Spring is here in North Carolina. The delirious lime green leaves aren’t quite here yet, but the fragile tender air is. It is soft portentious air that generally leaves me feeling cranky. I want to slip back into the chair in the corner. I want it to be cold and rainy so I can stay inside, cook lots of soup and read books. I’m not ready for this early Spring. I’m not sure I’m ever really ready for the bold, moving energy that comes with the lengthening days.
The Spring Equinox, the beginning of Spring, is actually the time when the day and night are equal. Now, that Spring is full on, the days are lengthening and the light is gaining on the dark. A mandate for growth and movement comes with the light. Where the Winter calls me inward, the Spring pushes me outward. Often, this is anything but subtle. And most often, it is quite sudden. One day you see no green, and then, almost without warning, everything is sprouting, hairy, jumping, singing.
In our world, in our culture, we don’t generally abide by the seasons. We eat fruit all year. Our houses are always 72 degrees and rain or shine we drive where we need to go. We don’t let ourselves slow down with the Winter, sprout in the Spring, speed up to full tilt in the Summer and let it all go in the Fall. Instead, we just speed around all year long, like we are in some kind of perpetual Summer, an unending season of fruition and activity. What comes from this kind of lack of alignment between body and earth? Tiredness, yes, but even more, a feeling loneliness, a lack of connection to both ourselves and our world. Ultimately, this could be said to cause all forms of disease and ill health.
Cycles of energy are natural features of all organic systems. Nothing that is alive can spin indefinitely without slowing or stopping. Rest, not sleep, but real rest that is the opposite of running, the opposite of going, the opposite of doing, is not only a vital part of any cycle, but is actually the source of energy for everything else. Rest powers all that we wish to do.
The things that sprout in the spring have been resting deeply. Lying still beneath the earth. Now, they have a bright and demanding energy. Like growing puppies, or even like growing humans, they need food and they need it now. They crave the light, the water and the air so they can get their growing going. Yet, the plant itself, or the human for that matter, is relatively fragile. Take a sprout and imagine what it would take for that sprout to push out of its seed. An enormous amount of accumulated energy has to be behind that tiny sprout to even consider such a move.
One might even say a fierce force. And after that fierce push, a sprout is stringy, soft, and prone to getting squashed. A feeling quite akin to the one I am calling cranky these days. Really, I just feel vulnerable, tender, not quite ready to move fast and push hard. I’m nourishing my cranky, tender self with lots of green things, taking a rest from animal foods and any supplement that comes in a pill. I’m trying to make it easier for my body to start moving. And I’m considering what I want to nourish in my vision, where to thin away the sprouts and where to add fertilizer for the months to come. To enhance my vision, I inhale my chocolate peppermint essential oil. Now, that takes the cranky and leaves the tender for sure!
How do you move with the windy weather, the demanding light, while honoring your fragile, springly self? How do you relax and enjoy the ride, the fierce wind and the tender air, the growing light and soft ground?
