Listen & Be Heard Weekly Archives

According to the Chinese calendar, autumn will begin this year on September 23. This is a good time to contemplate your transition from late summer into fall; the time when children return to school, summer vacations are over, and much of the world becomes focused again on work and readying for winter. It?s harvest time, when the deciduous trees lose their leaves, and we say goodbye to long, easy evenings as well as perhaps a friend or two. In TCM, each season is associated with its own distinct organ system similar to western medicine. Autumn is the season connected most closely with the lungs. Each organ is also associated with an emotion, element and prevailing environmental condition. The emotion associated with the lungs is sadness, the element metal, and dryness is the condition that dominates the autumn season.

Consider the changes that take place during fall. It?s the driest time of the year. You can watch the leaves change, drying before they fall to the ground. Plants begin to show signs of dryness; they lose their luster, stop growing, and become more rigid and stiff. We watch the daylight hours wane, and find our late evenings in the park cut short by earlier sunsets. We become more introspective, and reflect inward both planning our futures and contemplating our losses. Our outward focus moves inward toward things with a longer term significance; our relationships with others, our day to day surroundings, and our own behaviors, as we transition from the external focus of summer to the internal focus of winter.

As the driest part of the year, our diets and activities are best managed by ensuring we minimize foods and activities that are drying. Use moderation with particularly drying products including fried foods, coffee, cigarettes, and popcorn. Overexertion, overwork, and overtraining all cause dryness through the heat they generate. Exercise moderately, stay hydrated, and slow down if you begin to sweat profusely. Foods counteracting dryness are cooked slowly over a low heat. Some good foods to enjoy in autumn include tofu, soymilk, apples, pears, persimmons, sesame seeds and dairy products. A little salt is okay, and sour flavored foods in moderation such as pickles, lemons, olives are mildly astringent, helping to hold in moisture.

Fall is a time of letting go. Watch the leaves fall, and let go if those things that you no longer need. Get rid of that old car, recycle no longer used electrical devices, old magazines and newspapers, and put away the summer clothes. Let go of lost or draining relationships and bad habits. Organize. Make room for that which you need. Decide what you need to do and do it.

Finally, sadness weakens the lungs, and weak lungs manifest as sadness or grief. Sadness and grief are appropriate and essential to process a great loss, but can also be experienced for all the wrong reasons, whether its weak lungs or problems related to how various losses are viewed or processed. While TCM can treat both, if you are experiencing a prolonged sadness or grief and cannot see a TCM practitioner, be sure to make an effort this season to talk to someone to help you better understand what is going on with you. That can be anyone from your doctor or pastor to simply a well centered friend. Taking good care of yourself during fall will not only help ward off winter colds, but it can also help you transition into that person you were born to be.

[tags]Traditional Chinese Medicine[/tags]

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