The Heart, organ of Fire
If you read the last entry, you know that Summer time = Fire time of the year. However, we need to add in another important detail to give a better picture on why it is so important to be careful during Summer and how this leads to keeping ourselves in harmony and good health.
For a quick note, there are 5 Elements (also known as “Phases”) with each having their own correlations such as time of year, personality traits, etc. The most important correlations to each of these Elements are the organs of the body that pertain to each one since practitioners use this system to diagnose health issues and predispositions.
The Fire element has the Heart attributed to it. I saved an entire blog entry just for the Heart because it has a special place in Eastern Medicine and will further illuminate points that were made in the last post.
Why is the Heart attributed to the element of Fire? Because it never stops working to keep the blood flowing through our veins! You would get hot too if you had to never stop moving! The harder the Heart works, the more heat it gives off in the body which leads to faster blood flow, higher blood pressure, increased body temperature, increased sweating, etc. This is why moderating your activity during the Summer is so important! Not only is Fire at its peak strength during the Summer but so is the Heart. As it has been said in the previous post, Fire with Fire is something to be careful of! In this case, the Heart is easily pushed into overdrive due to the extra heat of the climate and excessive activity will make it even worse. In general, you want to make your Heart pump when you exercise or do daily activities and not pound. This goes double for Summer and triple if you are a Summer baby!
This concept of Fire and Heat also explains why eating with the seasons is so important. The foods during the Summer are cooling and these cooling properties help keep the Heart at a nice even temperature in the body and help prevent overheating.
An interesting fact is that in Eastern Medicine, the Heart is so important that Acupuncturists in ancient times did not even treat the Heart channel directly! If the practitioner believed that disease reached the Heart, death was imminent. Instead, they treated the Pericardium (which is the tissue that surrounds the Heart) which had the functions of protecting the Heart from disease like a bodyguard and helping with keeping the Heart at a comfortable temperature. If the Pericardium was diseased, the illness was considered dire but not life threatening. Nowadays these 2 get lumped together in Eastern Medical theory and with advancements in medicine we know that if a Heart has issues it doesn’t automatically mean death (Thank Goodness!).
With this information, keep your Heart happy and it will make sure you live to show your happiness!