Wind, Warmth & the Turn Toward Spring
A note for mid-August, Aotearoa New Zealand
Kia ora,
Back in July, Matariki gave us a moment to pause and send well wishes out into the dark of the year. We’re a little further along now — mid-August, frosty mornings, warmth through the day, new bird song. I wanted to keep that momentum going as we gently start to shift seasons.
Today is my birthday, and I am remembering when my grandparents came out to Australia for the first time. I must have been eight. They had trouble with their ticket getting back to Poland and had to stay a few weeks longer. Celina was really upset. Homesick. And she said she had a really sore neck. I offered her a massage. I found all the sore spots. I felt bad, because they hurt when I pressed on them. Little did I know that this zone of genius would become my bread and butter as I grew up.
I love this job, this profession, helping people out. Thank you for being part of it. And I’m so glad that on my journey I got to learn so much context to sore spots.
Why Do We Catch Colds?
In Chinese medicine, what happens first is actually the wind. The wind is an instigator of change — winds move. And then if we resist the change — the resistance, the stagnation, not moving, the contraction — that resistance is a kind of not surrendering to the change, not acquiescing to what’s being asked of us. That is viewed as being cold.
And so then we kind of struggle with that, and we have cold symptoms.
Sometimes It’s a Spring Clean of the Gut
There’s another way to view it. The digestion’s job is to separate the pure from the turbid. Everything that comes in, it has to be dealt with. Some things are really hard to digest. Some things can be quite heating — and the consequence of both is a kind of phlegminess.
You might be familiar with the sensation — if before you went to sleep you had pizza and cheese and crackers and some ice cream, you wake up and you’re coughing phlegm out of what’s sitting on the top of your chest and your throat. You might have waxy ears. You might have sleep in your eyes. So every now and again, the body might decide: okay, we’re going to get rid of that phlegm. And out of the digestion, you start coughing and hacking up stuff. It looks like a cold — it’s coming out of your nose, it’s coming out of your mouth — but this is oftentimes a cleanse of your gut, of your digestion.
So What Actually Is Immunity?
A lot of people talk about wanting to boost their immunity. So how is immunity viewed in Chinese medicine — what is it? We kind of view it more like this: we have the barrier of the skin on the exterior of our body, and if the body feels threatened, the first action it takes is to mount a sweat — even a micro sweat — to physically repel the pathogen from landing on the skin itself. It might also sneeze — a sneeze travels at a hundred kilometres an hour, which is a lot of energy expulsion to create.
The body is mounting an expulsion. And sometimes, if it’s due to something we ingested, we might vomit or have diarrhoea.
These mechanisms the body has of evacuating pathogens really ride on two things happening. One is that there’s an abundance of fluids available, at the disposal of the body, to do these things — a sweat or a vomit is a lot of fluid. But those actions also require a lot of energy to be able to do. In Chinese medicine terms, we talk about the body having ample fluids, but also having enough energy — we just call that yang qi, the warming, moving qi. So when we talk about immunity, basically what’s being said is that you just need to have your fluids and your yang qi in abundance.
- We are deeply hydrating
- We are eating good fats
- We are eating soup, stew, porridge
- We are sneaking water into food, so it can go through the whole trajectory of the GI tract instead of just being peed out like water
- We are not burning the candle at both ends
- We are going to bed early enough for sleeping — like ten hours, not eight. Whoever made that up.
You’re Invited
Nourishing Fluids & Yang Qi Course
If you’d like to learn more about building yang qi and nourishing fluids, I’d love to invite you to a small four-week seasonal eating workshop. We’ll meet live for one hour each Thursday evening, and I’ll take you through simple, practical dietary principles that you can actually use in everyday life.
Because, you know, it’s pretty scary — you go into Countdown and you have fruit and veg on one edge and meat on the other edge, and then a barrage of processed food with a pharmacy at its centre. What is that saying? Historically, we used to have soup before dinner, and before that we were eating out of a cauldron — we weren’t eating out of packets. We used to talk about “grandmother’s tales”, but now it’s really “great-grandmother’s tales” — those are the eating habits we’re trying to find our way back to.
We’ll explore what Chinese medicine has to say about seasonal eating, warmth, hydration and digestion, and how to bring some of those principles into modern life without making things complicated. I’ll share lots of simple, practical ideas — from having hot water in the morning to making your meals more nourishing and hydrating.
And we’ll get into some of the less obvious questions — like why eating a two-minute noodle might actually be better than having toast, from a hydration perspective, because it’s more watery! It’s not about ordering all your fruit and vegetables from Bliss (although I’ll give you a coupon code for that too). It’s about understanding the why, and finding simple things that work in your real life.
I’d love for you to join me live each week, where there’ll be plenty of time for Q&A and conversation. But if life gets in the way, every session will be recorded. You can catch up later — and if you’re joining us after we’ve already started, you can watch the earlier session and then join us live for the next one. You’ll have three months of access to the recordings, plus a practical handout with actionable tips.
Places are limited to keep it small and personal.
As the season turns, my hope for you is simple: stay warm, stay hydrated, and don’t fight the wind too hard when it asks something of you — what is the invitation?
With warmth,
Ada, The Acupuncture Sanctuary