The season of transition most people don't know exists, and how to come back to center as summer starts to shift

Let me take you back to my treatment room for a second.

For years, I could feel this exact time of year coming before the calendar told me. Late summer would roll around, and my schedule would start to wobble. Appointments got missed. People rescheduled, then rescheduled again. It was almost always the moms, honestly, caught in that back-to-school scramble where summer's easy rhythm suddenly flips into schedules, supply lists, earlier alarms, and everybody's routine shifting at once.

They were not being flaky. They were being human in a season of transition. Everything was changing, and their center of gravity was still catching up. Scattered, pulled in ten directions, a little ungrounded.

And here is the thing I want you to see, because it is the whole point of this piece: that scattered, everything-is-shifting feeling is not random. It is the signature of a specific season and a specific element. One that most people, even a lot of practitioners, do not realize exists.

Wait, there is a fifth season?

We are taught four seasons. Spring, summer, autumn, winter. Clean and simple.

But in Chinese medicine, there are five. Tucked into the turn between summer and fall is a fifth season, and it has its own element, its own organs, and its own particular medicine. We call it Late Summer, and it belongs to the Earth element.

You will not necessarily see it out your window yet. As I write this it is about ninety degrees, the leaves are still green, and it feels like the height of summer. Late Summer is not really about the weather outside. It is about a shift in energy, the subtle turn from summer's big, outward, yang expansion toward the quieter, inward gathering that autumn and winter will bring. It is the pause at the top of the breath, right before the exhale.

And that pause has a name, an element, and a job.

Late Summer and the Earth element

In Chinese medicine, the Earth element is the center. It is the steadying, grounding force, the ground under your feet, the thing that holds you stable while everything else moves.

The Earth element governs the Spleen and Stomach, which in Chinese medicine are the heart of digestion, not just of food, but of experience. The Spleen takes what you take in, food, information, life, and transforms it into usable energy. So Earth is the element of transformation and nourishment. It is how you take things in, break them down, and turn them into something that feeds you.

When your Earth element is strong and balanced, you feel it as groundedness. Centered. Rooted. Nourished. Able to hold steady while life changes around you, and able to care for others without running yourself into the ground. Think of the most solid, nurturing, dependable person you know, that is Earth at its best. I had a teacher who used to call Mother Teresa the quintessential Earth element, endlessly nurturing, steady, giving. Once you hear that, you never forget what Earth feels like.

The emotion of the Earth element is worry, or overthinking. (Hold that thought, because it is where we are headed next week.)

The season of transition and transformation

Here is why Late Summer lines up so perfectly with what I used to see in my practice.

Earth is the pivot. It sits right at the hinge of the year, between the outward, expansive energy of summer and the inward, gathering energy of fall. It is the great transition, the moment of turning. And transitions, even good ones, ask a lot of us. They ask us to let go of one rhythm and settle into another, and that in-between space can feel genuinely unsettling.

That is exactly what my clients were living. Summer was releasing its grip, school was pulling everyone into a new structure, and their systems were mid-turn, not quite in the old rhythm, not yet in the new one. Scattered schedules and forgotten appointments were not a character flaw. They were an Earth element in transition, looking for its center.

Which is the invitation of this whole season: come back to center. When everything around you is shifting, Late Summer asks you to root down, steady yourself, and nourish the ground you are standing on. Not to resist the change, but to meet it from a grounded place instead of a scattered one.

Try This: SP3 (Taibai) + geranium

When you want to help someone (or yourself) come back to center this season, I reach for the Spleen's home point.

SP3, called Taibai, is the source point of the Spleen channel, which means it has direct access to the whole Earth system. It is also the Earth point on the Earth channel, Earth within Earth, which is why it is so deeply grounding and centering. It is a beautiful point for strengthening the Spleen, steadying digestion, and grounding a scattered, overworked mind. When you feel pulled in ten directions, this is a point that helps you gather yourself back up.

You will find SP3 on the inner edge of the foot, just behind the ball of the big toe, in that little hollow where the skin changes from the sole to the top of the foot (what we call the border between red and white skin).

Pair it with geranium. Geranium is the iconic Earth element oil, grounding, balancing, and deeply nourishing, it helps settle worry and bring you back to steady. A lovely, rose-like floral that steadies the center.

Here is the practice. Put one drop of diluted geranium on SP3. Then hold it. Gentle contact, no pressing, no tapping. Just rest your fingertip there and let the oil settle in. Do both feet, breathing slowly.

A little bonus, for the curious: try rubbing that drop of geranium back and forth between SP3 and its neighbor SP4, along the inner arch of the foot. There is a lovely relationship worth noticing here, this little stretch of the Spleen channel is associated with helping balance blood sugar. And when you remember that sweet is the flavor of the Spleen in Chinese medicine, you can see why: the Spleen is the organ that governs how we take in and process the sweet. Point, oil, and flavor all pointing at the same thing. It is a fun rabbit hole to go down if you want to do some digging of your own.

For your clients

You will see this season all over your practice once you start looking.

The client who is suddenly overwhelmed by their own calendar. The one who cannot seem to settle, whose energy is scattered, who keeps rescheduling because everything feels like too much right now. The parent (often the mom) white-knuckling the back-to-school turn. These are Earth element people in a season of transition, looking for their center.

SP3 with geranium is a beautiful place to start, and it is easy to send home with them as a thirty-second grounding ritual. You are not just steadying them in the room, you are giving them something to reach for when the whole family is heading out the door at 7am and nobody can find their shoes.

And as always, if someone's scattered, worried, depleted feeling runs deep or has been there a long while, keep asking questions and stay curious about what else might be going on. This work is real support, and it is also completely okay to be the practitioner who notices when something needs a closer look.

Coming back to center

So here we are, at the turn of the year, in the season nobody told you about.

It still looks like summer out there, and that is fine. Late Summer is quieter than that. It is the pause, the pivot, the deep breath before the shift. And its whole invitation is to come home to your center while the world reorganizes itself around you.

So this week, find that little point on the inside of your foot, put a drop of geranium on it, and give yourself thirty grounded seconds. Root down. You cannot steady anyone else from a scattered place, so start with your own two feet on the ground.

Next week we go deeper into the Earth element, into what happens when all that transition tips us into worry and overthinking, and the point and oil I reach for when the mind will not stop spinning. (Here is a hint: it is a very different kind of spinning than the Fire element restlessness we talked about earlier this summer.)

Welcome to the fifth season. Let's get grounded.

Go deeper (free) inside the Collective

Want the full Late Summer training, the deep dive into the Earth element, the Spleen and Stomach, and a whole set of seasonal oil and point protocols? It is already waiting for you inside the Essentially On Point Collective, and when you join, it is yours. Come get grounded with us.

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