Nourishing Yin
RITUAL: Self Care | SEASON: Spring-Summer | HOLIDAY: Mother's Day
Each year, Mother’s Day is celebrated during the transitional period of Mother Earth element energy between Spring and Summer. It’s a short respite of fertile yin energy between the budding and blossoming yang energy of the Wood element of Spring and blooming and ripening yang energy of the Fire element of Summer. This day that honors the unconditional love of mothers and the self-sacrifice of motherhood perfectly coincides with this brief interval of balancing and stabilizing Mother Earth energy.
Just as Earth is the transitional element that lands between seasons, the Mother archetype is the grounding yin energy and nurturing feminine energy present at each formative stage and for each transition between phases or chapters in a woman’s life. It’s the mother who holds space for and gives birth to the girl, the maiden, the wife, the mother, the matriarch and the wise woman as she cycles through the seasons of her life.
It’s this yin energy that women, especially mothers, need to replenish with daily self care rituals. And while there are many approaches to self care, most of these popular practices don’t nourish yin energy. Instead, they tend to add more checkboxes to the already long to do list and tasks to the overly busy schedule, further depleting yin energy.
The modern woman often associates self care with doing, consuming and indulging. Taking a bubble bath and applying a hydrating face mask. Having lengthly morning and evening routines. Getting an afternoon coffee, making a cocktail at happy hour or opening a bottle of wine in the evening. Going shopping and spending money. And while all of these things might make you feel better in the moment, they’re not yin nourishing.
People tend to focus on the self care rituals that resonate the most with aspects of their personal feng shui element. Or, they create self love practices that are an expression of their primary love language. Those aspects and expressions can be a good place to start when personalizing your self-care rituals. But daily rituals and routines become more balanced when they include all five of your senses and all five of the elements. (More on designing your personal self care rituals in future blogs.)
Often in feng shui, the balancing of yin and yang energy is emphasized. An example of a self care ritual that is both yin and yang is silently meditating, but outside in the morning sunlight. The activity is yin and the environment and time of day is yang. (More on yin activities, environments and times of day in future blogs.)
In traditional Chinese medicine, yin deficiencies are said to be the result of the lack of rest and nutritional imbalances. Women in first world countries are extremely yin deficient due to lifestyle choices. TCM practitioners help their clients replenish yin by recommending yin activities and the intentional rebuilding of vital fluids in the body.
Physically, bodily fluids are yin. Yin is literally our blood, sweat and tears. Our lymph, mucus and saliva. The cerebral, spinal and synovial fluids.
And women’s bodies produce and release even more bodily fluids. Vaginal discharge when ovulating or sexually aroused. Monthly blood flow when menstruating. Amniotic fluid when gestating and giving birth. And mother’s milk when lactating.
Yin is the basis of blood, and blood is the physical manifestation of yin.
Yin energy is soft and subtle. It moves slowly yet steadily. It can even be still and silent.
To nourish our yin as women, we need to first replenish our yin energy. We need to restore our energy with deep rest and restore our body’s essential fluids with mineral rich foods, liquids, yin tonics and herbal teas and tinctures. Then, we need to design a life that honors our need for yin nourishing practices and yin replenishing rituals that rebuild and retain our bodily fluids. (More on mineral rich foods, liquids, yin tonics and herbal teas and tinctures in future blogs.)
DEEP REST
If you’re burnt out, chronically fatigued or completely depleted of energy, take some time off work and all of your responsibilities to others to rest and sleep. Since that’s usually not possible, the next best practice is to honor a bedtime between 8-10pm and benefit from a minimum of 8-9 hours of peaceful, restorative, uninterrupted sleep. Wake up naturally according to your body’s internal clock, not an alarm. Have rest periods built into your schedule. And take naps during the day.
Women seldom get the sleep they need for vital health and wellbeing. And for mothers, sleep is the first thing that they begin to get used to going without. Often women will get up early to workout and have enough time for a morning routine before their children wake up and need their attention or their work day begins. Or, women will stay up late after the children have gone to bed and the house is quiet so they can enjoy a little downtime when no one is needing them.
While quiet, alone time is essential, often these early mornings and late nights cause a woman to miss out on the restorative sleep she needs. Years or even decades of working too much and sleeping too little has a compounding effect and results in a severe yin deficiency, often diagnosed as chronic fatigue and other mental disorders, emotional issues and physical illnesses. For many women, all they really need is a good night’s sleep, ample time to rest and the freedom to move slowly through their day. But with all the pressure to perform, hustle and make money, the very things that nourish yin energy are sacrificed on the altar of being all the things to all the people in their lives and having and doing it all.
SLOWNESS, STILLNESS & SILENCE
For yin energy women, taking things at a slower pace, practicing stillness and being silent will be more natural for them, even if they have been trying to keep up with the speed and productivity of the world. Yang energy women may need a longer adjustment period to ease into these yin nourishing practices as they incorporate them into their daily lives. If you are a Water, Soft Wood, Soft Metal or Mother Earth element, these practices will resonate with your yin energy. For Fire, Hard Wood, Hard Metal and Mountain Earth elements, these practices will help to balance your yang energy.
Slow down. Stop rushing around. If you don’t have enough time to do everything you’re doing without feeling rushed, take some things off your to do list or weekly schedule. Create pockets of rest time and down time in your day planner. Make sure to have transition time between tasks and leisure time every day.
Be still. Not just for a 10 minute morning meditation or shavasana at the end of a vinyasa flow. Sit down and do nothing. Don’t move. Don’t listen to or watch anything. Don’t scroll on your phone. Still your body and calm your mind.
Practice silence. If you’re not used to thinking or contemplating without speaking, create a quiet time in your day to be silent. If you find being silent is difficult, start with quieting your environment. Turn off the television, radio and music. Stop yelling and talking loudly. Speak softly.
GENTLE MOVEMENT
High intensity or high impact cardio and long, exhausting daily workouts deplete your yin energy reserves. To nourish yin energy, practice slow and gentle forms of exercise. Walking and rebounding, dance and Pilates, yin yoga and vinyasa flows, tai chi and qigong are excellent ways to move your body. These types of gentle movement facilitate the flow of chi and the vital bodily fluids of the lymph and blood.
I recommend accessing YoQi’s video library of over 100 qigong flow routines to support your health, energy and longevity. A subscription is just $15 per month. Free videos are also available on the YOQI® YouTube channel. You can practice daily or even morning and evening, in the comfort of your own home or even outside on the grass.
Founder, Marisa Cranfill, recently created a set of Qigong Flows for the Dai Mai. The Dai Mai is a key meridian for women of all ages and stages of their life cycle. This meridian, called the Belt Vessel, wraps around the waist and supports the vital organs of the stomach and uterus, kidneys, liver and gallbladder. It’s the only channel that flows on a horizontal plane.
Energetically, the Dai Mai holds you together. Cultivating this channel will make you strong! If you feel like you are ‘falling apart’ or need support, this is the meridian to focus on.
~ Marisa Cranfill
According to Marisa, “The Dai Mai is made up of points on the Gallbladder and Liver Meridians, but it also intersects the Kidney, Stomach, Ren Mai and Du Mai Meridians. It harmonizes the Qi in the liver and gallbladder. Since it wraps around the lower back and Ming Men point, it also guides and supports the Qi of the uterus and Jing Essence, which is great for female longevity. Emotionally, the Dai Mai helps you process and let go of pent-up emotions. Opening this channel is like letting go of excess weight around the waist so that your belt does not feel so tight. Expanding further around the body like a hula-hoop, the Dai Mai also connects all eight Extraordinary Vessels that make up your energy grid, called the Cosmic Egg. A strong energy grid is crucial to maintain communication between your meridians and organs. In Qigong, the hula-hoop energy also spirals upward out the head and downward below the feet, cocooning the whole body in a spiral of Qi.”
INTERMITTENT FASTING
Fasting can be a very beneficial practice for both health and healing. Fasting triggers autophagy and starves cancer cells, strengthens the immune system and improves cognitive function, balances hormones and resets your metabolism. It can also help to heal endometriosis and PCOS, as well as, facilitate the healing of skin issues like psoriasis and dermatitis.
Women of child bearing age need to find ways to fast that work with their hormones and monthly cycle, lifestyle and season of life. Women who are pregnant or breastfeeding cannot fast. Women who are menstruating need to experiment with different fasting types and durations to find ways to practice fasting that work for their body’s fluctuating hormones and nutritional needs throughout their cycle. And women in menopause can practice fasting with amazing results!
There are lots of different ways to fast. Water fasting is the most common. Some people prefer dry fasting. Others drink electrolytes from LMNT or Redmond Re-Lyte or exogenous ketones. Gin Stephens recommends black coffee and filtered or sparkling water for her intermittent fasts.
The length of your fast depends on your intention for fasting. Start with fasting for 16 hours from 7pm to 11am. If you don’t eat and continue fasting after 16 hours you can enter into autophagy, an anti-aging mode and ketosis, a fat burning mode. If you continue to fast beyond 24 hours, you can trigger the increased secretion of HGH and production of stem cells.
Each body is different. If you want to enter into autophagy, a cellular detoxification, anti-aging and healing process, you will need to fast for at least 17 hours or more. If you want to enter ketosis, a fat burning state, you will need to fast for at least 18 hours or until your glucose reserves have been fully utilized by the body. If you want to increase HGH you may need to fast for 36 hours or more. And if you want to increase stem cells, you may need to fast for a minimum of 72 hours.
I recommend educating yourself about fasting. Then, experiment until you find the fasts you like to do. Try different lengths of intermittent fasting (16/8, 18/6, 20/4), OMAD (one meal a day) or ADF (alternate day fasting). Or, try a weekly 24 hour fast or monthly 72 hour fast. Find a rhythm or keep switching it up.
Book Recommendations: Fast Like a Girl by Dr. Mindy Pelz, Fast. Feast. Repeat. by Gin Stephens, Fast This Way by Dave Asprey and The Betty Body by Stephanie Estima.
BEST PRACTICES
Sleep in a completely dark, cool room.
Go to sleep on an empty stomach.
Be asleep by 10pm.
Wake up to your body’s clock, not an alarm.
Drink purified water with a pinch of Celtic salt to hydrate your cells.
Limit caffeine.
Take a nap everyday.
Go for a daily walk outside.
Practice slow, gentle movement.
Spend time in nature everyday.
Move slowly throughout the day.
Rest between work flows.
Practice stillness and silence.
Reduce noise pollution in your environment.
Create quiet places and yin rooms to sleep and rest in.
Remove fluorescent light from your living environment and work spaces.
Reduce your exposure to EMFs from WiFi, bluetooth devices and cell phones.
Avoid screens after 5pm.
Dim the lights in the evenings or go to bed once the sun sets.
Make some nourishing foods and teas, tonics and tinctures.
Share in the comments below something you learned you didn't know before or one of the ways you plan to start nourishing your yin.
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Dara Eden is the author of HER Rituals for the Divine Feminine, a periodical guide created in December of 2021. The 8 Elements, her life’s work, provides guidance about how to honor the essential needs and highest values of your personal feng shui element. Inspired by an Internet challenge designed for men, she created 365WISE, a daily self-care practice that supports women in honoring their needs and listening to their inner wisdom.
In HER Rituals, she offers insights, ideas and intuitive guidance about ways to honor your needs, values and unique expression of the divine feminine.
HER Rituals is a Womb Wisdom KeepHER’s guide to cyclical rituals for sovereign women. It provides insightful information, inspirational ideas and intuitive guidance on daily and seasonal rituals you can practice as a form of self-care. Read about ancient wisdom and philosophical principles, holistic approaches and traditional skills, slow work and intentional living, embodiment practices and immersive experiences.
