✦Spring ~ Wood
Rise early with the light. Move the body. Eat young greens, sour flavours, and sprouted foods. Plan, begin, set direction. Let the liver move freely; resentment is its winter residue.
Teachings ~ Seasonal Living
Daoist Seasonal Living
How seasonal energetics align body, mind, and rhythm
Daoist lifestyle begins with a simple observation: a human being is not separate from the natural environment. We are a microcosm of the macrocosm. The same qi that thaws the ground and send sprouts up in spring rises in the liver energy. The same heat that ripens fruit in summer opens the heart. The body is a small weather system inside a large one, and most modern fatigue comes from living against, or lack of connection to, this rhythm rather than with it.
Seasonal living is the practical art of letting the year's Five Phases ~ Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water ~ demonstrate what is appropriate for you to eat for your climate and the climate you live in, when you sleep, how you move, and where you place your attention.
✦Summer ~ Fire
Stay outward, social, expressive. Bitter greens and cooling foods. Open the heart ~ this is the season of connection, laughter, intimacy. Sleep later, rise early, do not over-shade the joy.
✦Late Summer ~ Earth
Slow down. Return to centre. Sweet root vegetables, congee, warm cooked foods. Digest the year so far ~ literally and figuratively. Mother yourself and others.
✦Autumn ~ Metal
Turn inward. Pungent, white, lung-supporting foods (radish, pear, ginger). Practice letting go: clean the home, complete what is unfinished, grieve cleanly. Refine.
✦Winter ~ Water
Rest deeply. Sleep long. Salty, dark, mineral-rich foods (bone broth, seaweed, black beans). Conserve. This is the season the kidneys ~ and your jing ~ are replenished. Do less.
Why alignment matters
Each phase provides different energy and wisdom for the body, mind, spirit and emotions. When we ignore the energetics of nature ~ pushing outward in winter, resting in spring, grieving in summer ~ qi becomes turbulent, and the Three Treasures begin to leak. Most chronic depletion is not the result of one big event; it is the accumulated cost of living out of season, out of alignment with the laws of nature.
Alignment is what creates the ability to be in flow. We want to be in flow with ourselves, our minds, our connection to the living ecosystem we live in, so that we may thrive. It is the practice of awareness and presence with where you are in space and time and within the cosmos. Awareness of seasonal energetics, personal energetics, and cultivating ourselves to be centred and aligned.
Move through the year together
The Seasonal Retreats and Living Spiral mentorship walk you through each phase in real time, in your own body.