Enjoy Your Summer Season and Your Summer More!

It’s Summer and it’s the time of year when we have more a tendency to enjoy the outdoors and social relationships with family and friends. These things we’ll do regardless of any knowledge we may or may not have of Chinese medicine’s advice to live in harmony with the seasons, but when we purposely choose to live in harmony with the seasons as traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) teaches, celebrating Summer can take on a whole new meaning. In addition to backyard barbecues and nature park picnic get-togethers, we can elevate our total Summer experience by diving into what it really means to live in harmony with the season. We can begin with applying a few "feng shui" principles to our homes, properties or party sites. This article outlines a number of novel ideas to get Summer off to a great start.

In the Wu Xing (the Five Element Theory of Chinese Medicine), Summer is characterized by the element of Fire, the color red and the emotion of joy. It’s a flowering, expansive, outgoing, social kind of season where relationships are enjoyed and nurtured. Taking this into account, we can devise creative strategies for enjoying the Summer even more. Here we go.

1. Brighten the path to your party or front door of your house with solar lights, torch lights or luminary bags.
2. Host a late night bonfire for friends or light up a portable metal fire pit. They’re easily and relatively inexpensively purchased in your local department store and will come in handy during Fall and Winter too.
3. Throw open your curtains, open your blinds, and allow the sunshine to cleanse your home of mold spores and bacteria. Let the sunshine draw its powerful cleansing energy into your home.
4. Light a lamp with a red lamp shade inside your home or burn red colored candles in the evening.
5. If your skin is red, irritated, sensitive, blotchy, allergic, excessively hot or couperose, use the Fire element line of skincare by PHYTO5. If your skin is perfectly in balance, now is the time for you to use this the Fire line, too.
6. Wear the color red in your clothing and jewelry. If you wear lipstick, now is the perfect time to sport your red lipstick.
7. Enjoy the evening on your porch, patio or balcony with an oil lamp lit nearby.
8. Have picnics with traditional red and white checkered tablecloths, red plates and napkins, red beverages like strawberry lemonade or soda, organic vine-ripened red tomatoes in a fresh salad, and red grapes and watermelon.
9. Following point #8, focus more on eating fresh produce of the season that’s red in color: tomatoes, strawberries, raspberries, red grapes, red onions, radicchio, radishes, red bell peppers, and beets. They’re rich in vitamin C and antioxidants which stave off the signs of aging and make us feel overall brighter and healthier.
10. Be a kid again and stick some pinwheels (they resemble sunbursts) in your garden. The petals are sharp and pointy which is the symbolic shape for Summer. Choose pinwheels bright in color as in red, orange and yellow–the colors of the sun.
11. Grow some sunflowers and bring them into the home. Bring any colorful summertime fresh flowers into the home, for that matter.
12. Keep things bright by day and intimately lit by night to very well celebrate the Fire element’s blazing warmth, energy and joy!

Check Out the Nature Series Podcasts too! For My 2018 Elemental Musings!