Resources for Healing, Growth, and Everyday Support
Thoughtful guidance, reflections, and practical tools to support your body, mind, and spirit, both in and out of session.
Vegan Longevity Soup: TCM Mushroom & Chestnut Recipe for Winter Energy
This plant-based version uses warming, Yang-tonifying ingredients to build deep energy and vitality. While animal products are traditionally used in TCM for strong Kidney Yang support, this vegan version focuses on warming spices, mineral-rich ingredients, and Yang-moving vegetables.
Moxibustion for Winter Immunity: Strengthen Your Defenses Naturally
Your body knows it is winter even if it is not cold and snowy outside. Winter - indeed all seasons - bring changes in the length of the day, quality of daylight, temperature of the earth and water bodies, blooming cycles, and animal behavior patterns. Our bodies are attuned to these natural signals. You are probably feeling the need to sleep longer, eat more warming foods, move a little more slowly. These are all signs the body is acclimating to winter and trying to go inward to store vital resources. This going inward also means that we have less external defenses (think immune system help) to protect us from colds, flus, and other ailments that surge during winter. This is where moxibustion can be a powerful healing tool.
Snake Shedding: Releasing What No Longer Serves
Like a snake shedding its skin, the process of letting go requires both courage and wisdom. This winter, as we transition from the Wood Snake year to the Fire Horse, discover how Traditional Chinese Medicine's Kidney energy supports releasing old fears, outdated beliefs, and patterns that once protected you but now only confine you. Explore the intersection of ancient TCM wisdom and modern neuroscience research on fear conditioning, behavioral change, and the brain's capacity for transformation. Learn why the Kidney system holds both our deepest willpower and our relationship with fear, and how winter's introspective energy creates the perfect conditions for shedding what no longer serves your growth. Understand the paradox of true strength: knowing when to release rather than hold on, and how this active choice of letting go opens space for your authentic self to emerge. This is your invitation to trust the natural intelligence of release and step into renewal.
Winter in TCM: The Kidney Season and Why Rest is Medicine
Key Insights:
Ancient TCM texts prescribed "retire early, rise late" in winter. Modern research confirms we naturally need 30-60+ minutes more sleep during winter months
Your Kidneys (in TCM) store Jing (vital essence). Winter rest prevents depletion that shows as fatigue, immunity issues, and premature aging
Sleep deprivation increases cortisol by 37-45%, triggers inflammation, and creates "allostatic load": the cumulative wear that mirrors TCM's concept of Jing depletion
Winter rest isn't laziness. It's strategic restoration that builds reserves for spring's expansion