Jump Start Your Energy this Spring
Ah, Spring!
Nature waking up from winter sleep, earth cracking open, green sprouts pushing up through soil, leaves unfurling, tiny seeds growing into tall plants, strong winds sweeping through and bringing rapid change.
In Chinese Medicine, we call it the Wood element – the very life force of vegetation moving up and out.
Hildegard of Bingen, the German mystic, called it Viriditas, the greening power that renews everything.
Wood energy is Yang in nature – warm and upward moving, rapidly expanding and coming into being.
In our bodies, wood energy is represented by our “sinews” – the tendons connecting muscles to bones, and the ligaments connecting bone to bone. If our sinews are well nourished, then our limbs are like the branches of a tree full of sap, flexible and resilient, able to bend in the wind without snapping.
This flexibility has its source in the Liver, the organ which Chinese Medicine relates to the Wood element and the season of spring. The liver is responsible for the smooth flow of Qi, vital energy, through the channel pathways, and for bringing nourishment to all cells and tissues. When the liver qi becomes stuck, everything becomes stagnant: our joints become stiff and painful, our muscles tight, our minds rigid and our mood cranky or outright angry.
The physical pain symptoms of this pattern are often seen along the channel pathways of the liver and its partner, the gallbladder: throbbing headaches, especially in the temples, migraines, sensitive and burning eyes, neck and shoulder pain, pain in the flanks and under the ribcage, hip pain and sciatic pain running down the sides of the legs. Breast distension, PMS and menstrual cramps are classical signs of liver imbalance, as the liver also regulates the menstrual cycle.
Mentally, the liver and gallbladder are responsible for planning and decision making. Spring is a time for new beginnings and for planning and plotting out the year ahead. But our information-overloaded, multi-tasking culture, infusing us with constant pop-up messages of distraction, makes high demands on never-ending decision making on us, straining our livers and keeping us under constant stress. Our livers can’t keep up with detoxing environmental stresses and mental garbage. Irritability and chronic stress is the result.
Anger, frustration, irritability and mood swings are emotional expressions of constraint liver qi. These emotions arise out of the experience of restrictions that keep us from fully expressing ourselves. The force of wood energy is all about coming into being, awaking and rising up, the desire to become who we truly are, to fulfill our destiny. Psychologists call this individuation (Jung) or self-actualization. When this desire is smothered, we become resentful and frustrated. Our muscles tense up in a holding pattern ready for confrontation, with tight necks and clenched jaws.
Anger and resentment can teach us areas where we feel stunted in our growth, where we deny ourselves to be our whole selves. The solution is to find creative ways of turning our anger into action, and to let go of that we cannot control – just like the serenity prayer teaches us. In Taoist philosophy, which is at the root of Chinese medicine, we learn to become a “free and easy wanderer”, striving to align ourselves with the flow of nature, riding the waves of change instead of resisting them.
Self-Care in Spring:
What can you do for your own self-care in spring?
• Stretch: Use stretching, yoga, Pilates, or tai chi to stretch your limbs and keep your muscles and tendons flexible and prevent injuries.
• Exercise: Use cardio exercise to jump start sluggish metabolism, use strength training or resistance bands to build strength and resilience. Exercise is the most powerful antidote against stress, depression or resentment.
• Sleep: Go to bed before 11 p.m. or earlier: in the Chinese organ clock, Qi is strongest in the gallbladder and liver between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m. That is the time when the liver detoxes and regenerates itself. Don’t jeopardize this by being a night owl.
• Take a break from electronics: Do yourself a favor and shut off your smart phone at night. Don’t keep it in your bedroom. Stop using all electronics two hours before bedtime. You can never keep up with everybody’s Facebook timeline anyway. Take a conscious break from information overload.
• Go outside. Breathe fresh air. Open the windows and air out.
• Detox: Spring is a good time to stop using harmful drugs – stop smoking, cut back or stop drinking alcohol or caffeine, get off sugar and junk food.
• Eat healthy, fresh food: Fresh bitter greens, pungent radishes, sprouts, a nutrient dense smoothie – nourish yourself with healthy foods that unburden your liver.
• Drink lots of water. Flush out winter.
• Be creative. Express yourself.
• Love yourself and nourish your vision: Do what nourishes you and appreciate yourself. Take time for yourself. Be gentle – the transition from winter to spring can be rough. Take time to explore your vision for this new growing season.
• Get a change-of-season treatment: Receive acupuncture or massage to flush out winter toxins and sluggishness and jump-start your metabolism for spring. Get your stagnant Qi moving.
• Ask your acupuncturist, naturopath or herbalist for herbal supplements to detox and support your liver.
Meret Bainbridge, L.Ac. practices at Acupuncture by Meret, 222 St. John St., Suite 137, Portland, ME 04102, www.AcupunctureByMeret.com, phone 207.878.3300, e-mail: meret@acupuncturebymeret.com.
ELM™ | Maine
