WHAT’S YOUR SEASON?

Healing Principles and Recipes for Your Body Type

Brielle Kelly, Cherisse Godwin, Kristy Hsiao, Kelsin Press (SEPTEMBER) Softcover $21.95 (352pp), 978-0-9993114-2-4

An alternative medical practitioner (Brielle Kelly) and two culinary professionals (Cherisse Godwin and Kristy Hsiao) bridge the wisdom of traditional Chinese medicine with awareness of the relationship of seasonal changes to health and well-being in this guidebook to restoring vibrant health and preventing disease. Our bodies are designed to respond to the seasons, and part of that innate knowledge comes from having learned from nature how to be in balance amid change. For our ancestors, the ability to adapt to seasonal change meant the difference between thriving or losing the struggle to survive. Though much of humanity is no longer at the mercy of the most extreme seasonal changes, we are all hardwired to respond to the cycle of the seasons. “When our bodies are functioning efficiently, we possess a natural inclination to live and eat seasonally,” write Kelly, Godwin, and Hsiao, but there is a tendency to “get stuck” in our basic seasonal type, craving and eating foods that belong to it and ignoring seasonal change. Their book provides ways to identify our seasonal type and where we might be stuck, and gives dietary recommendations, tasty recipes, activities, and therapies for healing and rebalancing. The book takes a mindfulness-based approach to healthy living, touching on topics like slowing down the pace of life and returning to the basics, restoring balance and focusing on moderation, being proactive in disease prevention, having the mindset of nourishing instead of depriving the body, and making sustainable lifestyle choices for long-term health and vitality—all in accordance with the never-ending cycles of nature. Enlightening and encouraging, the book suggests that we awaken to, honor, and reap the benefits of what our bodies intrinsically know: how to be well, naturally.