Seasonal Tips
Spring
Spring bursts forth with its light, color and possibilities. It suggests a time for new growth, expansiveness, artistry and assertiveness. Coming out of the dark and cold of winter, we now turn towards our vision of how we hope to manifest our unique gifts in the world.
Each season has representative organs. Spring relies on the health of the Liver and Gallbladder. Each performs work related to our clarity, vision, creativity, assertiveness, organizational ability and flexibility. These qualities are enhanced through the clear use of resources, such as food, money, time and energy, in service to the quality of life we want to create for ourselves. Where do we put our energy? What makes us happy? What expands and stretches us? What obstructs, frustrates, limits us, and what will we do about it?
Spring is a good time to visualize the harvest you want to create for yourself in the coming seasons. What do you want to grow in your life? What to prune? What are the big dreams you aspire to fulfill? How will you achieve them? Strategizing is a skill in service to our happiness and fulfillment. Spring is a time of hope. How do we reassess after disappointment and adapt, redesign and move forward? How do we assert when something is over and it's time to move on? It is said the emotion of spring is anger. In the west, we hear that often as a negative, but here it suggests the assertiveness to destroy what doesn’t serve and to build and create what does. This is a good time to stop habits that don’t bring us fulfillment and to design new practices that might.
Add the sour taste at this time of year—it is an astringent and it clarifies and revitalizes, helping the liver and gallbladder to detoxify, as well. Make some new plans for your happiness and go after them with resolve!
Update: 2024
May and June are often my favorite months. Comfortable temperature, lower humidity, greenery, blue skies or nourishing rain, birdsong, frog symphonies and lighter clothing, to name just a few gifts. I learned from Chinese philosophy that after the heavens’ manifest gifts to the earth disappear in the autumn, they return resplendent in the spring and early summer offering gifts for us all to savor and finally harvest, share and store in the late summer.
I write this to encourage us all to keep emerging, just as we see new plants come up and out, no matter their surroundings. These past few years have challenged and limited us, as well as strengthened and expanded us, in ways seen and yet to be seen. We have known fear and isolation, discouragement and courage, hope and disappointment. While we may feel that we’ve moved on, we are likely carrying yet to be fully understood consequences of the pandemic and these politically...