Falling Into Reflection, Finding Balance With the Season

With the arrival of fall and winter coming around the corner, our body and mind, day by day, make gradual adjustments.

In nature, fall is a time when everything begins to slow down. The weather cools, day light shortens, and the trees and animals begin their preparations to conserve their energy for the winter season. While nature may be slowing down, our schedules often don’t allow us to do the same. Commonly this is the time of year where we fall out of sync with the natural cycle around us.

As the heat settles, so does the expansive and moving energy that it carries. Water is a perfect example of this; as it is heated it will expand into evaporation. Cold has a contractive affect, turning water molecules into solid ice. (Let us not forget that our bodies are more than 75% water.) Summer heat provides a high energy time of year and as the days cool, our energy begins to withdraw inwards and movement begins to slow down. We find ourselves in a more internal, reflective time of year.

Consciously preparing for the transition into winter can help make the darker and colder season a time of beauty and comfort instead of a time to dread. Fall provides us the time of transition into a new state of mind. Just as water does not go from boiling to ice with the change of only one degree, our bodies do not make the transition from summer to winter immediately. Fall provides us with the process of cooling and slowing down.

We must be extra careful to take care of ourselves and find time to restore. Choosing and preparing food according to the season is part of that process.

All foods and flavors have different effects in the body. Some foods are warming while others cool the body’s thermal temperature. Here in New England, the vegetables that grow in the summer cool our bodies during the hot and humid season while the fall vegetable harvest has a more warming, dense and stable balance. When we eat seasonal, local foods, we receive the energies that naturally balance out the seasonal shifts that occur within our bodies.

The way we prepare our food also plays a role in the effect they have on our body. Rather than keeping to the raw foods and grilling methods of summer cooking, which keep the cooling properties, fall and winter are about slower cooked meals that are cooked on a lower heat for a longer period of time. This releases the more warming qualities of our food and provides a settling affect on the expansive (and sometimes scattered) patterns of the warmer seasons.

Baked foods, sautéed foods, heartier foods, and root vegetables all contribute towards the thickening of the blood. If one lives in a cold climate, it is necessary that the blood get thicker as the weather grows colder.

Traditional Chinese Medicine suggests that we can use different flavors to synchronize the body’s energy with the seasons. During summer, pungent, spicy foods may have served a purpose as they provide an outwardly expansive energy; causing us to break into a sweat. Since fall is a process of contracting our energy inwards, we want to incorporate flavors that effect us in a similar way. Sour foods are a good example of a contracting food (think of the face you make when biting into a lemon!). Sour foods include sauerkraut, olives, pickles, vinegar, leeks, adzuki beans, yogurt, lemons, limes, sour apples and sourdough bread. Extremely sour foods should be used in very small amounts as they have a strong effect.(*1) Salty is another flavor that is helpful in balancing the body during the fall and winter. Wholesome salts are found in foods such as unrefined salt, seaweeds, barley, millet, soy sauce, miso, or pickles that are prepared in salt water.(*2)

In modern times it is easy to create a routine that lasts all year round. We can have the same temperature in our house, the same foods in the fridge and the same long working days even when it is dark outside. Internally our body is changing with the seasons and the more we can adapt to those changes, the more we can maintain our vitality and health.

(*1) Caution: Minimize sour foods when feeling a “heavy mind or body” or constipation.

(*2) Caution: Minimize salt in conditions of over weight, edema, lethargy, or high blood pressure.