Let’s start this blog with the difference between Chinese medicine and regular Western medicine. A Chinese medicine practitioner looks holistic; looks at your whole energetic system. This is the biggest difference with Western medicine, where you, your body, can be reduced to a diseased part.
One of the baselines of Chinese medicine, are the five elements; the practitioner works with the five seasons: spring, summer, aftersummer, fall and winter. Every organ is linked to an element.
Every new season we will talk about that specific season. Since it is wintertime now, we will start with the winter.
The energy of the winter.
The winter is called the ‘water element’ and the organs linked to the water element are the bladder and the kidneys. The emotion that belongs to the kidneys is fear. When you are fearful, you use kidney energy. The other way around: when your kidney energy is low, you will feel more fearful. Please understand: it is not that there has to be something physically wrong with the kidneys, it is the energyof the kidneys that is low. You can built this energy back up by eating the right food and do special movements/exercises that you will also find on these blogs.
When you look at a tree outside, you can see what is going on: the leaves are gone, the period of letting go is over. The fallen leaves will become food again in an other season. Yes, we do live in a foodchain. Nothing stands alone. You can also see that the energy of the tree returns to the roots. Something similar happens in the human body. In the human body, the energy of the kidneys are called root or basic energy.
The moon is associated with the water element. The water element has the qualities of a feminine energy, such as receptivity, going with the flow, relaxation, going inward, sleep, rest, recharge, no resisting, touching base.
In the month of December you can see an unnatural and therefore unhealthy phenomena happen in Holland: in the corporations work needs to be finished, people working overtime to get it all done before the New Year. We also have a lot of buy nights in the stores, so also the sellers are working overtime. This is economy and not health driven behavior. You simply cannot recharge or touch base, when you are running around. When you don’t get enough rest in wintertime, a health problem will show up in a later season sooner or later. Since the human body IS nature, it will pay off to live according to the season, to nature, as much as you possibly can. Which is indeed a real challenge in the society we live in.
And finally, here is a recipe to make your own essential oil blend to help you rest, touch base and relax. You can make your own essential oil blend of lavender flower, cedarwood, ylang ylang, marjoram leaf, chamomile flower and sandalwood. It is said that this blend will make you sleep better and it will support you turning inward. You can use this blend anyway you want it: put a few drops in your bathwater or evaporate in a burner. Just everyting in moderation.
How are you coping with wintertime? Was this information useful for you? Please let us know in the commentsection under the header ‘welcome’. This is connected to our mail address. You will find a winter exercise and a winter recipe on this blogpage as well, so have a look and feel free to experiment with it and please share your findings with us.
December 2018
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