THE FIRE ELEMENT, SUMMER AND CHINESE MEDICINE
Perhaps, like me, you love summer. And for good reason. For many of us, summer is a season of warmth, light, long days, and time spent outdoors. We naturally spend more time in nature, become more social, and often feel a greater desire to experience and enjoy life. The energy of summer is expansive, joyful, and outwardly expressive.
Summer is the season of fire. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, it is associated with the Heart and Small Intestine, the organ pair that represents the fire element within the body. Together, they are responsible for our fire energy and are naturally influenced by external heat and the warmth of the sun. The fire element is associated with passion, joy, enthusiasm, and our inner spark for life. When this energy is in balance, we often experience joy, presence, creativity, and the ability to create and bring new ideas into the world. But like all forms of energy, fire can also become imbalanced. When that happens, it may become destructive rather than constructive.
Below, I've shared selected excerpts from the chapter on summer and the fire element from my book The 5 Seasonal Energies, available in my webshop.
HEART AND SMALL INTESTINE
The heart and the small intestine are connected through vital, nourishing processes that ensure the cells in the body receive the energy they need, while also removing waste products from the body.
The Heart plays a central role in the circulatory system. It functions as a muscular pump that maintains blood circulation throughout the body. Its task is to ensure continuous circulation so that oxygen and nutrients are transported to the cells, while carbon dioxide and waste products are removed.
In the small intestine, food is broken down into nutrients such as protein, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals. These nutrients are absorbed through the intestinal wall into the bloodstream and are then transported with the blood to the cells of the body.
The heart is considered the yin organ.
Energy peak: 11 AM – 1 PM. This is the ideal time for enjoying lunch, being social, resting, and taking things slowly.
The small intestine is the yang organ.
Energy peak: 1 PM – 3 PM. Use this time to deal with challenges and to structure, plan, and organise your tasks. If you experience a lack of energy, exhaustion, or cravings for sweets, this may be due to nutritional imbalance, unhealthy diet or skipped meals.
You can learn more about Chinese medicine and the organ clock in my book The 5 Seasonal Energies, which you can find in my webshop HERE.
CREATING WITH FIRE
We use fire when creating something new, or when creating the changes we need and long for in our lives. Fire can be both consuming and destructive, or nourishing and constructive. It simply depends on how we use it.
Fire is nourished by wood connected to the gallbladder–liver organ pair and associated with spring. As you may recall from the spring chapter, the emotions often associated with the gallbladder–liver pair include anger, irritation, frustration, and dissatisfaction. Strong emotions that are ideally used to create the changes we desire.
Dissatisfaction (wood) can motivate us to make any necessary choices and transformations (fire), moving us towards greater satisfaction and joy in life – or perhaps towards simply less discontent, depending on how we view life. We always have a choice, even if we do not like our options or cannot yet see the outcome.
SYMPTOMS OF IMBALANCE IN THE HEART AND SMALL INTESTINE ACCORDING TO TRADITIONAL CHINESE MEDICINE
PASSION
As with all meridian pairs, the heart–small intestine carries opposing emotions. In this case; passion. When we speak of passion, we refer to emotions such as joy, euphoria, infatuation, and attraction on one side, and repulsion, aversion, and hatred on the other. These are all intense and passionate emotions, which the summer, the sun, and the heat awaken even more strongly within us. Most of us probably recognise that our temperament is easily stirred by heat. The passionate feelings we all experience and perhaps cultivate in varying degrees. Some passionate emotions may seem like opposites, but are simply two sides of the same energy.
When passion is balanced, it is said to reflect a strong fire energy within a person. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, the heart is not simply as an organ, but also considered the home of the spirit or soul.
When balanced, we may experience a stronger sense of vitality and drive which positively influence our actions and creativity. Passion becomes as a powerful motivational force, helping us pursue our goals and dreams. With balanced fire energy, we experience a sense of harmony, joy, and balance, both within ourselves and in our social relationships.
Uncontrolled excessive passion can lead to exhaustion and burnout, or restlessness and unease. In contrast, a lack of passion can easily lead to a lack of motivation, enthusiasm, or spark of life.
ATTRACTION - REPULSION
Passion can move like a pendulum between two poles: attraction and repulsion.
And these truly are poles. Poles that repel and attract each other, like magnets. And just like magnets, the energy can turn. You may recognise how a strong attraction can suddenly turn into repulsion. You may even be surprised by what you were once attracted to. This shows how energy can shift – and how the energy of the element, and the organ pairs, forms a unified whole made up of the opposites of one energy, and everything in between.
Take a moment to notice whether you feel especially passionate or temperamental during the warmth of summer.
SEASONAL ADVICE FOR SUMMER
THE SENSES
In many parts of the world today, we have access to an enormous number of resources, foods, products, and experiences. As humans, we constantly seek to stimulate our senses, sometimes to the point where we feel almost dependent on it.
We continue to seek stimulation because it offers a pleasant, temporary sense of joy. And so we keep seeking it, again and again. Some of us may even begin to believe that stimulating the senses is what life is about and that this defines the good life. This does not mean that we should not enjoy life. Nor is it possible to avoid stimulating the senses altogether, as we take in far more unconsciously than consciously.
It is difficult to manage something we are not aware of.
PRATYAHARA
This leads us to another concept in Vedic philosophy: pratyahara, the principle of mastering the senses rather than being governed by them. This principle involves using the senses consciously as tools, rather than allowing them to control us. This is also how mindfulness relates to the senses.
Training the senses allows us to use them as tools instead of being controlled by them.
As you become familiar with your senses and learn to work with them, it becomes easier to turn your attention inward and become more present. More consciously aware.
GRATITUDE
To me, gratitude is one of the most important things we can learn in life. It is a recurring principle in positive psychology, Vedic philosophy, mindfulness, and other traditions.
Gratitude is about appreciating and valuing what you already have. It is about appreciating the people in your life who support and love you. Appreciating the moments and situations that help you grow. Appreciating the life you are choosing to live. Appreciating the small things that are easily overlooked or taken for granted.
When we practise gratitude and contentment, we become more aware of how much is already present in our lives and how rich we truly are. It is not only about appreciating what you have, but about perspective – recognising that what you already have may in fact be enough.
It seems to be part of our human nature to search for more. More things, more experiences, more people. We believe that more will bring lasting happiness – that if only we have more, we will be happy. But that kind of happiness rarely lasts. When it fades, we begin searching again. And so the longing for more continues. This brings us back to the ego once again.
Gratitude is a conscious choice. A choice to focus on what is already here, rather than on what is missing. More does not always bring more happiness. Often, less is more.
What we focus on is what we tend to find. If all we see are the clouds in the sky, every day may appear cloudy and grey. But if we choose to notice the moments when the sun shines through the clouds, the day may feel bright. It is all a matter of perspective and mindset.
In situations where we feel challenged or under pressure, it can be especially difficult to remain in a state of gratitude – or even to consciously cultivate it. It is easy to fall into a sense of victimhood. Yet we often learn the most during more difficult times. What feels difficult often holds something of value, even if we are not yet able to see it.
When we practise gratitude, disappointment and anger tend to have less influence over us. Disappointment is often the result of high expectations – expectations we create ourselves. Perhaps because of our own ambitions and fixed ideas about how things should be and where we should be heading.
When we practise gratitude, we may find ourselves positively surprised by what begins to appear in our lives. With trust and openness, possibilities and new paths can unfold. Everything happens for a reason – although we are not always able to see it right away. It can be difficult to recognise this if we are trying to control the outcome and holding tightly to our plans and ideas about what was, or what we believe should be.
If we continue doing what we have always done, the result will often be the same.
If we continue seeing the world in the same way, the world we see is unlikely to change.
If we wish for something new in our lives, we need to be open to something new. It calls for trust.
MANIFESTATION - CREATING THROUGH FIRE
As you already know, the heart and small intestine are associated with the fire element within the body. Fire can be destructive and consuming, yet it can also be constructive and nourishing. It is through fire that we create – or destroy.
We all manifest, often without being aware of it. We are co-creators of our reality.
When fire and passion influence us unconsciously, the results may not always be what we expect. We may not know where the fire within us is leading us, and that can feel unsettling, especially when we do not wish to destroy what we have already built. Yet we can also choose to create consciously and work with the fire intentionally. Awareness is, as always, the key.
We create through the energy of our emotions. We may logically want something with the mind, yet it is emotional energy that sets things in motion. This makes our emotions the main ingredients in the process of manifestation.
Joy, gratitude and trust are among the strongest emotions to cultivate when we wish to create in a constructive way.
Yet we can also create through anger, irritation or frustration. I have experienced this myself, sometimes with surprisingly quick results.
What matters most is our own clarity about what we truly want.
Emotions are essentially neurohormones released in the brain in response to experiences, situations and interactions with other people. Yet why wait for something external to trigger emotions within us, when we can consciously take part in that process ourselves – especially if we wish to cultivate a particular feeling or energy? You already carry every emotion within you. Emotions do not come from others, although they may be triggered by situations or by other people. They are part of your own chemistry. You already have the ingredients.
The question becomes what you wish to send out – and what you may in turn attract.
If anything were possible, what would you truly want?
YIN YOGA FOR HEART AND SMALL INTESTINE
Generally speaking, the heart meridian runs from the armpit along the inner side of the arm and all the way down to the little finger.
The small intestine meridian begins in the little finger and runs back up along the outer side of the arm to the shoulder, zigzagging around the shoulder blade, continuing up to the neck, across the side of the throat, up to the jaw and face, and ending just in front of the ear.
During summer, try to focus on working with the hands and arms – both the inner and outer arms – as well as the shoulders, the neck, and the side of the throat.
Below, you will find a few examples of yin yoga poses for the summer season.
Please keep in mind! The poses are meant as inspiration – always listen to your body and tune into what feels right for you. Forget about how a pose is supposed to look, and focus instead on how it feels. You may even find your own variation.
The key is to feel a stretch in the areas you are working with, while taking care not to overstretch the joints or any other part of the body as you go deeper into a pose.
If you're curious to learn more about the energy of summer, the fire element, and the heart and small intestine, you'll find much more in my book The 5 Seasonal Energies, available in my webshop.