The Yellow Emperor’s Inner Classic (Huangdi Neijing, 黃帝內經) is all about how to blend our body with mother. The 2000 years old masterpiece in traditional Chinese medicine is statistics proven way of natural living. The ancient Chinese collected the data and summarize the patterns behind it and tired to explain the reasoning behind it with their scientific understandings.

Seasons and time are a major topic in the The Yellow Emperor’s Inner Classic. The book observed the detailed changes in the nature: how the animals behaved in different seasons, how the plants changed over time, the temperature changes and people’s emotion changes over time.

So, here we come to the winter, we’ve been advised to excise all day and all year around from 6am or earlier. People jugging around the Central Park in NYC in freezing snowy days in early morning or even before the dawn is quite common.  Is  it a right thing to do everyday and for everyone? At least , according to the Huangdi Neijing, the answer is No.

The Yellow Emperor’s Inner Classic (Huangdi Neijing, 黃帝內經) clearly written down the tips for us and the reasons behind it:

1. Generally speaking, winter is not a ideal time to do outdoor excises, here is the reason the classic book gave us: we should all get hints from other animals’ behaviors. In winter, most of the animals living in clod weather will be hibernated in the harsh weather. We, human, as a part of nature, should “hide” too. That means in winter, the Yang is low, the Yin is high, to better collaborate with the nature, we should “save our energy” too but not consume too much energy in our body.

2. For everyone, it is better to start your excise two hours after the dawn, that is usually 9am, when the land the warm up a little with the help of sunshine.

3. For senior citizens, a good and long – hour sleep is a better choice than getting up too early in the morning when the temperature is still too low and maybe harmful for your body.

Exercise is always good, but maybe we could adjust our timetable a little to collaborate with the nature.