There may be a certain ambivalence in the western world toward winter, as well as toward its parallel in the 24-hour-cycle, nighttime. On the one hand: Snow! On the other hand: Cold! And all the things we associate with the deepest and longest of colds, of nights, of winters: less warmth and less light traditionally meant (at least before refrigerators and the global economy) also less to eat, less warmth, the question: have I harvested and stored enough food and fuel to get through this winter? And when we think of the analogous wintertime of our older years, that question becomes, to paraphrase the poet Mary Oliver: what have I done with my „one wild and precious life?“ Will my memories be enough to warm me as I lay myself down to my eternal rest? And will my actions and accomplishments, on balance, leave enough living and fruitful behind that the generations after can grow on beyond me?

It’s a natural anxiety, whether we speak of nighttime, of winter, or old age. In the ancient agricultural tradition underpinning traditional Chinese Medicine, the communal rituals and personal comportment recommended for transition into Winter have a lot to do with pulling in the last harvests, storing as much as possible for the time ahead, and making sometimes difficult decisions to pare down, so that we enter the cold dark season with only the most essential things that we know will get us through this time, long enough to emerge, perhaps bleary-eyed and fuzzy-headed but alive, once again in Springtime.

We in the West know this anxiety through our restless attempts to defeat the season. We (and I count myself among „we“) may read or watch movies on our blue-lit computer screens sometimes late into the night. We may hang strings of holiday lights and leave them on until morning – sometimes even year-round. Regardless of the season, we might work the same hours, even if that means getting up before the sun or coming home long after sunset.

This is not just a matter of environmental degradation (although that alone might give us pause!) as the article goes on to remind us,

„Our body’s circadian time-keeping system, which allows us to respond to environmental changes, is naturally sensitive to the dark. As day comes to an end, these circadian rhythms prompt clocks throughout the body to take note and prepare for sleep, eliciting shifts in temperature, blood pressure and hormones. But without the signals provided by the arrival of darkness, these rhythms can falter, creating a disruption that distresses our entire body.“

„This is important because the systems controlled by the circadian cycle play a profound role in our physical functions, including ageing, cell proliferation, cell death, DNA repair and metabolic alteration. When circadian rhythms are confused or disturbed, this affects the body’s metabolic system, raising the risk of developing conditions such as diabetes, cancer, obesity or cardiovascular disease. Immune deficiency and high blood pressure – with the accompanying risk of stroke – have also been linked to circadian rhythm disturbance.“

A teacher from whom I learned quite a bit about the roots of the Chinese tradition and the progression of Qi throughout the year’s Qi nodes, Liu Ming, suggested that the essence of winter was to determine what is of value. In winter, Qi has gone deep; it is less available on the surface, and one has to work a bit more than in summer to obtain it. For example, the abundance of summer’s harvest is no longer with us; we have to carefully pick over our precious root vegetables and cook them long and slow in order to obtain the nutrition deep within. Or think of the stocks and stews over which we labor (or allow our slow cookers to labor for us) for hours, until the savory essence of bones and meat, or perhaps beans and spices and more root vegetables, have steeped and seeped forward, their flavors emerging and deepening with every hour devoted to that cook. When we do this, we’re not just reaching for vitamins and trace minerals but something deep and essential within that vegetable; in obtaining that, we are in turn nourishing something deep within us, which we might never have noticed or been able to nourish with the quick stir-fries and fresh salads of summer. The depths in us are essentially related to and touched by the depths of the foods that nourish us. In the process of doing this, we are discovering what is of value to us, what is essential to our lives, what can we really not do without.

But then, perhaps „labor“ isn’t the best word for the life practices upon which we might better rely in winter. In the Chinese tradition, reflecting its agricultural roots, there is actually relatively little „work“ to be done in winter, at least in the sense of sowing, nourishing, harvesting – these are largely tasks for other seasons; in winter the task is to get by on what we have already stored up, and hope our supplies hold. Maybe that sounds like an exhortation to „do more with less,“ but actually it’s meant to give us – along with all other living beings – a break. Recall that the text says:

„The three months of winter, they denote securing and storing. The water is frozen and the earth breaks open. Do not disturb the yang [qi].“

We’re not really meant to be brimming with new ideas, learning new skills, running marathons, or working long hours of overtime in winter, implies the Nei Jing. We could do these things, but it would take much more effort in winter than would be required in spring or summer, because the Qi is just not available at the surface in this season – and that’s for good reason. By going deep and still, the Qi in us is actually doing exactly what it needs to be doing in order to be able to do all it will need to be doing in the New Year, when that time comes. When we demand the same levels and kinds of activity in winter as we do in spring and summer, it’s comparable to digging up seeds from under to snow and wondering why they aren’t as sustaining as a fully grown plant would be in summer. Worse, if we dig that seed up in winter, there will be no plant in spring or summer to sustain us when the time actually comes for more kinds of activities.

I want to be clear here that I don’t think the Nei Jing is suggesting some sort of radical “movement diet” in which one only sits around all day. That would be an extreme reading that wouldn’t match the Nei Jing’s context culturally or historically. And, as we know, bodies do need movement! I’m only emphasizing stillness in contrast to the kind of fever-pitched “doing, doing, doing” with which modern western culture seems to be obsessed. Even – or maybe even especially – in the wellness community, there seems to be this idea that we must be continually improving ourselves, and we can only arrive at some heightened state of goodness or wellness through always doing the right things, always manifesting the right mental states, whether through diet, exercise, meditation, etc. This is not what is under discussion here. The Nei Jing was not on a self-improvement trip. Rather, the text seems to be suggesting an organic process of allowing ourselves to manifest the Qi of the time, to listen inward and just see what bubbles up. In doing so we might just organically end up feeling better, living longer – or maybe even just living with more ease.

I take it back – maybe we are learning new stuff, but it’s a kind of Yin form of learning. Rather than opening books, studying something new, we are re-visiting deeper truths we thought we had already learned. In sleep, in meditation, in that weird alpha space our brains enter when we pause with sock in hand on the edge of the bed in the gray early morning hours, things have a way of shifting deep inside. That is the kind of „growth“ for which the Qi is abundantly available in winter – more of a settling into ourselves than a growing into ourselves, if that makes sense. Maybe we don’t need to be DOING so much in order to just BE. At least in Winter.

Endnotes

1. The Huang Di Nei Jing was assembled sometime during the Warring States period (475-221 BCE), at a time when the ancient Chinese had already begun to evaluate both the natural world and the human body as subject to basic, understandable, reproduceable natural laws. Nevertheless, the shamanistic roots of the medicine were still in evidence in the text, and remained a part of the living medicine at least until the 20th Century. The text is framed as the Emperor Huang Di posing questions to his trusted advisor Qi Bo and receiving answers that help explain how the human body functions in alignment with the universe around it.
2. Unschuld, Paul U., and Hermann Tessenow, in collaboration with Zheng Jinsheng, Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen, Volume 1, (Berkeley, CA, USA: University of California Press,  2011, p. 30-32.)
3. Ibid., p. 49-50