Soul of the Seasons: Creating Balance, Resilience, and Connection By Tapping the Wisdom of the Natural World

By Melody Scout

In a world filled with conflict, controversy, and confusion, Soul of the Seasons brings us a timely message based on an ancient medicine that is urgently needed in our modern, fast-paced lives. Through centuries of observation the sages of Five Element theory, a form of Traditional Chinese Medicine, taught that the outer landscape of the natural world reveals much about the nature of our inner landscapes.

Encoded within the five seasons of Spring, Summer, Harvest, Fall and Winter, lies a wisdom designed to create and support balance and harmony. The five fundamental elements of Five Element theory resonate in our bodies as the core emotions of Anger, Joy, Sympathy, Grief, and Fear. Like the working components of a fine clock they comprise an elegant system of continuous movement, growth, and transformation.

Weaving her deeply personal stories with Five Element wisdom, Melody A Scout teaches us that by developing intimate relationships with our core emotions—the unique vibrations that connect us to both our bodies and the Earth—we can effectively adapt and respond to life’s challenges. By developing a more intimate relationship with the seasons of life, we can learn to effectively: identify and correct our imbalances; develop greater compassion, integrity, and honesty; and to authentically and appropriately express our emotions in ways that support our highest good.

Soul of the Seasons offers the wisdom of a traditional model of health and harmony made current through practical and easily accessible language, soul-stirring exercises, and thoughtful questions.

Encoded within the seasons of the natural world is a wisdom that teaches that: • Spring is the time to remember our visions, to set healthy boundaries, and make quality decisions. • Summer brings us warmth and joy through community, communication, and connection. • Harvest provides a sweet satisfaction for an abundant life and the capacity to nurture and be nurtured. • Fall teaches us the importance of letting go and to value and respect what is most precious to us. • Winter reminds us that contemplation, reflection, and rest are essential in the germination of new visions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
• Release date: Nov 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9781642376289

Book preview

Melody

Preface

THIS BOOK IS divided into three segments. Part One is an overview of the terms and concepts commonly referenced throughout this book. The principles of healing, balance and harmony, and emotional response may be familiar to most, but what each term means to us personally may differ wildly. To understand how these values support and interact, we will explore them through the lens of Five Element theory. Brief overviews of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Five Element theory also are provided.

Part Two provides an in-depth exploration of the individual seasons of Spring, Summer, Harvest, Fall, and Winter. Each of these five seasons is influenced by what the ancient masters considered a particular fundamental element of creation. The ancient masters treated these elements as archetypal beings, each with a particular wisdom and medicine, each possessing a certain resonance or way of being. Thus, the fundamental elements common names were capitalized to reflect their distinctive personas, functions, and movements in the world. In the following pages, I encourage you to come to think of the seasons as not merely passages of time but as archetypal beings as well, each with their own unique imprint.

Additionally, congruent with Five Element theory, the five core emotions, the sensory organs, the sounds, and other unique characteristics and qualities of each season are discussed (see table in Chapter 2).

For instance, Spring’s fundamental element is Wood, which signifies new growth, boundaries, and the core emotion of Anger. Wood also represents the plant world.

Summer’s element is Fire. Fire encompasses warmth, community, passion, the maturation process, and the emotion of Joy.

Harvest (or Indian Summer) is represented by the element of Earth. Earth offers us abundance, nurturing, the essence of Mother, and the emotion of Sympathy—the ability to have compassion for and understand others on the deepest level.

Fall is represented by Metal, a sharp and brittle element that is perfect for efficiently separating what is of value from what is refuse. Fall is the season for both receiving divine inspiration and letting go of what no longer serves us. The emotion of Grief resides in Fall.

Winter’s element is Water. During Winter’s passage, we hibernate, rest, face death, and gestate new life. Here is where the seeds of our new visions have come to germinate. The core emotion of Winter is Fear.

As we explore these archetypal beings, we will gain a sense of their power and purpose. We can learn how to move with and respond to the seasons, both in balanced and imbalanced ways. As we become more aware of our balanced and imbalanced states, our patterns and behaviors are illuminated, providing a greater capacity for transformation. The illumination of both our brilliance and our foibles provides us opportunities to take greater responsibility for our part in our creations.

With some final words of support and encouragement, Part Three: Beyond the Five Seasons includes follow-up exercises to help you delve more deeply in your journey toward balance and harmony. A bibliography and a suggested reading list are provided if you are interested in expanding your knowledge of the core emotions, Five Element theory, or Plant Spirit Medicine.

The Natural Order of the Seasons

Soul of the Seasons reminds us that everything is cyclic and always in motion; the five seasons and their corresponding elements and emotional states work and flow together. In the natural world, summer is not superior to fall and spring is not better than winter. Though in our culture, joy is revered over anger and sympathy is seen as superior to grief; we can only thrive in an environment that values and respects all emotions.

While you could begin your journey in any season, there is a purpose and a meaning to their natural order. Thus, you’ll receive maximum benefit from the information by following the seasons in their natural order. Although each season contains elements of all the others, spring follows winter and harvest always follows summer for a good reason. Each season contains the seeds of the next passage. Each core emotion draws on the energy of the previous season and, when appropriately expressed, births the next emotion with balance and harmony.

I recommend regular grounding throughout the reading of this material. Grounding connects us with our bodies, our emotions, and to the Earth itself. Throughout the reading of this material, I suggest frequent breaks to complete one or more of the grounding exercises listed below. By remaining grounded, we will feel calmer, more self-aware, better able to respond quickly and effectively.

A Simple Grounding Exercise*

With both feet flat on the ground, take three deep breaths, filling your lungs and then releasing each fully. Now imagine your feet connecting solidly to the spot where you are standing. See this connection as similar to an electrical cord that continually circulates energy between your body and the Earth. Watch this energy cycling back up through your feet and throughout your body and down into the Earth again, going deeper and deeper with each cycle.

Keep your breath slow and calm as you feel this circulating energy disburse any tension or unease you may be feeling. Feel your body becoming calmer. Stay here until you become relaxed and peaceful. Now take a deep breath and bring your consciousness back into the room where you are standing.

*More grounding exercises are available in Chapter 10.

Journaling: Recording Your Journey

In the following chapters you will notice certain exercises and questions that prompt you to journal your answers. Journaling is simply writing down your thoughts and experiences as they happen. Your journey through Soul of the Seasons will be enhanced by journaling throughout your journey. A simple notebook dedicated specifically for this process will do.

The material in this book is presented through the story of the Earth’s seasons, where the rich and dynamic lessons of life are literally in front of our eyes. As spring, summer, harvest, fall, and winter play out daily in the natural world, they offer us their tangible lessons of strength and resilience, of rebirth and loss, and the passing of one life into another. I am honored to be your guide as we explore the seasons of your soul.

Part One

1

A Good Map

EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING on this planet will journey through passages of birth and rebirth, maturation, harvest, loss, and death. There are no exceptions.

Maps are a comforting reminder that we are not journeying alone. They show us our community, the places where we belong. They can reveal stretches of desolation and uncertainty. Soul of the Seasons is intended to be a map, a guide for the reader along the highways and byways of the seasons of life based on wisdom that was developed by the sages through many centuries of observation.

The Chinese masters identified the five seasons as: Spring, Summer, Fall, Harvest (also called Indian Summer), and Winter. Each season offers a set of guideposts to help identify its terrain. These seasonal attributes constitute a legend on our map, orienting us as we traverse the inevitable passages of life. They help us discover where we have been and consider where we have yet to go.

Each season has a particular topography with identifying qualities of that passage. Though they can differ in their duration and intensity, seasons are universal.

Spring is considered a time of rebirth after the cold darkness of Winter.

Summer is known for its long, hot, sun-filled days, a time for maturation and growth.

Harvest is the time to reap the results of, and enjoy the satisfaction in, all our hard work.

Fall is a time of preparation for the long, dark days of Winter, a time to let go of anything that is no longer useful.

Winter is a time for hibernation, a time to slow down and conserve energy, a time to gestate the seeds of new visions.

Based on the principles of Plant Spirit Medicine and Five Element theory, Soul of the Seasons was written as a spiritual guide book. I have found these principles to be a reliable and time-tested method in which to explore both our inner and outer connections to the terrain of each season.

I invite you to join me in this journey of exploration. Like dedicated cartographers, we will carefully track the summits and dark descents as we traverse the cycles of life. As we explore the terrains of the five individual seasons in the coming chapters, we will learn some of the waymarks one might expect along the way. These will include, but are not limited to:

the five elements and their associated five core emotions;

balanced and imbalanced attributes of each element/season; and

their unique sensory properties .

With the five seasons as our guide, we can learn to artfully negotiate the terrain of the five core emotions. For instance, during the Spring seasons of our lives, we can find a way out of unmanageable anger and into the security of setting appropriate boundaries. In this season of new growth, we can support and guide our visions for the future. In Summer, we can move from bitterness and sadness and track our way back to a joy that connects with warmth and passion in our relationships and in our communities. If we become lost in indifference and apathy, we can learn to access a sympathy that engenders the understanding and caring afforded in the season of Harvest. From the desolate land of grief in the season of Fall, we can find a way to honor our losses and respect what we truly value. In the darkness of Winter, we can discover how fear keeps us alert to danger, ready to respond appropriately. We can also surrender to the mystery, to rest and become still, creating a sacred space where we can access our inner wisdom. Through its dynamic system of balance and harmony, Five Element theory provides a detailed roadmap with which to skillfully navigate both our inner and our outer worlds.

Just as nature undergoes a transformation during each season of the yearly cycle, so will we encounter patterns embedded within each phase of our life. Relationships, jobs, families, projects, romances, even hairdos, all have their seasons. Each experience will mark a period of birth, growth, harvest, loss, and death.

Like the seasons, our emotions cycle and give way to new feelings. During life’s momentous events, it is common to excavate deep emotions. Some of these feelings may seem incongruent with our current situation. The joy of sending our children off to college may also present feelings of deep loss. A fun, new love affair can summon the anger and sadness of old betrayals. In the midst of our grief, we may be surprised with moments of remembered joy and laughter.

When we remember the adage that everything has to do with everything, we can know that these responses are quite normal and to be welcomed. Extended periods when we feel stuck or emotional responses that seem out of balance with our experience may signal a deeper process at work. During these difficult passages, we may need to reach out to trusted friends and spiritual advisors for support and guidance.

Fortunately, throughout our travels, wanderers and vacationers and scouts are certain to appear. Some will be quite serious about their journey while others will seem casual or lacking discipline, perhaps even riotous. Whether through their wisdom or by example of what not to do, our fellow travelers are here to guide and support us, helping us correct our course when we stray. Each person and experience we encounter has a gift for us, should we choose to accept it. And once we’ve learned to more skillfully navigate the seasons of our life, we can offer more balanced support and guidance to those who may be starting their own courageous journey.

2

Five Element Theory:

A Thumbnail Sketch

FIVE ELEMENT THEORY, also known as Five Element acupuncture, was born out of Traditional Chinese Medicine, an ancient and beautifully intricate system of healing developed over centuries by the masters of balance, health, illness, disease, and treatment. Both traditions are rooted in the Taoist thinking that nature’s patterns and cycles supply us with the ideal example by which humanity can maintain balance and, thus, can thrive.

Extensive study of the natural world led the ancient masters to understand how nature’s cycles are mirrored in human life. The natural world adapts, responds to, and interacts with all beings, and that includes us. Nature is a reliable tool in the study of humanity because, while we are all a part of nature, nature is not fundamentally human. Plants, bacteria, and animals can all survive just fine—in some cases, much better—without us, but we cannot survive without them.

In the 1960s, interest sparked in bringing acupuncture to the Western world, but teachers of Traditional Chinese Medicine were unavailable due to the political situation with China. However, Five Element theory, although more esoteric, has its roots in Japan, Taiwan, and Korea, and thus was more accessible. So a varied group of healing arts practitioners interested in acupuncture gathered and began to study. One of the group’s members, a physiotherapist and naturopath from the United Kingdom, J. R. Worsley, decided to travel to the Far East, as it was called at that time, for further study. In the late 1960s, Worsley broke from most of his peers to teach his own vision of Five Element acupuncture in the Midland of England. In the 1970s, my Plant Spirit Medicine teacher, Eliot Cowan, a student of J. R. Worsley, learned what was then termed Five Element Classical Acupuncture. With more than two decades of experience as a skilled acupuncturist and through his extensive study with plant medicine healers, Eliot eventually created the system of healing called Plant Spirit Medicine.

The ancient healers knew that each dynamic of life—our emotions, our experiences, and our physical bodies—are meant to support and supply the energy necessary to carry out the divine purpose given to us by our Creator, what they termed ‘Divine Destiny.’ They also taught that only from a place of balance and harmony can we truly be of service to others.

The fundamental teachings of balance and harmony, of movement and change, of community and connection are encoded within the very soul of the seasons. Instead of resisting or conquering illness and imbalance, one learns how to move and dance with life’s passages to create and maintain harmony and balance. Within this dance, we can come to fully grasp that movement, change, and flow are all signs of life, and that all are to be welcomed and embraced.

The Five Elements

In the world of science, an element is a base material that cannot be broken down into further substances. In Chinese medicine, the five elements are seen as base aspects of the natural world, each being fundamental to support life.

Five Element theory teaches that the fundamental elements of Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water hold particular resonances with the corresponding seasons of Spring, Summer, Harvest, Fall, and Winter. In addition, each element possesses a corresponding core emotion. The five core emotions are Anger, Joy, Sympathy, Grief, and Fear. Additionally, the elements hold particular resonances of color, sensory organs, and sound (see table below).

Note: The names of these elements (and their corresponding emotions) are capitalized because each is seen as a unique presence, a being, if you will, with distinct influences, roles, characteristics, and patterns. The fundamental elements along with their associated core emotions are given great importance in assisting the Five Element/Plant Spirit Medicine healer to determine where a clients’ imbalance lies and how to treat those imbalances in order to restore balance and harmony.

This is only a thumbnail sketch of Five Element theory. The wisdom encoded within this beautifully rich and complex system intended to maintain health and balance extends far beyond the scope of this book. Although helpful, it is not essential for you to remember all the characteristics and functions of a particular element. Nor must you fully comprehend Five Element theory to receive the healing offered by the wisdom of the seasons.

3

The Five Elements and the

Five Core Emotions

The dynamic of relationship is central to Five Element and Plant Spirit medicines. Relationship is central to every single aspect of life. The balanced relationship between mankind and the natural world offers rich lessons about resilience, ease of movement, and adaptation. The medicine encoded within the five seasons generously and efficiently offers us continual examples of how to achieve perfect balance and harmony in body, mind, emotions, and spirit.

The five elements, along with the five core emotions, work in concert with one another, to seamlessly deliver the spiritual, emotional, and physical nourishment necessary for responding to life’s challenges, and ultimately, to thrive. Similar to the pieces of a mechanical clock, this dynamic system comprises seemingly endless parts, all moving and shifting together with Precision. Though each separate part has a purpose and a function, it performs its function as part of the whole.

For example, the trees in a forest possess a vast underground network of communication, one that involves their tree neighbors, plus all the other flora and fauna down to the tiniest fungi. While this network of communication supports individual trees and plants, it also connects the entire forest community. When a stressor befalls one, other forest beings respond by sending nutrients and energy to the struggling one. Further, a parent tree reaching the end of its life will participate in its own death by sending its nutrients out to nearby offspring, allowing them to more fully mature to someday become the next parent tree. Finally, the aging tree gives up its own body as it returns to the earth, enriching the soil. In this way, the entire forest remains viable.

Like the trees of a forest, the five elements of Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water encompass and inform each season of life. Each element has unique properties and resonance, and each, in turn, is held by and influenced by the others. All are essential to maintaining balance and harmony to all of Earth’s beings. The five fundamental elements are considered by the sages to be critical to our health and well-being, offering the support and resiliency we need to carry out our divine purpose on Earth.

Our Emotions: Signposts Along the Road of Life

The five core emotions of Anger, Joy, Sympathy, Grief, and Fear are inextricably woven into the fabric of our everyday lives. Our emotions move us. They inspire us to build grand mansions, write soul-stirring music, and create fantastical art. Emotion drives us to create a cure for horrible disease or to design a better doorknob. They motivate us to create things designed to make our lives more comfortable or interesting or safe.

Like the seasons, our emotions are designed to flow naturally from one state to another, each one supporting the others. Just as the seasons innately flow in a continuous progression, our balanced emotions move and transform our lives with fluidity. And, like all of the natural world, when something is amiss, we have an inherent tendency to seek balance and harmony.

Emotions are our personal vibrational compass, serving as guideposts along the transit of life’s seasons. Our emotional responses contain important clues to who we are and how we respond to our world. They can show us our strengths and our vulnerabilities, our courage and our reticence, our generosity and our need to withhold. The five core emotions of Anger, Joy, Sympathy, Grief, and Fear contain keys to help us build better relationships, to overcome hardship, and to bring our visions to fruition.

Our bodies are created with the capacity to resonate via the full spectrum of emotions for a very good reason. For instance, the guiding energy of anger reminds us to set or restore healthy boundaries and to respect the boundaries of others. Without joy, we would lose the rich and heart-felt experience of connection. Lacking sympathy, we can fail to understand and attend to the plight of others. Without grief, we become frozen in our loss, unable to truly value what we once loved so dearly, blocking us from future love and connection. Without fear, we lose the ability to perceive danger or respond to our fears from a place of intuitive wisdom.

The ability to decipher the wisdom embedded within our emotions is directly proportional to our willingness to become intimately acquainted with them. To fully master the ways our emotions move us, we must become familiar with both their light and dark sides. We must come to know the depth of our grief as well as we experience the expansiveness of joy. We must illuminate both the darkness of our anger and the brilliance of our generosity. We must be willing to explore our deep-seated fears of survival, death, and the unknown. We must become aware of the stories we tell ourselves about the nature of our feelings. Without emotional self-awareness, it’s easier to be buffeted about by life’s challenges, rudderless and powerless to affect true change.

Our feelings are meant to alert us to when our life is in balance and when it’s not. But many of us have been taught that trusting our heart—the organ many spiritual disciplines consider to be the seat of our emotions—is simply too risky and unreliable. We even might have been told it is just plain dangerous. Though we may yearn for joy and the sweetness of life, our anger feels too volatile, our grief a bottomless pit of despair. Perhaps we have taken on the belief that expressing our darker emotions isn’t good for us. Maybe we have been told that lingering too long in these uncomfortable feelings would create more of the same. Being emotionally stuck, however, is the consequence of the inability and/or the unwillingness to express our emotions quickly and in a manner appropriate to the circumstance.

Some feelings are uncomfortable, so we shy away from experiences that might trigger them. Some emotions evoke dark stories we have created to make sense of difficult situations. When confronted by powerful feelings and lacking a creative way to engage in meaningful action—action that brings about balanced change—we often push our unwanted emotions far below the surface. Sometimes we do this with the aid of numbing distractions like food, sex, electronic devices, drugs, or self-created crises. These sorts of distractions, however pleasurable at the time, can lead to ever-increasing emotional volatility and a sense of victimhood. Unexpressed emotion, over time, will fester and congeal in the body, only to surface at the most inopportune moments. As a result, we’re likely to blame the person, politician, or news story unfortunate enough to trigger our reactivity.

In trying to manage our deep feelings, the fearful mind creates a story about our experience and then projects these stories onto the world around us. Treating our emotions like the proverbial neglected stepchild, we are destined to become detached, hyper-reactive, and overly critical. We might skillfully point out our mother-in-law’s cold indifference while ignoring our partner’s feelings of isolation and loneliness because we have disconnected. The callous disregard of our government officials may constantly enrage and distract us, masking our deep need for balanced fathering. We might despise the homeless or the mentally ill because they remind us of our own feelings of powerlessness and neediness and loss. We might quickly judge the anger in others as evil instead of taking responsibility for our own imbalanced relationship with anger. In the denial of our anger imbalance, we might react to boundary violations with unkind, destructive, or hateful behaviors toward others.

Woefully, little sacred space exists in our culture for the expression of authentic emotion. Instead of being properly initiated into the wonderful world of feelings, we are taught to judge (or discount or dismiss) our feelings, to criticize them as bad, wrong, or inappropriate. Instead of shining the light of truth onto the nature of our emotional responses, authentically feeling and then releasing them, we train the mind to analyze difficult situations; we move away from our uncomfortable feelings to make rational decisions. In our need to detach from our discomfort and our bodies, we explain away or spiritualize our emotions. (Love is the only answer!) We may come to believe that our expert rationalization is far superior to honestly expressing our emotions as they arise. On the contrary, those challenging emotional states—especially the ones we label bad or negative—are invitations to make choices in keeping with our Divine Destiny.

Dancing with Our Emotions

Most young children emote freely in response to their everyday world. Children giggle and frown. They earnestly cry out in their sadness and bitterness and grief. They pitch fits of anger when their outer world refuses to respond to their inner needs. Generally, the adults around them find these emotional expressions amusing and perfectly normal.

Eventually, more often than not, we are told to grow up and settle down and be good. When expressing strong emotion, we may be spanked or called names like crybaby or sissy. Sadly, many of us received these painful messages early in life.

Often, big girls are taught not to express anger but to instead smile and look pretty. Even very young boys are told not to cry or show vulnerability. Shake it off! is the prescribed response to pain and hurt. Anything less shows weakness—something to be avoided at all costs.

Early messages enforcing myths such as Boys must never be weak and Girls should be quiet and polite are imprinted on our psyches long before adulthood. My own childhood was filled with messages similar to these. Was yours?

My Emotional Journey: Learning Emotional Mastery

I have always felt my world intensely—some may say, theatrically. I’ve been called a drama queen a time or two. Though the reasons for my emotionality are varied and complex, I have worked hard to become a master of my emotional responses rather than their hyper-reactive slave. Mastery, of course, is always a work in progress.

My emotional expressiveness has caused me to be labeled too sensitive, over-reactive, an attention-seeker. I behaved as if I had an emotional weather station, and I was the forecaster. In the past, if anyone so much as hinted that I was being too emotional, that I should calm down, I promptly emoted all over everything and everyone. No reactivity there, right? Back then, I didn’t realize the finely tuned internal sensor I possessed