Rolling with the seasons…

Last year I read Dr. Michael Finkelstein’s book, 77 Questions for Skillful Living: A New Path to Extraordinary Health, I suspect that what I’ve learned from the book and am working to adopt in my life will emerge as a theme in this blog. Something I like about the book is that Dr. Finkelstein is a doctor clasically trained in Western medicine who, through experience with the traditional medical system in the United States, has come to the conclusion that there are many things about our current medical system that are broken. One of the biggest issues he talks about is how our healthcare system is incentivized to treat symptoms in the short term, rather than the overall cause of health problems through a holistic, long term approach.

“77 Questions” guides readers through his holistic view of health, through an approach that integrates the health of the mind, body, and spirit. Before I lose too many of you here, let me say that I was very skeptical at first. However, Dr. Finkelstein gets out in front of the skeptics, at least he did for me, by taking what I interpreted to be a very common sense approach to the questions, rather than what I expected, which was a really “out there”, new age, flying above the clouds dialogue that wouldn’t have really flown for me. Most, if not all of the 77 questions just really made sense to me, as did his explanations.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about paying attention to the cycles of nature and seasons, as Dr. Finkelstein suggests throughout the book. He suggests resting in the winter, reviving outside in the spring, and reflecting in the fall. I’m not sure what he suggests in the summer, although my own interpretation is that summer’s a good season to defer to the heat and rest a bit, while at the same time recharging outdoors at lower activity levels than in the spring. This discussion of the seasons is a small part of what Dr. Finkelstein writes about regarding the natural rythms of life and how health problems can be partially caused by ignoring and forcing ourselves out of these rythms.

This seasonal approach makes sense to me and is one I’ve been thinkng about mostly as the winter hit and continues to hit here in NYC. It’s been a more extreme winter than usual, which has made it easier to get on board with the idea of resting inside more often during the winter, especially on the weekends for me. Whether or not this has been helping me sync with the rythms of nature isn’t clear to me yet. The benefit I’ve found is in finding another reason to help convice myself to back off on the weekends. Thinking more through the upcoming seasons, I can see trying to sync up better with the seasons being helpful. Along those lines, I’m excited to help out this spring and summer at a community garden up the street, which I just came across and is accepting new members (not the easiest thing to find here!). And my wife and I have always enjoyed spending time at the beach when we can in the summer. Fall has always been one of our favorite seasons as well.

Having lived in a number of different climates help to reinforce the idea that syncing with the seasons feels right to me, when I look back on places I’ve lived. During college, I lived in South Florida twice for a period of about eight to ten months each time. While each time I came back less prepared to face the harsh central Pennsylvania winters, I found myself missing the distinct change in seasons while living in Florida. I also missed the distinct seasons when living in Washington, DC. While I’m sure many would argue that DC has distinct seasons, with a few exceptions, my experience was that the seasons were all realatively muddled together there, from a slushy winter, rainy spring, humid summer, then usually a pretty nice fall. I’m enjoying the change of seasons here in NYC, even through the pretty extreme winter we’re having, at least compared to past winters in NYC.

So I don’t think I’m painting as clear of a picture as I’d like to right now about why syncing with the seasons resonates with me. That’s probably because I’m just thinking it through and trying to figure it out myself. One thing I do know now is that the idea makes sense to me and I look forward to trying it out this year. I’d like to revisit this idea toward the end of the year to see if the experiment has resulted in any additional clarity for me.