Speaker 1: 0:01

It's winter, midwinter, that time of the solar cycle when we stop, slow down and take a break.

Speaker 1: 0:10

According to Taoist medical theory, the biggest cause of disease is failure to live in accordance with the cycles of the season. Living during midwinter the way we did during summer solstice, it can cause our bodies to be depleted and other things which we're going to dive into. It's important to slow down, take a break, not squander our free time with activity, but actually use our free time to be still and silent and meditative. This principle also applies to the earth itself. If we keep going in midwinter by mining and harvesting and extracting these precious resources that we have left in the earth, like drilling oil, we don't actually give the earth time to stop and slow down. I'm just imagining what it would be like if our rate of extraction of the earth's resources were slowed down by in half, if it only happened during the summer, which even that could be really helpful, even though we're going at such a rate that's hard to imagine. Our habit of taking and taking from our home planet has a palpable impact on the Earth's health as we continue to mine and transport and wage war and make damaging political decisions and consume way too much stuff all year round, she doesn't get a break. It's strange that we use this time to buy lots of presents and go into consumer mode, often in this culture. So as the earth rotates around the sun, it moves through progressive phases which invite corresponding shifts in conduct. And these shifts happen every two weeks as we enter a different qi node, or a kind of a cycle. Each cycle invites us to shift our conduct according to the season's changing landscape. So, for example, in midwinter we can keep the lights low, not use too much electricity by brightening everything up, by working at night. With this in mind, let us consider winter to be a time of rest, an out-breath hibernation. Out-breath hibernation when we live in harmony with the cycles, we align ourselves with universal law. The same way that basic universal laws of physics need to be taken into account when we move our bodies, say dancing the environmental chi also needs to be taken into account when considering correct conduct. And in this context, when we say correct conduct, it's not a Judeo-Christian matter of morality where there's punishment involved, it's simply resultant. So what we experience in the present moment is the result of our conduct in the past. The result of our conduct in the past.

Speaker 1: 3:30

Wintertime is when big yin is free to develop as it's unhampered by yang's impact of yang. When we carry the summer yang energy into winter, we miss out on the tremendous opportunity for recovery that the winter seasonal cycle offers. For recovery that the winter seasonal cycle offers. There's an amazing opportunity to deeply nourish our yin at this time.

Speaker 1: 3:51

Winter is a time to turn inward. It is the time of the water element, which corresponds with the kidney and bladder organs and meridians. During this time, it is important to not bend over backwards trying to get stuff done, as we could easily overflush our kidneys, both literally and metaphorically, which leads to exhaustion of the adrenals. In aligning ourselves with the seasonal cycles, we are wise to take our cues from nature. The animals are in hibernation, the plants are down down into their roots, some of them digging so deep into the earth as to reveal nothing of themselves. Above ground, water makes its way down from the sky and shamans are in retreat, as are the bears and other animals. Wintertime is an opportunity to fall deep down into the depths of the ocean, the unknown, the mystery. That healthy water element is at home in the depths of the unknown and is comfortable celebrating the darkness. A healthy water element. It's like being deep, deep down in the bottom of the ocean and not knowing when we're going to come up for air. But being deeply still, the unhealthy water element keeps going and doing recklessly, pushing the perpetual fight or flight mode and thus taxing the adrenals. As it pushes on, despite the season's call for quiet and stillness In a harmonized cycle.

Speaker 1: 5:29

The autumn is a time to store, while the winter is when we withdraw. Spring's impending resources are external, so we have to cultivate our internal resources during our winter retreat time to be ready for and aligned with the freshness that spring promises. That's why craving to live in warm climate all year round can be symptomatic of a young derangement, with our constantly wanting external engagement while denying the inner, quiet internal world. In the Western world, colloquially speaking, winter begins at winter solstice. People mark that as the beginning of winter. However, if we think of winter solstice, it's the darkest time of the year and it's when the nights are the longest and the days are the shortest. So it makes sense to think of as a solar cycle. That's the very, very deepest part of winter.

Speaker 1: 6:35

So there's a few things that we can do to help protect our chi in the wintertime and how we can keep nourishing the yin. One thing that's simple and easy is to wear a haramaki. So a hara is middle in Japanese right and maki is a wrap like in sushi. So haramaki is a wrap for the middle and you can just use a scarf or a cloth band and wrap it around your kidneys and your belly. Scarf or a cloth band and wrap it around your kidneys and your belly and it can help with warmth and protection. It's really the kind of thing that it's hard to imagine how wonderful it feels until you actually try it, and any kind of scarf will work, or similarly proportioned cloth, such as something that's quite wide.

Speaker 1: 7:24

Second thing to remember all year round, but especially in the winter, is to have morning water. Our kidneys, what need water? This is kind of a basic way that they can flush out the toxins out of our body and stay healthy and plump and not dry brittle, dry brittle. There's a blog article that I have on water and all of the benefits of morning water. You can check that out there.

Speaker 1: 7:56

As for food, now's the time of year when we begin to consume the autumn foods that we've stored, such as squash and root vegetables. Bone stock makes a wonderful supplement to the autumn harvest, fresh foods don't give us all of the resources we need for winter months. Sometimes there's an idea that we always want to eat fresh, fresh, fresh, but in the winter. This time provides us with an opportunity to access a different quality of nutrient than those we access during more young times of year, when we're eating things like lettuce and more raw foods. For those navigating chronic spleen deficiency with different kinds of digestive issues, this is important, especially important to give your spleen and stomach a chance to assimilate more easily.

Speaker 1: 8:48

So when we slow cook, we boil away the fresh aspects of our food and reduce it down to a different, more yin nutritive state. Really, fresh food has an immature quality. It's kind of like a. It doesn't have the same kind of wisdom that can come with age. When we slow cook food for a long time, it starts to generate something very precious. Take dried mushrooms, for example. These vegetables condense their qi and their jing during the drying process, so jing is a very deep nutritive quality. When we rehydrate these dried vegetables and then slowly cook them, they give off a highly concentrated essence that isn't available when they're really fresh. Similarly, even a light vegetable soup made with boiled bones doesn't give up its deepest, most magical essence until the last hours that it's cooked. A stir-fry doesn't offer us these concentrated qualities either. Slow cooking is a useful way to support our inner yang in the winter months.

Speaker 1: 9:55

I recommend cooking with stocks rather than water to enhance simulation and allow nutrients to absorb more deeply. So to make a bone stock, you can take some bones getting from the butcher, make sure they're clearly local and organic and grass fed, put them in the oven for about 40 minutes or until they become brittle, and then put them in a slow cooker or a stock pot and simmer them with a tiny bit of vinegar for about eight hours, or a stock pot and simmer them with a tiny bit of vinegar for about eight hours. No-transcript. When you're done simmering, you can strain out the bones and freeze the stock into ice trays, and then I just keep these ice trays in my freezer and I use one cube at a time when I'm cooking anything that would otherwise ask me to use water for it, such as steaming vegetables or not steaming them, but just kind of having a little bit of moisture into your pan braising them, of moisture into your pan braising them.

Speaker 1: 11:06

Another really important tip during the winter is to dress really warmly, keep a scarf around the neck. I know these things sound obvious, but so often I see people who come into my office with a cold or a bronchitis or something and they're not even they're wearing short sleeves or a tank top. It's really important to keep warm. The most important places are around your neck, around the wrists, where we have these points, zanjiao five, where the xie qi or the harmful qi can come in that can make us sick. We think of it as wind carries a cold or a heat that can then enter the body, causing that to look like a common cold in Western lingo. It's also important to wrap around the kidneys that we talked about, and another place that's very important to keep warm is the ankles and feet. If it's not bothering you, it doesn't mean it's not important to keep it warm. You still want to keep socks and boots on or slippers on around the house.

Speaker 1: 12:10

Dressing warmly in the winter allows us to conserve our chi and access more energy, which can be used for recovery, self-reflection, dreaming. The seasonal changes generate different kinds of wind, and even though we don't experience the extreme cold here in California, we're still susceptible to the type of wind associated with winter chi. This is the kind of wind that inspires coughs and low-grade illnesses, while also impeding our body's ability to digest or dissolve, because we're spending our energy fighting something off or resolving an internal invasion rather than digesting, resting, relaxing. Another great tip for winter is to increase your dream practicing keeping a journal by your bed, jotting down dreams as soon as we wake, setting intentions to dream and remember our dreams at night, or lucid dreaming. Other tips for dreaming are putting magical dreaming symbols underneath your bed or your pillow, making pouches with mugwort in them to help remember your dreams and dream more deeply.

Speaker 1: 13:21

As far as exercise goes, this is a time of year where we want to slow down on our exercising Sweating is not the goal and want to head more towards the relaxing side of movement, such as Qigong meditation. Certainly, it's important to not sweat and then get cold, because the cold wind meeting with that sweat can cause arthritis and we think of that, as could also later lead to paralysis. In the summer, strenuous activity can help make us feel strong and give us movement, but in the winter there is a suggestion of withdrawal. So the vigorous training in the summer then turns towards more vigorous meditation retreats in the winter. It's cultivating a different kind of strength, and it can also help change our notion of strength to be less depleting to the adrenals. So strenuous activity drains chi away from the surface and the cold wind can easily then invade, which then leads us to get sick.

Speaker 1: 14:34

For people who have a hard time meditating, the counsel is to try it in the winter, because that midwinter meditation comes easily with the quiet and the stillness that's all around us. In ancient china it was forbidden to travel this time of year. You needed a special jade plaque from the emperor saying that it was okay and think it's a great time of year to stay home, be quiet, be internal, meditate and reflect.