The Tao of Survival
Published in The Retreat Newspaper December 2023 issue No. 07
Winter is a time of survival. The cold slows the circulation of your body and thoughts, flaring up your seasonal depression, anxiety, and symptoms. Despite the promised relief of your seasonal self-care practices, you feel restless, and reliant on your matcha, workouts and many ways you prop yourself up until spring puts the fire back under you. You get stuck chasing adrenaline, not knowing that in your deepest core, you are full of life.
This is the message of the season, according to Taoist philosophy. Your source of vitality, healing and regeneration is not in your wellness hacks, but in your kidneys (the organ of winter). They hold your genetic potential and ability to survive, including your willpower, courage and even the adrenal steroids to power you through fear (the emotion of the kidneys).
The problem is that when you get caught in a chronic stress response, your instinct to survive can block your evolution. The impacts from your past experiences have a way of lingering in your bones (the body tissue of the kidneys), calcifying the mind into fearful programs that confuse your ability to release, change and move forward in daily life. This is what we call trauma, when the scars of ‘survival mode’ freeze you in patterns of addiction, suppression, and distraction against your will.
The good news is the kidneys are all about freeing you from this. Ruled by the element of water in Chinese medicine, they govern not only our urination, filtration and buffering systems but also the fluidity and perspective of the mind. They are on a constant mission of purification and transformation for you, trying to keep things flowing at all costs (that is the hallmark of health, after all). You were literally built to release.
As a physician, I’ve found the only rational way to heal diseases is not to treat them, but rather to restore the body’s ability eliminate what got in the way of its perfect design and function. Remember, your vitality is within you and there to nourish you, but it’s suppressed by the self-eroding chemistry of cortisol and struggle. This is where you come in.
If you’re willing to go beyond simply surviving, it begins with one question: can you commit to living in a way that (1) doesn’t add to the problem and (2) naturally eliminates it?
If so, apply that to every food, pill, practice, and environment in your life and you’ll learn what needs to naturally fall away. Maybe it’s the rigid workout protocols that keep your cortisol up, or the caffeine and cacao addictions that constantly spike your adrenaline. You may also want to bring life into your body with deeper breaths, and hydrating foods that move old waste through you easily. Maybe even practice putting down your phone, dropping your shoulders, and exhaling next time your thoughts try to convince you of impending disaster again.
The catch? It takes persistence. While your mind can likely think up many methods to create more fluidity in your life, your body only believes you through consistency. A foundational, kidney-deep restructuring can only be made with the qualities of the water element: Taoism says these are patience, commitment, perseverance, humility, perspective, and surrender. In time, this solid path lays the groundwork for a more tolerant, adaptable, and purposeful nervous system. In other words – freedom to live - which is what you are really after.
You will have to continue this way – this Tao - every moment of every day despite the seduction of more sophisticated methods. And as you begin to find stability, you might begin to sense the fulfilment, optimism, and strength that has always filled every portion of your body from the inside too. Just in time for spring.