Spring
Wake & Rise
Welcome to the Spring Embodiment Path
Spring is the season of new beginnings, a time of inspiration, hope, and renewal. All around us, nature is waking up from winter. The first shoots of growth push through the soil and energy begins to rise again, like sap moving through the trees.
After the deep rest of winter, we begin to gently reawaken. We shake off stagnant energy and start to feel the stirrings of possibility. Spring invites playful curiosity, creativity, and the first sparks of what wants to grow in the months ahead.
Just as Mother Earth moves gradually from dormancy into life, this season asks us to awaken slowly and intentionally, noticing what is rising within us and tending the seeds we wish to plant.
In the video below, I’ll share more about the energy of spring and how we can embody this season in our bodies and lives.
Let’s begin.
The Spring Embodied Listening Practice brings you into closer contact with the sensations in your body.
Sensations are the language of your body. Tracking sensations in your body and bringing your awareness to areas that feel constricted and tense, open and relaxed, or neutral is the first step to learning your body’s unique messages.
We also engage in a pendulation practice, shifting our awareness from places that feel constricted to those that feel relaxed or neutral. Not only does this invite areas that are tense to begin to soften, it also shows our body that we are not stuck in one state. We are restoring the natural flexibility of our body and nervous system to move between states of contraction and expansion. We are practicing nervous system regulation. This increases our capacity to be with ourselves in the present moment.
Embodied Listening Practice
Embodied Movement Practice
In the Spring Embodied Movement Practice we are waking up our bodies. We bring movement to clear out stagnant energy and increase flow. We are allowing the energy to rise up through our bodies.
This is a wonderful practice to do in the morning to wake up and connect with your inner flow.
Embodied Nourishment
Nourishment takes many forms: food, herbs, love, connection, and the felt experience of emotions like joy, pleasure, compassion, and self-acceptance. In this section, we’ll explore nourishment in its many expressions as a way to deepen connection with your body and inner landscape.
When you slow down and engage your senses as you prepare a recipe or move through a practice, you begin to notice what truly supports you. Over time, this awareness helps you understand what you need in each phase of your cycle; how to listen, respond, and care for yourself with greater attunement.
Herbalism offers one pathway into this relationship. It invites us to partner with our bodies, our health, and the natural world in ways that feel both meaningful and reciprocal. Many of the herbs and foods we already know and love carry powerful medicine. Whole, seasonal foods, especially those grown close to home, nourish not only the body, but also the mind and spirit.
Inner Spring Herbal Infusion
2 parts Nettle (6 tablespoons)
1 part Red Clover blossoms (3 tablespoons)
1/4 part each Dandelion Root, Lemon Balm, Linden flowers, and cinnamon (3 teaspoons each).
Mix dried herbs together in a quart mason jar. Cover with hot water, put on the lid, and steep at least 8 hours on the counter. Strain herbs and enjoy hot or cold.
This is an herbal infusion, which is stronger than a tea. The large amount of herbs and longer steeping time creates a medicinal strength brew. Drinking herbal infusions daily is a great way to get your vitamins and minerals.
-
Hot and drying, very nutrient dense, powerful anti-inflammatory, provides mineral dense nourishment for the blood. supports immune strength and can help with seasonal allergies if taken regularly starting about 2 months before onset of allergies. Moves blood and lymph around. Strengthens adrenals. Tonifies the lymph, lungs, and blood circulation. Contains highly assimilable iron and protein that offer sustenance and strength when someone feels weak and exhausted. helps in the creation of healthy boundaries.
-
Blood nourishing and blood cleansing. Amino acids provide our bodies with the materials to create neurotransmitters, like seratonin and dopamine, to help maintain a healthy and stable state of mind. - helps emotional stability before PMS, nourishes endocrine system, calcium, minerals, vitamins, nervine, hormone balancer, can be beneficial for infertility, breast health, irregular cycles, painful menstration. Ok during pregnancy and great postpartum when re-building stores and helps breastmilk. High iron content. Red Clover benefits the whole body, especially lymphatic, digestive, female reproductive, muscoloskeletal, nervous, and skin. It is a nervine, nourishing the nervous system slowly. Regular use will alter how you respond to stress. It builds inner strength and promotes calmness through nourishing the nervous system with an abundance of vitamins and minerals. Supports health of endocrine system, including adrenal glands.
-
Cool, bitter, drying, liver tonic - replenish and strengthen. Blood cleanser and systemic tissue cleanser (lymphatic system does this). Also a source of assimilable iron.
-
Also called bee balm. cooling, drying. Nervine - great when anxious during the day but still have stuff to do. Honeybee energy - reconnect with what makes us happy. Calming and uplifting. Also good for womens reproductive system.
-
Wonderful for anxiety, merges mind and heart (2 places we hold anxiety), nourish the emotional part of our heart. Tight chest. Opens emotional and spiritual heart. Opens you to the bliss of your true multi-dimensional nature. Helping you be with your feelings. Moistening, cooling.
Note: Each herb has many powerful actions in our bodies. This is not intended to be a comprehensive overview of each herb, rather an introduction to the herb, why they were chosen for this tea blend, and how they can support us this season.
Herbal Tea Sensory Embodiment
Connecting with herbs through our senses is a wonderful way to build a relationship with herbal allies. Each herb has their own energetics (wet/dry, hot/cold) and taste (sweet, sour, salty, pungent, bitter, and astringent). You can learn about herbal energetics from a book, but it is only through your own embodied exploration do you understand the unique way each herb interacts in your body.
I invite you to go back to the Herbal Embodiment Practice on the homepage and work with each herb individually or as a blend. Begin to notice your own taste, smell, mouthfeel, and inner sensations as you drink the herbal infusion. Notice how might this change over time as you deepen your relationship with the herb and your body.
Braised Spring Greens
2 teaspoons oil or ghee
1 garlic clove, minced
1 bunch spring greens (dandelion, kale, chard, or spinach), rinsed and roughly chopped
1 tablespoon tamari
1 teaspoon maple syrup
1/3 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
1 tablespoon fresh ginger, grated
Salt & pepper to taste
Heat oil in skillet on medium-low heat until melted. Add garlic and cook for about 1 minute, until softened and fragrant but not browned. Add the greens, tossing them with the oil and garlic until they’re bright green and wilted. Remove from heat.
In a small bowl, mix the tamari, maple syrup, ginger, and toasted sesame oil together. Pour the sauce over the greens.
These can be enjoyed as a side dish, as part of a grain bowl, or (my personal favorite), with eggs and toast for breakfast.
Recipe adapted from The Kosmic Kitchen Cookbook: Everyday Herbalism and Recipes for Radical Wellness (highly recommend!)
Greens are usually the first vegetables ready to eat from our gardens in the spring. They are packed with nutrients like calcium, potassium, and vitamins A, C, and K. They keep our skin and bones healthy, support our immune system, and maintain normal blood pressure and clotting.
Greens, especially dandelion greens, have a bitter flavor. The bitter flavor stimulates the digestive system, helps release digestive enzymes, and cleanses and supports the liver. Spring greens offer medicine to move stagnation, wake up our bodies, and clear and detoxify any heaviness from winter. While the bitter flavor is cooling, this is balanced by the ginger and garlic, which are warming and stimulating to the body.
Spring invites us to focus on lighter cooking methods, like steaming, sautéing, and braising.
Sensory Embodiment Practice
Preparing and eating food with intention invites us to slow down and connect with our senses. This practice brings us into deeper connection with our bodies and the simple, embodied experience of nourishment.
Make space to sit down for your meal. Before you begin eating, take a few slow, grounding breaths to settle into your body. Notice your food: the colors, the textures, the way it looks in the bowl. Inhale and take in its scent. What do you notice?
As you take your first bite, move slowly. Feel the texture in your mouth, notice the flavors as they unfold. Sense how your body responds to each bite. What sensations or emotions arise as you eat this simple, seasonal meal?
Allow yourself to truly savor your food and feel the ways it’s nourishing you. Over time, this practice deepens your relationship with both your body and the food that sustains it.
In the spring, we can support our body to cleanse and clear stagnation in gentle, supportive ways. Three rituals to support cleansing and stimulating the body are dry brushing, warm baths, and gua sha massage. I like to stack these three rituals together, but they are beneficial on their own as well.
Start with dry brushing to support your lymphatic system. Lymph is fluid that circulates through your body, removing waste and transporting elements of your immune system. The lymphatic system does not have a pump like your heart, so you can intentionally assist its movement. One way is using a dry bristle brush to brush the skin in an upwards motion towards the heart. Start at your feet and work your way up your body. For your arms, start at your wrists working up towards your shoulders.
Warm baths help to relax your body and promote circulation. You can add herbs to your bath, like lemon balm and rose, to calm your body and nourish your skin. Epson salts are also a fantastic addition that helps relax your muscles and provides highly absorbable magnesium for your body. I like to take energetic detox baths once per week: add ½ cup Epson salt, ½ cup baking soda, and ½ cup sea salt to a hot bath (as hot as still feels comfortable). Soak for 15-20 minutes (not more, as over 20 minutes begins to reverse the detox effects.)
After your bath, apply your body oil and end with a gua sha massage to break up stagnation and adhesions and open energetic flow throughout the body. Gua sha is a practice used in Traditional Chinese Medicine where a small tool is used to scrape the skin to promote blood flow and natural lymph drainage. Simply scrape the tool along your skin, again working in an upwards motion towards your heart. Apply a pressure that feels good to you. Lighter pressure will move lymph, but a firmer pressure will begin to release tension and stagnation.
Cleanse & Clear Your Body
Reflection Questions
Name a current feeling, emotion, or sensation you are experiencing in your body. What is this feeling telling you? How can you honor this feeling, or honor yourself today?
Where in your life are you noticing new sprouts of growth? What is rising within you? What is your soul yearning for? How can you tend and nurture these instead of holding onto past versions of yourself?
What is your relationship to change? Do you tend to brace, shut down, or cling on to old habits or patterns? Or are you able to trust yourself and the flow of life? This is often an indication of the state of your nervous system. We need to feel safe and in capacity before we can transition into new ways of being in the world.
What are seeds you’d like to sow in your life? (greater prosperity, health, clarity, self trust, etc.)
