Happy Chinese New Year 2020!
Saturday, January 25th marks the 2020 Chinese New Year. The date of Chinese New Year changes annually since it is based on their solar calendar, falling on the new moon that occurs between January 20th and February 21st. In Chinese culture your animal zodiac sign is determined by your birth year, not your birth month. Because of this, those of you who were born in January and February need to check the date of New Year before determining your zodiac sign. Find your Chinese zodiac sign by clicking here.
There are twelve Chinese zodiac signs and they are cycled through one by one in the same order every twelve years. The Rat is the first of the twelve. As the story goes, the Jade Emperor decreed that the order of the zodiac signs would be determined by the order in which the animals arrived at his party. Rat tricked Ox into giving him a ride but just as they arrived at the door, Rat jumped down and landed ahead of Ox, becoming first. In Chinese culture, because rodents are attracted to grain stores, rats are a symbol of wealth and surplus. Since a female rat can have up to six litters of pups per year, they are also considered a symbol of fertility. Rats are known for their originality and initiative. They are intelligent, energetic, trustworthy, hardworking, loyal, perfectionist, and easily angered but forgiving.
There are many traditions surrounding the New Year. In preparation for the upcoming holiday it is important to sweep your house out to get rid of any bad luck left over from the previous year. Never sweep or dust on New Year’s Day, however, or all of your good luck will be cleared away. On New Year’s Eve you should open all of your doors and windows at the stroke of midnight to allow the old year to escape and the good luck of the New Year to enter. Firecrackers are set off to scare away evil spirits, send off the old year, and welcome the new.
For New Year’s Day itself there are many considerations. It is thought that on this day precedents are set for the entire year. In particular, it is important to not lend anything out on this day or you will find yourself lending things out all year. Also, never spank a mischievous child on this day to avoid tears that will last the whole year through. It is taboo on New Year’s Day to refer to death or the past, to use foul language or unlucky words, or to tell ghost stories. In general, knives and scissors may not be used because they may cut off your good fortune. Do not wash your hair on New Year’s Day or you will wash away good luck and do not get your hair cut during the first lunar month of the year because it places a curse on your maternal uncles.
How you dress is also important as are the types of gifts that are given. On New Year’s Day it is thought that you should wear red because it scares away evil spirits and bad fortune and ensures a bright future. Black and white should not be worn as black symbolizes bad luck, and white is a Chinese funeral color. People also dress in all new clothes and shoes to symbolize a new beginning. Children are given red packets or envelopes containing even numbered amounts of money since odd numbered amounts of money are traditionally given during funerals. However, $4 is never given since it is an unlucky number (because the Chinese word for “four” sounds like the Chinese word “death”).
Winter Health, A Chinese Medicine Perspective
Digestion is Like Fire, Digestion is Like Earth
I see so many individuals who have digestive conditions. In order to address the cause of these conditions it is important to understand that digestion is like fire and digestion is like earth. What does this mean? Well, digestion is like fire in that this is how we burn up, or metabolize, nutrients and reduce them to "ash," or waste material. This literally is our metabolic fire, the juice that keeps we warm-blooded creatures moving. We don't want our fire to be too low or we are always tired, with poor appetite and susceptibility to cold. However, we don't want our fire too be too high either, or we end up with heartburn, stomach ulcers, excess thirst, or acid reflux.
On the other hand, digestion is like earth because this is how we dissolve and break down foods into smaller particles so that their nutrients can be absorbed and utilized by our cells. Think of the soil and how anything that falls on the forest floor is slowly broken down and absorbed by the soil and its microbes. This is exactly how our digestive organs work. We use stomach acid and digestive enzymes to reduce foods to smaller and smaller particles and then absorb them through our intestinal walls into our bloodstream. And, just like the soil, our digestive process depends on the beneficial bacteria in our intestines to help up do this effectively. In fact, we actually couldn't live without the bacteria in our guts! This is why supplementing with digestive enzymes and probiotics can be so beneficial for those who have poor digestion.
I started thinking about all of this and its implications on diet just the other day when I came across an article from the BBC, "Did the Discovery of Cooking Make us Human?" It's quite an interesting hypothesis, you really should read it. In the article, the author proposes that if we ate nothing but raw foods, like chimpanzees, we would have to eat around five kilos of raw food per day to get enough calories to survive. Not only that, but we'd have to spend a staggering 6 hours per day chewing in order to properly extract the nutrients from our foods.
Cooking our food saves us from all of that chewing because it breaks down cells walls so that our intestines don't need to do as much work to release the nutrients. In other words, cooking predigests our foods, saving us energy because we don't need to work so hard to digest it. Apparently cooking our foods may have even precipitated an evolutionary leap for us, freeing up energy to power a larger brain, and freeing up time for the development of culture. In fact, once we started cooking out foods our digestive system reduced in size by 20% and our brains grew by exactly the same amount, 20%! As the article states, "Cooking is essentially a form of pre-digestion, which has transferred energy use from our guts to our brains."
Winter is the Season of the Water Element
Winter is the most yin of all the seasons: cold, dark, and quiet. It is a time for storage and rest in nature, when the plants die back to their roots and energy is conserved. Winter is a natural time for us to rest as well, sleeping more, staying more in the dream world, a semi-hibernation against the cold. It is also natural during this time of year to turn inward, reflecting on life.
Water exists within us as an essential medium in the blood, which carries warmth and nutrients throughout your body, and in the lymphatic system, which drains wastes and helps you fight off viruses. Just like our planet, we are 75% water, and our blood is our private ocean, almost identical in its concentration of salt and other ions to seawater. The urinary and reproductive organs are part of the water element and the flavor associated with it is salty, like seawater. If you crave salt or have a strong aversion to it, this may signal an imbalance in this system. If you have an unquenchable thirst, drinking many liters of water a day, or no thirst, where you have to force yourself to drink, that may also signal an imbalance. A good way to gauge if you are getting enough fluids is by the number of times you urinate per day (normal is five to six, or approximately every two to three hours) and the color of your urine ( it should be pale yellow, not clear or dark). Because of the challenges of the weather, it is especially important during this season to relax, eat well, and stay warm and dry.
Winter foods should be warming and, because we are less active, we must take care to watch our portions, so we don't gain too much weight during the season. A diet of mostly vegetables, grains, beans, dairy, and protein is idea. Fresh fruits are not naturally available around here during the winter and they are considered to be cooling in nature, so their consumption should be minimized (dried fruits and nuts are better for snacks). In general, hearty warming dishes like soups, stews, and casseroles are best. Winter root vegetables like carrots, onions, and potatoes are seasonally appropriate, as are winter greens like cabbage and kale. Ocean foods, especially deep, salt water fishes, come from the water element and provide us with healthy fats and easily digestible proteins.
Just as the energy of the plants retreats into the roots during the winter, many of the herbs that are helpful during this season are roots. For example, marshmallow root is often used for respiratory infections, soothing inflamed mucus membranes and thinning phlegm so it can be expectorated. Ginger root is warming and helps the body eliminate pathogens by sweating out fevers. Ginseng root is an excellent tonic to boost the chi, our internal source of warmth.
Fall Health: A Chinese Medicine Perspective
As the sun descends lower and lower and the weather starts to cool, we enter fall, the season of harvest. Just as our physical work over the past few months results in an abundance of fresh produce, what we have channeled our intentions and mental energy into comes to fruition as well. Like trees dropping their leaves, fall is an excellent time for us to complete projects and emotionally let things go. As the plants die back to their roots in preparation for winter's long rest, we also begin the process of energy conservation and consolidation. We naturally begin to reduce outdoor activities and turn inward, spending more time at home doing contemplative activities like reading and writing. The Autumnal Equinox falls this year on Monday, September 23rd.
