Harvest Time: On Digesting Life

The 5 Phases of the year depicted in a clockwise circle: Winter/ Water Spring/ Earth Summer/ Fire Late Summer/ Spleen Autumn/ Metal with a yin/yang symbol in the center

Are you giving yourself time to digest life?

That’s the theme of this season: the phase of the year that Chinese Medicine calls “Late Summer.” No longer in the hottest, most active, most intense part of summer with its foot on the accelerator, this season akin to Harvest Time, where we reap what we’ve sown in the past few seasons.

It corresponds to the digestive system (the Spleen and Stomach), so it’s a good time to consider simplifying your diet a bit — or grab some Chorus — a phenomenal formula for digestion (like its stronger cousin Microgard that I carry in clinic.)

It’s a season of integration of what has happened thus far in the seasonal cycles – reckoning with life

The 5 Phases of the year depicted in a clockwise circle: Winter/ Water Spring/ Earth Summer/ Fire Late Summer/ Spleen Autumn/ Metal with a yin/yang symbol in the center

and integrating it into our consciousness.

You can’t integrate what you haven’t processed. Just like undigested food bogs down your digestive tract, undigested experiences leave us feeling vaguely disconnected from ourselves, foggy, and unclear. 

A few prescriptions I’ve written down this week to create space for the digestion of life include: a media-free walk in nature. 5 minutes of sitting in silence or transcribing whatever is in your brain onto paper.

Time and space without new input or anyone else’s energy so you have full permission to feel it all, and ugly cry if need be.

Digestion and integration of what we’ve been experiencing is also key to feeling nourished by your life. It’s so easy to think about what’s undone – -that stuff hanging over your head — and isn’t there always something? That mindset sets you up for feeling stressed and overwhelmed.

So I hope you’ll give yourself credit for what you have done instead of focusing on what there is left to do.

For real: think of three things you’re grateful to yourself for having done. Give yourself a pat on the back. (Yeah, past self! You did that. Take that in!) Especially if you’re in the midst of a difficult slog and life isn’t feeling particularly bountiful and abundant.

You deserve to feel nourished by your life. Otherwise it’s just depleting. 

May you enjoy the harvest!