Ten Autumn Sayings: Which Come from Medical Texts, Which Are Just Experience
Every year around this time, a forwarded "ten autumn taboos" inevitably appears in the family group chat.
I used to swipe past them without a look, until last autumn when I woke at four in the morning two weeks running and drifted through the workday like a sleepwalker. My mother said on the phone, "Autumn is here, gather yourself in a bit." I gave a half-hearted reply while I went digging through the sources, and as I read I discovered — these ten actually fall into four groups: some are original text from medical books, some are just experience, and some have nothing at all to do with the body.
1. Three That Come from the Huangdi Neijing
In the autumn passage of the "Basic Questions," "The Great Treatise on Regulating the Spirit in Accordance with the Four Qi," the original reads: "The three months of autumn are called receiving and leveling … go to bed early and rise early, arising together with the rooster; keep the will calm and peaceful, to soften autumn's severity; gather in the spirit and qi, so that the autumn qi stays level." This is an excerpted quotation (a paraphrase), and split apart it makes exactly three points:
1. Go to bed early and rise early. The ancients held that autumn qi governs "gathering in," and people should gather in along with it.
2. Keep the will calm and peaceful, to soften autumn's severity. Translated: don't get wildly elated or devastated; don't swing your emotions wide open and shut.
3. Gather in the spirit and qi, so that the lung qi is clear. Pull the thoughts you have scattered outward back in a little.
2. Four That Come from Folk-Saying Experience
4. At White Dew, don't bare your body. The original folk saying is "at White Dew don't bare your body; at Cold Dew don't bare your feet" — meaning after White Dew, stop showing your arms and legs.
5. Don't sleep facing the window at night. The old saying calls it "thief wind" — autumn wind slips in quietly and picks on people who are asleep.
6. Don't eat too much spicy food. Autumn dryness is real: your throat, nose and skin will protest together.
7. Don't sit long on stone benches or cold ground at night. Stone and ground conduct heat faster and more easily carry away your body heat.
3. One from Later Health-Cultivation Interpretation
8. Autumn is not the time for heavy sweating. This one is often attributed to the Huangdi Neijing, but it is really more of an extension by later health-cultivation writers: autumn governs gathering in, and heavy sweating is treated as "leakage." Today's principle is about the same — a light sweat from autumn exercise is fine; don't train to the point of collapse.
4. Two That Are Clearly Folk Custom
9. Choosing a day to avoid moving house or breaking ground. This belongs to the huangli tradition of selecting auspicious days; it is a cultural preference, not health advice.
10. Old rules tied to grave-sweeping and festivals. They differ from place to place; in essence they are a way of expressing respect.
Marking them out this way isn't to prove who's right and who's wrong, but to say: three are useful for your body, four are a reminder to you, one you can take as reference, and the remaining two are culture.
How I Plan to Spend This Autumn
- Change the blanket on the day of White Dew
- Be lying down before eleven at night, with the phone left in the living room
- One cup of warm water a day, and drop the habit of "reaching for something spicy"
- Switch exercise to brisk walking, no longer chasing "training up a heavy sweat"
- That "ten taboos" post in the group chat — this time I won't swipe past it
If your recent state has already affected your life — long-term inability to sleep, low mood, no appetite — please first see a doctor or a counselor; if you simply want a reference point to compare yourself against, you can put the trouble into one plain sentence, let 占卜迷指 recommend a suitable method and produce a chart and reading for you, which you can also export and save.
After all, autumn's lesson is to remind you to gather yourself back in.
Sources
- Original text of "The Great Treatise on Regulating the Spirit in Accordance with the Four Qi" from the "Basic Questions" of the Huangdi Neijing
- Xinhua, "The Beauty of the Seasons · White Dew" (with folk sayings and phenology)
- China Weather Network: Twenty-Four Solar Terms feature
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