Summer’s the time of year to enjoy the outdoors and social relationships with family and friends a little more than usual. Without even learning about any kind of Summer lifestyle tips, these things just come natural to us. But most of us don’t know that after centuries of observation, traditional Chinese medicine’s compiled similar advice for energetic Summer. Little did traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) know it was prescribing Summer lifestyle tips already thousands of years ago. It teaches us that celebrating Summer following principles of TCM can take on a whole new meaning and enjoyment for us.
Summer Lifestyle Tip: Dive into what it really means to live in harmony with the season according to TCM.
More than backyard barbecues, nature park picnic get-togethers and sports, TCM’s Summer lifestyle tips are about a whole lot more.
There are many things you can do to elevate your total Summer experience. Start by applying a few feng shui principles to your homes, property, party site and literally, yourself.
The valuable Summer lifestyle tips below will help you live better and even increase your vitality.
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Summer Lifestyle Tip: Understand what ‘energetic Summer’ and the Fire element truly mean to get the most out of the season.
The Wu Xing (the Five Element Theory of traditional Chinese Medicine) characterizes Summer with the element of Fire, the colors red (yang energy) and purple (yin energy) and the emotion of joy. There are more than colors and an element for each season. There are tastes, sounds, organs, sensations, body tissues, directions and weather too.
All told, for example, Fire’s attributes combine to give us important clues or season of Summer lifestyle tips.
Fire’s taste is bitter and burned: Grill food outdoors.
Its sound is laughter: Have fun.
The weather during the Fire season is hot and the direction is South: Embrace the southerly and Summer heat.
Fire’s sensation is taste and sense organ is tongue: Enjoy the foods of Summer, especially the fresh produce now in abundance.
The organs of Fire are small intestine and Heart: Small intestine keeps you healthy by processing nutrients from all the fresher foods you can eat during the Summer season.
Its body tissues are vessels: These vessels carry blood through the body to nourish it.
Both blood and Heart are synonymous with joy of life.
And joy-in-balance is Fire’s emotion.
TCM calls every season energetic meaning it embodies the energy of not just the season but its correlating element. The four seasons we commonly know come a little earlier in the calendar than the established Gregorian system. For example, energetic Summer begins May 6 every year. Though the four major seasons seem to come a little earlier than we’re used to, if you tune in, you can feel the energy of the season coming into being.
So often we just run through life without stopping to feel energies. Every season brings a distinctive energy all its own. When we pause to sense and feel them the energies give us pointers for living in harmony with the season. And when we can live in harmony with the season we demonstrate we know our place in the world: We are one with the natural world.
Living as part of the natural world life goes easier for us. That’s perhaps the best Summer lifestyle tip or any season lifestyle tip for that matter. Simply try to live like you’re part of the natural world.
We feel better, happier, more healthy and alive. We benefit on all levels: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.
Each of the four seasons is sandwiched between an inter-season 18-day period of the year. These four inter-seasons of the year correlate with the element of Earth. Beyond just Summer lifestyle tips, each one of these seasons has its own distinct set of lifestyle tips.
They make way for one major season to transition into the next. Just before energetic Summer, we lived through the 18-day between seasons period of Earth and will do so again just before we move into energetic Fall.
Summer Lifestyle Tip: Attune yourself to the season and respond to it creatively.
Energetic Summer’s a flowering, expansive, outgoing, social kind of season. We enjoy and nurture our relationships in social settings quite a lot during Summer.
Tune in and come up with your own Summer lifestyle tips like these so you can fully enjoy this energetic season which lasts until August 7 according to TCM.
Brighten the path to your party or front door of your house with solar lights, torch lights or luminary bags.
Host a late night bonfire for friends or light up a portable fire pit. You can easily and relatively inexpensively purchase a portable fire pit in your local department store. It’s good investment. It will come in handy during energetic Fall and Winter too.
Throw open your curtains and open your blinds. Allow the sunshine to cleanse your home of mold spores and bacteria. The sunshine will also draw its powerful cleansing energy into your home too.
Light a lamp with a red lamp shade inside your home.
Burn red colored candles in the evening.
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Wear red clothing and jewelry. If you wear lipstick, it’s the perfect time to sport your red lipstick.
Enjoy evenings on your porch, patio or balcony with an oil lamp lit nearby.
Enjoy some traditional Summer picnics complete with:
red and white checkered tablecloths
red plates and napkins,
red beverages like strawberry lemonade, soda or sparkling wine
organic vine-ripened red tomatoes in a fresh salad
and red grapes and watermelon.
Focus more on eating fresh produce of the season that’s red in color. They’re rich in vitamin C and antioxidants which stave off the signs of aging and make us feel overall brighter and healthier:
tomatoes
strawberries
raspberries
red grapes
red onions
radicchio,
radishes
red bell peppers
beets.
Be a kid again. Stick some pinwheels (notice how they resemble sunbursts appropriate to Fire) in your garden. The petals are sharp and pointy—the symbolic shape for Summer according to TCM. Choose pinwheels bright red, orange and yellow–the colors of the sun and Fire.
Grow some sunflowers and bring them into your home. Bring colorful Summertime fresh flowers into your home. Make your home more joyful and vibrant like Summer. (Joy-in-balance is the emotion of the Fire season according to TCM.)
Keep things bright by day and intimately lit by night to very well celebrate the Fire element's blazing warmth, energy and joy!
All these are more than Summer lifestyle tips. They’re a way of life and a wonderful exciting way to live in harmony with the long awaited season.