Taking Time to Take Care
06 Aug 2010 No Comments
in Blog
Taking Time to Take Good Care-Earth Season
Late summer or Indian summer—as some like to call it—is upon us here in New England. The consistent buzzing sound of a combination of crickets and cicadas replaces the excited chirping of birds in the early morning. The morning atmosphere has a heavy lazy quality that pulls my attention inward causing me to notice and attend to my inner world with more care. Another common marker of the turning of the seasonal wheel to late summer—you gardeners will truly relate to this—is food production from our gardens begins to speed up like coasting down a fast hill. Soon there will be more food than we will know what to do with. Folks will be surreptitiously leaving zucchini, cucumbers, and green beans on their neighbor’s porches ringing the doorbell and making a break for it before anyone is the wiser.
Late summer always has a faint tinge of sadness for me because I know the dog days will be ending soon. And for Vermonters that also means winter is that much closer. Don’t get me wrong, winter is a beautiful season, it has its many blessings too. It just happens to be longer than any of the other seasons here. And, there is nothing like the freedom and joy of a Vermont summer with its swimming holes, potlucks, outdoor events, warm moonlit evenings with a touch of breeze and the perfect skies that hang cumulus clouds in the most artful compositions. Why wouldn’t we mourn the passing of such ecstatic perfection?
So that is why I would like to suggest, during this transition from summer’s end to the beginning of fall, that we all take time to take care. It’s easy to become overwhelmed with all that there is to do—getting the wood in, weeding the garden beds, putting food by, cleaning the kitchen for the fortieth time in a day, back to school shopping for the kids, last minute visits with relatives and friends and still keeping up with careers too—we can easily fill our calendars with doing and become overwhelmed with the abundance that life is offering.
Chinese medicine refers to this season as Earth season. In this holistic health model, the seasons are broken up into five rather than four. Each season has an element, body system, taste and energetic attribute that give us clues to how we might incorporate our, mind, body and spirit in harmonious living with the natural world.
Earth season in this paradigm asks us to pay attention to our relationship to nurture and nourishment. The nurture and nourishment we receive comes in many forms. It comes from the earth in the form of food, water and air. It comes from our relationships with friends and loved ones, our spiritual lives, and the care we receive from our medical and holistic practitioners who partner with us to keep our bodies in balance.
The body system associated with the Earth season and the earth element is the digestive system. As harvest time gets underway there is ample opportunity to become more acquainted with our digestive health. Digestion is the breaking down of food into fuel that is distributed throughout our bodies and eventually becomes the tissue that is our bodies; literalizing the old maxim “you are what you eat”. The same could be said for mental and spiritual digestion. What we take into our thoughts and our hearts also has the potential to fuel our beings and become the building blocks of who we are as people; “you are who you think you are”. This idea exemplifies the importance of watching our physical and mental diets.
Sweetness is not just a metaphorical term for life during late summer but it is also the taste associated with this season. Traditional gastronomists tell us that a bit of sweet helps to stimulate digestion after a meal, hence the invention of dessert. The attribute of sweet plays an important part in nurture. The kind words of someone hold us when we feel vulnerable. An empathetic tone can soften emotional upheaval or soothe a physical pain. As Mary Poppins tells us “ A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down” in other words sweetness can comfort us during difficult times or help us get through difficult life lessons. Another corny favorite is “you can catch more flies with honey than salt” this saying reminds us that kind words open people’s ears where harsh ones close them up. However, as we all know too much sweet can become detrimental to our health. On a physical level it can tax the pancreas so much so that it is unable to function anymore causing diabetes. Other symptoms of exaggerated sweet in the body can be sleeplessness, a burned out feeling after eating, a bloated belly or mood swings. On an emotional level, seeking too much sweetness in our lives can cause us to turn a blind eye to dealing with difficult times at all. Sometimes the temptation to brush over important issues with more that one spoonful of sugar can lead to a Pollyanna-style attitude toward life.
Helpful questions we might ask ourselves about nurture and nourishment to help attune ourselves to the energetic of the times might be: how do we receive nurture? Are we able to accept nourishment? What are the things in life that give stability and structure to my life? How do I feel about home? Taking time to answer some of these questions honestly could be a useful tool in working with the anxiety of the times.
Other tips are to eat sweet fruits and vegetables instead of processed desserts. The natural sugars in these foods are easier for our bodies to assimilate. If you find that you just love to eat sugary sweets and cannot moderate your intake; say a quiet thank you to your body for the work it is about to do whenever you eat your favorite dessert. This can help you become more aware of your actions and politeness never hurts even to yourself.
Enjoy the harvest
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