grounding season

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In the ancient Chinese philosophy, there are five elements – wood, fire, earth, metal, and water – that are believed to be the foundational elements of everything else in the universe. These elements also correspond to the five seasons in Chinese medicine: spring, summer, late summer, fall, and winter. The Japanese call this late summer season dojo season, and it also occurs during the transition times – the ten-ish days before and after each equinox or solstice.

The earth element is associated with dojo season, so, according to Chinese medicine, we should try to focus on grounding and balancing during this time – spending extra time with our grounding practices and avoiding the extremes. Chinese medicine says that dojo season can be very unsettling, a transitory time when things can feel shifty and like it is difficult to find your footing.

This late summer season is a bridge between the more expansive, abundant seasons of spring and summer and the more inward seasons of fall and winter. This year, I’m thinking of how I want to enter the more inward season of fall ahead with firmer footing, with a better sense of who I am and what I want. It’s like I have this need to feel heavy and anchored to the earth, instead of the in-my-head anxious, ramped up feelings that can get out of control.

This need for grounding reminded me of If Women Rose Rooted by Sharon Blackie. It is full of stories of women who go through something, usually something traumatic of some sort, and who use that brokenness to break open instead of shut down or grow hard and brittle. It is full of stories of actual women and ancient mythological women finding their footing in their world. Blackie writes:

We won’t find our way by running hell-for-leather towards the light; we will find it rather by embracing the dark. By exploring the fecund, loamy ground of our being — our own being, and that of the rich, wide world around us…Whatever form [this explorative work takes], whether it comes easily to us or not, we have to be still, and trust; we have to resist the urge to view what is happening to us as a problem to be solved. We have to let ourselves hurt, release the old needs, let go of the old urges to become what we are not, what we were not meant to be. This is how we pave the way for rebirth.

I want to lean hard into these more inward seasons coming that I will miss out on fully experiencing if I’m not intentional about it because our cultural tide ignores the rhythms of nature. This fall and winter seem like the perfect time for the “embracing the dark” and “exploring the fecund, loamy ground” of my own being, as Blackie directs us.

But I’m realizing that I’m not going to get to that place without some nurturing and preparation in this season that already supports that kind of work. To that end, here are a few questions I’m wrestling with in case you want to join me in preparing for the dark seasons ahead – or even if you’re finding, like me, that you could handle feeling a little more centered and grounded these days:

• In nature, this season is the last big push of growth and ripening before harvest. In what ways have you ripened this year? In what ways have you grown into more of your authentic self?

• In TCM, this late summer season is associated with the stomach and spleen organs and meridians, so we think about digestion during this season. This applies not just to our physical digestion, but our emotional, spiritual, and mental digestion too. What do you need to digest from the past season? Past year? What is serving you and what can you let go of?

• The earth element is associated with mothering, nurturing energy. What do you need right now to feel nurtured, supported, cared for? Imagine what a good mother might do for you during this season.

• Naming things helps. Try it for yourself and see! 

We can’t think our way into grounding, so some practices I double-down on during this season include:

• Avoiding the extremes whether it is food, movement, scheduling activities, time on my phone, etc. I’ve been trying to live a little more in the middle of things – and often failing. But I do notice a difference when I can limit living in the extremes.

• Eat the harvest. I (obviously!) think it is a good idea to eat in tune with the seasons all year long, but earth season is an especially good time to eat what’s in season. There isn’t an easier time in Indiana to eat what is in season than the late summer season, and your body will thank you for consuming what the earth is naturally producing.

• Chinese medicine says that these transition times require more rest. So I’ve been trying to go to bed before I’m actually tired. Kind of like stopping eating before you’re stuffed (what the Japanese call hara hachi bu), if I can make myself go to bed before I’m really yawning, I feel better the next morning.

• Cold showers are grounding.

• Grounding-focused meditations. I really like tree visualizations and meditations for grounding. I love this one and use it often.
• Grounding breathing practices. My favorites: Nadi Shodana starting on the left-side for focused grounding; Sheetali pranayama (sanskrit word for breathing practices); and what I call pelvic floor breathing as taught by Phillip Shepherd – here is an audio teaching from him. 

• Getting my bare toes on the earth and sitting on the earth at least once a day.

• Journaling. Dumping my feelings, frustrations, gratitude lists, whatever feels right depending on the day helps me to get it out on paper so that I can either deal with it further or let it go.

• Yin yoga, specifically really grounding poses like: child’s pose, supported butterfly, supported caterpillar and dragonfly, and reclined twists.

Let’s ground first, so we can fully fall back into the fullness of restoration that fall and winter invite us into.