Shoulder Seasons, The Earth Phase
In this series of essays on the greater energetic movements that give rise to the seasons, I hope to offer perspectives and tools to help you find more resilience and joy amidst this turbulent time in history. The ancient Taoist Five Element lens offers us an understanding of the five energetic phases that are the basis of change and creation in the cosmos. By observing and understanding how Nature responds to the cycle of ever-changing energies over the course of a year, we gain insight into how these great forces are influencing our bodies, minds, and spirits. This knowing helps us work with these Great Movements in ways that supports us and helps us live more fully into our gifts and potential amidst the unraveling of human culture and ecosystems all around us.
Here in Maine, we have the “shoulder seasons”. Traditionally, the shoulder seasons are the transitional times before and after the make-it-or-break-it season of high summer but there are “shoulders” between the other seasons as well. When working with Five Element energetics, we call these transition periods the Earth Phase.
By observing and understanding how Nature responds to the cycle of ever-changing energies over the course of a year, we gain insight into how these greater forces are influencing our bodies, minds, and spirits. This knowing helps us work with these Great Movements in a way that supports us and helps us live more fully into our unique genius and gifts.
1. Summer Solstice, 2. Autumnal Equinox, 3. Winter Solstice, 4. Vernal Equinox
The movement of the earth around the sun over the course of the year gives rise to the seasons as our position relative to the sun determines how much energy from the sun is arriving each day. According to Taoist teachings each season is 36½ days on either side of the Solstice or Equinox. The solstices are the mid points of Winter and Summer, not the beginning. The equinoxes are mid points for Spring and Fall. Each of the four seasons is seventy-three days, which totals 292 days. That leaves 73 days of the year to account for. This in-between time, the shoulder season, is the transition period we call the Earth Phase. Each year, you would need to count out the 36½ days on either side of the Equinox or Solstice to get the exact days and times of the Earth phase because they shift a little each year. Here are the approximate dates of the Earth phase in a given year.
Earth Phase times of year
Autumn to winter October 28th to November 15
Winter to Spring January 27th to February 11th
Spring to Summer April 26th to May 14th
Summer to Autumn July 28th to August 17th
The Four Season diagram (top) is one of those things that is deceptively simple yet infinitely complex. It is truly describing the movement of energy behind all of creation, the movement of energy before there is form. We can relate to this process as an essential step in any creative process. For example, if you decided to make a chocolate cake, where does that idea or inspiration come from? Then, as you mull it over, thinking about really good chocolate cakes you may have had in the past and what it might take to create one, the cake begins to come together energetically, in your mind. It does not yet have physical form. It is an idea, an imagining, a sense of excitement and anticipation, warm memories of cake shared with loved ones. You must go through the step of thinking about it, remembering it, imagining it, visualizing it long before it is ever cake on your kitchen counter. This pre-form stage of creating something is the energy behind creation. In our example, the creation is cake, but this is the same process that takes place infinitely, all around us as Life expresses and recreates itself.
Why is it useful to understand a bit about the greater energetic movements behind the creation of Life? Because these are the same energies that create our lives. And because we are part of Life, part of Nature and those energies affect us as much as the plants and animals that live outdoors. It’s like getting caught out in a rain shower without a raincoat and having no clue why we are so uncomfortably wet or what to do about it. It is helpful to understand how these greater energies are affecting and influencing our bodies, minds and spirits so we know how to respond (by putting on a raincoat) or recognizing what we don’t actually have any control over.
(Check out the blog post, Riding The Waves of Change, for further explanation and a fun video about how resonant energy waves work.)
It is not uncommon to see a chart like the one below when reading about Five Element Theory. The chart is an attempt to help us understand how these energies behind creation manifest once they constellate into a form we can experience. There is a lot of information here, but for our purposes, let’s focus on the areas highlighted in orange.
Here in Maine, we have a lot of experience with the movement of the seasons because they are quite distinct. For instance, in Winter we like to cozy up at home resting in front of the wood stove with a mug of tea and a book, eat long cooked stews, and go to bed early. In Summer, we like to be busy, putting time and energy into our passions, socializing, recreating outdoors, eating light raw meals and staying out later. But what about Shoulder Seasons? What are we resonating to, what are the patterns that emerge in the transitional times? If Winter energies support us in rest and restoration and Summer energies support us in outwardly manifesting our passions, then what are the Transition times supporting in us? There are 73 days a year of Earth Phase Transitions that we can better use to support us with a little understanding of where to focus our attentions in those times.
Transitions/Shoulder Seasons
Each of the four different Earth phase times will have slightly different flavors and textures because of the differences in seasons they are between. But the underlying, before creation energies are the same in all of them. Imagine you are going on an adventure with several sections. You are going hiking in Patagonia, kayaking on the Ganges, sailing in Maine, and dogsledding in Alaska. You will need four distinct sets of gear, clothing, food, and external support (transportation, guides, help from friends, etc.) for your experiences to be successful. The time you spend between each leg of this journey repacking, acquiring the necessary gear, reprovisioning food, and setting up the external support is the Earth time, is the Transition. Each leg of the journey completely depends on doing a thorough job of getting all the resources in place to ensure a safe and successful adventure. Earth time is like the point in the packing process where you pull in everything you can imagine needing for the next journey, but you still have to winnow it all down to what will be most useful and what you can actually carry.
Let’s look at the chart and those attributes that are in orange as a place to begin to get a handle on Earth energies, and how we might think about the “repacking” what we need to do between the four seasons.
Neutral Energy direction
The direction of energy in Earth time is Neutral, like slack tide in the harbor, there is no predominant current. During slack tide, all the boats are facing every which way as if they haven’t decided upon a heading. How does “slack tide” resonate and influence us? Anything in your life that doesn’t already have a clear heading and some momentum in that direction will feel more unsettled at this time. (Life transitions are always eased by centering and steady lifestyle practices such as keeping blood sugar steady, exercise, meditation, gratitude, and breathing.)
Contrast that feeling to Spring energy when everything in Nature is “bursting forth,” a clear up and out direction. Or in Winter when we are clearly drawn down and in to “hibernate.” During Earth time, it’s difficult to make major life decisions because, just as the boats in the harbor have no particular current to align with, the currents in your life are in flux during this time. If situations in life aren’t coming together, and you notice it is Earth time, just wait, and trust that in a couple of weeks the currents will establish themselves and your heading will become clear.
Transformation
The Earth phase energetic opportunity is Transformation. In contrast to the energetic opportunities of the four main seasons, the idea of transformation can be puzzling. In Spring, for instance, the energetic opportunity of renewal, birth, and growth is clearly happening all around us. Earth energies are responsible for your capacity to transform Life as a whole into your individual life. This is the food you eat, the air you breathe, the books you read, the company you keep, the good, the bad, the ugly.
To thrive in life, we are completely dependent on our capacity to digest and transform Life into ourselves. When we are struggling to transform Life, we may experience physical transformation/digestive issues or difficulty with digesting and transforming at the level of the mind/emotions, which can be recognized as rumination, overwhelm or stress.
If we could all go on “retreat” during Earth time, it would be ideal. Simple nourishing food, not too much to do, time for contemplation and sleep, time in Nature… This setting offers us the “reset” we need in the Earth time to do a good job of reprovisioning for the next leg of the journey. We can’t literally do something like that four times a year, but we can keep it in mind. We can reset our eating to be nourishing and seasonal, we can make more time to be nourished by our loved ones and Nature, we can reset our exercise routine for the coming season, we can keep an eye on too many commitments, and we can hold off on big decisions until the way forward is clear.
It is good to acknowledge here that there are some life events that are beyond human capacity to digest and transform. There are things that happen in life that would be like being fed rocks. In these instances, we simply do not have the digestive capacity to make nourishment out of them. These would be significant trauma and losses. These are the kinds of events--the loss of a child, physical or emotional abuse, or living in a war zone, capital “T” trauma --that will change us. The best we can do in these instances is the healing work that will help us carry the “rocks” more comfortably and find a way to have something good and wholesome arise from the ashes of trauma.
Nourishment
The central issue of the Earth Phase is Nourishment. By now, that starts to make sense. The organs associated with the Earth Phase are the physical digestive organs, which include the capacity to digest mentally and emotionally as well. This is the literal nourishment of carefully choosing what we put into our bodies, and this is also the choices we make around how we spend our time and with whom. Are we feeding ourselves a wholefood, low sugar/alcohol diet? Are our friendships and relationships nourishing us or do we need to make an adjustment or let go in that realm. Is our work nourishing beyond a paycheck? Do we have enough free time spent on wholesome activities? We all know when we have gotten off track with these basics of self-care. Earth time gives us an opportunity for a reset.
These are not judgments but rather a way to notice and make gentle corrections toward more nourishment. It is the steady rhythms of nourishment that enable us to grow into the fullest version of ourselves. Just as with a child, all the nourishing, loving, and enriching they need to grow into a healthy whole person, adults fundamentally have the same needs, albeit in adult form.
It is in the Earth phase, remember, that you pull together all the resources you are going to need for the next leg of Life’s journey. Of course, once your supportive, nourishing rhythms are in place, you have to maintain them throughout the coming season to successfully surf the next seasonal wave.
Gratitude
Our emotions can also offer us insight into how we are doing with the Earth Phase transitions. The emotions of the Earth Phase can be considered by contrasting the balanced versus unbalanced emotions. Satisfaction and gratitude versus worry, rumination and obsession. If you are well nourished on all levels of the body-mind-spirit, you will feel satisfied and grateful. It is the feeling after a good meal prepared with love and enjoyed with loved ones. If you are not well nourished on all levels, you are basically hungry, if not physically, then mentally, emotionally or spiritually. You will feel worried, your mind will go round and round ruminating on how to ease the feeling of scarcity or to solve the problem of the day, and you will have a tendency to get overly focused on something that may or may not actually help (like our addictions). We all recognize this pattern in ourselves when we feel stressed and are facing a situation with no obvious way forward. When you focus on reestablishing the good care and feeding rhythms of good nutrition, good company, good sleep, good movement of the body out in Nature, good work habits, your innate systems of transformation will have what they need to work optimally. We have a natural tendency to thrive, so by giving ourselves basic nourishment, our body/mind knows how to transform it and solutions naturally arise.
When we find ourselves worrying or ruminating, a gratitude practice can help us shift our minds toward more balance. The ancients have told us that the counterbalance to worry and rumination is gratitude and satisfaction. Gratitude is good nourishment for the mind, rather than letting your mind go round and round on unsolvable problems. To practice gratitude, make a daily list of 10 things you are grateful for. When you catch yourself ruminating, recite your list. Focusing on all that we are grateful for shifts our brain chemistry and helps us feel more satisfied and content. It is far more likely that the best solution to the current worry will arise from the energy of satisfaction and gratitude rather than a place of worry and rumination. This could be a mini meditation practice you do anywhere anytime throughout the day.
In truth, all the phases are happening all the time in big and small ways. The Earth phase happens every day, not just 73 days a year. Every day we are transforming Life into our individual lives. By working with the yearly calendar and observing these energetic phases as they give rise to the seasons, we can learn to let Nature help us. We can start to know ourselves to be part of the Great Rhythms of Life rather than feeling separate from them. We can know that all of the Northern Hemisphere is resonating to the same greater energetic phase and that much of what we are experiencing is common to all of us. Just as a farmer works with these phases to grow, harvest, compost, rest, and begin again, we can work with these energies to help us thrive.
Tools for transitions
When you find yourself in a transitional phase, whether it is a Shoulder Season Transition or a Life transition, the Taoist understanding of Earth phase energies offers us tools to help us find the direction forward. These Tools for Transitions will naturally help you move through them.
Recognize the transitions in our lives as situations that, to some greater or lesser degree, are just not satisfying enough. Situations that need some adjustment to feel nourishing. Situations where gratitude is challenging. It could be a relationship, job, or living situation etc. that just isn’t quite right.
Awareness that the yearly Earth phases will resonate to any transitions we are working on in our individual lives and make them more noticeable/uncomfortable. It helps us see more clearly the areas in our lives that aren’t feeling nourishing.
Understand that the “slack tide” energy has no clear direction and that the way forward will become clearer when it is the right time.
Know that when you are experiencing a transition, it can be uncomfortable for a period of time, it will take a new form eventually. (Caterpillar to butterfly, wow!)
Be especially attuned to nourishing yourself and establishing good rhythms on all levels of body/mind/emotion/spirit to facilitate smooth transitions.
Focus on centering and steady lifestyle practices such as keeping your blood sugar steady, exercise, meditation, gratitude, and breathing.
Practice gratitude and mindful breathing rather than allow your mind to ruminate and worry.