The Summer Solstice will arrive in the Northern Hemisphere on Thursday, June 21st.
The Summer Solstice is a time to reflect on the growth of the season. It’s a time of cleansing and renewal, a time of love and growth. This is the time of the year when there is the most light available to us. Throughout history, with so much light being showered upon the Earth on this day, it’s been known as one of the most powerful days of the year for spiritual growth and healing.
For centuries, many civilizations have celebrated this first day of summer with varied traditions in honor of the solstices. In ancient China, the Summer Solstice was associated with “yin,” the feminine force. Festivities celebrated Earth, femininity, and the “yin” force. The Chinese mark the day by honoring Li, the Chinese Goddess of Light.
“Li manifests itself in the eye.”
Fire is intelligence that enlightens everything, leaving nothing in shadow.
“Seeing” also means discerning and separating. Seeing differences, distance. Both feeling “kindred” and “alone” have to do with fire.
“Li means dependence.”
Fire needs fuel. Transformation can only happen from one form or element into another, and manifestation needs light, the result of transformation. Fire is the energy and beauty of life, but just as well the contrast with darkness, the night where light is lost or regains new energy and purity. Fire appears both as a creative force and as a destructive one. Flames can bring punishment and suffering. It may be a purifying, cleansing fire that will allow the birth of a fresh new world.
“Li acts in the pheasant.”
Fire can be a symbol of immortality and eternal rebirth, as in the case of the Phoenix, the mythical Egyptian bird that is periodically destroyed by flames to rise reborn from its own ashes. In Chinese and Japanese mythology, the “firebird” also appears as a sacred figure.
Fire “illumines the four regions with its continuous brightness.”
Fire is used symbolically throughout Summer Solstice celebrations in praise of the sun. The spiral is also a symbol associated with the solstices. The sun moves from contraction at the center of the spiral (the Earth) at the Winter Solstice to expansion at the Summer Solstice and back again. The sun’s warmth provides the light necessary for all living beings to thrive and prosper.
Summer’s special gift — the energy of fire — allows us to give and receive warmth. By giving and sharing, we build our own fire, open our own flowers, and bring more of the summer sun to the world.
Fire is about warmth, transformation, and dynamic, sparkling movement. Summer brings fire through the heat of the sun, long days, and energized bodies.
Cardiovascular exercise serves you especially well during the summer because fire rules the heart and circulation of the blood. Fire also rules the small intestine, which, in traditional Chinese medicine, is intricately connected with the heart. The small intestine transforms the foods we eat into usable components, which go directly into the blood. The blood moves to the heart and is circulated through the rest of the system.
If you feed your body toxic food, the small intestine has little to work with when trying to pass on good nutrients. For this reason, it’s important to eat nutritious food year-round, but during the active summer season, it’s especially beneficial.
Summer: Tending Our Fire
We experience fire, one of the elemental powers, most fully in the season of summer. We, who are part of nature just as surely as all that surrounds us, can enhance our own health by understanding the special functions of the hottest of all the seasons. Through this awareness, we can help balance our own fire energy.
When nature’s energy flourishes and blossoms in the summer, it is time to enjoy the fruit of the seeds we have planted and the visions and plans we have made. If a tree doesn’t flower and bear fruit, there can be no harvest; for us, similarly, if we do not allow ourselves to flower during this season, we will deprive ourselves of a late summer harvest to carry us through the year. Autumn, the season of letting go, will be all the more difficult for us if we haven’t experienced the fruition of our hopes and plans.
Summer’s special gift — the energy of fire — allows us to give and receive warmth. By giving and sharing, we build our own fire, open our own flowers, and bring more of the summer sun to the world.
On a deeper level, the fire element expresses itself as joy and manifests within us as love, laughter, and enthusiasm. During summer, the season of maximum expansion, we can become aware of ourselves to our fullest. Drawing on the expansive warmth of fire, we can reach out and relate to the world like a flower opening.
The ancient Chinese recognized the connection among the energetic powers they called the Five Elements, and they understood which specific power manifests most strongly in each phase of the cycle of seasons. Summer holds the power of maturity. In summer, the buds of spring mature into full flowers and are now able to share their pollen to make more flowers. With us, it is the same. Only in the fullness of maturity do we have the inner abundance and self-sufficiency to truly share with others.
Know that in summer, the energy of fire supports you in enriching your enjoyment of life and your relationships, getting closer, opening outward, and being receptive to others. Your flowering may not be as bright or as big as you want, but remember that every flower is different, unique, necessary, and perfect for where it is.
There will be another summer; we will have many chances to open up, extend compassion, and forgive. While we all need love, the sick need it most — not only the physically ill but also those who are suffering in mind and spirit.
How Acupuncture Helps Balance Our Fire
Classical acupuncture utilizes hundreds of points along the energy pathways of the body to create harmony and balance and generate what is lacking in body, mind, and spirit. We can begin to find within ourselves the clear space to expand into the joy present in every season, but especially so in the summer.
