Summer isn’t just for children. It’s for the child in us all. What is the energy of Summer and what does it do to heal us?
To understand how the energy of Summer affects us we must first look at the physical energies according to Chinese medicine. In this model, the season of Summer is the Fire Element. The Fire Element manifests in our bodies through our heart, pericardium, small intestine and San Jiao or triple burner/warmer. The pericardium is the fascial wrapping around the heart and acts as a “protector” of the heart. Physically, the small intestine is what separates the nutrients we will absorb in our food, from the waste that will leave our bodies. Late Summer, August through early September is a separate season all it’s own in Chinese Medicine. It’s affect in our bodies is through the spleen and stomach. Late summer is a time of a decrease of the brightness of Summer that is associated with abundance of harvest and a feeling of slowing down and gathering in and a time of nurture. August is when, historically, the state and federal courts were closed for several weeks for everyone to take a break.
When most of us were children in this country 3-6 decades ago, Summer meant free time, rest and play. We might remember the golden and ripening colors of August and the beginning of fewer hot days as the days grew shorter and all of the vegetables our parents planted in the family garden seemed to come in all at once. The watermelons, squash, pole and string beans were fully ripened and picked.
If you were lucky like me, you got to laze about in the Summer, under a tree, reading a good book or swimming at a friend’s pool, the quarry or the beach. But even if you have never had the experience of a free and easy Summer feeling, it is within reach.
We have become a nation of human’s doing rather than human beings. Rarely do we allow ourselves a real vacation to decompress our bodies through doing nothing so that self-reflection can begin and where true rest and true inner peace can be rediscovered. We have clogged our minds and hearts and small intestines with excess thoughts and activities. Consequently, so many more of our children have severe imbalances and illness or disease by the time they are teens. We talk incessantly about things that may not need to be said. We teach our children, by example, to run at the mouth, rather than listen; and I don’t mean to listen to us or the TV. I mean to listen to their inner voices and most of all to the silence. We teach them to watch the TV to relax, rather than to do nothing to relax. There are so many things we are missing; laying on the lawn at night looking up at the stars; or laying under a tree, on the cool grass, reading a good book while the summer breeze rustles through the leaves above. This is how we be human in the truest sense of the word.
We are missing out on the best part of being human; finding out who we really are and not just who our parents, teachers and guidance counselors only THINK we are. Thinking keeps us from doing stupid things but only opening our hearts to ourselves through the silence is what gives us ourselves. Social media and networking have a purpose but it is in the silence that we get to know who we really are.
The only way we find out who we are is when we have a prolonged period of time where creative silence can be felt and listened to so that the ego can shrink and the mind (the mind is the heart in Chinese medicine) can open. There is no person outside of us that can do this for us. Unless we know who we are we cannot find our joyful work and the lasting inner peace that maintains our physical and mental health. Heart disease and depression are directly connected and I believe this lack of listening to the silence of Summer is the cause. We are Summertime energy deficient.
I am not talking about what summer time may have come to mean for young people today—a time to run around free, do drugs and get into trouble; a time to pack as many Disney activities and theme parks as you can into one week. Though the Disney experience is fun, it is done to the point of exhaustion rather than at an easy pace. In fact, we have done too much “doing” in the summer, whether it is Disney or summer school to “get ahead” or 3 summer jobs. Too much doing, causing deficiency of the real energy of what we are wanting from what we imagine we want Summer to be.
We are deficient and not allowing ourselves to ripen as the summer vegetables do in order to know what our true fruit looks like.
Why would sacred texts advocate sleep and rest? Because the ancients knew things we have forgotten about how to be human and enjoy the whole of the human experience and not just an isolated experience at Disney or a warrior vacation of rock climbing. And the human experience, by all of its joys and sorrows is a Spiritual experience; one in which when we engage fully in the silence and balance it will the joys of life gives us fully unto ourselves.
Though activity when there are long days is a healthy thing, we must learn to balance that activity. If one day you are very active, then next day a slower pace is best to allow the body and mind to expand, feel and see things from the experience of the previous day’s activity. There are those who liken our bodies to machines,but the fact is, our bodies and minds are nothing like a machine. The ebb and flow of rest, sleep, doing nothing and activity is what brings lasting health, inner peace and joy.
Most adults today would say to all I have said here, “I don’t have time to rest or play, I have to pay the bills”. Yes, you must pay your bills but there are ways, if would allow yourself time, sitting quietly, as a practice on a daily basis that would literally “pop into” your mind, about how to change the style of your life AND pay your bills, if you would only sit down and just be in the silence of yourself.
Yes, at first, your mind will wander and be flooded with thoughts that distract you from hearing the silence. This is because you have trained your mind to think constantly. You can retrain your mind, as you actually have control over it, even if you think you don’t. And as such each time you sit down with the intention of this practice, the mind will begin to quiet.
Eventually, you will begin to crave the quiet and the wonder of the silence and you will find for sitting quietly as you find time to shop and go to the movies.
I have recently had the occasion to rediscover this feeling of free and easy. I underwent a spontaneous healing in a training class earlier in the summer which left my heart, pericardium and small intestine ravaged and exhausted. The acupuncture I received over the course of a week and the rest I allowed myself, helped me remember that I can walk, day to day in this feeling, even if I am not a child, lazing about under a tree, on a warm and breezy summer afternoon.
Since my healing, I now find myself walking more slowly, typing in my passwords into my email accounts with more ease and less speed. I’m getting more done and feeling more relaxed about it all.
But this healing began much earlier this year with a commitment to sitting in the quiet, twice per day, once at the beginning and once at the end. At first, my body and mind resisted and I would tool around and sometimes get to avoid it but as I made myself sit and intend to be in the stillness and the quiet, the more I began to see the rewards in my day to day life. And then, I received an even bigger gift, when I had the advantage of group energy in my training class early this summer; a healing of the heart because of my commitment to myself and the silence that brings us all things good.
Happy Late Summer to you all. See you in class on September 16 for more lessons in healing.
Author: Bethann Vetter
Bethann Vetter is a Holistic Therapist, Medium and Teacher. She uses frequency balancing tools via her Mediumship in Trance skills to locate and provide the frequencies your unique set of imbalances requires. She uses her own subtle energy body technique, Epigenetic Reprogramming to help you clear subconscious level blocks. Frequency Specific Microcurrent is used for specific cellular level healing. Classes are available in active meditation skills such as mediumship and trance healing skills. Trance Healing sessions called QHHT© are also offered. Her frequency balancing ability works similar to the way Edgar Cayce worked. She tunes in to your issues and provides you with the necessary information, substances you might need as well as adjusting your frequency to a higher harmonic level. Her work is done by appointment only at a distance or in her office in Jacksonville Beach, FL.