Winter

Winter

Chinese medicine, from its earliest days, has taken lessons from the world around us and applied them on the level of the individual human body. The laws of nature, like the laws of physics or chemistry, do not stop when they reach our skin, but rather affect and permeate and govern the body. We can learn a lot about "how to live" by observing how the natural world around us lives, and in turn applying those lessons to our own lives.
Do I mean that we should eat like a pig or quack like a duck? Well, these could be effective if we are trying to look like a pig, or sound like a duck, but only with limited success, as we are people, and looking and acting like other animals will only bring us farther from human nature. The more generalized an observation, the more specifically we can apply it to ourselves.
As we look around our winter landscape, we see plants and animals putting the most work into conserving energy, and we may do well to take this lesson to heart. Winter is the time of internal work, cultivation and introspection. It is a time to plan more than to act. It is a time to be as firmly rooted as possible; in fact growing our roots through the winter, just as a fall planted tree does, can only help us to remain strong and standing in this season, as well as setting up the conditions for more and greater growth in the future.
Winter is the season of water, and these past few days we have (finally) seen some significant precipitation, beginning to recharge our aquifers, streams and springs. In the body, this can be a time to be kind to our kidneys, and especially to the all- important adrenals, which are supported by the kidneys. We may have run on adrenaline just a little too much the rest of the year, but now can be a time to rest and nurture. Pre-industrial humans clearly slept much more in the winter... it's hard to stay up when it is dark for so much of each twenty four hour cycle around the sun. Now we have a great variety of delightful and addictive reasons to fight nature, as well as leftover stimulants (caffeine) circulating though our bodies and brains. Each day we grow more weary, or at best remain the same amount of weary, while the artificial sun from our televisions, computer screens and reading lights trick us into thinking that we should still be awake.
We live in the modern world, a fact I am generally very glad of, but in this time of taking and keeping energy in, why not honor your body by taking a night off each week? A night off from worry and work, a night off from computer games, web surfing and TV. A warm bath and early to bed, just one night a week. Think of it as a "date night" for your body. Love your body, and it will love you back.