Rhythms of the Year of the Fire Horse 2026
A return to natural cycles.
Q&A with: Dr. Gabrielle Naomi, Doctor of Chinese Medicine, and Sema Simone, Feng Shui and Chinese Astrology practitioner
Artwork by Brooke Stewart
Tell us about yourselves and your practice. Who are you, where are you based and why do you do what you do?
We are Dr. Gabrielle Naomi, Doctor of Chinese Medicine, and Sema Simone, Feng Shui and Chinese Astrology practitioner. Together, we are Rhythms of Health. Our work is devoted to women. We guide women back to their natural physiology not through trends, restriction, or force but through understanding rhythm, timing, and constitutional design. When a woman realigns with her internal seasons, her organ systems, her elemental blueprint, and the environment around her, health becomes self-sustaining rather than something she constantly chases. We believe a woman living in her true rhythm does not just heal herself she shifts culture. We are here to restore Yin to a world that has exhausted itself in excess Yang.
Inside the We Go Yin Community, we teach women how to: Work with seasonal and solar timing. Understand the constitution and energetic blueprint of food. Regulate according to their own elemental design. Align their body, decisions, and environment with natural law. When women come back into rhythm, the world reorganizes around them.
What is the overall energy of the Year of the Horse? What themes, challenges, and opportunities can we expect in 2026, and how might this year feel different from recent years?
The overall energy of the Year of the Yang Fire Horse is fast, visible, and intense. Horse energy moves. It pushes forward. It exposes what is stagnant. It amplifies independence, bold decisions, and sudden shifts. Add Yang Fire the energy of the sun (the wildfire) at its peak and everything becomes brighter, louder, and harder to ignore. 2026 will likely feel quicker than recent years. More information. More exposure. More reaction. More pressure to choose sides, move faster, speak louder.
You can expect themes of acceleration, government and institutional exposure, information overload, emotional reactivity, independence and decentralization, and breaking from old systems.
“There will likely be chaos. And it’s important to understand that chaos is often part of how systems reorganize power. Order is frequently created through disruption. When people are overwhelmed, overstimulated, or divided, it becomes easier to restructure control. So we cannot emotionally metabolize every global event this year. That is not sustainable for the nervous system. We have to take our focus and attention HOME.”
From a Rhythms of Health perspective, this year will feel different because we are already overly Yang as a society overworked, overexposed, overstimulated. We can’t live on abstract systems anymore that aren’t rooted in natural law. The Fire Horse amplifies what is already there. If there is imbalance or incoherence, it becomes obvious and we are asked to change direction.
Looking to previous Years of the Horse, what patterns or shifts might we see repeating or completing as we enter 2026? And how might this year relate to the collective return to biological rhythms after generations of living out of sync with natural cycles?
Horse years historically accelerate unfinished momentum. They tend to expose instability in systems, amplify movements that were already brewing, and push individuals toward independence, in the last cycles we’ve seen the patriarchy making moves, trying to remove yin from society in horse fire periods. This hopefully ends now, because we see it ourselves. Horse years don’t create tension they reveal it and move it. In 2026, this acceleration meets a world that has been living out of biological rhythm for generations, spending generations taking the female biology out of life itself. Utilizing Artificial light, 24-hour productivity, globalized nervous systems, constant digital exposure all of this has pulled humanity out of circadian, seasonal, and reproductive timing.
“The Yang Fire Horse intensifies contrast. It will likely feel like a reckoning between artificial rhythm and biological rhythm.”
Especially for women, because women have had enough! From a Rhythms of Health perspective, this year marks the beginning of a collective correction for women. Not necessarily because systems soften but because women’s bodies can no longer compensate and through social media we can now measure it into a bigger scale seeing that it’s not personal as it was back in the other year. A woman can’t be isolated anymore. It is collective, a system error. And I hope to see many women making drastic changes in their life to not have to live a patriarchal lifestyle anymore.
How does the Horse year's energy relate to the body's natural rhythms and cycles? In Chinese Medicine, what rhythms might be particularly activated this year, whether menstrual, seasonal, circadian, or life-phase cycles?
The Horse is peak Yang movement. In Chinese medicine, this activates the Liver (movement, Blood, menstrual flow) and the Heart (Shen, clarity, circulation). It will reveal if we have enough yin/matter within to move the fire.
Rhythms particularly stimulated in 2026 include menstrual rhythm (cycles may shorten, ovulation can feel more intense because it’s a yang phase, and PMS can increase if Liver Qi stagnates), circadian rhythm (sleep disruption is common when Heart Fire rises, and falling asleep before 11pm will be crucial because 11pm–3am is Liver–Gallbladder repair time), seasonal rhythm (summer energy will feel amplified, heat symptoms can spike, and winter will feel like a necessary reset rather than optional rest), and life-phase cycles (women in perimenopause can feel heat and dryness more intensely, and younger women can feel pressure to “move faster” with a sense of urgency and being behind).
“The invitation is not to suppress the fire but to regulate it through grounding practices, nourishment, and rhythm so the fire has somewhere to land. Practice infradian rhythm and circadian rhythm. We need to rebuild our yin and come back home, out of the urgency. When yin is nourished and we are rooted, fire land and move us rather than control us and burn us out.”
Many people today are dealing with autoimmune conditions, and hormonal imbalances. From a Chinese medicine perspective, how might these patterns relate to living out of rhythm with our natural cycles? And what does the Year of the Horse offer in terms of healing these deeper patterns? Any tips for restoring balance and harmony in our cyclical bodies?
First I want to say this. In previous fire periods, the women’s body was completely overriding. First came the church and took her rights away. Then came the witch hunters and burned her for more than 200 years. Then came the Industrial Revolution and took her rhythm away. So what we are seeing now is the aftermath of centuries trying to take away a woman from her rhythm. So before reading more remember this: it didn’t start with you! But if you have symptoms you are asked to end the spell in your lineage!
In Chinese medicine, disease does not appear overnight. It accumulates. Generations of learned behavior. Years of overriding impulses. Years of not resting when bleeding. Years of saying yes when the body said no. Years of performing competence while internally collapsing. Years of pushing through fatigue because society rewards Yang and ignores Yin.
This creates internal contradiction.
The Liver responsible for movement, direction, and the smooth flow of Blood becomes constrained when we suppress desire and self-expression which prevent it from detoxifying itself and create pathogenic overload. Constrained Qi turns into heat. Heat agitates the Heart and creates inflammation. The immune system, governed by Wei Qi and our boundaries becomes confused in an environment of chronic internal tension and its hard to see where we end and the world begins.
And beneath all of this sits Kidney Yin.
Kidney Yin is your deepest reserve. Your hormonal foundation. Your reproductive water. Your ancestral battery. Your YOUNESS. In a Yang-dominant society constant light, constant stimulation, suppression, constant production we burn through that reserve to survive lifestyles that are not aligned with our essence. Eventually the body protests. Autoimmunity, in this context, is the body attacking a way of living that is not true and it’s generational. Hormonal imbalance is the body refusing to regulate under artificial rhythm.
Now enter the Yang Fire Horse.
This is a year of amplification. Fire reveals. Horse accelerates. What has been building quietly will no longer stay quiet. Symptoms can intensify for those who continue overriding themselves. Inflammation, cycle irregularity, anxiety, sleep disturbance these are not punishments. They are exposure and intelligent messages and when it shows, we can finally correct it.
“This year also offers something powerful for women. Clarity. Courage. Movement. Change IF WE DARE. And coming together saying: No more. This is the end of a 100s of years cycle.”
The Horse does not tolerate more stagnation. It pushes us to choose. To stop negotiating with misalignment. To stop metabolizing global chaos and instead reorganize locally in your home, in your body, in your rhythm.
If you restore rhythm, the body responds.
Sleep before 11pm. Eat seasonally. Remove artificial food and toxins from your house.
Protect your menstrual phase like winter.
Reduce unnecessary stimulation.
Nourish Kidney Yin through depth, stillness, mineral-rich foods, time in darkness and PLEASURE (nature provides that).
Make decisions that are congruent with who you actually are. This is about returning to your original blueprint. 2026 will feel intense because it is the peak of accumulated Yang meeting depleted Yin. It is the tipping point.
The Fire Horse will either expose the cost of your lifestyle or ignite the courage to change it. The body has been speaking for years.
This is the year you listen. It’s a very powerful time to be a woman!
The Fire Horse year brings intense yang energy. What can women learn from tracking their personal menstrual cycles? How might this awareness help us navigate the year without burning out?
I do not encourage women to artificially sync their cycles with the full moon. Your body has its own timing. Its own intelligence. Its own axis.
In Chinese medicine, menstruation is a downward movement of Blood. It is a descending, inward, releasing phase. This is a Water process. The best time for bleeding is when external pull is minimal when the body can move downward without upward agitation (as the full moon light)
The Fire Horse amplifies Yang phases. If a woman does not track her cycle, she can overextend during follicular and ovulatory phases and crash harder during luteal and menstrual phases.
Tracking teaches you when you are naturally outward, when you need containment, when your Liver is tightening, and when your Shen is overstimulated.
Awareness prevents burnout. When you know you are in your inner winter, you do not schedule outer summer demands and vice versa. It provides important information and a deeper connection and understanding of ourselves and our mood.
What's one simple practice or ritual we can incorporate into our daily lives this year to better honor our cyclical nature and work with the Horse year energy?
“Wake with natural light…For at least 5–10 minutes each morning, step outside barefoot or sit facing sunrise. No phone. No input. Just light entering the eyes and breath entering the body.
This anchors circadian rhythm, calms the Liver, regulates cortisol, and stabilizes Shen. One small act of rhythm alignment daily regulates excessive Yang accumulation.”
Any other wisdom or insights you'd like to share that feels relevant?
Do not metabolize the entire world.
The Fire Horse year will bring exposure, information, truth revelations already seeing it (Epstein files). This is by design. Some of this is necessary to witness. BUT, Some of it may be overstimulation disguised as awakening. Women’s bodies are barometers. If your sleep worsens, your cycle shifts, your chest tightens your body is telling you the fire is too high.
