Winter: Six Ways to Align with its Energy

*photo by LoboStudio Hamburg

Maintaining harmony with the cycles of nature is central to our well being: this is a key insight of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). How we create this alignment involves understanding the particular energies, gifts and vulnerabilities of each season, and the foods and practices that enhance our health and resilience during it.

Winter is recognised as a potent time of cooling, contracting energy, of inward focus. It is the fertile darkness out of which all things will soon arise. In the cold night of winter, we do best not to cleanse, but to build ourselves up, to conserve our resources and nourish ourselves with stillness, with warmth.

There are other ways that TCM describes the energy of winter. The season is associated with the element of water and its salty flavour, with the blue-black colour of the depths of the seas or the night sky and, predictably, with the Kidney-Bladder organ system within our bodies.

*photo by Mark Basarab

The Kidney-Bladder System: nourishing the waters within us

To align ourselves with winter IS to take care of our kidney energy. 

The kidneys store our body’s most basic vitality, our inherited life force and memory of wholeness, also called Jing. This is our fundamental energy reserve, which any organ in need draws upon. Kidneys govern and determine the health of our fluids, our reproductive system, our skeleton. Saying that we feel something “in our bones” reflects this embodiment of deep, essential, knowing that are our kidneys.

Healthy kidney energy shows itself when we can connect with and express our will and libido, when we are able to age gently, and maintain an adaptable immune system. When this energy is compromised, it can express itself as a weakness in our lower back and knees, as infertility or impotence, insomnia, hair loss, and excessive panic and anxiety. We become more susceptible to fear when our kidneys are depleted, and then that ongoing experience of fear further taxes our system.

However, as always, we have tools with which we can nourish and preserve this most vital part of ourselves.

*photo by Peyman Farmani

Aligning with Winter: and protecting kidney essence

1. Stillness and Sleep: both revitalise kidney energy, and are in harmony with winter’s dark and quiet nature. The season also invites us to reduce sensory input and turn in a more introspective direction. Be mindful of excessive activity and stress: allow yourself to pause and rest when needed, and try to get to bed before midnight to receive the most benefit from your sleep.

2. Self-massage: there are a number of acupressure points on our bodies that strengthen kidney energy. Rubbing along your ears for several minutes, or stomping slowly and with flat feet for the same amount of time, stimulates kidney and bladder meridians.

3. Warmth: cold is the “thief” of kidney energy. Protect yourself by avoiding iced drinks and raw foods now. Make use of slower cooking methods such as roasting that drive more heat into our food. 

4. Water & Salt: our kidney system needs sufficient water, and sea salt in moderation (excess will harm kidneys). Incorporate tamari and miso into your meals (the longer-aged and darker ones such as red, rice, and barley are most appropriate in the winter months).

5. Jing-Building Foods: those foods that hold reproductive energy, such as seeds and eggs, strengthen what we call our “acquired jing”. As bone marrow is produced by kidney jing, drinking bone broth also nourishes this essence within us.

6. Eating the Colour of Winter: Blue, black, and purple foods enhance the vitality of our kidneys. Black sesame seeds, black rice, black beans (as well as the darker kidney and aduki), purple yams, the darkest leafy greens, as well as sea vegetables and spirulina (which contain a certain primordial energy as some of the oldest plants on earth) all tone the kidneys. 

For a lovely treat that nourishes our kidney essence, we share here a recipe for Black Sesame Jing Balls.

*photo by Monika Grabkowska

A Longevity Diet Recipe: Black Sesame Jing Balls

Black sesame seeds tonify jing and help build blood, which can be useful for those of us who wish not to eat red meat. They are also a rich source of calcium.

Ingredients

• 1.5 cups black sesame seeds

• ½ cup goji berries

• 1 small piece of fresh ginger

• ½ cup local honey, creamed

• 1 tsp+ grated orange peel

• 1 tsp ground cardamom

• ¼ tsp ground cinnamon

• 1 pinch of salt

• 1 tsp vanilla extract

• 1 tbsp cacao powder

• 1 cup dried rose petals (or 1/3 cup rose petal powder)

Optional ingredients

• A pinch of Shilajit

• 1 tbsp He Shou Wu (Fo-Ti) extract powder

For dusting

• ½ cup almond flour, matcha, or rose petal powder

Directions

1. Toast the black sesame seeds until they become fragrant and begin to pop. Set aside to cool in a bowl.

2. Once cooled, place in a food processor with salt, cardamom powder, dried rose petals or powder, cinnamon, vanilla and cacao. Pulse together into a uniform powder.

3. Add orange zest, goji and ginger. Process everything together until clumps form.

4. Pour honey into the food processor with the blended sesame seed paste. If your food processor is not powerful enough, mix by hand.

5. Process until the mixture forms one solid mass, as if you were making dough.

6. Taste and add more spices as needed.

7. Form the dough into 3/4" balls.

8. Roll the balls in almond flour, rose powder or matcha.  

9. Refrigerate for at least 4 hours to set.

10. Store in a covered container. Will keep for a couple weeks, if they last!