Spring Begins Li Chun 立春 Febrary 4th – February 18th

Feb 7, 2025

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Join us as we explore the seasons of Asian Almanac this year — and learn how it impacts our bodies and our outlooks. Twice a month, we’ll discuss what’s happening in our environment. Find out how to flow with the seasonal changes and let them propel you along your journey toward optimum health.

We at Red Earth hope your 2025 is off to a great start.

Ours is! Many of you who have worked with us for any length of time will hear David reference the medical Asian Almanac, especially when he is working with longer-term or chronic health conditions. While we are already headlong into 2025 Western calendar, according to the medical almanac, the Solar Year starts on February 4th.

The part of the almanac that we want to share with you is sometimes called the 24 Qi Jie (氣節). Here, Qi means the environment or atmosphere we inhabit, and Jie means a node or “term” as in a defined time-period.

Bamboo also has nodes — those knuckle joints that separate each piece of bamboo. What drives this part of the almanac is the relation of the Earth to the Sun and how much light, and therefore heat, we (all living creatures) have to work with.

When you’re in the clinic, have you noticed that at the end of your treatment, David asks “How do you feel right now?” and “Let me know what changed in this session, and by how much?”

These questions helps a master practitioner know what your body needs for a successful treatment, and they invite you to pay attention to how you are in the moment — not how you felt in the past or how afraid you might feel in the future — but right NOW!

By sharing this information, we hope to equip you with a powerful tool to assist you to become and stay healthy. Remember, health is how our body responds to disharmony.

Observe the subtle changes of the seasons. Watch and listen to how your body responds to the interplay between it and the outside world. By paying attention to our own relationship with the world around us, we can understand better what we need to do to continue our health journey as we move through the seasons.

Think of these changes to the seasons like water and air “flows.” Swimming in water is much easier when we pay attention to the currents; likewise, navigating life takes less effort when we pay attention to flows of the seasons of life.

The 24 Qi Nodes track the movement of the sun as its light hits the Earth and indicate how much heat — or yang — is present in the environment (Qi). Basically, one qi node lasts 15 days and represents the movement of the sun relative to the earth 15 degrees.

The most important markers, as in the Western calendar, are the longest and the shortest days of the year and the two mid-points in between. However, unlike in the West, the ancestors in the East saw the Solstices and Equinoxes as the apex of each season rather than the start!

This marks one of the great strengths of this medicine — the power of observation. We want all our patients to hone this powerful tool in their own lives as they continue in their journey of taking control of their health so they can keep restoring their ability to heal.

Since food and nutrition are such important parts of our healing journey, we are including recipes created for each of the Qi nodes by one of David’s teachers, Liu Ming. Each one reflects how the qi of the food and qi of the season match.

These recipes are unmodified. Therefore, some of the ingredients may be found at Asian groceries. If you’re adventurous, you may want to give them a try.

Even if you don’t, please pay attention to the types of foods used in the recipe and how they’re prepared; they offer clues to what sort of fuel our bodies need to interact well with our environment throughout the seasons. Observation of this relationship is known as a form of self-cultivation and leads to a happier life.

Let’s dive in. Here are the first three Qi Nodes until the Spring Equinox on March 20^th.

Notice that third Qi Node ends with the Spring Equinox (our beginning of Spring).

Here is a rendering from David’s late Acupuncture Master, Dr. Bear, showing the relationship of the 24 Qi Nodes and how much Yin (cold) and Yang (warmth) exists at each note, in relationship to the angle of the sun as it strikes the Earth.