Bright, early mornings in the garden have become essential to me right now, before the phone, before the screen, before the day finds its way in. The garden is good for my Shen: quieter, calmer, greener, more tactile. This is where I want all my mornings to begin.

Because while the internet feeds the psyche, it’s nature that nourishes the soul.

In last week’s article we talked about how I’m preparing for a particularly hot Fire Horse Summer using some of my favorite TCM-inspired tools, herbs, and recommendations. This week I want to talk about Yang energy, the morning hours, and why they should belong to you, not your screen.

Replacing the Scroll with the Stroll

There’s a particular quality to early morning light that’s different from any other time of day. It’s still gathering itself, still on the ascent. I feel it in my body too. Something rising. TCM calls this energy Yang: the upward-moving energy of warmth, light, and activation that rules the daylight hours. The morning marks the beginning of it’s ascension which will peak at noon.

Most of us knew this once. Think back to summer break as a kid, the warm rising sun spilling through your window, waking you easily, naturally. You didn’t need an alarm. You jumped up ready to go. That was your body perfectly calibrated to its circadian rhythm, or what TCM calls the organ clock: the understanding that there’s a right time for everything, and the morning sun meant now is the time to move.

Somewhere along the way most of us traded that calibration for screens. Strolling my garden in the early morning is how I reclaim it, gathering enough of that rising Yang energy to move through the rest of my day without the dips and crashes that come when you start the morning fighting your own biology.

Your body is already doing something remarkable in that first half-hour after waking, producing its largest cortisol surge of the day, sharpening your mind, steadying your mood, and setting how resilient you’ll be to everything that follows. TCM understood this without the biochemistry. It’s why the organ clock orients the entire morning around rising, moving, and meeting the sun. Morning light and movement amplify this response. The screen has become the default first light most of us feed our eyes, and it’s the fastest way to flatten that peak before it ever fully rises. The garden is simply me choosing not to waste it.

Protect Your Shen

In TCM, Early Summer belongs to the Fire element, and Fire’s home organ is the heart. The heart is the seat of the Shen: your mental-emotional-spiritual center, the part of you that registers joy, connection, and peace as nourishment just as surely as food.

The Fire element heart thrives on calm. It needs unhurried mornings. The modern morning routine, the one that begins with a phone in hand before your eyes have fully adjusted to the light, is a particular kind of cruelty to the heart.

I’m not immune to it. But I’ve learned what it costs. A small cracked screen that livestreams all the failings of the world right into the palm of your hands is not a neutral way to begin a day.

The day’s work will always find its way back to me. The news will still be there. What won’t wait is this particular quality of morning, this specific window of rising light. The scroll can wait. The morning belongs to my garden stroll.

All You Really Need

I’m 25, I can’t afford constant retreats, fancy facials, or curated wellness vacations, and increasingly I’m not sure I want to.

This week’s latest article is by no means a new or novel concept (I’ve made peace with not reinventing the wheel). But I often find in my line of work that returning folks back to the rudimentary basics is ten times more effective than anything hot, new, or trending.

The wellness industry has a remarkable talent for repackaging the non-Western worlds traditions and sciences and selling it back to you at a markup. In reality people are much more like plants than they give themselves credit for. We need what they need: water, plenty of sunshine, and tender consistent care.

Which is why you’ll keep finding me in the early morning sun strolling the garden this Summer. Same as always, tending.