Welcome to the Blog
The five seasons provide a blueprint for our lifestyle, food choices and self-care practices to maintain balance and health throughout the year. We are invited to eat, move and live differently by each season to create harmony in our world and balance in our bodies.
Explore articles by their most appropriate season below, or see my most recent ones:
Summer
Summer energy is reflected in circulation, temperature regulation and cellular metabolism. We thrive on our connections to each other and the joy that comes from them.
Late-Summer
Late-Summer, considered its own season, is characterized by the harvest, when our earth gives us food and our digestive organs and ability to nurture ourselves and others comes into focus.
Fall
In fall, energy starts to contract back into the body as the plants also shed and retreat. The metal element allows us to grieve, set boundaries and let go of what is no longer in service.
Winter
Winter is defined by stillness and quiet, a time to connect with our deep inner knowing, the collective subconscious and the seeds we plant that come to fruition in the spring and summer.
Spring
In spring the upward energy is abundant, motivating us to move forward with our lives, engage in healthy resistance and creativity and vision new possibilities.
Recent Articles from Gillian Rose, MAcOM, LAc.
Returning to One
As the energy of plants and animals alike draws inward, we also retreat to our quieter lives. It’s easier to caretake the body this time of year, in part by honoring the overextended nervous system with saying “no.” If there’s a practice you want to start regularly engaging with, ride the energetic of the fall season and the strength of the metal element.
The Body is a Microcosm of the Universe
The body is a microcosm of the universe. The universe expands and contracts and so, too, does the body. In spring and summer we feel the expansion of the season opening us up as the world itself opens with leaves and flowers. In fall and winter the life force of trees contract back into their trunks, the animals hibernate, and we humans find rest and self-reflection. Every breath contains an expansion and a contraction. On the inhale our lungs fill, expanding our muscle fibers, compressing our organs with air. On the exhale our lungs contract, like a pump moving qi and blood through the body.
Life is a Spectrum
While it has always been important to stay open-minded and flexible, our ability to adapt is more essential now than ever. Our world and society are changing rapidly as many systems our society has relied on are breaking down rather chaotically. If we hold on too tightly to one philosophy or way of living, we will be putting ourselves and our relationships in peril.
Rest as Resistance
In human society an overabundance of Yang, when it falls out of service to Yin, looks like toxic masculinity, over-controlling governments, war, and hoarding of resources. Without enough Yin, there is a sense of scarcity of substance and an overabundance of movement that is chaotic and disruptive. Yang-dominant symptoms are often parallel with the fallout from living with chronic stress in a sympathetic nervous system state of fight or flight. That Yang aspect of the sympathetic nervous system must be balanced by the parasympathetic “rest and digest” for our bodies to function and thrive.
A Love Letter to Hip-Hop
“I do feel like there’s something special about hip-hop, though, that I’m always trying to get at in my music. And it’s not about a sound. To me it’s about how honestly and vulnerably I’m willing to tell my story in the music itself and what telling that story could do for people with similar stories, for people who have never heard of such a story, for the whole world.”
– DoNormaal
Intentions in the Season of the Water Element: Reap What You Sow
Ritual is intentional. So much of what we do on the day-to-day can be done without intention or even presence. But then we miss the opportunity to bring intention and meaning into the way we do the dishes or walk the dog. Grooming is an opportunity for self care and self love. Cooking is a way to nourish ourselves and our pods. Finding creativity in the way we approach our outfit choices for the day or our kitchen organization expresses our unique identity and moves liver qi that is constrained by all the sitting and stressing we are doing during the pandemic.
Rethinking Success in the time of Covid19 and Black Lives Matter
I have never bothered much with traditional definitions of success for my life, prioritizing community connection over individual achievement and rich life experience over financial riches. And yet the bills still have to get paid, and a lack of money for basic needs and “what-ifs” causes ongoing stress. We all must calibrate our investments and achievements to determine what in our lives feels fulfilling or “successful” and what doesn’t. We must be able to set goals and reach for them.
Remember to Breathe: Lung and Kidney Connection
Breathing is how we let the world in. It is our moment-to-moment interaction with the world. We take in air. We take in the tiny particles of the world. We release our breath, we send little bits of ourselves into the world.
Mindlessness: A Message from the Earth Element
The mindfulness movement is big right now, and thank goodness for that. But it isn’t new. It’s the basis for Buddhist practice and has been pondered, pontificated and practiced for thousands of years. I happen to feel that “Mindfulness” is a misnomer. Our minds are too full already. They take over our lives too much. I prefer to call it “Mindlessness.”
Life’s Work: Wisdom of the Water Element
It seems likely that each of us has some important work to do in this lifetime. And I don’t mean the capitalist-style, work-your-butt-off-make-the-money-til-you-die kind of important work. Our work might be creative. Or invisible. It might be transformative. It might not show up in our lifetime, lost in the stream of a shifting, changing world. Our work might be about learning how to love deeply. Or making beautiful things that enrich other people’s experience of being alive.
