Navigating the era of COVID19 with Traditional Chinese Medicine

Perhaps isolating at home during this time, isn’t just an act of grace for our collective health and for the more vulnerable among us.  

Perhaps it is also an act of grace for ourselves.

We live in a society that reveres and oft demands constant productivity.  Collectively, we don’t honour the seasonal rhythms; the waxing and waning; the natural oscillations between growth and dormancy.   

And yet, here we find ourselves in an enforced and profound pause.  

 Even the great beasts of industry and economics have been bought to a standstill. All movement has ceased, bar the steady heartbeat of essential services. 

As individuals, we are also being invited into a place of stillness.  All that is unnecessary and unsustainable is falling away from our daily lives, and we are being led back to that which is most essential. 

In the Southern Hemisphere, we are also being called to embody this process of letting-go through our season of Autumn.  After the fecundity of Spring and the ripening of Summer, Autumn demands surrender.  Falling leaves join the refuse of the seasons yield, and the composting matter succumbs to the earth’s embrace.

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, Autumn is associated with the element of Metal, and corresponds to the Lungs and their paired organ, the Large Intestines.  As with Autumn, these organs are responsible for our body’s process of letting go, through the elimination of carbon dioxide and digested waste.  

Metaphysically, this function is mirrored as the letting go of that which we can no longer hold.  

 This is the act of grieving.  

We don’t just grieve the loss of the ones we love.
We grieve the loss of hopes, dreams, and relationships that once promised to hold us unconditionally.  
We grieve stolen or missed opportunities and the ghosts of past selves that can no longer find their way.   
We grieve ability and independence claimed by illness or ageing, or perhaps those to which we never had access.

So many of us are experiencing a sense of loss at this time –privileges we had once taken for granted;
time spent in the company of the ones we love; for some, their very livelihoods. 

As the myriad of ways we were once called to show up in the world falls away and the scaffolding of our everyday collapses,
we are forced to lay down many of the masks that we wear; our habituated patterns of living.

And we are left with the question, who are we in this time of pausing?

Questions of this nature are rarely answered easily, or with our rational mind.  Instead, we arrive at them via a non-linear process of searching, often not knowing quite what we are looking for.

But if we allow her, grief will take us by the hand, and lead us on a descent into the deepest recesses of our being.

This is the beginning of what is known as the hero/heroine’s journey. 

And at the end of this vast exhalation we may find ourselves in the pause that lingers between the next intake of breath.  A liminal space, where we may feel bereft and without purpose or direction.

 Many of us will find ourselves in this place, during this time of waiting.  

Without the external distractions and busyness that our previous lives held, we are being gifted the opportunity to truly linger here.  The shadows of past grief may appear.  Worn and outmoded ways of being may begin to call more loudly to us, resounding within these smaller spaces we’re occupying; between those whom we are sharing so intimately with – our partners, our children.

But know that these challenges and difficulties are the hallmark of transformation.  If we can resist the ‘doing’ and the ‘fixing’, and rest a little in this this dormancy of being, we will find that there is great purpose in this place.  For just as the formation of metal occurs deep under the earth, we must traverse our own darkness in order to alchemise old ways of being, into a new understanding of self. 

And when the time is right, we will emerge with a refined sense of insight and purpose.  

Just like the act of breathing, our lungs will again fill with a fresh intake of life and inspiration.  

 “Inspire”, at its root origin, literally means to breathe in. 

 It stems from the latin word “spiritus”, which means Spirit, or the breath of God.


This is the invitation of Autumn, and the medicine of Lung energy.   To have the courage to let go.  To allow the unravelling.  And to find renewal and divine inspiration from a place of deep surrender.


So, may we each bring some more curiosity and compassion to this time of waiting. 

 May each breath be a reminder of our innate capacity for surrender and renewal.  

And may we emerge from this season, to know ourselves anew.