Spring vibe is real and has been picking up momentum for several weeks now.  Last week it was so powerful, even though something like 6 inches of snow had fallen the night before, I had a lovely early morning walk through the park where the energy was vibrant with early Spring and the beautiful back drop of bright sunshine and freshly fallen snow.  Sure it was pretty cold outside and there was snow everywhere, but who cares?  The light was amazing, the birds were so psyched, the squirrels were so spunky, the dogs were so happy -like 3 different dogs jovially scampered up to me and dropped a ball at my feet; everyone was feeling it!  There were probably 10 times as many runners as usual most other mornings.
If you're like me and typically get depressed, discouraged and unmotivated in the winter, and you're such a sun baby like me in the summer, it's these little signs that can make you so happy and restore optimism.  For at least the past month, I've been saying to everyone, "oh my god! it's 5:00 and look how light it still is outside!", and eventually, "woah! check it out! its 6:00 and look how light it is outside!"  I think people might be sick of hearing me say it but it impresses every day.  Another big sign to me is, especially since the new moon on February 19,  I've been enthusiastically springing out of bed at 6:00am where for the past 3 months I'm still struggling sometimes at 9:00 or later, even if I go to sleep by 10:30 (I'm a hard-core hibernator).  Of course, as of Sunday, it's light until 7:00 now, which is cool I guess, but I feel like I get a good jump on things if I'm up by 6:00.  Now the sun's up at 7:00 so I am too.  I'm not quite past the time switch 'jet lag' yet, but soon it will be light at 5:00 and I'll be springing up for a run along the river.

You might think I'm crazy just because there is still snow on the ground, and many people think another cold snap and snow storm is on the horizon....  could be.  But if you get caught up in your discouragement and pessimism, and overlook all of the subtle, and yet not so subtle signs of spring, you're missing out on the excitement of it!  In the Chinese and Lunar calendar Spring arrives with the Lunar new year, which was February 19.  Those 2 weeks between the New Moon and the Full Moon were so active and productive for me, and I think probably for you too.  To me, everyone seemed to re-surface, people were busy, there was a lot of work and much more motivation to get it done, and then there were many social things going on as well.

My cats are hip to the Spring vibe too.  My 11 year old female, Momo, has been having sponaneous bursts of scampering sideways with a fiery look in her eyes the way kittens do, and Ginger, my 1 year old male (yes, male... it's ok he's named after a tomcat in a Beatrix Potter story, ok?), he's just more restless and attempting even crazier things than usual, but for certain, they have both been shedding like crazy for a couple weeks now.  Their bodies are responding to the light and the Spring energy, even though they never go outside and have no idea how cold it is or weather or not there is snow on the ground.

This morning there were birds on my roof and fire escape singing a different song.  I'm not sure if they are the same birds singing a spring-time song, or if they are new birds passing through on their way back north, but it's a new, jovial song for sure.

Of course you are probably as relieved and excited as I am that the cold weather finally broke and we had a fabulously warm and sunny couple of days starting on Sunday.  So I grabbed my friend and forced him to go walk in the park with me to look out for buds and maybe even some crocuses or snow drops if they happened to be popping up through the snow.  We did't see any flowers yet, but the tiny buds and new growth of the tress and shrubs made me giddy, and confirmed for me that Spring is here, and there is no going back, even if it snows again.

Growing up in New Hampshire I remember this time of year (which is actually a little later there) when I was little and my mom would point to the trees and said "look! the trees are budded" and she still enthusiastically points out budded shrubs in the garden.  When I was a kid, the snow cover always remained on the ground until Spring, and it was very exciting when you started hearing all that trickling of water as little streams alongside the snowbanks formed.  At first they would freeze back up and then flow again until finally it was just a constant state of trickling water and mud for several weeks.  I used to be so relived and excited when you looked out and mostly just saw bare ground, then I'd get discouraged when either on the side of the house where the sun didn't shine, or under trees you could still mounds of frozen snow.  I'd go about thinking we were all in the clear and then I'd come across one of those I hadn't seen before and get a little resentful.  I don't know why... did I think it would stay there all summer reminding me of the long, depressing winter?  Who knows, but I'm glad that now when I see remaining mounds of snow I don't mind at all.  I know summer will still come.  Even if we do get thrown into a global-warming-apocalyptic-ice-age-type situation and it does snow in July, it will still be summer and the sun will still shine from 5:00am to 9:00 at night, which will make me happy.


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 Xin Yi Hua.  Magnolia Flower. Warm, acrid and surface releasing.  Opens the nasal passages and relieves sinus headache.  It winters over on the tree and is harvested in the Spring.  It's soft and fuzzy and smells lovely. Have you seen it on the trees?

Confessions of an Acupuncturist.

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.

Welcome to Living with the Seasons!

Welcome to my blog “Living with the Seasons.”  An account of my experiences as an Acupuncturist and practitioner of Chinese Medicine trying to manage living by traditional concepts of health preservation in a fast-paced city in a modern world.  I'll share the challenges, pleasures, benefits and dilemmas encountered while I attempt to live the ancient guidelines of wellness-living, according to the principles of the medicine I practice, in the face of today's temptations and distractions, which at times appear to be aimed at achieving the exact opposite.  I'll also share some of these principles as well as the theories behind them.