Finding the Joy: A Return to Center this Summer, in the Year of the Fire Horse
If this year has felt like a gallop you didn't quite sign up for, you're not imagining it. I myself feel like I’ve been in the corral taming a wild bronco. An interesting analogy considering I’m highly allergic to horses!
2026 is the Year of the Fire Horse — and while I don’t proclaim to have spent much time around horses, I’ve witnessed their passion and general nature: swift, spirited, and unwilling to be held back. Add fire to that temperament and you get an understanding of why this year is one defined by acceleration. Global events, personal transitions, the pace of daily life — so much of what we've moved through this year has arrived fast, bright, and a little unpredictable. Turbulence has been the undertone humming beneath 2026, even in its quieter moments. I’ve taken to referring to these twists in momentum as the year of the fire horse ‘bucking again’. This year will not be tamed. And there is joy in that.
In Traditional Chinese Medicine, summer belongs to the Fire element, and Fire's emotion is joy. And this mid summer we also reach the mid-point for this year of the fire horse. Are you seeing a theme here? It’s hot out there, and within ourselves! Physiologically, this is when our bodies run hottest and busiest: longer days, more activity, more stimulation, more doing. Our nervous systems are wired to rise to meet a season like this — cortisol and adrenaline keep pace with the extra daylight and the extra demands. It's the most yang time of the year, energy expressed outwardly, expansively. We’ve got this. Even though it may feel like the edge, we have got this.
It’s strange though, the calling to anchor into a practice of joy and fun in the midst of such fierocity. It’s is a strange kind of arrival, isn't it — we reach the very peak of the year most associated with joy, in the very year most associated with speed and turbulence. Maybe that's exactly the invitation. When everything is moving fast, joy is what we tend to skip. It's the first thing to fall away when there's too much on the calendar and too little stillness to feel it in.
Why Joy Isn't a Luxury
Joy isn't frivolous. It isn't decoration. Research on positive emotion consistently shows that joy actually broadens our capacity — it widens attention, strengthens resilience, and gives the nervous system somewhere to land other than vigilance. In a year that has asked so much of your alertness, joy is what restores your ability to rest inside your own life, even while it keeps moving. And we are in the season of joy!
Simple Ways to Find It
Joy rarely needs an occasion. It tends to show up in the ordinary, if we make room to notice it:
The first sip of something warm in the morning, before the day has asked anything of you yet
A song that makes your body want to move, even for thirty seconds
Calling someone whose laugh you love, just to hear it
Watching light move across a room or across water
The particular relief of bare feet on grass
A meal eaten slowly, with nothing else in your hands
None of these require more time than you already have. They require attention — a small redirection toward what is already good, already here.
A Breath Meditation: Finding Joy in Your Inner World
Find a comfortable seated position, spine tall but not rigid. Let your eyes close, or soften your gaze toward the floor.
Begin by simply noticing your breath — no need to change it yet. Just observe its rhythm, the small rise and fall it moves you through.
When you're ready, inhale slowly through your nose for a count of four. As you do, imagine warmth gathering at your chest, like the first light of morning arriving on the horizon.
Hold gently for a count of two.
Exhale through your mouth for a count of six, and as you release the breath, let your inner voice ask, quietly: ‘where does joy already live in me?’
You don't need an answer. Just let the question rest there, the way a coal rests in embers — glowing, unforced.
Continue this pattern — inhale for four, hold for two, exhale for six — for eight to ten rounds. With each exhale, return to the question, ‘where does joy already live in me?’.
Let whatever surfaces surface: a memory, a face, a color, a feeling with no name yet.
On your final exhale, let a small smile reach your face — even if it feels manufactured at first. The body doesn't always wait for the feeling to arrive before it believes it. Sometimes the smile leads, and the joy follows to catch up.
Open your eyes when you're ready. Carry that small ember with you into the rest of your day.
This year shows no signs of slowing. The Fire Horse is off to the races challenging our ability to hang on. But when we grab the reigns and lean into a steady rythmic breath and vision of where we are headed, joy finds itself as a solid companion; along for the ride with you. So go do the things that bring you joy. You, and the whole world, will feel more alive and well for it.
And of course! Come get some acupuncture! We’ll work through a healthy breathing pattern, regulate the nervous system and get you ready for the next round of holding steady as the y.o.t Fire Horse tries to buck you off your gate, once again!