You’ve likely been feeling the shift toward Spring over the last several weeks.
The Spring Equinox is right around the corner and with it, we are brought a beautiful opportunity to clear out cobwebs and start fresh, both literally and figuratively.
Spring is the “true New Year” of the natural world and our bodies, intrinsically connected to nature, are also journeying with the awakening Earth.
Now is a powerful opportunity to begin anew and set intentions for the months ahead as we are most supported energetically to do so.
An invitation for you at this time, if you feel called, is to create a ritual for Spring, a ceremony of sorts, to celebrate what’s awakening within you.
Rituals don’t have to be complicated or fancy, they can be anything that helps you step outside of the busyness of life and connect to yourself. The important thing is that they feel doable, easy, and supportive.
For your Spring Equinox Ritual, consider: what will help you feel most connected to the essence of rebirth, renewal, and the fresh start Spring provides.
Some ideas to help you create your own Spring Equinox Ritual:
~ Find a place in nature to sit and observe awakening life.
~ Take some time to reflect on your growth over the last year.
~ Meditate or journal about what is growing anew within you and most importantly- what beliefs, habits, behaviors, patterns, or junk are you ready to let go of.
~ Create intentions or goals around what you’re birthing or would like to create from now until the Fall Equinox.
~ Start a dietary cleanse by lightening up your food intake or eating a bit cleaner.
~ Clean your house or closets.
~Clear your space with blessing herbs to support lighter, clearer energy.
~Clear your energy and release pent-up emotion with an invigorating Breathwork Practice.
As Spring awakens, it can be helpful in addition to your ritual, to set some intentions on cultivating balance in the months ahead.
~ Spring Energies & Creating Balance ~
After the Winter, Spring's warmth and vitality can feel like a true blessing. We may feel excited and energized to get outside, move, socialize, and create in new ways.
However, Spring is a time when, if we aren't careful and push ourselves too hard, we risk burning out in the months ahead.
Linear Growth is not Nature's Way.
With our culture's emphasis on linear growth and an overall resistance to rest, many of us push too hard at the onset of Spring expecting ourselves to maintain maximum output and productivity all year long. Then, when we find ourselves sick, burnt out, and exhausted come the Fall and Winter months, we wonder what's wrong.
During Spring, we are invited to take care of our bodies and health with intention so that we can receive nature's awakening vitality and thrive all year long.
When we work with nature's rhythms of expansion and contraction intentionally, focusing on creating balance each day, we are better able to regenerate ourselves- physically, energetically, and even spiritually. We can stop pushing against the current and begin to flow through our lives with greater ease.
A few suggestions for creating greater balance during Spring:
Pace Yourself
Consider scheduling time on your calendar for rest, downtime, or restorative practices that invite balance into your days.
Where can you block off time in your schedule for doing nothing?
What practices do you enjoy that support active rest?
Consider practicing yin yoga, Breathwork, self-pleasure, or adding naps into your daily routine. Planning for downtime will allow you to work and play, rest and receive, do and be with intention.
Focus on warmth
While Spring may bring warmer days, there is a tendency for temperatures to shift. With cold mornings and evenings, our bodies may feel "shocked" by the constant changes and chilly breezes that are not uncommon at this time.
Support your body to maintain balance by keeping warm. Drink hot teas or adaptogenic elixirs, eat warm and cooked foods instead of too many raw fruits and vegetables, and wear layers, especially scarves to protect your throat and upper respiratory system.
Keep your body warm through Spring's swinging temperatures and notice what may begin to shift in your health and well-being.
Support Digestion - Both Physically and Spiritually
Winter is a time in which we tend to eat heavier foods, process heavier emotions, and possibly become more sedentary. In nature, Spring begins to introduce food medicine - bitter greens, edible flowers, delicate sprouts- that support us to move energy, access greater vitality and activate digestion.
As our bodies digest and clear the heavy foods of the previous months, our souls may also be shedding emotional density brought to the surface during Winter. It can be helpful at this time to find ways to both stimulate this process and tend to our overall well-being with greater intention and compassion.
We can incorporate more bitter foods to stimulate digestion (think: Dandelion root & greens, nourishing herbal bitters, or vinegar, eating fermented foods with each meal).
We can carve out time to digest what's happening in our lives on the mental, emotional, and spiritual levels through journaling, talking to a coach, therapist, or supportive friend, or taking some quiet time alone to contemplate all we're experiencing.
Spring is also a wonderful time to work with sacred plants that assist in self-discovery. Practices like Microdosing can support your intentions and help you to shift habits and patterns that no longer serve you but may have arisen in the Winter months.
Promote Healthy Immunity
During Spring, our immunity, both literally and figuratively may be compromised. Our immune systems may be asked to fight new pathogens and our social lives may require greater boundaries to be implemented with more invitations and opportunities to connect.
When in doubt, remember balance.
Intend to move slower than you think you need to so you can create more intention around your physical health practices, emotional care, and tending to your overall well-being. This may require you to be more present to create such shifts.
What can you say no to that will provide more space for self-care?
What new health-benefitting habits do you want to implement?
How can you support yourself more fully to create the life you're stepping toward?
Where can you assist your body to thrive even more- rest, clean foods, more movement?
Our immune systems work on more than just the physical level to support keeping the good within and the bad out. Focus on ways you might support this process for yourself in the weeks and months ahead.
~Journal Prompts: Setting Intentions for the Spring Equinox~
The Spring Equinox is a time of rebirth. As we connect to the Spring energy (can you feel it?), it's a wonderful time to set intentions and nourish the ideas we planted in the winter.
Journaling is a great way to focus your energy in an embodied way. Set aside some time this Spring Equinox to contemplate and envision what you would love to create in the months ahead. You can use these prompts for support and guided inquiry.
Take a moment to slow down, light a candle or some incense, breathe deeply, and tune in. Consider:
What dreams do you want to have take root and grow in your life?
What has shifted and transformed that no longer serves you?
What is awakening within you at this time of year?
Where do you feel the "hope" of Spring emerging in you and your life?
If you were to sow the seeds of your dreams in the Spring soil, what do you wish to bring to harvest in Autumn?
Check out my Healing Products shop for ritual tools and herbal medicines to support your transition from Winter to Spring.
Click below to explore the shop!
If you have any other Spring practices or Equinox rituals you love, please share your ideas in the comments below.
With love,
Stephanie
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