Summer is just around the corner and I’ve already started thinking about all the ways I’m going to work with the season rather than get steamrolled by it. In TCM, Early Summer is the most Yang-heavy point of the entire year, which places the fire element at full intensity, with energy, activation, and heat cresting all at once.
What makes this particular Summer worth paying attention to is that we’re heading into it under the Year of the Fire Horse, which means many of us are going to be fighting fire with fire before the first heat wave even hits. This means more sweat, more irritability, and more burnout than usual. But you, being the seasonally-informed wellness baddie that you are, obviously already sensed that coming, which is exactly why you’re here.
Eat the Season, Cool the Fire
Photo created by Nicole Ashley Rahayu Densm…
Hydration is the foundation of any Early Summer ritual, and in TCM, this goes well beyond just drinking enough water. The fire element’s peak heat creates what I call “heat madness”: that creeping irritability, mental fog, and low-grade lethargy that sets in when your internal system is running too hot.
My grandmother recently spent a month in Mérida, Mexico, sweating through temperatures in the low 100s, and she told me she’d randomly find herself snapping at my grandfather for absolutely no reason. Western science maps onto this too. Researchers have documented the correlation between rising temperatures and rising aggression, cognitive strain, and emotional dysregulation. Heat taxes the body, spikes heart rate, and creates a physiological stress response that makes clear thinking feel like wading through a heated haze.
The TCM antidote is cooling and moistening foods, a specific energetic category of ingredients that work from the inside out to counter the fire element’s intensity. Many of Summer’s most natural offerings already fall into this category: watermelon, cucumber, tomatoes, strawberries, and zucchini are all composed of up to 90% water and carry a cooling energetic that directly addresses what the season is doing to your body. Hence why, I make sure they’re showing up in almost every meal once the temperatures start climbing, and I immediately notice the difference in my mood, patience, and energy. Sometimes the simplest additions deployed at the right time do the deepest work.
No Scroll Sundays
Photo created by Gülʂah Adoğan text overlay by me
In Traditional Chinese Medicine, the heart houses something called Shen (神), translated simply as “Spirit.” Shen governs our consciousness, our sense of clarity, and our emotional stability. It is the mind-body-spirit connection of our entire being. The eyes are considered the “windows to the Shen” and you’ve likely already witnessed this in yourself and others — eyes that are bright, sparkling, and fully alight with presence and embodied joy. Conversely you’ve probably also seen those moments where the eyes go dim and develop a dark, cloudy, or veiled malaise. That dimming is Shen disturbed.
So what disturbs Shen? Overstimulation. Plus, dysregulated dopamine and serotonin. The draining of the quiet mental energy needed for deep focus and restful sleep. Tell-tale signs of a disturbed Shen include insomnia, fluttery heart palpitations, and fitful or distressing dreams. Sound familiar?
This leads me to discussing my extremely love-hate relationship with social media. I use it for work, which often straps me to it against my will, and so many aspects of it don’t align with my values. But it’s also one of the easiest ways to build a real community across the globe with people who share a love of herbs and holistic living, and for that I’m genuinely grateful.
What’s harder to be grateful for: the nasty habit of checking every like, every comment, every subscription, and every pledge while monitoring my creator stats and website traffic like a hawk. The comparison wars. The filtered achievement feeds. The circus-like mania of keeping up with current events. There’s a very real reason you and I feel that particular cocktail of anxiety, irritability, and depletion that social media reliably produces, and Shen is it.
Excessive screen time quite literally disturbs Shen and drains our capacity to move through life with joy and calm regulation. And because Early Summer is governed by the fire element and the heart organ that houses Shen, this season is the most important time of year to protect it. So this Summer I’m introducing a No Scroll Sunday. One day completely unplugged: no Instagram, no TikTok, no website analytics, and YouTube limited only to the subliminals and affirmations I use while journaling. I’d love for you to join me. Our Shen will surely thank us.
My Yang-to-Yin Day
One of TCM’s most grounding principles is that our bodies are not separate from nature. They move with it. Every day carries its own Yang-to-Yin arc: energy rises through the morning, crests at noon, and gradually surrenders into the restorative quiet of evening. When we structure our lives to flow with that arc rather than fight it, everything becomes a little easier. With that said here’s what that actually looks like in my life.
7 AM – 12 PM 🌞
Early morning through noon is peak Yang territory, the day’s energy still climbing, the mind sharp, and the body willing. This is where I place my most demanding work: writing, research, filming, important meetings with my business partner, the kind of heavy thinking and decision making that requires a clear and unencumbered mind. I treat this window as protected time.
I also make it a morning practice to walk my home garden before the day gets going, coffee in hand, surveying the plants, watching the early sun move through the leaves. That early light isn’t incidental. In both TCM and Western chronobiology it’s the signal that sets the body’s clock for the entire day, calibrating the Yang ascent that makes everything that follows possible. The garden in the morning is also its own kind of medicine.
12 PM – 6 PM 🔥
At noon Yang reaches its peak and begins its slow descent. My workload shifts with it. Lighter, slower, less demanding. The big decisions have already been made. This is also when the TCM organ clock tells us digestive fire is at its most active, so I make a point of eating my biggest meal here and keeping dinner intentionally lighter. My body knows what to do with food when I give it at the right time. By mid-afternoon I’m writing or scripting rather than deciding, moving with the heat rather than pushing against it.
6 PM – 12 AM 🌝
By evening Yin has taken over and the day retreats turns inward. I close out work by 5 or 6 PM, eat a light dinner, move through some gentle stretching, and begin the slow wind-down toward sleep — screens off, lighting soft, in bed before 11 PM. In TCM, the hours between 11 PM and 1 AM are governed by the gallbladder and considered essential for the body’s deepest restorative work.
Aligning with the movement of the Sun is less about discipline than it is about attention. The arc is already there, rising, peaking, falling, the same way the seasons already are. Learning to read it and move within it is the same practice at every scale. What we eat and drink and reach for as the season shifts matters just as much as when.
So take a look at your own day and try a simple Yang-to-Yin style map. Where are you placing your heaviest demands? Are they landing in the morning when your energy is climbing, or are you front-loading your evenings when your body is already asking to wind down? Even small adjustments to that sequencing can change how the whole day looks and feels.
What’s in My Summer Apothecary
Photo created by Damian Apanasowicz
Summer is the season where my herbal regimen shifts most dramatically, and honestly it’s where one of my favorite transitions of the year begins. The heavy, warming roots of Winter give way to bright leaves and berries. Out goes the ginger. In comes the mint, the lemon balm, the hibiscus. In TCM, as the fire element rises, the medicine shifts with it, reaching for plants with cooling, moistening, and heart-calming properties that meet the season where it is.
My Summer apothecary tends to center around a core handful: mint, lemon balm, hawthorn berry, chrysanthemum, hibiscus, marshmallow root, motherwort, and barley. What they share is a bitter or cooling Energetic, with a particular emphasis on calming and anchoring the heart, exactly what the fire element’s intensity calls for.
The herb I reach for most is barley tea. Called Mugicha (麦茶) in Japan and Da Mai Cha (大麦茶) in TCM. Made from roasted barley pearls that have been steeped in hot or cold water, it’s caffeine-free, deeply cooling, and has a toasty, nutty depth that I find genuinely hard to describe without just handing someone a glass.
Mugicha has been a summer staple across Japan, China, and Korea for centuries, chilled and served through the hottest months as both a cooling drink and a digestive tonic. I have a personal tenderness for it. My great grandmother’s culture built a relationship with this drink long before I ever found my way to TCM, and there’s something quietly meaningful about reaching for the same thing across time and oceans.
In TCM, barley’s cooling and draining properties make it especially useful for clearing Summer heat and supporting a digestive system under thermal stress. I keep a pitcher in the fridge all season, often paired with hawthorn berry for its tart brightness and heart-strengthening properties. The two together make a cooling cardiovascular tonic I genuinely look forward to every year.
Lemon balm has become the other non-negotiable. If you’ve ever brushed against a fresh lemon balm plant and caught that sudden burst of citrus, you already understand why it belongs in a Summer kitchen. It’s a natural antidote to the heat madness we talked about earlier, calming the nervous system and cooling the irritability that rises with the temperature. I steep it fresh into lemonade, sometimes with a little raw honey, and let it do its quiet work.
This is what I love most about seasonal herbalism: it’s not a complicated gym-bro protocol. It’s a conversation with the season, one that asks you to pay attention to what’s growing and what your body is asking for. Summer, with all its fire and intensity, turns out to grow the most cooling medicine. The most Yang season offers the most Yin remedy. Nature, as usual, knows exactly what she’s doing.
Giving the Fire Somewhere to Land
Photo created by Nataliia Zhytnytska
Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, Summer was always my favorite season and still is. There’s nothing quite like watching the Sun’s light stream between the dense evergreen trees while the bees and pollinators hum through the garden doing their diligent, precious work. The Puget Sound glittering like a thousand stars. Mountains in every direction. It’s a genuinely special place to be in the Summertime, and it’s exactly why I want to show up for it fully.
Early Summer is ruled by the heart, which governs our capacity to feel joy and warmth: within ourselves, our relationships, and the world directly in front of us. In a Year of the Fire Horse that presence doesn’t come automatically. All that Yang energy (the heat, the intensity, the activation) needs somewhere to land. These four rituals are how I’m giving it somewhere to land. How I’m building enough Yin to hold the Summer without getting burned by it.
The thoughtful hydration, the No Scroll Sundays, aligning with the daily rhythms of Yin and Yang, incorporating cooling and moistening herbs. All of it is in service of being fully present for the season rather than just surviving it.
Now I want to hear from you. What are you planning to do this Summer to stay cool, grounded, and in your body? Drop it in the comments — I’d love to know all about the Summer rituals you’re building for yourself.
Catch up on the Latest Reads:
Auspicious Flow: A TCM Tea Blend for Glowing Skin and Tired Eyes
References:
Anderson, Craig A., Kathryn B. Anderson, Nancy Dorr, Kristina M. DeNeve, and Mindy Flanagan. 2000. “Temperature and Aggression.” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology Volume 32 32: 63–133.
Devi, Khumukcham Anupama, and Sarva Daman Singh. 2023. “The Hazards of Excessive Screen Time: Impacts on Physical Health, Mental Health, and Overall Well-Being.” Journal of Education and Health Promotion 12 (1).
Rath, Arun . 2018. “Heat and Aggression: How Hot Weather Makes It Easy for Us to Offend.” GBH. July 11, 2018.
Wilkins, Erin M. 2023. Asian American Herbalism. Princeton Architectural Press.
