The yoyo days of spring are here. Temperatures are fluctuating madly – one day in the 70s, another day in the 20s. These dramatic changes in weather bring along powerful, cleansing winds that pick up the remaining dregs and collected debris of winter and blow it away. The drastic temperature fluctuations influence the rising sap of the trees. Sap for syrup flows most strongly when, on a cold night, the sap sinks back down into the roots, preparing to flow more strongly the next day as the temperatures rise again. The more fluctuation in temperature, the more sap flows and the more sweetness can be gathered.

How does the sap flow in you during this season? Is it flowing well, bringing energy, vision, and creative growth? Or are you feeling stagnant and stuck? Frustration,

irritability, aches and pains, and depression are all common complaints in Spring, when our energy and circulation do not move freely in synch with the weather around us.

How are you affected by the wind? Do you feel the invigorating, cleansing strength as it buffets around you? Do you have the flexibility to bend with the storms of life around you? Or do you feel brittle, at risk of losing parts of yourself like a tree that drops its branches on a windy day? Do you have the internal strength to hold steady in the wind or do the fluctuations of life leave you feeling agitated and vulnerable, about to blow away like the leaves and dust?

Exercise, yoga, and movement can all help you to pass beyond stagnation. Making shifts in your food choices can help to increase the flow of energy during this time. Consider increasing leafy greens, such as steamed or sautéed chard, kale, or mustard greens. Massaged kale or spinach salads are also good choices. Cutting back on sugar and starchy or greasy food can be especially helpful during this season.

Balance in health starts with clearing out stagnation so that you can you can focus more clearly on nourishing and tonifying your body in order to feel strength, motivation, and creative energy flow again. One of the things I offer the people I work with is the Lifestyle Self-Assessment, an exercise to help you begin reclaiming your own health, assisting your body to regain its ability to maintain health.

Acupuncture and Chinese Herbal Medicine can be excellent ways to help clear out stagnation and move through this season with ease.

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Blessings to you on these gentle, hopeful, blustery, dreary, sweet days of Spring!

Lucy Marsh, LAc

Deep Roots Acupuncture, LLC