June 13, 2025 • 39 mins
Ever wondered about the energy of the Summer Solstice and its implications on our everyday lives? We're going on a journey to explore this celestial event that is not just the start of summer, but in fact, its zenith, marking the beginning of its decline. It's a period of subtle shifts when yin begins to rise within yang, a change that we need to align our energy with, lest we invite long-lasting and deep-seated diseases. We'll also shed some light on the concept of patriarchy and how it's tied to the imbalance of yang energy.
Moving forward, we'll unravel the realm of yang wisdom and its profound expression during the summer solstice. This wisdom transcends mere productivity and becomes a conduit for expressing love and appreciation for our surroundings. We'll also learn about nourishing our bodies with juicy, yin-filled foods, and why it's essential to reduce meat and protein to let our yang energy rest. Aligning with the seasons isn't just a charming idea; it's a gateway to improved health, increased longevity, and enhanced fertility.
Lastly, we'll discuss how we can steer our children towards cooperative play during the summer season, shifting them away from the ruthlessness of competition. Remember, it's all about being gentle during this time. So, what are you waiting for? Join me, Bronwyn Ayla, with a cup of tea and sit back as we embark on an insightful conversation about aligning with the natural energy of the summer solstice. And remember, you can always visit my website for more insights on aligning with nature's rhythms.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Alchemy with Bronwyn, a podcast
dedicated to helping you live aninspired, heart-centered life
by cultivating energetic mastery.
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I'm your host, bronwyn Isla,board-certified acupuncturist,
(00:25):
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(01:54):
your own time and move at yourown pace with home learning.
This is Bronwyn Ayala speakingat the Summer Solstice about the
energy of the season in waysthat we can harmonize with
what's happening in nature.
Often in the West we think ofSummer Solstice as the beginning
(02:18):
of summer, but actually it'sthe beginning of the end of
summer.
This is the peak of summer,when the days are the longest
and the nights are the shortest.
It's the peak of the rise ofyang that began in the spring.
It's actually the crescendo ofyang.
This is the time when yin isgiving birth inside of yang.
(02:39):
However, yin, because of itsnature, presents internally
rather than externally In thewintertime.
Yang is giving birth inside ofyin.
We celebrate this with allkinds of holidays and different
traditions depending on thereligion.
However, it's rare to find atradition that celebrates the
(02:59):
birth of yin at summer solstice.
Yin at summer solstice, but inthe same way that we celebrate
the coming of the light aroundwinter solstice with Christmas
and different traditions, andHanukkah and Kwanzaa and
traditions where there'slighting of candles to symbolize
the coming of the light.
We could be celebrating thecoming of the dark in wintertime
(03:22):
, a celebration of the yinaspect of slowing down, taking
more time for internalreflection and actually tuning
into this part of the season.
A lot of the information thatI'm bringing with this seasonal
harmonizing talks is coming frommy teacher, lu Ming, and he
(03:42):
would say that this is the mostimportant talk to listen to.
This is the one where, if wedon't observe this decline of
yang and harmonize our energywith that, it can cause the most
long-lasting and deep-seateddisease.
The reason yang's potential forharm is much greater than yin's
is because yang, by nature,when it's very strong, is
(04:07):
non-responsive.
At this time of the year we'reasking yang to retire, but
because its nature isnon-responsive, there is a great
potential for harm.
Yin, on the other, its natureis responsiveness.
So even when yin is dominant,such as in the wintertime, if
(04:28):
there's a small amount of yangapplied, such as the day slowly
getting brighter, yin respondsto that and allows the change.
An analogy would be a generalwho's won many battles in the
late spring and early summer andif their yang is not reined in
around this time they'll think,oh, now it's time for me to be
(04:49):
emperor.
And they'll kind of keep goingbecause their young is not
retiring.
And the way to get their youngto retire would be to have them
marry, get them some land, turnthem into a farmer.
But if the general is not ableto transition into being a
farmer, metaphorically he'd haveto have been killed as a reward
(05:13):
for his service to the army.
An out-of-control general isgenerally considered chaos,
because military training isappropriate for battle but it's
not appropriate for running thegovernment.
We have this right now in ourgovernment, where there's the
(05:33):
out-of-bound young that'stotally unequipped to run the
government.
There's not enough yin toanchor them and so they try to
create dictatorships.
When a healthy yang is dominant,there's a sense that one can do
anything.
We can multitask, completeprojects, invent new projects,
(05:53):
reinvent ourselves, and there'sa great sense of accomplishment
and competence.
So if this has been the case ofcultivating young, in the
spring we might find ourselveshaving completed lots of
projects or be really excitedabout new beginnings and change
and a sense that we can doanything and get a lot of things
(06:16):
done.
The key here is to let thatroll now rather than pushing the
river.
It's like it's already flowingfrom the spring and the height
of summer, but now it's just letit go.
Don't keep the pushing of thatyang.
When yang is really intelligent,there's a quality of discerning
(06:38):
, instead of the oppositionalyang that's characteristic of
early spring.
In early spring, we often havethis energy of like.
I don't want to do this anymore.
I'm going to change this.
This aspect of my life isn'tworking.
Let me see if I can move to anew place or find a new
relationship.
This energy of movement andchange is appropriate.
(06:59):
It's like this rebelliousteenager, after a long winter of
hunkering down and beinginternal, that wants to now try
something new.
Yin and yang intelligence arequite different from each other
and they actually rely on eachother.
Whereas yin's intelligence isdreamy and spacey and belongs to
ancestral realms, it's thiswintry, dark, spiritual,
(07:22):
visionary intelligence At theend of the winter retreat time.
If yin doesn't add a littleyang to its energetic flow, it
becomes a spacey visionarymumbling on and on about all of
its spiritual blah, blah, blah,but it doesn't really have any
(07:47):
yang to to anchor that intochange.
However, here at summer,solstice is when yang needs to
respond to yin in this way.
Yang needs to yin out.
It needs to begin to sink down,be anchored by that yin and let
the yin slowly become dominant.
This is such a literal metaphorfor patriarchy.
Patriarchy is out of control.
(08:08):
Yang it's that pushing, pushing, going, not listening, moving,
conquering, raping, pillaging,all the symptoms of yang being
out of control and not anchoredby yin, by the feminine aspect
of life.
Lu Ming would often use theanalogy of how, in the
wintertime, the yin has becomedominant and then at some point
(08:31):
becomes senile, like a grannywho's senile, and then yang
takes her hand and helps hercross the road, like the yang
grandson helps senile grannymake it through the day.
And now, at summer solstice,yang is big and Yin is just
growing.
Yin is a young girl that's justbeing just growing up and she
(08:54):
needs to come and take her outof control grandfather home and
let him relax and sit by thefire and watch his grandkids
grow up.
As Yin is being birthed atsummer solstice, it's a time
where we can engage less of ourdisciplined and ambitious ways
and these parts of ourselves andmore of a willingness to listen
(09:17):
, hold and tune in.
The quality of Yin is listeningand the quality of Yang is more
ambitious and disciplined andcolder.
This yang quality gets the jobdone, even if it means using
force.
This time of year, we don'tneed to be overly disciplined to
get the job done and to run ourlives.
(09:37):
There's a way where we can tapinto our willingness to be
open-minded, listen and allowthe flow of the river to happen
without pushing it.
At this time, yin and yang areat a pivotal moment, a pivotal
shift, and as a result of thisdynamic force, a wind is born
around summer solstice.
This wind is a culmination ofyang.
(10:00):
At this time of year, that windenters into the plants and the
fruit trees and makes them ripen.
The wind gains yin over timeand eventually damp in the
autumn.
But right now it's a sharp,pathogenic wind.
It's also the wind that helpsthe birds migrate.
For many birds, theirsensitivity to this wind is
(10:21):
their intelligence.
When they feel a shift in thiswind after the summer solstice,
that's when they begin tomigrate and they use that wind
to carry them to the south.
This meeting of yin and yang, orthis pivoting of yin and yang
at this time of year that causesthis wind, is allegorical to
(10:42):
the meeting of the ocean and theland, this deep yin body of
water with the more yang land.
In ancient China, people didn'treally hang out on the beach or
go to beach resorts because itwas considered pathogenic to
absorb this wind and that hotyang of the beach.
They would maybe take walksthere, but not live there.
(11:05):
A more balanced place to liveis where a lake meets a mountain
.
This was considered angeliccompared to an ocean meeting the
land.
As far as exercise goes, becauseYin is a fragile newborn at
summer solstice, it's importantto not exert yourself too much
(11:27):
this time of year.
If we exercise to the point ofprofuse sweating, we lose the
little yin that is here andlater.
This can lead to biggerproblems with our immune system
Working very hard after theirsumma, solstice can exhaust that
tiny little infantile yin.
(11:47):
As far as conduct goes, thebiggest counsel is to calm down
and re-strategize.
If we don't, we end up withstruggle and aggression,
ambition and pushing.
The image we can see in natureis rotting before ripening.
Nature is rotting beforeripening.
(12:07):
The things we struggle with westruggle to protect or to grow
or to keep our ambition up startto rot before they actually
come to fruition.
As far as a yearly plan, it'sbetter to get our ya-ya's out,
as my daughter calls them, inlate spring and early summer,
such as during spring break, togo and have a big wild time, and
spring break is way moreappropriate than at the end of
summer.
(12:27):
Being wild in the spring helpsus sort out our young.
However, after summer solsticebeing aggressive is no longer
useful.
This is not a Judeo-Christianmorality conversation.
It's conduct recommendation toattune to the flow of energy
happening in and the cycle ishappening on the earth.
(12:49):
But now the council is toreally rein in the immature
young behavior In modern life.
We are quite reluctant to slowdown on the young spring moving,
pushing energy.
After summer solstice we haveJuly 4th, where we light
fireworks and barbecue andfurther emphasize the young fire
heat aspect of life and furtheremphasize the young fire heat
(13:11):
aspect of life.
And for many of us in the WestCoast at least, after summer
solstice and late August we haveBurning man.
It's really difficult to getmore young than lighting things
on fire and parading around inthe desert half naked.
Or if we take something likered meat which is already its
(13:32):
thermal nature is quite hot, andthen we roast it on a barbecue
in the middle of the heat of theafternoon and then stay up and
watch fireworks, we might end upwith constitutionally more
struggle and aggression which,again circling back to the
patriarchy conversation, isreally the struggle that we're
(13:52):
having worldwide.
Right now is the time when theyoung, out-of-bound nature could
hang out with little girls anddiscover what it means to be a
grandpa, what it means tonurture and hold and observe.
We don't want grandpa to bestressed out.
We want him to think that it'stime to retire.
We don't want grandpa to bestressed out.
(14:13):
We want him to think that it'stime to retire.
So it's like where the generalor the emperor is distracted by
his granddaughter from from war.
Healthy, young at this time hasa, has a confidence that it's
time to simply let all of thatgo, to relax, to allow yin to
flourish, to eat steamed fishand drink tea rather than
(14:35):
barbecue heavy red meats anddrink beer.
So even though this misconducthas been normalized in the West,
in Chinese medicine, we wouldthink of this as quite
catastrophic In modern life.
We push and the result is thisempty yin and then later in the
winter having more febrilediseases and fevers.
(14:57):
As I often remind my patients,what is normal doesn't
necessarily mean that that'shealthy.
Part of this change of conductat this time of year includes
revising strategies.
Instead of trying to finish upall the tasks and do a final
push, just take some time toslowly let it all unfold.
If you have projects thataren't complete from the spring,
(15:19):
let them just kind of drift onand slowly come to completion.
Modern young, out of balance,looks like violence and
aggression, patriarchy and alack of acuity and intelligence.
But Yang is not necessarily allmuscle.
Part of Yang's power is beingaccurate and precise.
(15:39):
When Yang is healthy, thisprecision makes for more
strategists than violentgenerals.
So a healthy Yang.
When Yin starts to come back inthe autumn, a healthy yang is
able to use this focus and thisprecision to go inside and pay
attention and connect to theinner world.
(16:00):
It shifts its focus from allthe activities of spring and
summer to focus on the innerworld in the wintertime.
We don't want to provoke, weneed to protect it and keep it
warm throughout the winter.
For those of you that arepractitioners out there of any
kind of medicine, often in theautumn and the winter we have
(16:20):
people coming to us telling usthat they feel low energy, that
they're tired, that they don'twant to go out.
And if we give them herbs oracupuncture to help them feel
better and have more energy, weactually could be provoking the
yang.
So they'll start to feel moremotivated, they'll feel vigorous
, but we're actually dischargingtheir yang at that time of year
(16:41):
.
So at this time of year, at thesummer solstice, it's the peak
of yang and includes the firststep of decline.
It's this time to start to reinin our yang and our movement
and our doing.
This is certainly not a goodtime to be competitive with
others.
Expressing feelings iscertainly an important part of
(17:03):
this time of year, butexpressing emotions means more
like going for a walk or writingsome poetry, not yelling at
your partner.
So we allow ourselves toexperience things directly, but
not making them into a hugedrama.
It's more about taking time tolook at the sunset, playing
(17:24):
music and reading books ofpoetry.
So emotional things are lookingat the sunset, being proud of
your daughter, more calm, quiet,emotional health.
This can often be the snap offpoint for relationships that
have become too young, so thiscould look like expecting too
(17:46):
much from the other person.
This is a kind of youngdis-ease when we want someone to
be more than they are.
It would be healthier to stoplooking outside and to turn our
attention inward.
What could be happening thistime of year is a rejuvenation
of our own inner resource andessence.
It's not about our partner,it's about ourself.
(18:08):
So symptomatic of young out ofbounds would be more of a I'm
being competitive and I'm uniqueand I want to win at all this
stuff and maybe my partner'sholding me back, and so I have
to move on.
This is a disease where we'reimagining that winning has some
kind of ultimate meaning.
This is the yang going crazy.
(18:30):
When the young is at fullmaturity, which it is at summer
solstice, it could be wise, andthe young wisdom is not only
about getting things done.
When the general we've beentalking about comes home from
war and meets his granddaughter,he shifts his energy from
wanting to be in battle towanting to create a world that's
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safe and beautiful for hisgranddaughter.
It shifts from, as Loomingwould say, from building rocket
ships to wanting to create cutelittle doll houses for the
granddaughter.
So it's a time to express ourfeelings articulately.
This is different than going toexotic dance and flailing
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around in a state of ecstasy.
It's more about telling thepeople close to you that you
love them and that they'reimportant to you.
It's not a let's stay up allnight.
We need to talk.
That's more appropriate to dothat inside yourself.
Talk to yourself all night ifyou want to do that and then,
with whatever it is that youdiscover, articulate that to
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your loved ones.
This is also a really great timeto give people gifts,
especially giving gifts of ripefruit.
You can give these to yourfriends and the people you love,
but it can also be a good timeto give gifts to people that you
have a more difficult time with.
If we work on our mostdifficult relationships this
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time of year, the other onesbecome easier, and gift giving
with difficult relationships canbe a way to harmonize the
energy.
Work out some way ofarticulating all of the feelings
that have been latent in yoursystem.
All times of year is a greattime to be outside and in nature
.
This time of year is nodifferent.
Spending time in nature canhelp cultivate our yin, but this
(20:17):
is less about going to thebeach and lying half naked in
the sun.
The wind over the next twot-nodes, which is about a month,
is toxic and penetrating thisyin.
Deficient yang.
Wind is dangerous.
If we're going to be outside,wear long sleeves, wear a hat,
stay out of direct sunlight fortoo long, because this wind can
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pierce us and create a stuckquality, which is what we want
to avoid.
We need to make sure that ourinner yang does not get stuck.
This is what we're trying toprotect.
So, on very sunny days, thinktwice about how to participate
in the season If, for somereason, the young does get stuck
.
We want to make sure to getthis out before the winter time
comes.
One amazing way to get theyoung to retire and chill out is
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to go on vacation this time ofyear.
This can be very disorientingto our productive, ambitious,
get things done mode.
This can be very disorientingto our productive, ambitious,
get-things-done mode.
We have a chance, when we goaway, to go away from our
patterns Like, for example, wecould go somewhere.
We don't speak the language andso our discerning, knowing,
(21:26):
needing to understand, mind cantake a break.
It could be a good idea to gosomewhere and be really
unimportant, like no one thatlittle town off of the coast of
wherever it is cares that you'rean important person, where
you're coming from.
They don't know who you are andthey don't really care, and
they're just there doing theirfishing or whatever it is.
So we have a chance to gosomewhere and realize that
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there's more to life than all ofthe things that we have become
wrapped up in in our day-to-day.
The yin rising and the yangdeclining.
This process has the potentialto give us a certain kind of
profound wisdom.
Go away for a while from yourwork and discover when you come
back that you're actually quitegood at what you do, for example
(22:10):
, when we're gobbling data andgetting knowledge.
We are a student, so going awayfor a while allows us to be
more in our experience andactually let that data transform
into a softer wisdom.
Foods that can help our youngretire are the juicy, yin-filled
foods such as melons and juicy,ripe fruit and watery dishes
(22:35):
and soup.
It's better to eat during thedaytime and not at nighttime,
definitely not when it's dark.
Eat less meat and protein.
The farmer's market is soabundant this time of year.
Everything is juicy and ripe,less rich, but more abundant,
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splendid, sweet and sour tastes,and a little bit of this tells
your young what to do.
All of the plants related tolongevity are not only sweet but
sweet and sour.
With sweet and sour, the spleenand the liver are involved, so
peaches and plums, apricots andnectarines, cherries all of
(23:17):
these fruits that are kind of,have a tartness and not.
Incidentally, we want thislongevity not so we can simply
be old, but so that we can ripenas a person.
So this process of ripening inthe summertime is really
reflective of our process ofwanting to ripen as a person.
(23:40):
Often in my practice I like toremind my patients that what
we're doing here isn't simplyfixing their shoulder or getting
them healthy so that if theydid a bunch of tests and EKGs
and whatever their levels wouldcome out good, whatever that
relative thing is.
But health really is aboutbeing a loving person and having
(24:01):
longevity so we can live longenough and we have time to
develop as a person and becomewise.
So there's ways of protectingyourself from our constitution
by our conduct.
There's ways of protectingourselves from our constitution
by our conduct.
For example, if yourconstitution is young, modern
life with all of our technologyand cell phones and crazy
politics and all of it, puts usat great risk for heart disease.
(24:24):
If our constitution is moreyoung, we tend towards cancer
and rotting in an effort to getyang going all the time when
actually we're tired.
So there's more of a smolderingheat leading to this yang
deficiency.
So, on that note, this is thetime of year to let yang decline
(24:44):
to protect us from thesetendencies.
So at the farmer's market, whatwe see here, all of these juicy
fruits, are items that are notreally that good for storage.
There are more things that wewant to eat now.
They're vigorous but they'renot appropriate to eat later on.
Yang is maximized and ourspleen is strong that we can
(25:07):
take out all the nutrients thatis offered to it.
So everything now needs to beeaten fresh and it's not until
later in the year that we seethings that want to be stored.
So right now we have summersquash.
We want to eat that now.
Everything starts to lose itsmoisture later on, but right now
the juices that things have arecreated straight from the
(25:29):
sunlight.
Later on, when we start storingfood, it's more appropriate for
nourishing the yin.
So we're just starting to seethe turn of the cycle where
we're heading towards foods thatcan be stored and then used in
the wintertime to really morestrongly nourish that yin
quality.
Another piece of counsel that LuMing used to give is to graze
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rather than eat big meals Ifwe're healthy.
Our assimilation right now isat its peak.
So this ripeness of summer wewant to store in the body as a
chi pattern for the rest of theyear, not as nutrients, but as a
chi pattern.
This time of year a largesupper is really detrimental,
(26:13):
save the eating larger meals forthe early part of the day when
the qi is higher.
Let the food not be complicated,but just simple soups like a
salty juk or a rice soup with alittle bit of bok choy in it.
We want a savory liquid, butnot a liquid that's very rich.
Lightly cooked foods that areblanched are more harmonious for
(26:39):
inviting young to retire thanthings that are fried or
barbecued.
Having, for example, agluten-free soba and a broth, a
salty broth, could be a nice,simple way to harmonize with the
season.
You can do dry frying in thewok, or what is called water
frying.
Using the water will help thefood get blanched, so it's a
(27:01):
kind of a stir fry with onlywater, a water frying.
You can do this with somethingfresh like pea shoots or snow
pea leaves.
Okay, so, circling back to thisripening conversation, lu Ming
would say that blossoming is thesplendor of spring, where
ripening is the splendor ofsummer.
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Ripening is when food is themost delicious and digestible.
But if we don't pick the fruitthis time of year, then it
begins to rot.
Plants do this to dischargetheir seed.
In the autumn time.
They want the fruit to start torot so that it can discharge
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the seed and become a compostfor that seed to grow into
another tree.
This is how it survives.
Immature, yang is the flowerthat leads to the fruit, that
then leads to the seed, and then, when pit fruit matures, that
fruit part starts to rot andthat way it can compost itself
and have something nutritiousfor the seed to sprout from.
(28:07):
So the expression of yin thatcomes out of the tree is this
compost to feed the seed.
This is the nourishment thatthe fruit tree will give to the
next fruit tree.
So right now we're at the peakof ripeness and after summer
solstice it begins to have atendency towards rotting.
(28:29):
So, as we know, if we have astone fruit such as a peach or a
nectarine that's not all theway ripe, we can chew it really
well.
This will allow it to be moredigestible.
And actually this is sort ofripening for that fruit, for our
bodies.
Our saliva begins to break downthat food and prepare it to hit
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the stomach acid.
So all of the ripening plantshave abundant juiciness this
time of year and it's importantnot to eat rotten food.
So we don't want to eatanything that's overripe, that
watermelon that's been sittingaround just a little bit too
long.
Often we use these ripe fruitsas offerings on our altars, but
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we want to make sure to checkthe altar several times a day so
that there's not a situation ofmold or rotting on the altar.
This would be very inauspiciousand create imbalance in the
situation.
It can make yang aggressiveactually, because yin rotten
foods means that yang has goneup and this is pathogenic.
(29:33):
Yang Fertility can be enhancedby eating ripe foods such as
cucumbers, melons etc.
Because it encourages the kindof yin and yang synthesis.
We don't think of this often,but being in a hurry is a way to
create infertility.
I see this often with women whocome to see me in my practice
(29:54):
who are struggling withinfertility and they're the CEO
executives running aroundjuggling multiple stressful
situations.
They're often late to theirappointment, they have to leave
at a certain time right after.
Their phone is close at handwhile they're on the table.
(30:15):
All of this kind of youngderangement can lead to an
infertility.
When young is out of control,there's a kind of dominance of
looking for more energy andaggression and individuality and
uniqueness, but that's notreally how we produce.
Fertility is actually aboutbeing in the whole cycle of the
year, not only glorifying Yangand then, in the wintertime,
(30:36):
going on vacation in a warm, hotplace like Mexico or Ibiza.
In the wintertime, we need tohunker down and be in solitude
and quiet and the depths ofwinter as a way to repay that
young time of the year of thesummer.
Thus we recognize birth as partof an ongoing cycle.
So these ripe fruits encouragefertility because they harmonize
(31:01):
yin and yang.
Okay.
So moving on to rituals andcelebrations, this time of year
we want to honor emotions andcelebrate them, but not in a way
where we have like an operaticdrama of the emotions.
Healthy rituals could includeplanting trees and flowers and
(31:23):
celebrating the positiveinfluences of this time.
These are all rituals trying toget young to calm down, and
another great way to do this isby honoring our ancestors.
One way you can do this is togo to tombs of ancestors, sweep
away the muck and put flowers onthe graves, give gifts to
(31:43):
different family members thatmay be estranged.
It's actually actually givinggifts to honor the ancestors and
your similar lineages.
Hold big banquets and makeofferings in the four directions
and also that of the fourdirections representing the
living, the dead, the enemy andthe ally.
Because of the abundance ofthis time of year, it becomes
(32:07):
that there's no real differencebetween enemy and ally, living
and dead.
We're just celebrating all thatis abundant on the earth.
As we talked about earlier,things that are appropriate for
the altar are things related tolongevity, like ripe fruit can
also use things that representthe turtle or tortoises.
These are all representing thecycles of time in the yin,
(32:32):
especially the tortoises andturtles that live in the ocean,
because these have a direct yinquality.
In ancient China, the emperorwould put on display this time
of year tortoise shells that hadlived thousands of years, and
these rituals are all there tocalibrate everyone, to get
(32:52):
everyone to calibrate with theseasons.
For farmers, this time of yearis often more calmer because the
crops have been planted andthey're waiting for the autumn
harvest.
So for this reason, gatheringsare appropriate, because there's
actually time to have thegatherings.
Dress can be in full splendorand beautiful clothing.
(33:14):
It's appropriate to dress up tocelebrate the height of young.
So if you're going to havesummer solstice gatherings, have
them in full regalia and fancydress, okay.
So another thing to tune intothis time of year is loyalty.
Loyalty is clearly one of theemotions of being human and the
(33:37):
point of the experience ofloyalty isn't to find someone or
something to be loyal to, butto simply practice the
invocation of loyalty into one'ssystem so we can find someone
to be loyal to and celebratethis.
But ultimately the point ofloyalty is simply to have an
experience of loyalty.
Loyalty actually is a healthyattribute of young.
(34:01):
It's not the kind of loyaltywhere we kill.
Everyone is not loyal.
It's more of an invocation ofthe sense of loyalty that
represents a healthy youngenergy.
There becomes a respect ofother people's loyalty, whether
it's to religions that are notour own or to a government that
we don't agree with.
There's a respect of loyaltyjust as a way of invoking
(34:25):
loyalty itself.
The day cycle's height of energyis at noon.
So you can imagine, becausethat's when the sun is at its
highest, that's the best time todo our practices.
So when we wake up we face thesouth.
You can imagine that the inhaleis coming from the south over
the horizon.
It's not a time where we wantto do too much qigong.
(34:48):
It's more little bitsthroughout the day.
The same way we would begrazing food slowly throughout
the day, also doing ourpractices a little bit all day
long.
This is not a time of year todo it more and do it harder, or
do a yoga workout and getathletic.
This is more a time to slowlypractice and cultivate qi
(35:08):
throughout the day.
If you're an acupuncturist or amedical provider right now,
patients get better very easilybecause the yang is at its
height.
When patients come incomplaining of various things,
almost any treatment we do andthey'll get better.
Pulses often feel very healthybecause the channel T is strong.
It's because digestion isstrong.
(35:32):
Foods are easily assimilated.
This assimilation of thenutrients produces strong blood
and that blood helps to nourishthe channels At the solstices
and equinoxes.
We shift our medical treatments.
It's important not to tonifyyoung this time of year.
Even if people come in and itlooks like they're yang
deficient, rather than tonifyingyang, we want to tonify their
(35:55):
spleen chi.
Even a chi deficient person canget enough from vegetables and
fruit this time of year becauseof their ripeness.
Similarly, people who come inmight have a lot of catharsis on
the table, a lot of needing toexpress emotions and let go of
things.
This is healthy.
You might recommend that theydo things to enhance this
(36:16):
letting go and feeling ofemotions.
Ideas could be reading books ofpoetry, spending time in nature
, reading sad stories.
All of this is very healthy.
As far as our conduct withchildren, it's also important to
give space for their expressionof emotions.
So this time of year you mightnotice your kids having more
outbursts, more tantrums, moreletting go of pent up emotions.
(36:40):
It's important to give them thespace and time to do this.
Hold them, show understanding.
Let them cry in a lovingcontainer.
Show understanding.
Let them cry in a lovingcontainer.
Help them to know that theirwild expression of their
emotions is welcome and that allthe different kinds of emotions
are welcome in your family.
Demonstrate to them how havinga wide range of feelings can be
(37:02):
a safe experience for them.
This is important all times ofyear, but especially important
now.
And in addition, if you noticeyour children being competitive
or starting to want to have alot of comparisons, my counsel
would be to guide them intoanother way of play.
Find games that are more basedon collaboration the competitive
(37:26):
edge.
This time of year can get quiteugly and can actually be
harmful to the chi.
Remember that you can supportthis work with a monthly
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(37:46):
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(38:12):
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You can also make an appointmentto work with me one-on-one,
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(38:33):
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(38:56):
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That's R-E-I-K-I-Y-O-G-A.
(39:16):
Thanks again for tuning in.
Have a beautiful summer and Ihope to connect with you soon.
Welcome to Alchemy with Bronwyn, a podcast
dedicated to helping you live aninspired, heart-centered life
by cultivating energetic mastery.
We delve deep into how toorganize our life force around
what matters most.
I'm your host, bronwyn Isla,board-certified acupuncturist,
(00:25):
mama dancer and practitioner onthe path of illumination.
Thanks for tuning in Before weget started.
I'm asking for your supportwith this podcast.
I've been running this podcastsince 2017 on a different
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Please support me and this showby following on whatever is
(00:47):
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This will help this work reachmore people and help me to know
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In addition, you can support mefinancially with a monthly
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Higher subscription rates giveyou weekly live calls with me
(01:09):
and additional video content.
But the biggest reason tosupport this work is so I can
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I also offer a six-month Reikitraining in the San Francisco
Bay Area that you can find outmore about at reikiyogacom
(01:31):
that's R-E-I-K-I-Y-O-G-Acom.
This is a powerful way touplevel your spiritual path and
healing potential with a smallcohort of like-minded
practitioners and healingpotential with a small cohort of
like-minded practitioners.
If you're not in the Bay Area,you can also join online.
I have online regular Reikitrainings that you can start in
(01:54):
your own time and move at yourown pace with home learning.
This is Bronwyn Ayala speakingat the Summer Solstice about the
energy of the season in waysthat we can harmonize with
what's happening in nature.
Often in the West we think ofSummer Solstice as the beginning
(02:18):
of summer, but actually it'sthe beginning of the end of
summer.
This is the peak of summer,when the days are the longest
and the nights are the shortest.
It's the peak of the rise ofyang that began in the spring.
It's actually the crescendo ofyang.
This is the time when yin isgiving birth inside of yang.
(02:39):
However, yin, because of itsnature, presents internally
rather than externally In thewintertime.
Yang is giving birth inside ofyin.
We celebrate this with allkinds of holidays and different
traditions depending on thereligion.
However, it's rare to find atradition that celebrates the
(02:59):
birth of yin at summer solstice.
Yin at summer solstice, but inthe same way that we celebrate
the coming of the light aroundwinter solstice with Christmas
and different traditions, andHanukkah and Kwanzaa and
traditions where there'slighting of candles to symbolize
the coming of the light.
We could be celebrating thecoming of the dark in wintertime
(03:22):
, a celebration of the yinaspect of slowing down, taking
more time for internalreflection and actually tuning
into this part of the season.
A lot of the information thatI'm bringing with this seasonal
harmonizing talks is coming frommy teacher, lu Ming, and he
(03:42):
would say that this is the mostimportant talk to listen to.
This is the one where, if wedon't observe this decline of
yang and harmonize our energywith that, it can cause the most
long-lasting and deep-seateddisease.
The reason yang's potential forharm is much greater than yin's
is because yang, by nature,when it's very strong, is
(04:07):
non-responsive.
At this time of the year we'reasking yang to retire, but
because its nature isnon-responsive, there is a great
potential for harm.
Yin, on the other, its natureis responsiveness.
So even when yin is dominant,such as in the wintertime, if
(04:28):
there's a small amount of yangapplied, such as the day slowly
getting brighter, yin respondsto that and allows the change.
An analogy would be a generalwho's won many battles in the
late spring and early summer andif their yang is not reined in
around this time they'll think,oh, now it's time for me to be
(04:49):
emperor.
And they'll kind of keep goingbecause their young is not
retiring.
And the way to get their youngto retire would be to have them
marry, get them some land, turnthem into a farmer.
But if the general is not ableto transition into being a
farmer, metaphorically he'd haveto have been killed as a reward
(05:13):
for his service to the army.
An out-of-control general isgenerally considered chaos,
because military training isappropriate for battle but it's
not appropriate for running thegovernment.
We have this right now in ourgovernment, where there's the
(05:33):
out-of-bound young that'stotally unequipped to run the
government.
There's not enough yin toanchor them and so they try to
create dictatorships.
When a healthy yang is dominant,there's a sense that one can do
anything.
We can multitask, completeprojects, invent new projects,
(05:53):
reinvent ourselves, and there'sa great sense of accomplishment
and competence.
So if this has been the case ofcultivating young, in the
spring we might find ourselveshaving completed lots of
projects or be really excitedabout new beginnings and change
and a sense that we can doanything and get a lot of things
(06:16):
done.
The key here is to let thatroll now rather than pushing the
river.
It's like it's already flowingfrom the spring and the height
of summer, but now it's just letit go.
Don't keep the pushing of thatyang.
When yang is really intelligent,there's a quality of discerning
(06:38):
, instead of the oppositionalyang that's characteristic of
early spring.
In early spring, we often havethis energy of like.
I don't want to do this anymore.
I'm going to change this.
This aspect of my life isn'tworking.
Let me see if I can move to anew place or find a new
relationship.
This energy of movement andchange is appropriate.
(06:59):
It's like this rebelliousteenager, after a long winter of
hunkering down and beinginternal, that wants to now try
something new.
Yin and yang intelligence arequite different from each other
and they actually rely on eachother.
Whereas yin's intelligence isdreamy and spacey and belongs to
ancestral realms, it's thiswintry, dark, spiritual,
(07:22):
visionary intelligence At theend of the winter retreat time.
If yin doesn't add a littleyang to its energetic flow, it
becomes a spacey visionarymumbling on and on about all of
its spiritual blah, blah, blah,but it doesn't really have any
(07:47):
yang to to anchor that intochange.
However, here at summer,solstice is when yang needs to
respond to yin in this way.
Yang needs to yin out.
It needs to begin to sink down,be anchored by that yin and let
the yin slowly become dominant.
This is such a literal metaphorfor patriarchy.
Patriarchy is out of control.
(08:08):
Yang it's that pushing, pushing, going, not listening, moving,
conquering, raping, pillaging,all the symptoms of yang being
out of control and not anchoredby yin, by the feminine aspect
of life.
Lu Ming would often use theanalogy of how, in the
wintertime, the yin has becomedominant and then at some point
(08:31):
becomes senile, like a grannywho's senile, and then yang
takes her hand and helps hercross the road, like the yang
grandson helps senile grannymake it through the day.
And now, at summer solstice,yang is big and Yin is just
growing.
Yin is a young girl that's justbeing just growing up and she
(08:54):
needs to come and take her outof control grandfather home and
let him relax and sit by thefire and watch his grandkids
grow up.
As Yin is being birthed atsummer solstice, it's a time
where we can engage less of ourdisciplined and ambitious ways
and these parts of ourselves andmore of a willingness to listen
(09:17):
, hold and tune in.
The quality of Yin is listeningand the quality of Yang is more
ambitious and disciplined andcolder.
This yang quality gets the jobdone, even if it means using
force.
This time of year, we don'tneed to be overly disciplined to
get the job done and to run ourlives.
(09:37):
There's a way where we can tapinto our willingness to be
open-minded, listen and allowthe flow of the river to happen
without pushing it.
At this time, yin and yang areat a pivotal moment, a pivotal
shift, and as a result of thisdynamic force, a wind is born
around summer solstice.
This wind is a culmination ofyang.
(10:00):
At this time of year, that windenters into the plants and the
fruit trees and makes them ripen.
The wind gains yin over timeand eventually damp in the
autumn.
But right now it's a sharp,pathogenic wind.
It's also the wind that helpsthe birds migrate.
For many birds, theirsensitivity to this wind is
(10:21):
their intelligence.
When they feel a shift in thiswind after the summer solstice,
that's when they begin tomigrate and they use that wind
to carry them to the south.
This meeting of yin and yang, orthis pivoting of yin and yang
at this time of year that causesthis wind, is allegorical to
(10:42):
the meeting of the ocean and theland, this deep yin body of
water with the more yang land.
In ancient China, people didn'treally hang out on the beach or
go to beach resorts because itwas considered pathogenic to
absorb this wind and that hotyang of the beach.
They would maybe take walksthere, but not live there.
(11:05):
A more balanced place to liveis where a lake meets a mountain
.
This was considered angeliccompared to an ocean meeting the
land.
As far as exercise goes, becauseYin is a fragile newborn at
summer solstice, it's importantto not exert yourself too much
(11:27):
this time of year.
If we exercise to the point ofprofuse sweating, we lose the
little yin that is here andlater.
This can lead to biggerproblems with our immune system
Working very hard after theirsumma, solstice can exhaust that
tiny little infantile yin.
(11:47):
As far as conduct goes, thebiggest counsel is to calm down
and re-strategize.
If we don't, we end up withstruggle and aggression,
ambition and pushing.
The image we can see in natureis rotting before ripening.
Nature is rotting beforeripening.
(12:07):
The things we struggle with westruggle to protect or to grow
or to keep our ambition up startto rot before they actually
come to fruition.
As far as a yearly plan, it'sbetter to get our ya-ya's out,
as my daughter calls them, inlate spring and early summer,
such as during spring break, togo and have a big wild time, and
spring break is way moreappropriate than at the end of
summer.
(12:27):
Being wild in the spring helpsus sort out our young.
However, after summer solsticebeing aggressive is no longer
useful.
This is not a Judeo-Christianmorality conversation.
It's conduct recommendation toattune to the flow of energy
happening in and the cycle ishappening on the earth.
(12:49):
But now the council is toreally rein in the immature
young behavior In modern life.
We are quite reluctant to slowdown on the young spring moving,
pushing energy.
After summer solstice we haveJuly 4th, where we light
fireworks and barbecue andfurther emphasize the young fire
heat aspect of life and furtheremphasize the young fire heat
(13:11):
aspect of life.
And for many of us in the WestCoast at least, after summer
solstice and late August we haveBurning man.
It's really difficult to getmore young than lighting things
on fire and parading around inthe desert half naked.
Or if we take something likered meat which is already its
(13:32):
thermal nature is quite hot, andthen we roast it on a barbecue
in the middle of the heat of theafternoon and then stay up and
watch fireworks, we might end upwith constitutionally more
struggle and aggression which,again circling back to the
patriarchy conversation, isreally the struggle that we're
(13:52):
having worldwide.
Right now is the time when theyoung, out-of-bound nature could
hang out with little girls anddiscover what it means to be a
grandpa, what it means tonurture and hold and observe.
We don't want grandpa to bestressed out.
We want him to think that it'stime to retire.
We don't want grandpa to bestressed out.
(14:13):
We want him to think that it'stime to retire.
So it's like where the generalor the emperor is distracted by
his granddaughter from from war.
Healthy, young at this time hasa, has a confidence that it's
time to simply let all of thatgo, to relax, to allow yin to
flourish, to eat steamed fishand drink tea rather than
(14:35):
barbecue heavy red meats anddrink beer.
So even though this misconducthas been normalized in the West,
in Chinese medicine, we wouldthink of this as quite
catastrophic In modern life.
We push and the result is thisempty yin and then later in the
winter having more febrilediseases and fevers.
(14:57):
As I often remind my patients,what is normal doesn't
necessarily mean that that'shealthy.
Part of this change of conductat this time of year includes
revising strategies.
Instead of trying to finish upall the tasks and do a final
push, just take some time toslowly let it all unfold.
If you have projects thataren't complete from the spring,
(15:19):
let them just kind of drift onand slowly come to completion.
Modern young, out of balance,looks like violence and
aggression, patriarchy and alack of acuity and intelligence.
But Yang is not necessarily allmuscle.
Part of Yang's power is beingaccurate and precise.
(15:39):
When Yang is healthy, thisprecision makes for more
strategists than violentgenerals.
So a healthy Yang.
When Yin starts to come back inthe autumn, a healthy yang is
able to use this focus and thisprecision to go inside and pay
attention and connect to theinner world.
(16:00):
It shifts its focus from allthe activities of spring and
summer to focus on the innerworld in the wintertime.
We don't want to provoke, weneed to protect it and keep it
warm throughout the winter.
For those of you that arepractitioners out there of any
kind of medicine, often in theautumn and the winter we have
(16:20):
people coming to us telling usthat they feel low energy, that
they're tired, that they don'twant to go out.
And if we give them herbs oracupuncture to help them feel
better and have more energy, weactually could be provoking the
yang.
So they'll start to feel moremotivated, they'll feel vigorous
, but we're actually dischargingtheir yang at that time of year
(16:41):
.
So at this time of year, at thesummer solstice, it's the peak
of yang and includes the firststep of decline.
It's this time to start to reinin our yang and our movement
and our doing.
This is certainly not a goodtime to be competitive with
others.
Expressing feelings iscertainly an important part of
(17:03):
this time of year, butexpressing emotions means more
like going for a walk or writingsome poetry, not yelling at
your partner.
So we allow ourselves toexperience things directly, but
not making them into a hugedrama.
It's more about taking time tolook at the sunset, playing
(17:24):
music and reading books ofpoetry.
So emotional things are lookingat the sunset, being proud of
your daughter, more calm, quiet,emotional health.
This can often be the snap offpoint for relationships that
have become too young, so thiscould look like expecting too
(17:46):
much from the other person.
This is a kind of youngdis-ease when we want someone to
be more than they are.
It would be healthier to stoplooking outside and to turn our
attention inward.
What could be happening thistime of year is a rejuvenation
of our own inner resource andessence.
It's not about our partner,it's about ourself.
(18:08):
So symptomatic of young out ofbounds would be more of a I'm
being competitive and I'm uniqueand I want to win at all this
stuff and maybe my partner'sholding me back, and so I have
to move on.
This is a disease where we'reimagining that winning has some
kind of ultimate meaning.
This is the yang going crazy.
(18:30):
When the young is at fullmaturity, which it is at summer
solstice, it could be wise, andthe young wisdom is not only
about getting things done.
When the general we've beentalking about comes home from
war and meets his granddaughter,he shifts his energy from
wanting to be in battle towanting to create a world that's
(18:51):
safe and beautiful for hisgranddaughter.
It shifts from, as Loomingwould say, from building rocket
ships to wanting to create cutelittle doll houses for the
granddaughter.
So it's a time to express ourfeelings articulately.
This is different than going toexotic dance and flailing
(19:13):
around in a state of ecstasy.
It's more about telling thepeople close to you that you
love them and that they'reimportant to you.
It's not a let's stay up allnight.
We need to talk.
That's more appropriate to dothat inside yourself.
Talk to yourself all night ifyou want to do that and then,
with whatever it is that youdiscover, articulate that to
(19:34):
your loved ones.
This is also a really great timeto give people gifts,
especially giving gifts of ripefruit.
You can give these to yourfriends and the people you love,
but it can also be a good timeto give gifts to people that you
have a more difficult time with.
If we work on our mostdifficult relationships this
(19:54):
time of year, the other onesbecome easier, and gift giving
with difficult relationships canbe a way to harmonize the
energy.
Work out some way ofarticulating all of the feelings
that have been latent in yoursystem.
All times of year is a greattime to be outside and in nature
.
This time of year is nodifferent.
Spending time in nature canhelp cultivate our yin, but this
(20:17):
is less about going to thebeach and lying half naked in
the sun.
The wind over the next twot-nodes, which is about a month,
is toxic and penetrating thisyin.
Deficient yang.
Wind is dangerous.
If we're going to be outside,wear long sleeves, wear a hat,
stay out of direct sunlight fortoo long, because this wind can
(20:39):
pierce us and create a stuckquality, which is what we want
to avoid.
We need to make sure that ourinner yang does not get stuck.
This is what we're trying toprotect.
So, on very sunny days, thinktwice about how to participate
in the season If, for somereason, the young does get stuck
.
We want to make sure to getthis out before the winter time
comes.
One amazing way to get theyoung to retire and chill out is
(21:04):
to go on vacation this time ofyear.
This can be very disorientingto our productive, ambitious,
get things done mode.
This can be very disorientingto our productive, ambitious,
get-things-done mode.
We have a chance, when we goaway, to go away from our
patterns Like, for example, wecould go somewhere.
We don't speak the language andso our discerning, knowing,
(21:26):
needing to understand, mind cantake a break.
It could be a good idea to gosomewhere and be really
unimportant, like no one thatlittle town off of the coast of
wherever it is cares that you'rean important person, where
you're coming from.
They don't know who you are andthey don't really care, and
they're just there doing theirfishing or whatever it is.
So we have a chance to gosomewhere and realize that
(21:48):
there's more to life than all ofthe things that we have become
wrapped up in in our day-to-day.
The yin rising and the yangdeclining.
This process has the potentialto give us a certain kind of
profound wisdom.
Go away for a while from yourwork and discover when you come
back that you're actually quitegood at what you do, for example
(22:10):
, when we're gobbling data andgetting knowledge.
We are a student, so going awayfor a while allows us to be
more in our experience andactually let that data transform
into a softer wisdom.
Foods that can help our youngretire are the juicy, yin-filled
foods such as melons and juicy,ripe fruit and watery dishes
(22:35):
and soup.
It's better to eat during thedaytime and not at nighttime,
definitely not when it's dark.
Eat less meat and protein.
The farmer's market is soabundant this time of year.
Everything is juicy and ripe,less rich, but more abundant,
(22:56):
splendid, sweet and sour tastes,and a little bit of this tells
your young what to do.
All of the plants related tolongevity are not only sweet but
sweet and sour.
With sweet and sour, the spleenand the liver are involved, so
peaches and plums, apricots andnectarines, cherries all of
(23:17):
these fruits that are kind of,have a tartness and not.
Incidentally, we want thislongevity not so we can simply
be old, but so that we can ripenas a person.
So this process of ripening inthe summertime is really
reflective of our process ofwanting to ripen as a person.
(23:40):
Often in my practice I like toremind my patients that what
we're doing here isn't simplyfixing their shoulder or getting
them healthy so that if theydid a bunch of tests and EKGs
and whatever their levels wouldcome out good, whatever that
relative thing is.
But health really is aboutbeing a loving person and having
(24:01):
longevity so we can live longenough and we have time to
develop as a person and becomewise.
So there's ways of protectingyourself from our constitution
by our conduct.
There's ways of protectingourselves from our constitution
by our conduct.
For example, if yourconstitution is young, modern
life with all of our technologyand cell phones and crazy
politics and all of it, puts usat great risk for heart disease.
(24:24):
If our constitution is moreyoung, we tend towards cancer
and rotting in an effort to getyang going all the time when
actually we're tired.
So there's more of a smolderingheat leading to this yang
deficiency.
So, on that note, this is thetime of year to let yang decline
(24:44):
to protect us from thesetendencies.
So at the farmer's market, whatwe see here, all of these juicy
fruits, are items that are notreally that good for storage.
There are more things that wewant to eat now.
They're vigorous but they'renot appropriate to eat later on.
Yang is maximized and ourspleen is strong that we can
(25:07):
take out all the nutrients thatis offered to it.
So everything now needs to beeaten fresh and it's not until
later in the year that we seethings that want to be stored.
So right now we have summersquash.
We want to eat that now.
Everything starts to lose itsmoisture later on, but right now
the juices that things have arecreated straight from the
(25:29):
sunlight.
Later on, when we start storingfood, it's more appropriate for
nourishing the yin.
So we're just starting to seethe turn of the cycle where
we're heading towards foods thatcan be stored and then used in
the wintertime to really morestrongly nourish that yin
quality.
Another piece of counsel that LuMing used to give is to graze
(25:52):
rather than eat big meals Ifwe're healthy.
Our assimilation right now isat its peak.
So this ripeness of summer wewant to store in the body as a
chi pattern for the rest of theyear, not as nutrients, but as a
chi pattern.
This time of year a largesupper is really detrimental,
(26:13):
save the eating larger meals forthe early part of the day when
the qi is higher.
Let the food not be complicated,but just simple soups like a
salty juk or a rice soup with alittle bit of bok choy in it.
We want a savory liquid, butnot a liquid that's very rich.
Lightly cooked foods that areblanched are more harmonious for
(26:39):
inviting young to retire thanthings that are fried or
barbecued.
Having, for example, agluten-free soba and a broth, a
salty broth, could be a nice,simple way to harmonize with the
season.
You can do dry frying in thewok, or what is called water
frying.
Using the water will help thefood get blanched, so it's a
(27:01):
kind of a stir fry with onlywater, a water frying.
You can do this with somethingfresh like pea shoots or snow
pea leaves.
Okay, so, circling back to thisripening conversation, lu Ming
would say that blossoming is thesplendor of spring, where
ripening is the splendor ofsummer.
(27:22):
Ripening is when food is themost delicious and digestible.
But if we don't pick the fruitthis time of year, then it
begins to rot.
Plants do this to dischargetheir seed.
In the autumn time.
They want the fruit to start torot so that it can discharge
(27:45):
the seed and become a compostfor that seed to grow into
another tree.
This is how it survives.
Immature, yang is the flowerthat leads to the fruit, that
then leads to the seed, and then, when pit fruit matures, that
fruit part starts to rot andthat way it can compost itself
and have something nutritiousfor the seed to sprout from.
(28:07):
So the expression of yin thatcomes out of the tree is this
compost to feed the seed.
This is the nourishment thatthe fruit tree will give to the
next fruit tree.
So right now we're at the peakof ripeness and after summer
solstice it begins to have atendency towards rotting.
(28:29):
So, as we know, if we have astone fruit such as a peach or a
nectarine that's not all theway ripe, we can chew it really
well.
This will allow it to be moredigestible.
And actually this is sort ofripening for that fruit, for our
bodies.
Our saliva begins to break downthat food and prepare it to hit
(28:50):
the stomach acid.
So all of the ripening plantshave abundant juiciness this
time of year and it's importantnot to eat rotten food.
So we don't want to eatanything that's overripe, that
watermelon that's been sittingaround just a little bit too
long.
Often we use these ripe fruitsas offerings on our altars, but
(29:11):
we want to make sure to checkthe altar several times a day so
that there's not a situation ofmold or rotting on the altar.
This would be very inauspiciousand create imbalance in the
situation.
It can make yang aggressiveactually, because yin rotten
foods means that yang has goneup and this is pathogenic.
(29:33):
Yang Fertility can be enhancedby eating ripe foods such as
cucumbers, melons etc.
Because it encourages the kindof yin and yang synthesis.
We don't think of this often,but being in a hurry is a way to
create infertility.
I see this often with women whocome to see me in my practice
(29:54):
who are struggling withinfertility and they're the CEO
executives running aroundjuggling multiple stressful
situations.
They're often late to theirappointment, they have to leave
at a certain time right after.
Their phone is close at handwhile they're on the table.
(30:15):
All of this kind of youngderangement can lead to an
infertility.
When young is out of control,there's a kind of dominance of
looking for more energy andaggression and individuality and
uniqueness, but that's notreally how we produce.
Fertility is actually aboutbeing in the whole cycle of the
year, not only glorifying Yangand then, in the wintertime,
(30:36):
going on vacation in a warm, hotplace like Mexico or Ibiza.
In the wintertime, we need tohunker down and be in solitude
and quiet and the depths ofwinter as a way to repay that
young time of the year of thesummer.
Thus we recognize birth as partof an ongoing cycle.
So these ripe fruits encouragefertility because they harmonize
(31:01):
yin and yang.
Okay.
So moving on to rituals andcelebrations, this time of year
we want to honor emotions andcelebrate them, but not in a way
where we have like an operaticdrama of the emotions.
Healthy rituals could includeplanting trees and flowers and
(31:23):
celebrating the positiveinfluences of this time.
These are all rituals trying toget young to calm down, and
another great way to do this isby honoring our ancestors.
One way you can do this is togo to tombs of ancestors, sweep
away the muck and put flowers onthe graves, give gifts to
(31:43):
different family members thatmay be estranged.
It's actually actually givinggifts to honor the ancestors and
your similar lineages.
Hold big banquets and makeofferings in the four directions
and also that of the fourdirections representing the
living, the dead, the enemy andthe ally.
Because of the abundance ofthis time of year, it becomes
(32:07):
that there's no real differencebetween enemy and ally, living
and dead.
We're just celebrating all thatis abundant on the earth.
As we talked about earlier,things that are appropriate for
the altar are things related tolongevity, like ripe fruit can
also use things that representthe turtle or tortoises.
These are all representing thecycles of time in the yin,
(32:32):
especially the tortoises andturtles that live in the ocean,
because these have a direct yinquality.
In ancient China, the emperorwould put on display this time
of year tortoise shells that hadlived thousands of years, and
these rituals are all there tocalibrate everyone, to get
(32:52):
everyone to calibrate with theseasons.
For farmers, this time of yearis often more calmer because the
crops have been planted andthey're waiting for the autumn
harvest.
So for this reason, gatheringsare appropriate, because there's
actually time to have thegatherings.
Dress can be in full splendorand beautiful clothing.
(33:14):
It's appropriate to dress up tocelebrate the height of young.
So if you're going to havesummer solstice gatherings, have
them in full regalia and fancydress, okay.
So another thing to tune intothis time of year is loyalty.
Loyalty is clearly one of theemotions of being human and the
(33:37):
point of the experience ofloyalty isn't to find someone or
something to be loyal to, butto simply practice the
invocation of loyalty into one'ssystem so we can find someone
to be loyal to and celebratethis.
But ultimately the point ofloyalty is simply to have an
experience of loyalty.
Loyalty actually is a healthyattribute of young.
(34:01):
It's not the kind of loyaltywhere we kill.
Everyone is not loyal.
It's more of an invocation ofthe sense of loyalty that
represents a healthy youngenergy.
There becomes a respect ofother people's loyalty, whether
it's to religions that are notour own or to a government that
we don't agree with.
There's a respect of loyaltyjust as a way of invoking
(34:25):
loyalty itself.
The day cycle's height of energyis at noon.
So you can imagine, becausethat's when the sun is at its
highest, that's the best time todo our practices.
So when we wake up we face thesouth.
You can imagine that the inhaleis coming from the south over
the horizon.
It's not a time where we wantto do too much qigong.
(34:48):
It's more little bitsthroughout the day.
The same way we would begrazing food slowly throughout
the day, also doing ourpractices a little bit all day
long.
This is not a time of year todo it more and do it harder, or
do a yoga workout and getathletic.
This is more a time to slowlypractice and cultivate qi
(35:08):
throughout the day.
If you're an acupuncturist or amedical provider right now,
patients get better very easilybecause the yang is at its
height.
When patients come incomplaining of various things,
almost any treatment we do andthey'll get better.
Pulses often feel very healthybecause the channel T is strong.
It's because digestion isstrong.
(35:32):
Foods are easily assimilated.
This assimilation of thenutrients produces strong blood
and that blood helps to nourishthe channels At the solstices
and equinoxes.
We shift our medical treatments.
It's important not to tonifyyoung this time of year.
Even if people come in and itlooks like they're yang
deficient, rather than tonifyingyang, we want to tonify their
(35:55):
spleen chi.
Even a chi deficient person canget enough from vegetables and
fruit this time of year becauseof their ripeness.
Similarly, people who come inmight have a lot of catharsis on
the table, a lot of needing toexpress emotions and let go of
things.
This is healthy.
You might recommend that theydo things to enhance this
(36:16):
letting go and feeling ofemotions.
Ideas could be reading books ofpoetry, spending time in nature
, reading sad stories.
All of this is very healthy.
As far as our conduct withchildren, it's also important to
give space for their expressionof emotions.
So this time of year you mightnotice your kids having more
outbursts, more tantrums, moreletting go of pent up emotions.
(36:40):
It's important to give them thespace and time to do this.
Hold them, show understanding.
Let them cry in a lovingcontainer.
Show understanding.
Let them cry in a lovingcontainer.
Help them to know that theirwild expression of their
emotions is welcome and that allthe different kinds of emotions
are welcome in your family.
Demonstrate to them how havinga wide range of feelings can be
(37:02):
a safe experience for them.
This is important all times ofyear, but especially important
now.
And in addition, if you noticeyour children being competitive
or starting to want to have alot of comparisons, my counsel
would be to guide them intoanother way of play.
Find games that are more basedon collaboration the competitive
(37:26):
edge.
This time of year can get quiteugly and can actually be
harmful to the chi.
Remember that you can supportthis work with a monthly
subscription so I can continueto make great content for people
everywhere.
It really helps a lot.
(37:46):
Hit the like button, hit thesubscribe button, support the
work with your finances and letme know that you're out there
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Higher subscription rates alsogive you live weekly calls with
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Again, if you can't make thoselive calls, you can also watch
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(38:12):
offerings and ways to attune tothe cycles every week For a more
personalized approach to yourhealth and well-being.
You can also make an appointmentto work with me one-on-one,
either online or in person.
If you live in the Bay Area,that can be found at
holisticmedicalartscom.
(38:33):
I work within the realms ofacupuncture, body work,
lifestyle upgrades, herbalprescription and frequency
medicine to help people livetheir best and healthiest lives
possible.
You can also find out about mysix-month in-person Reiki
training in the San FranciscoBay area with a small cohort of
(38:56):
amazing healing people, and thesuper early bird discount is on
June 21st, so I invite you tocheck that out you can find that
at ReikiYogacom.
That out you can find that atreikiyogacom.
That's R-E-I-K-I-Y-O-G-A.
(39:16):
Thanks again for tuning in.
Have a beautiful summer and Ihope to connect with you soon.
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