Aligning with spring

Spring is Kapha season in Ayurveda. For many people they call Spring “allergy season.” Kapha season is about heavy, sticky, gooey – sounds like mud, right? For those new to Ayurveda, we work with 5 elements that make up all of life and provides a lens in which we see the world. Kapha is the combination of the water and earth elements.  Things like joint fluid, mucous lining in the body, protective fluids and expansion – all relating to Kapha. Emotionally, it is governs the emotions of depression and sadness. On the upswing, Kapha is that energy that helps us feel together and solid. In our mind, it helps us remember long ago memories and, tapping into it, can even bring up long forgotten memories of our ancestors. Emotionally, Kapha connects us to love, unconditional love, love of others and love of the self.

As we enter into the Kapha season, spring here in the Northern Hemisphere, Ayurveda suggest we drop into a cleansing process. Actually, our cleansing should begin just before Spring so that when spring DOES arrive, we are feeling light, rejuvenated and happy: ready to take on the heaviness of the Kapha season.

For those that do not cleanse before spring arrives, your eating habits can get really crazy in the “between season” of spring. You may experience uncontrollable cravings of sweets, heavy foods like cheeses and even desiring to chow down on salty potato chips. Normally, in spring, you are unable able to find the luscious foods of summer and you’re sick of the things you’ve been eating over winter. In olden times, or “time before refrigeration,” we would have run out of our stores and be basically forced into reducing the quantity of food eaten or even do a fast. This lasted until the first spring greens started showing up, perhaps some of the early berries and even some early cold-hardy vegetables would start producing. 

In addition to feeling “off” with our diet, spring can cause us feel off emotionally too. I’ve had people coming to me proclaiming to feel “out of sorts,” “like I’m scattered,” and “have no real direction.” In the American culture, we often jump from one thing to the next, never allowing time to transition or ease into the next experience. Same with the seasons. When we’re in winter, we can’t wait for spring. When spring is here, we are anxious for summer to arrive. When the sweltering heat of summer burrows in, we dream of cool fall days. When the muckiness of fall sets in, we resign ourselves that “winter is coming.” If you were to switch your thinking and allow yourself to settle in to the season we are in, you’d experience many wonderful things including a deep satisfaction in your soul.  When we do this alignment to the flow of nature, we are comforted by the season, nurtured by the foods available and feel relaxed! 

As I sit in Southern Wisconsin, we are on the edge of spring. We had snowfall just a few days ago and today, it is nearing 60 degrees. The trees are just showing their buds and the grasses are mostly green versus mostly brown. Mother Earth is giving herself a looong stretch, opening for her first drinks of water after a dormant winter and is preparing for the vibrancy of spring. All living things need a lot of energy to emerge in the spring. When we lie dormant or have a quieter winter (yes, you are SUPPOSED to be quieter in the winter,) then we need that reset to burst into the flurry of spring. If you’re like most people, you just carry on giving little to no thought about the change in seasons. Well, maybe we lightening our clothing and doing some house cleaning but no much beyond that.

Aligning our eating habits, thought patterns and lifestyle to be in sync with nature sheds a whole new light on what it means to live in harmony with our surroundings.

Clean your inner house. Lighten up your foods. Switch to broth based soups and lighter grains leaving behind the heavy soups, stews and chili we love in winter. Carve out time for quiet reflection and day dreaming. We often forget about emotional cleansing and just focus on the physical body. When I speak about emotional cleansing to my clients, they often look back at me with a little fear in their eyes. We all have skeletons in our closet that we’d like to just keep under wraps. Well my friends, that never serves us. When we face our emotional challenges in a calm time versus in a crisis, we can more fully observe our habits, our deep feelings and decide what to do about it. I find journaling is a great way to do this. Just pick up any journal, sit down and start writing. See what comes up.

Cleanse isn’t a fast. I just want to be clear on terminology. Cleansing isn’t necessarily fasting, and in fact, in Ayurveda it shouldn’t be. I find that many people embark on a fast desiring to exert control over something. Perhaps their own body, but sometimes it is done when they feel out of control in another area of their life so they feel they should “do a fast” to control SOMETHING. So, I’m not talking about fasting. My definition of cleanse in this case, is to simplify your diet, reduce your overall intake and be mindful that your food is super easy to digest. Another point to clarify, easy to digest foods are not raw foods like salads. In fact, for most people, raw foods are super hard to digest often causing gas, bloating and constipation. I’m talking about whole, COOKED foods that you freshly prepare for each meal.

No food, herb, practice can actually cleanse the body. The BODY has to cleanse the body.

When we make our food super easy to digest, our body can relax in the digestive process and do it’s own work of cleaning house. My favorite food to do this cleanse is the shining star from Ayurveda, kitchari. Freshly prepared from whole ingredients, kitchari moves through your body with ease providing appropriate nutrition, energy and flavor. I do love lots of flavor so I’m always using plenty of spice. I don’t mean hot spice, but flavor spice. I super charge this digestive party by rubbing in a couple of supportive essential oils like turmeric, fennel or ginger. I massage these in over my abdomen using a clockwise motion, the flow of the digestive system.

I also pull out my juicer in the spring. I rarely use my juicer in the winter since it often involves using veggies out of season. An occasional carrot or beet juice may be fine but otherwise, I wait until the farmer’s markets have an abundance of produce, which is normally summer. In the spring, my local fresh foods places do have spring greens on the shelf like dandelion greens and that seems to pair well with bok choy, celery and a bit of ginger root. As fresh spring veggies start arriving, they get rotated in to my juicing. 

Even my teas switch from the spicier, winter ingredients to more nourishing herbs. My current fav is more of an infusion (longer steep time) of rose hips and nettle. Yum!

Following a solid “easy eating” plan and easing through the spring season, I arrive in summer with renewed energy, clear focus and a plan for embracing the force of the fire season.

 If you feel a bit lost on your spiritual path, a fun thing I like to do in the Spring is to tap into ancestral knowledge. My favorite way to do this is by facing north (direction of the ancestors), applying my white pine essential oil, and I may even have a few white pine cones on my desk or altar. I then take a few deep breaths, close my eyes and visualize a sacred forest. Out of the shadows, as my mind relaxes, step my ancestral teachers, the wisdom keepers of my linage. Some I recognize, some I don’t. I sit with them for as long as I can and as often as I can. I don’t usually ask questions, I just receive, gleaning bits of kept knowledge that I can bring back with me to make my own. I am continually surprised at just what comes out of these sessions. It’s like they know me or something –  ha, ha.

 In true Shamanic tradition, I do this practice on an empty stomach so my mind is clear and not bogged down by my body needing to digest something. As I sit in gratitude to this process, I am clearer about my path going forward. It has been illuminated by my own clarity. But I had to get still and quiet to receive it.

 I love witnessing all the glory of nature in the spring. Flowers blooming, grass turning green and trees unfurling their leaves. I hope you are feeling “fit as a fiddle” as we say in the south and embracing this magnificent season of birth, renewal and new beginnings.

(Panchakarma is an ancient program to guide you through a proper cleansing diet, supportive herbs, aligned daily habits and rejuvenating body therapies. To learn more about “PK,” read here.)