by Jiling Lin, LAc
Five Elements Lifestyle Medicine for Seasonal Living <br/><br/><a href="https://jiling.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast">jiling.substack.com</a>
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🇺🇲
Publishing Since
9/1/2024
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January 1, 2025
<p><strong>Hi! I’m Jiling</strong>, an acupuncturist, herbalist, and artist in coastal southern California bridging medicine and expression through my Ventura acupuncture clinic, Five Elements classes, and Elemental book-in-progress that interweaves nature, art, movement and ritual for thriving personal and ecological wild beauty. Learn more about me <a target="_blank" href="https://www.jilinglin.com/about">here</a>, join events <a target="_blank" href="https://www.jilinglin.com/events">here</a>, and get acupuncture <a target="_blank" href="https://www.jilinglin.com/schedule">here</a>. Enjoy this January 2025 newsletter! Get monthly letters at <a target="_blank" href="https://jiling.substack.com/">Jiling.Substack.com</a></p><p>~</p><p>Happy New Year!</p><p></p><p>Chinese legends say that on the night of the Lunar New Year, the great monster 年 nian traipses through town wreaking havoc. So villagers make some noise: firecrackers, drums, gongs! Everyone wears red. They hang red paper on front doors with lucky words to dispel harm and welcome beauty. Nian flees to his cave. The villagers are saved for another year. <strong>Legends and traditions continue.</strong></p><p></p><p>Lunar New Year is the biggest holiday of the year in my ancestral lands of Taiwan and China. People still light fireworks, honor ancestral rituals, and hang 春聯 chun lian— or lucky words— for this intact ancient tradition of clanging out the old and banging in the new. We still wear red. Clean our homes. Light incense. Families gather to eat circular foods around circular tables, symbolic of 團圓 tuan yuan, unity and harmony. <strong>The circle comes together again.</strong> The disparate threads of our scattered communities and experiences reunite. We start fresh. Alone and together. Circling.</p><p></p><p>年 Nian means year. The monster represents the year ahead, full of unknown beauty and terror. We stand at the edge, gazing down the abyss. What lies ahead?</p><p></p><p>In protecting ourselves from the nian-monster, we adorn ourselves and our homes to welcome delight, abundance, ease— all that we wish to call in. We clean and shine to make space for loveliness to reenter. We hang the word 春 chun, or spring, upside down. The word for “upside down,” 倒 Dao, sounds like 到 dao, or to arrive. Painting “spring” on red paper and sticking it on the door upside down, we welcome spring’s arrival.</p><p></p><p><strong>Lunar New Year honors the first new moon of the new year</strong>, the first full darkness. We begin again. Soon, the birds return. The first buds of spring pop open. But we must first survive the dark. Court the monster. January and February can be dark, cold, and destructive. We survive together, shoulder to shoulder, clanging drums and chimes, grinding ink, writing lucky words that remind us of who we are and what we hold dear. We uplift our collective light to the sky, come clouds, storms, darkness. We stand together.</p><p></p><p>The next year— and next four years— will be ______________.</p><p></p><p><strong>We</strong><strong> fill in the blanks. </strong><strong>We</strong><strong> choose our words. </strong><strong>We</strong><strong> choose our destiny.</strong></p><p></p><p>What new year stories and traditions surrounded your childhood— and the lives of your ancestors? What still feels pertinent or poignant today? How are you adapting and honoring ancient ways for modern days? Which powerful words and phrases guide your way?</p><p></p><p><strong>May this new year of the Wood Snake slither luscious loveliness into your life.</strong> Call out your intentions and deepest heart’s desires, paint them on your door, and may those flowers bloom, bloom, bloom.</p><p></p><p>Tea & Ink: An Invitation</p><p>Come make 春聯 chun lian and sip tea with me, Madeleine Colvin, and other beautiful humans in Koreatown at Madeleine’s new Tile Cat Teahouse! We’re both first generation Asian-American women, offspring of flowing ink and tea, experimental bridge-walkers and culture-weavers extraordinaire. Come join us!</p><p></p><p>We’ll grind ink the way my 爺爺 yeye grandpa taught me with traditional Chinese art tools from Madeleine’s artist grandmother. Play with mark-making skills that translate across any fluid artistic medium to reignite creativity for the new year. Experiment with auspicious Chinese words and phrases for traditional chun lian or write in English, and bring home your own chun lian for the year ahead!</p><p></p><p>Wood Snake Astrology</p><p>I love these two annual Chinese astrology forecasts. They’ll usually publish new forecasts for the new year sometime soon.</p><p>* Artist <a target="_blank" href="https://www.tigereyeastrology.com/forecasts">Yu Hua Meng</a> (missTANGQ)</p><p>* <a target="_blank" href="http://www.tigersplayastrology.com/tigers-play">Gregory David Done, LAc</a></p><p></p><p>Auspicious Dates</p><p>* Lunar New Year is January 29. Light incense, sip tea, play music, write lucky words— do something to mark this transition, or intentionally do nothing and rest into the darkness of the first new moon of 2025.</p><p>* My birthday— the final year of my 30s— falls near the lunar new year. I’m wearing red, painting rainbows, and opening to wonder.</p><p>* Schedule your <a target="_blank" href="https://www.jilinglin.com/schedule">acupuncture</a> or <a target="_blank" href="https://www.jilinglin.com/coach">creative coaching</a> for the fresh year— and I’ll see you on the Harmon Canyon trails for <a target="_blank" href="https://www.jilinglin.com/events">Ventura plant walks</a> next month!</p><p></p><p>❤️ May this be the best season of your life,</p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.jilinglin.com/">Jiling Lin, L.Ac.</a> • Acupuncturist, herbalist, artist • <a target="_blank" href="https://www.jilinglin.com/">JilingLin.com</a></p> <br/><br/>This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://jiling.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1">jiling.substack.com</a>
December 1, 2024
<p><strong>Hi! I’m Jiling</strong>, an acupuncturist, herbalist, and artist in coastal southern California bridging medicine and expression through my Ventura acupuncture clinic, Five Elements classes, and Elemental book-in-progress that interweaves nature, art, movement and ritual for thriving personal and ecological wild beauty. Learn more about me <a target="_blank" href="https://www.jilinglin.com/about">here</a>, join events <a target="_blank" href="https://www.jilinglin.com/events">here</a>, and get acupuncture <a target="_blank" href="https://www.jilinglin.com/schedule">here</a>. Enjoy this month's May 2025 newsletter! Get monthly letters at <a target="_blank" href="https://jiling.substack.com/">Jiling.Substack.com</a></p><p>~</p><p>Hello friend,</p><p></p><p>Short days, long nights— <strong>it’s the darkest time of year.</strong> Embrace your bearish hibernatory need to slow down. Savor the in-between spaces, the mysteries therein.</p><p></p><p><strong>How do you celebrate the longest night of the year?</strong> Winter Solstice arrives on December 21. Welcome the darkest darkness, the slow return of light. Here are seven Winter season practices to light up your life.</p><p></p><p><strong>Winter Lifestyle Medicine Ideas</strong></p><p>* <strong>Play with your dreams.</strong> Write them down, draw them out, speak them aloud. See what messages your Dream Self has for you, what patterns light up when you pay attention.</p><p>* <strong>Light candles.</strong> Let the dark— be dark. Use soft lighting, like candles, to illuminate smaller pools of light than harsh overhead lighting. Bask in Fire’s warm flickering glow.</p><p>* <strong>Practice yin or restorative yoga before bed</strong>. Gentle movement wiggles out accumulated tensions from the day. Try Legs-Up-The-Wall (viparita karini) or Reclined-Butterfly (supta badha konasana) fully supported with pillows and blankets.</p><p>* <strong>Meditate for five minutes a day</strong>, first thing in the morning. Set a timer if you want. Sit with your steaming mug of coffee, tea, or whatnot. Gentle into your breath, body, and mind.</p><p>* <strong>Make millet congee</strong> with turkey tail and other medicinal mushrooms, adaptogens like astragalus and goji, and warming spices like cinnamon and ginger.</p><p>* <strong>Stay warm</strong>. Soak your feet in hot ginger tea before bed. Drink warm soups. Sip chai tea. Wrap yourself in the warmth of beloved kin and nourishing activities.</p><p>* <strong>Scribble</strong>. Winter season is Water Element season. Tap into Water’s depth and flow with watercolor paints, breath-integrated art, and freeform imaginative creative play.</p><p>Annual Reflections</p><p><strong>What lit you up this year? What’s coming in the new year? </strong>Here’s some sweetness from my year!</p><p></p><p><strong>Clinic Highlights</strong></p><p>* Seeing athletes do their sports again after long breaks from injury or pain— especially getting surfers surfing again after extended periods away from Mama Pacifica.</p><p>* Midwifing folks through pregnancy— and continuing support through postpartum and beyond!</p><p>* Meeting multiple generations of patients’ immediate and extended families.</p><p>* Seeing herbs work! I’ve seen some profound shifts with formulas for hot flashes, dysmenorrhea, stress, and more.</p><p>* When small lifestyle changes make big impact! Walking, relaxing teas, removing food triggers…</p><p>* Seeing pet photos, hearing love life updates, and living vicariously through patients’ Big Adventures. So much gratitude!</p><p></p><p><strong>Personal Delights</strong></p><p>* Surfing in southern Taiwan and feasting our way through northern Taiwan</p><p>* Spring desert teaching and travels</p><p>* Summer staycation: local surfing, hiking, biking and backpacking</p><p>* Hot springs backpacking trip along the California coast</p><p>* Backpacking to alpine lakes in the Sierra Nevada</p><p>* Ohio writer’s residency— and completing (mostly) draft 1 of my book-in-progress (2026 publication? In the works!)</p><p></p><p><strong>What’s Coming in 2025</strong></p><p>* CREATIVE COACHING: I am now offering <a target="_blank" href="https://www.jilinglin.com/coach">virtual coaching calls</a>!</p><p>* FEBRUARY: Bimonthly Plant Walks with <a target="_blank" href="https://www.venturalandtrust.org/events">Ventura Land Trust</a> begins— check my <a target="_blank" href="https://www.jilinglin.com/events">Events</a> page for updates!</p><p>* MAY: <a target="_blank" href="https://www.midwestwomensherbal.com/">Midwest Women’s Herbal Conference</a> Elemental immersion in Wisconsin</p><p>* ADVENTURES: Surfing C-street and beyond, backpacking, bike-packing, Insight meditation retreat, Writing Residency #2 somewhere lovely!</p><p></p><p><strong>How ‘bout you?</strong> I would love to hear some of your 2024 delights and upcoming 2025 adventures!</p><p></p><p>Here’s one of my favorite poems for seasonal transitions:</p><p></p><p>Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn,</p><p>a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter.</p><p>If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things,</p><p>this is the best season of your life.</p><p>— Wumen Huikai (1183 - 1260 CE), translated by Stephen Mitchell</p><p></p><p>春有百花秋有月，</p><p>夏有涼風冬有雪，</p><p>若無閒事掛心頭，</p><p>便是人間好時節。</p><p>— 無門慧開，《無門關》第十九則</p><p></p><p></p><p><strong>May this Winter Solstice darkness be a fertile resting ground for the swirling waters of your life to settle.</strong> No mud, no lotus. I look forward to celebrating and supporting your flowering and blooming— and our collective Wild Beauty— into 2025 and beyond! Thank you for being part of my life.</p><p></p><p>❤️ May this be the best season of your life,</p><p>Jiling</p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.jilinglin.com/">Jiling Lin, L.Ac.</a> • Acupuncturist, herbalist, artist • <a target="_blank" href="https://www.jilinglin.com/">JilingLin.com</a></p> <br/><br/>This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://jiling.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1">jiling.substack.com</a>
October 1, 2024
<p><strong>Hi! I’m Jiling</strong>, an acupuncturist, herbalist, and artist in coastal southern California bridging medicine and expression through my Ventura acupuncture clinic, Five Elements classes, and Elemental book-in-progress that interweaves nature, art, movement and ritual for thriving personal and ecological wild beauty. Learn more about me <a target="_blank" href="https://www.jilinglin.com/about">here</a>, join events <a target="_blank" href="https://www.jilinglin.com/events">here</a>, and get acupuncture <a target="_blank" href="https://www.jilinglin.com/schedule">here</a>. Enjoy this newsletter from October 2024! Get monthly letters at <a target="_blank" href="https://jiling.substack.com/">Jiling.Substack.com</a></p><p>~</p><p>Hello friend,</p><p></p><p>Rain drip drops. I’m warm in the <a target="_blank" href="https://unitedplantsavers.org/deep-ecology-artists-fellowship/">UpS</a> yurt at what’s become my writing desk. My right thumb is sore— injured, really— from scribbling over 300 meandering eventual-book pages in three weeks. Copper ink ran out today. Black ink barely remains. Pens and papers surround me. Watercolors and nuts from the forest floor. Slabs of bark. Detritus of a writing life.</p><p></p><p>The rain pounds heavier. I wonder where yesterday’s busy squirrel is now, the wiggling snake in the pond, the slow turtles on the Medicine and Oak Trails. One more week. I’m ready to hug hubby Ben, surf my beloved C-street home break, and walk the paths closest to my heart. And, I’m not ready to leave this Heart Pond I’ve swam in daily, this long desk smooth from love and art, these paths and plants that have grown close to my heart.</p><p></p><p>I wrote the below for future artists-in-residence here— and for anyone living a creative life— that’s you!</p><p></p><p>~</p><p>It’s okay to stop. There are seasons of action, and seasons of rest. The seasons are cyclical, not linear. Their chapters and patterns shift.</p><p></p><p>When you came here, you committed to stopping, and sensing. You are making, yes— a dreaming and creating process that is generative, imaginative, and rooted in natural rhythms. But you are not pushing. You are making just to make, and not to produce. Process over product.</p><p></p><p>Your steps pile over each other, pressing a path into the leaves, an old path, walked by many before you, but obscured by leaves that keep falling.</p><p></p><p>You carve long lines of movement across the pond, lines that ripple out to the carp, frogs, minnows, turtles, and snakes, then get reingested by the body of water that keeps flowing.</p><p></p><p>You step out into the night to watch the sky, your hair tangled in leaves and cobwebs, naked and unafraid.</p><p></p><p>This is your life now. Nothing came before, nothing comes after. Everything came before, everything comes after.</p><p></p><p>You nestle into trees, wiggle into grasses, slide into leaves. Your words, drawings, meanderings step on each other, stomping out a new path on an old path covered in leaves, more clear as the sun rises, and you begin again.</p><p></p><p><strong>Recommendations</strong></p><p>* 🌕<strong> </strong><a target="_blank" href="http://jilinglin.com/schedule"><strong>Get acupuncture</strong></a>. See you soon, Ventura folks! Please remember to cancel or reschedule at least 48 hours before your appointment to avoid charges. The holiday season will be here soon so inquire for acupuncture gift cards, or share personalized <a target="_blank" href="http://jilinglin.com/heartcopy">poetry</a> with someone you love!</p><p>* 🌿 <a target="_blank" href="https://blog.mountainroseherbs.com/tea-blending-and-ceremony"><strong>Tea Blending & Ceremony</strong></a> Mountain Rose Herbs blog & video</p><p>* <strong>🐝 </strong><a target="_blank" href="https://www.sierraclubindependentaction.org/endorsements"><strong>Sierra Club Elections Endorsements</strong></a>. Vote for the Earth!</p><p>* <strong>🌊 </strong><a target="_blank" href="https://www.sierraclub.org/california/2024-endorsements-scc-political-committee"><strong>Sierra Club CA Legislature Endorsements</strong></a>. Thanks for voting!</p><p>* 🌺 <a target="_blank" href="https://youtu.be/Y3YBRw236Kg?feature=shared"><strong>The Art of the Herbal Interview</strong></a>, HerbRally x Mountain Rose Herbs (me, Mason Hutchinson, Rosalee de la Foret, Thomas Dick… and Rosemary Gladstar!)</p><p></p><p>❤️ May this be the best season of your life,</p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.jilinglin.com/"><strong>Jiling Lin, L.Ac. 林基玲</strong></a></p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.jilinglin.com/">JilingLin.com</a> • <a target="_blank" href="https://jiling.substack.com/">Substack</a> • <a target="_blank" href="https://instagram.com/linjiling">Instagram</a> • <a target="_blank" href="https://www.facebook.com/JilingLAc/">Facebook</a> • <a target="_blank" href="https://insighttimer.com/jiling">Insight Timer</a></p> <br/><br/>This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://jiling.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1">jiling.substack.com</a>
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