As the Lunar New Year is upon us and we go valiantly galloping full force into the Year of the Horse, I wanted to share some thoughts I’ve been having; about the season, the state of the climate, our health, and my personal experience.
When studying Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine, you learn, of course, a lot about health, health preservation and illness prevention. Often this curiosity and fascination drives a person to pursue something like Acupuncture. There is a great potential for personal growth and self-discovery when undertaking the maintenance and preservation of one’s own health. Typically, acupuncture works best as a preventative medicine, but usually people come for treatments when they are already sick, so most of the treatment strategies are focused on addressing illness. Additionally, in a typical acupuncture session, we often don’t get the opportunity to explore, in depth, the role an individual can play in his or her own health. Often times the changes one might need to make can be uncomfortable and people aren’t willing or ready to make them. It’s not easy, and it requires a lot of effort, motivation and discipline. Chances are, if you’re reading this its because you have some interest in living a healthy lifestyle and you’re aware that you can be an active participant in the maintenance of your own health, or perhaps you’re just curious about Acupuncture and what it’s all about. So I thought I could share some information that benefits me personally, and health concepts that I try to live by in this blog, beginning with a post about personal health care during the winter season.
I had been feeling a little bad about myself for not making it to some kind of movement or exercise class or engaging in any real physical activity for the last 4 days. Honestly, this winter I’ve managed to remain the most active of any winter so far in my life! So really I should congratulate myself. But knowing it’s the consistency that makes it manageable, when I fall off for a bit, it seems like I’m slipping into dangerous territory, at risk of losing it all, and I start to panic and feel guilty; because if you’re anything like me, once a routine gets disrupted, it can be hard to bring it back. Could be irrational self-criticism or fear, but this is where I go.
While knowing the nature of the winter season and the way we should be living this time of year, from a Chinese Medicine perspective, in order to stay healthy- conserving and storing energy, keeping activity to a minimum, and staying in out of the cold (exactly what my body was trying to have me do!) I was still feeling bad about myself, and in need of a little reinforcement. So I picked up the Huang Di Nei Jing again, or Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Medicine for some validation. This is the most important medical text in Chinese Medicine, and the foundation for all subsequent texts. Huang Di, the Yellow Emperor, reigned during the third millennium, BCE. Yes, the source of this text is a good 5,000 years old. Yet it’s so rich and advanced-thinking, and relevant to today. This source I cite is from the translated version by Maoshing Ni, PhD.
The whole text is a discourse between Huang Di and his teachers. I’ll be exploring the text more in future posts. But today I want to share something that relates to my undue guilt- a guilt you may be familiar with- about not exercising for 4 days in the middle of January in New York and of another one of this year’s Polar Vortex-type cold snaps, and on top of it all approaching a New Moon (time during the lunar cycle when the energy is at it lowest). Here is the passage I was looking for when I went to reach for the Neijing:
During the winter months all things in nature wither, hide, return home, and enter a resting period, just as lakes and rivers freeze and snow falls. This is a time when yin dominates yang. Therefore one should refrain from overusing the yang energy. Retire early and get up with the sunrise, which is later in winter. Desires and mental activity should be kept quiet and subdued. Sexual desires especially should be contained, as if keeping a happy secret. Stay warm, avoid the cold, and keep the pores closed. Avoid sweating. The philosophy of the winter season is one of conservation and storage. Without such practice the result will be injury to the kidney energy….
(*yin energy is more feminine, cool, dark, moist, downward, still and with substance, while yang energy is more masculine, hot, bright, active, ethereal, and upward.)
The Kidneys are the organs affiliated with the winter season. Their element is water and the color is black. In Chinese Medicine they represent many aspects of the body including your vital energy, sexual and reproductive energy, bones and teeth, head hair and of course, urinary function. They relate to the low back, knees and heels. They are also the energy you use when you don’t get enough sleep or don’t eat right but keep going even though you’re exhausted. Drawing on the vital and source energy of the Kidneys is a bit like drawing on your savings account. You’re drawing on reserves, there’s a limited supply and what you use doesn’t get replaced. This concept is known as jing. Some people have more jing than others. Therefore, some of us have to take better care of ourselves. Some of us notice more the effects of staying out late the next day, while some people don’t seem to be phased by it. When we’re in our 20’s we can go out dancing and drinking all night and go to work the next day looking ok and being able to function more or less, but when we start getting into our 30’s or 40’s we don’t bounce back so quickly. We have less Kidney energy, less jing, especially if we used a lot of it when we had a lot of it!
So it’s totally ok that I took a few days off from working out. It’s not the time of year to be hitting the training hard. In fact it’s advised not to. It’s advised to conserve energy and avoid sweating. Over the weekend I was completely exhausted and all I wanted to do was sleep and watch movies. Well no wonder, I had been out from early in the morning till late at night Wednesday, Thursday and Friday! That’s fine in the middle of summer, but now it’s time to rest and turn inward. Even a little melancholy introspection is normal and healthy this time of year, according to Chinese Medicine. I’m sure I’ll still take an exercise class and go for a run before the season is over, but it’s not summer, when yang energy is at its highest, and we can afford to spend more of it since there’s more to go around. You probably feel it too with the decrease in the hours of sunlight. Getting up at 5:00am to go for a run is a much different experience in July than it is in December… or even getting up at that hour in general. Pushing yourself to get up when your inclination is to stay curled up under the covers in the winter is drawing on Kidney energy. But it doesn’t mean that you should never ever push yourself to do something. Will is the emotion affiliated with the Kidneys. It’s that same kind of energy. Mustering up strength to tap into resources. So being aware that we do have those resources is empowering, but also being aware when maybe we’re using them on things that might not necessarily be worth it, like staying out late drinking. Rather, perhaps we can instead develop the will to say no to things that literally aren’t worth our vital energy. Weather its work, play, family- its wintertime now, and it’s an especially cold one this year, so spend your vital Kidney energy wisely.
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"…the change of yin and yang through the four seasons is the root of life, growth, reproduction, aging, and destruction. By respecting this natural law it is possible to be free from illness…"
For the winter, in addition to conserving and storing our energy with respect to our activity, we can also do this with the food we eat. In colder climates we should have warm, cooked, easy to digest food. Stews and soups are a great option this time of year. Root vegetables like carrots and other produce that lasts in the winter. Sometimes winter kale can be available and of course winter squash. We can also have preserved fruits in the form of jams, or dried fruits which we can then stew. My grandparents always used to have stewed prunes in the morning and I always think of how perfect this is for them. First of all prunes are black, so that means they go to the Kidneys, and since my grandparents are elderly they are at the stage in life where their Kidney energy is waning, and therefore can use some extra support. By stewing them they can have them warm, therefore easier for the digestion. Consuming cold and raw food should be kept to a minimum this time of year, and taking things out of the fridge to come up to room temperature is always a good idea anytime of year. Your digestive system prefers warm.
As I mentioned before the lower back is associated with the Kidneys, but really the whole spine including the neck too. Additionally, the Urinary Bladder meridian, the organ representing the yang aspect of the water element paired with the Kidneys, which are yin, runs up the entire length of the back. Therefore it is good to do gentle exercises that strengthen and stretch and move the back and spine, such as spinal twists, rotations, and forward and backward bending.
These are some basic principles of health to live by this time of year. It’s also perhaps worth noting how you feel throughout the seasons. Often we are too busy to notice, but when you pay attention, you realize these principles, and the foundation of Chinese Medicine and several other traditional ways of living and maintaining health, are based on common sense. We just tend to overlook that sense when we have all kinds of external resources and devices to tell us about our health and how to live, and we tend to look at ancient systems of astrological and meteorological observations as obsolete since we seem to have little use for them these days. But actually those are the things that the development of civilization was dependent on, and just because they seem irrelevant to our modern lives, doesn’t mean they don’t still play an influential role in them.
If you have questions about health preservation according to Chinese Medicine, you are curious about trying acupuncture or Chinese herbal medicine, or setting up a free consultation, please get in touch by visiting my contact page.
