In general, when we mention organs here, we are talking about systems that are not exactly the same as the physical organs you’re familiar with. Please do not worry about your Spleen and Stomach organs unless you already had those concerns or your physicians have told you otherwise.
From one perspective in East Asian Medicine, we’re in the Earth element season – late summer. This is the time governed by the Spleen and Stomach, the organs responsible for taking in the world and transforming it into something usable. From our perspective, consumption and transformation happen on physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual levels. What we take in becomes us, unless we decide it’s not useful and let it go. We are doing this all the time but late summer, in particular, asks us to slow down and consider this process. There’s a particular kind of stillness that late summer asks of us. The frantic growth of spring has settled. The full expansion of summer has crested. What’s left is something quieter — ripening, gathering, digesting.
It makes sense, then, that late summer is the right moment to slow down around food.
Not diet. Not rules. Just attention.
The practice
Before you eat, sit down and pause. Not for a long time — a few breaths is enough. Notice the food in front of you: its color, its steam, its smell. This isn’t about performance or ritual for its own sake. It’s about arriving before you eat, rather than arriving three bites in, once your body has already caught up to what your mind started twenty minutes ago.
As you eat, notice the first bite. Notice Its textures. Where exactly on your tongue do you taste it? Are you feeling your body resisting the invitation to slow down or welcoming it with ease? Most of us eat at the pace of our thoughts, not the pace of our digestion — and Earth’s medicine is precisely about closing that gap. Slow your body. Slow your thoughts. Increase your awareness.
Why this season
The Spleen doesn’t just transform food. In this framework, it transforms everything we take in — impressions, conversations, obligations, our own thoughts. When the Spleen system is taxed, we describe it in strikingly literal language: things feel “hard to digest.” We say we’re “chewing over” a problem, that a piece of news is “hard to swallow.”
Late summer’s damp, heavy quality can weigh on this transformative capacity if we’re not careful — but it also offers a natural invitation to practice the opposite: presence, groundedness, the patience of actually digesting rather than just consuming.
A small commitment
Try one meal a day — even five minutes of it — without a screen, without multitasking, without eating standing at the counter. Just the food, the body, the breath.
It’s a small practice. Earth season isn’t about big gestures. It’s about return — coming back, again and again, to what’s right in front of us.
What do you notice? What changes after one meal like this? After a week of this? A month? Please actually share your observations with us!
Whether you’re new to Jennum O’Hara Acupuncture or have been in our care for years, this welcome packet has useful information for how to get the most out of your treatments with us.
Keep this to refer back to when a new symptom arises or you receive an unfamiliar treatment.
As always, reach out to us with any questions or concerns!