One difference between Chinese medicine and materialist medicine is the former’s emphasis on time as opposed to space. So while Western medicine is interested in what specific organ/cell/chemical process is malfunctioning in your body, Chinese medicine is more likely to be interested in the time of day the symptom shows up or what time of year the ailment began. I have a particular interest in what the medicine has to say about the energy of the seasons. Each season is associated with one of the five elements, with the left over element (Earth) being assigned either to the transition time between the seasons proper or to a “late summer” time between summer and fall. I’d like to discuss each of these and provide some recommendations on how to align yourself with the season that most Northern hemispher-ers are experiencing – SUMMER.
First, I want to explain an important concept. There is a lag between what the energy and matter are doing within any given season. To understand this consider the easily observable pattern of heat throughout a given day. The sun is at its peak around the noon hour, but the hottest part of the day is much later. The same goes if you observe the sun through the seasons. Although summer solstice brings us our longest days, the “dog days of summer” with their unbearable heat come later in the summer – in August. So, in a sense, the energy of the sun leads the material response of the Earth’s surface with a considerable head start. At any given moment in the day or in the year your experience of the sun is going to be behind the actual activity of the sun.
