Your Fire Element Prescription — Summer Season — Time to Pursue Your Passion

Fire is reflected in the Summer season. Summer’s special gift — the energy of fire — allows us to give and receive warmth, supporting the functioning of our hearts. We enhance our health by understanding the correlations between the Fire Element and Summer.

Summer is a time of activity and interaction with the outside world; a time to re-charge our batteries during the high point of the year’s own peak.

Summer is the season of the Heart and its partner organ, the Small Intestine. Although the Heart’s main function is to pump oxygen-rich blood through the arteries into all parts of the body, it also determines the state and strength of our constitution. The Heart is also connected with the “Shen” or spirit while also being associated with the mind. In Chinese Medicine mental activity resides in the Heart, which affects our emotional health, memory, thinking and sleeping. A strong healthy Heart results in a mind that can balance our emotions is peaceful and happy, and is able to sleep undisturbed.

Summer is about becoming more expansive and connecting with others through hiking, trips to the ocean and mountains, gardening, and summer gatherings. Recharging our Fire Element during the active, summer season will carry us through out the year. Connection with the Fire Element can be a source of great joy that embews us with renewed energy and enthusiasm and lightens our tasks. When we have the strength of the Fire Element within us there is fun to be had in all that we do. When love and joy are alive in us we naturally reach out to others to share our warmth and friendship.

Here are some tips to stoke your Fire Element:

• Plan to have fun regularly. Schedule your fun and PLAY!!!
• Volunteer…give of yourself and the love will be returned three-fold. You’ll feel appreciated and yes….LOVED and that does your heart good. There is no shortage of non-profits that could use your particular talents.
• Live your passion. It can be as simple as whistling or taking a walk through the woods. If you sing in the shower and always wanted to sing with others, join a choir.
• Take up painting, throwing pots (as in pottery), calligraphy, dancing, drumming….you get the idea.
• Move, Move, Move…. There’s nothing like physical activity to get into your body and out of your head. Leave your computers and blackberries behind and walk, dance, swim, bicycle, hike, kayak or make up an activity. Get your circulation going in any way that suits you.