WHAT SEASONS CAN TEACH US ABOUT OUR PATIENTS

How time reveals what one session cannot.

What One Session Can—and Can’t—Show You

When someone comes in, you read the pulse. You observe the tongue. You assess their pattern in that moment. You build a treatment based on what’s in front of you.

This works. It’s how you practice.

But a single session shows you a snapshot. What you’re seeing may be how their system is organized today. In this room. In this weather. At this point in the year.

What Emerges Over a Year

When you follow someone through the seasons, something shifts in how you understand them.

The person who comes in with anxiety in January and seems different in June isn’t necessarily a different system. The season seems to change how their constitution expresses itself.

Watch what happens:

One patient may always struggle in late summer. It doesn’t matter what you treat in spring—something about the transition, the shift from outward to inward, seems to destabilize them. That pattern might reveal their system struggles with grounding, the shift from activity to nourishment.

Another patient may move through late summer easily but develop insomnia in December. Winter’s depth and darkness may activate something. That pattern could tell you their foundational resources are adequate in moderate cold, but deep cold becomes harder to meet.

A third patient may be stable until the days shorten. Then something shifts. Same system, different seasons—the constitutional reality begins to look different.

Reading the System Through the Seasons

Seasonal patterns seem to offer constitutional clues.

When you watch someone across a year, you may begin to notice:

• How does their system meet heat? Do they burn out? Stay organized? Overheat?
• How do they meet cold? Do they collapse? Harden? Stay resourced?
• Which transitions appear easier? Where do they fragment?
• Where does their system seem stable and where vulnerable?
• What time of year might they need most support?
• When might you be able to step back?

A person who struggles every December may not have random winter depression. Their system might be showing you something: perhaps their foundational strength isn’t adequate for deep winter. Or their Shen may lose its anchoring when light diminishes. Or their nervous system may struggle to settle without external stimulation.

That kind of reading seems different from what a single session offers.

How This Changes Your Practice

Seasonal observation might shift from “I treat winter insomnia” to “I’m watching how this system meets winter. What resources might it need?”

It could shift from protocol toward precision. You might not apply a standard winter formula, but instead ask: Does this person need support entering winter? During it? Transitioning out?

Over time, you may begin to predict. You might recognize which patients often need extra support in autumn. Which ones may get sick in early winter. Which ones seem to thrive in spring but struggle in summer. And you could potentially prepare them before the season shifts.

The Constitution Beneath the Seasons

Over years of watching, a pattern may emerge: the same response each year.

Some people seem to be fundamentally summer people. They’re organized in heat and light. They struggle in cold and darkness. That might be constitutional.

Some people may be winter people. They need the quiet and inward. They seem to struggle with summer’s pace. Possibly constitutional.

Some people may have difficulty with every transition. That might suggest their system struggles with adaptation.

Why This Changes the Work

Seasonal work may not just be symptom management. It could be constitutional assessment at a different scale of time.

A person who comes in once for seasonal treatment might get relief. A person who stays connected through the seasons, who lets the medicine help them move through the year, may have something deeper shift.

Their system might learn how to transition. How to ground. How to stay resourced. That takes time. It takes seasons.

The Work

This is how we think about seasonal practice. Not as protocols. But as observation—watching a system meet the year and paying attention to what we see.

When you practice this way, you may see constitution more clearly. You may see where a system will likely struggle and where it will likely thrive.

You may learn to support at the moment of transition, not crisis. To prepare while abundance is still present.

This is the medicine at the scale of seasons.