Self-Care
Midsummer Dreams for Heart Coherence
My dearest people …
We are in the deep middle of the Season of the Heart, where the energetics of the Sun are strongest, sending us Vitamin D and serotonin, and the Earth is alive with an abundance of colors and fragrances. Flowers are feeding the bees, butterflies and hummingbirds, and the bunnies scampering in the grass are so abundant this year! We are midway in our journey through the Year of the Yin Rabbit, and the message continues to be: cultivate inner stillness, inner quiet, and reconnect with our innate wisdom and guidance by aligning ourselves with the coherence of our hearts. continue reading
Your body is your SUBCONSCIOUS MIND
The relationship between the body and the mind has always been one of unity, connection and interdependence within the system of Chinese medicine. Disharmony or “dis-ease” presents itself with a symptom/sign – perhaps an ache, a fever, fatigue, heart palpitations, changes in appetite, and more. These signs are assessed by the doctor, suggestions for remedies are made to alleviate discomfort, and the underlying reason for the “dis-ease” is also addressed. Symptoms – the outward conversation between the inner and outer body – are seen as messengers, helping to guide us to redirect our attention and follow the clues so that harmony can be restored in the body.
The Fire Season of the Heart
Summer season, The Great Yang, has definitely arrived and with it, the heat, humidity and the occasional emotional crankiness that is common when temperatures soar. This is the phase of the Fire Element in Chinese medicine, and the Heart, assigned to emotional and spiritual balance, is the representative organ. While the Heart aligns with Fire, it is heat that can actually agitate and disrupt the Heart’s function and flow, and so we are instructed to be mindful of how to keep our body and mind flowing with ease, as if a cool stream is moving through our head, limbs, and torso. The Heart is referred to as “the sovereign emperor” in the kingdom of the body, and all systems work together to ensure the Heart is well served, for an upset emperor can wreak havoc in the body.
Cultivate Your Inner Stillness
Greetings my precious people!!!
For the first time ever, I decided to take a ‘summer sabbatical’ in the month of June to cultivate some much needed rest, and experience “being” instead of “doing.” Chinese medicine extols the value and virtue of living in accordance with the seasons, and while Summer is the high point of the active yang energetic, we are also in the year of the Yin Water Rabbit, where we are reminded of rest, retreats, and the gifts of cultivating an inner stillness. So a summer sabbatical seemed quite appropriate!!
You Have the Ability to Heal Your Self: A Simple Qigong Practice to Support Immunity
One of the oldest and most famous of all qigong sequences is ‘Ba Duan Jin’, or ‘Eight Pieces of Brocade’, also known as ‘Eight Treasures’. This practice can be traced back to the Song dynasty, which lasted in China from 960-1279CE. During this period, China was noted as the most advanced civilization on earth and responsible for the invention of the mass printing of books, gunpowder, and the compass. General Yue Fei (a Song era military general, poet, and calligrapher) is often noted as the originator of the set of exercises that became Eight Pieces of Brocade as a way to keep his soldiers healthy and ready for battle.
