June 21, 2025 - Summer Solstice

Tomorrow is the start of a new Seasonal Node. Each of the four seasons can be broken down into six smaller segments, called "Seasonal Nodes" (or "Solar Terms"), which come with specific instructions about what to do (and what not to do) to stay healthy, happy, and harmonized with the natural world.

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Heat is in the forecast.

Louisville is preparing for temperatures in the 90s this weekend and next week.

But I'm not referring to the outside...

(Side note: If this year is like most other years, we haven't reached the hottest part yet. Also, there are people in other places of the world who would argue, appropriately, that 90s isn't that hot.)

"Heat is in the forecast" is a warning.

One's internal fire expands and contracts over the course of the year:

This is a metaphor for the natural ebb and flow of the body's warming, active, creative, and transformative forces (its yang Qi). It's a mirror of what happens in Nature.

So here we are at full blaze.

Those of us who vent enough heat energy outward this summer will be fine.

Those of us who don't (who stay too isolated, inside, unproductive, uncreative, sedentary) will have problems in the fall and beyond.

(The classic texts call these problems "malarial disorders." But they don't mean malaria. They mean disorders that are hot and diverse).

Summer is the season of expression. It's the time to bloom - socialize, build, create, explore, run, dance, sing, and literally go outside (despite the heat). Not just because we can, but because our Nature requires us to.

These activities are required therapy - they vent internal heat and prevent it from turning into restlessness, rage, or worse later in life.

We're alive so we're playing with fire. Best not to be passive about it.

[Tomorrow is Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year, so time's running out.]