My least favourite season to work is fall. Why? It is when most people get really ill/sick/hurt/diseases….
Heather and I went camping and were talking and realized an interesting fact. We are the first children in our ENTIRE family tree to be born into a home with electricity! All of our parents when they were born, most of them born on the farm. There was NO electricity at the house, or running water.
The significance of that is huge. When the sun went down, your ability to work outside was limited and inside was not much better with an oil lamp. So you basically had more ‘free time’. They got to relax and this is how it’s been for a thousand years. Your work time really revolved around sunlight hours.
Not so much anymore. It’s a 24/7/365 world. We got lights, phones and we are having some action. But humans just do not adapt as quick as you might like. While there are arguments over how much humans “evolve”. It is easy to see how much culture/society/technology has evolved in one lifetime. I have seen people farm with horses and the last tractor my dad used had 80′ coverage (that’s big, really BIG).
This summer we went to Heather’s mom’s house. It was 20×15 feet of rough plank, no insulation. It was very basic, this is north of Edmonton. I have a feeling it was a bit cool (freezing cold) in the winters. Another way currently we have adapted, all our houses are pretty warm vs that.
So what do you do? Take it easier come fall. As soon as you see the leaves start to change, take it all down a notch for a month or so. Then start to notice how much better you feel vs all of your friends complaining.
People often ask “what’s your top health recommendation?” Yeah… it’s not that easy. But a big one is get more rest for the months of September and October. As If you took all the dates off of my treatment notes, I could easily identify what treatments were in the fall. Just from the ailments.
In school we learn all about the importance of getting an acupuncture treatment at each season change to help the body adapt to the changing demands of each season. I thought that may have been helpful 100 years ago, but in my last 29 years of practice I have come to realize it’s still true.
I am pretty sure for most of us we are not built to just go 15 hours a day for months and months. I see ‘auto-immune’ ailments and I think, “hmm their immune system is hurting itself. Does that sound like a system that is self-regulating?” No of course not. Then I ask about sleep and it’s always under 7 hours, eating – they skip meals, bowel movements 4-8/week, water intake under 500ml….
I read a book once “The body book” it has some “obvious” but not generally followed rules.
10 Rules for Loving & Running Your Body (from The Body Book)
- Feed your body real food – choose whole, unprocessed foods over packaged or refined ones.
- Eat when you’re hungry – honor natural hunger cues instead of eating by habit or emotion.
- Hydrate often – water is essential for energy, digestion, and overall health.
- Move daily – your body is built for motion; exercise keeps it strong and resilient.
- Build strength – muscle supports your metabolism, posture, and long-term health.
- Rest and recover – sleep is non-negotiable for repair, memory, and well-being.
- Respect your body – accept it as uniquely yours; treat it with care, not punishment.
- Be consistent, not perfect – long-term habits matter more than quick fixes.
- Manage your mind – mental health, stress balance, and self-talk directly affect your body.
- Practice gratitude – see your body as a partner in life, not a problem to solve.
Anyway, life has a way of getting a hold of us. It’s a great idea to build in a short break at each season change. Have a look at what’s going on in your life. Do you like that? Is it going in a direction you like?
I tell this story at work all the time. A long time ago, in a cruise ship far away. Our little super hero (me) got a really cool job running a store. It was a mess when I took it over and I ended up working 15 hard hours a day. Then one day about 2-3 months into that someone found me unconscious on the floor. It seemed I was not built for that sort of work. So I cut it down to 12 hours a day, 7 days a week and did another 13 months of that. At the end of that I think I spent almost a year on a beach recovering.
All that to say I am not criticizing you. I have been there and done that. BUT!!! I also say. If you want a life of relative balance you will likely need a time out of balance to get there. Which is what I did. I did not expect it would be that hard but it was and I would do it again for what it has gotten me.
The rest of that story. After the year away, I went back and a business partner and I ran it each for 6 months and were off for 6 months. We got the hours down to likely 6-10/day (it depended on the day) which is easy stuff when someone is doing all the cooking and cleaning for us. We did that for around 10 years and it was fantastic.
I could see the potential in the job and decided to dig in and pay the price. If there was no potential, I would have left after the first few months as it was really hard. But life is hard and if you go hard for too long your body will “fail you”, but really who failed who?
But when in doubt go to Enderby for the best donuts and ice cream around.
Be Well,
Ward Willison R.Ac.
allbodycare.com
Kelowna Acupuncture & Other Natural Therapies