Spring is Still Springing
Jefferson Breland
(4/2023) I am going to endeavor to explain a concept that is very foreign to most Americans and their view of health. According to Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), wind is a very interesting phenomena that affects our bodies and emotions.
To explain wind from a TCM perspective, I am going to divide my explanation into two parts.
As a result of my decision, I am going to lead with the health advice I normally reserve for the end of the article. Practical advice to help you stay healthy today.
Until mid-May: Cover your neck. Keep your feet and ankles warm. Don’t wear shorts or skirts that expose your lower legs. Wear a bit more clothing than you think you should.
All this is due to the coolness of the earth and the wind in the air.
I sound like your grandmother, don’t I?
Technically speaking this article is about two months late. Our Gregorian calendar places the start of Spring on March 20, 2023. According to other calendars around the world, Spring sprang at the beginning of February.
These calendars choose the beginning of February to mark the beginning of Spring because according to their cultural/historical beliefs that is when the energy of the Earth begins to rise, thus ending the stillness of Winter. It is when seeds begin their first stirrings beneath the ground and the shifting of sap in tree roots begins to move upwards unseen.
This is all based on the energies of nature. We do not see these stirrings because they are not yet visible. While these are unseen, we begin to see the effect of this rising Spring energy in other ways. Our pets may begin to be more active. We see birds migrating. We see our first robins, a classic harbinger of Spring.
Another of these effects of the rising energy of Spring is wind. Wind fascinates me. Before science taught us that wind is caused by air pressure systems and/or the uneven heating of water and land on the Earth’s surface, it was a mystery. Wind is the subject of many a myth. It can have symbolic meaning as well as practical application. It was the motive force of the global naval economy until engine driven ships were invented.
While we can’t see wind, we can see its effects. This "invisible" force can be very pleasing, helpful even, as well as destructive such as tornados, hurricanes, derechos, and any mighty wind.
In past Complementary Corners, I have written about the invisible being more powerful than the visible. In those articles, I focused on the invisible beliefs which influence how we choose to live our lives. In relationship to the natural world, wind is a great example of the invisible being more powerful than the visible on both the physical and energetic levels.
What do I mean by visible? The visible, that which we can see, is limited because it has a distinct shape, size, etc. You can touch it. It is what it is. What you see is what you get.
The invisible is everything we can’t see. That is a lot of stuff. Generally speaking, we can only see five percent of the Universe. That is what scientists say; only five percent. Who am I to argue with science except when I disagree with it?
On Earth, the percentage of visible stuff seems much higher. I see things all around me all the time, yet there is plenty that is invisible. We can’t see odor, taste, or sound. With the possible exception of looking directly at the sun (Do not do this, you will damage your eyes), we don’t see light itself. Even looking at the sun (I repeat, DO NOT do this!), the light you see has travelled roughly 92.624 million miles over 8.33 minutes and passed through the atmosphere and bounced off lots of tiny bits of things like water vapor, particulates, etc. We only see light that is reflected off of stuff, so generally speaking, even light is invisible. Weird, right?
According to TCM, wind has an association with the Spring season. From the scientific point of view, this makes sense. As the days get longer, more sun light heats up the earth unevenly as it happens since the earth is made up of all sorts of different things like rocks, soil, trees, ponds, rivers, oceans, parking lots, and well you get the idea. These things heat up, store, and release the energy of the sun at different rates and the result is the winds of Spring.
While the ancients who discovered TCM may not have had concepts about the composition of sunlight and thermodynamics, they were astute observers of the natural world. This makes sense since they didn’t have distractions like cable television, cell phones, light bulbs, and lengthly commutes.
These ancient observers made correlations between the seasons and how the natural world shifted according to these seasons. These correlations form the foundation of Chinese Medicine and how we look at the human body.
Now it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to observe nature. In the springtime, daylight gets longer, plants and animals behave differently, there are spring breaks from school, baby animals are born, and baseball season starts.
According to modern science, there are many categories of winds, too many to list in the interest of brevity. According to TCM, wind is looked at differently. In an attempt to bring Western and Eastern concepts together, I will boil them down to two kinds: the winds you can measure and the winds as defined by TCM.
While we pretty much have wind and breezes all year round, the winds of Spring are a bit different. The winds tend to be stronger according to science because of the greater heat differential between the planet and the air. These we measure and can be very impressive. The fastest wind measured by an anemometer (a wind gizmo) was 253 miles per hour (mph) on Barrow Island, Australia on April 10, 1996. Doppler radar has measured tornado winds of just over 300 mph. Now these are extreme situations. The average wind speed for Emmitsburg for the months of February through April are about 8.5 mph, a little higher than the rest of the year.
According to TCM, the Spring winds are stronger because the energy or Qi (pronounced "chi") of Earth is rising which affects the temperature and all things on the planet.
In Spring, the rising energy may be observed this way. Humans tend to move more as the days get warmer. More activity means more gets done. There are more things to do.
Similarly, as the wind is a bit stronger, it blows stuff around. The wind can knock dead branches off of trees which is healthier for the trees. Wind disperses seeds and pollen of a wide variety of plants. Wind also helps plants grow stronger. Every time a plant is pushed by the wind, it releases a hormone that stimulates the growth of supporting cells.
So we can see that wind does good things other than push boats around or help us fly kites.
In the next installment, I will introduce ideas about how wind affects our health and well-being from the TCM perspective. With a little knowledge of how wind influences our bodies and emotions, we can be prepared for any weather, any season, and any emotional situation.
Jefferson Breland is a board-certified acupuncturists licensed in Pennsylvania and Maryland with offices in Gettysburg and Towson, respectively.
He can be reached at 410-336-5876.
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