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Energy goes deep in Winter
A funny thing happened on May 31st…
I was in the clinic and had felt the fifth person’s pulse for the day. The position of the pulse that relates to “Kidney” energy had been sunken and low on all of those people. Young pregnant women, elderly people – same feeling on the Kidney pulse.
Then I realised it was one day until Winter, when the Kidney and Water element dominate. At this time it’s said that energy turns inward, contracting and shrinking away from the outside world.
Acupuncturists two thousand years ago wrote about this – the connection between the movement of energy in nature and corresponding movement of energy in the body. In Winter, everything slows, sinks down, condenses and goes into storage. The exact same energetic tendency can be felt in the body, because we are a microcosm of the outer natural world.
I was amazed that those ancient observations still held true in modern people, with all our artificial heating and lighting, unseasonal food, sedentary indoor jobs and so on. That the Kidney pulse can respond to Winter’s onset (albeit one day early!) – in human bodies that have so many weird artificial conditions imposed on them – suggests to me that the natural forces that surround, support and nurture us are more powerful and subtle than we give them credit.
