One long cycle

One long cycle is coming to and end?

I love seasons, more than you may know. Each season has a specific energy, and they represent an element according to Traditional Chinese Medicine. Spring season represents the Wood element. Spring is a season of growth, where all living things start to flourish and thrive; have you started spring cleaning? Gardening? or seen the results of your carefully made plans? This is spring energy bursting. We then go through the maturity of summer and harvest the fruits of summer in the fall and finally enter the stillness and darkness of winter where we come to the end of a cycle. The winter is the time to focus inward and restore before the new cycle begins.

Before one can truly understand and benefit from our connection with nature and its energy, I think we need to take a step back and delve into history for a bit.

A major shift and advancement in Modern medicine happened during the Renaissance period in the 17th century. The idea of dualism, separating body and mind and considering the human body as a machine, was introduced by French philosopher Rene Descartes in the 17th century. It was the golden era of many philosophers; we came to worship our thinking minds. We also began to think of people as independent of the living systems around us and assumed that we could dominate and exploit nature without being affected by it.

As of today, we have witnessed the outcome of our actions and our short-sightedness of it. The truth is, I do believe Renaissance and duality served a certain purpose, and we have learned and benefitted from it greatly in the form of Modern civilization and -Medicine. However, the mind-body connection we used to have, the respect for nature and all living things, has so much healing potential we can’t afford to neglect it.

I like to look at it as a cycle that is coming to an end. We have learned a great deal, and we don’t like the direction we’re headed with Climate change and the inequality of the world population. The runaway train of our sick-care system which was supposed to be our healthcare system is costing us trillions of dollars, not to mention billions of lives.

When a cycle comes to an end, it offers us an opportunity to let go of what no longer serves us, and augment what we’ve learned. We have a plethora of scientific research about complementary medicine, but only a few of us have realized its potential. The wellness industry flourishes for a reason; yoga, meditation, and mindfulness work! But have you truly realized how to use the intention and conditioning of your mind to heal your body? Dr. Shamini Jain explores different energy medicine approaches from the scientific perspective in her book “Healing Ourselves”. If you’re feeling helpless in the face of so-called aging-related illnesses, that most autoimmune diseases are, but don’t want to give out your power over your own health, this is a good read for you.

It’s undeniable that nature works in cycles, we can see it in tides, and seasons as well as in our circadian rhythm. It should be obvious that our mind and body are affected by these natural cycles. Still, I have seen people frown in disbelief at the thought that our health issues could be related to the ebb and flow of those cycles.

My experience is that once we begin to respect the natural cycles of life, not only do many of our problems get solved but we gain huge benefits from it. It’s all about balance, we may create a lot of blockages and stuck energy to our bodies during the day but investing in a good night’s sleep will heal and restore our energy. That is how nature intended it. Any problems in our physiology are usually a hint that this balance may have been disturbed.

I’m going to write more about the seasons and the circadian rhythm in this blog. If you want to gain the advantage of the many cycles in your life, stay tuned.

Further reading:

Rupert Sheldrake, The Rebirth of Nature: The Greening of Science and God

Dr. Shamini Jain, Healing Ourselves