Something On Late Summer Moving Into Fall
Late Summer in 5 Element Chinese Medicine is attributed to a 5th season that we don’t
distinguish in our culture. The 5th season starts in early to mid-August and continues until
usually sometime in October. It is associated with the fruition of the year. This is the time of year when, if we have taken care of all the other parts of the previous year, we get to
experience the fruits of our labor.
This represents not only the literal harvest of the fruits and veggies we gather before the fall but also the harvest of all of the other seeds and intentions we have planted for the year in the spring and summer. If we have cared for those seedlings and paid attention to them throughout the year, they grow into saplings, then mature plants that will eventually flower.
The fruit comes after the flowering of experience, from our responsible tending to intentions and actions. Although the fruit of our labor can come at any season, often in nature we see it in the summer and late summer. But this idea is just a metaphor for that experience of seeing something through to completion, which can happen at any time of the year. In our celebration of the seasons, we acknowledge the reaping of the fruits of our labor before the actual fall.
In 5-element acupuncture, fall is the season when leaves and fruits fall back to the ground to decompose, revitalize the soils, and begin the cycle over again.
After the fall, those fruits of our labor that were not harvested and have fallen back to the earth decompose to enrich the soils. The ideas, intentions, and actions we had envisioned in the previous year are reflected upon and let go of so that we can reconsider what worked and what didn’t. We can take the essence and richness of what worked and use that to re-envision our plans and hopes for the following spring. We can let go of the rest of it.
Once we go through that process, it's time to go deep inside and allow our energy to drop back down into the batteries of our kidneys and begin to recharge that deep energy.
This is ideally the calm and recharging of the winter months (which is commonly not our experience in this culture). We sit with that richness and reflection, and as spring comes, we can feel the energy bubbling up—that's the energy of spring that naturally starts to cause the energy in our bodies and minds to rise and envision our hopes for the coming year.
As we start to plan and plant seeds in our minds and gardens, we begin the cycle over again.
This distinction between Late Summer and Fall is one that we don't tend to make in our culture, but I find it enriching because it does not rely on the traditional turning of the seasons, which begin and end on the equinoxes and solstices. To get in tune with when the seasons change in regard to the five-element theory, you need to pay attention to what is happening outside your window day to day.
I like to argue with people about when the actual day is when I first noticed late summer starting, and usually, it is a specific moment when I get that first hit of Late Summer. The light suddenly has a slight yellow hue to it. There might be the first yellowing of the tips of the leaves of a tree, the temperature changes slightly, and the air feels different. This is the same for fall and every other season. It's not a hard change; it's more about getting the first hit of a season that is still primarily within the previous season.
So, for late summer, although it may be primarily Summer, you will get a hit of late summer within Summer. Then, slowly but surely, the tides turn, and the presence of Late Summer increases until it finally takes over, more or less, completely into full-on Late Summer. Test it out and see if you can notice the changing of the seasons in this way.