Seasonal Support: Easing Toward Spring

Practicing the ideal morning as a seasonal flavour, make your own citrus bitters and a Spring Tonic Tea.

Step into your imagination for a moment.

If you could design your ideal morning, what would it be like?

How do you wake up feeling? What sounds/smells/textures/colours surround you? Who is with you? What does this ideal you get to savour in the mornings? What food, drinks and tasks await you? How does this version of you breathe, move and relate to their environments?

If you’re anything like me, or most humans, that ideal morning likely doesn’t involve a blaring alarm clock at an hour before sunrise, rushed coffees, minimal or no breakfast and glaring screens. I could be wrong, but let’s not dull the ideal with versions of our cultural normals!

I invite you to this exploration with intention, of course.

Spring is upon us, here on the prairies. Our emergence from winter ushered in by the seemingly endless throws of early spring weather. As the seasons go, spring is well represented by the morning of the broader year. Things begin to wake. Arising from hibernations, melting toward a season of growth and flourishing in the growing warmth and length of the daylight.

Yet, in our day to days, we often are only aware of the building energy and the human propensity to RUSH into rising, subject to energy without ground, growth without nourished roots.

But that doesn’t have to be the case.

Think back to that practice of ideals. As you visualize that ideal version of morning, likely born out of combination of natural needs and wants, how do you feel? Likely there is a motivating energy, a spring of aliveness bubbling away.. but not necessarily an urgent flood of productivity.

While Spring can hold both motivating and productive energy as the remains of past seasons are washed away and new growth begins, it does so naturally with perfect timing. Nature doesn’t rush, even when it’s busy. We are a part of that chorus, even if we often feel subject to a different circus. All it asks of us is to tune into the rhythm of things, of ourselves, with intention.

My ask of you this season is to find ways to feel into your “ideals”. Even if it’s just in your imagination for now. Spend a few moments day dreaming, or even better, in that liminal space between sleeping and waking, wandering through that ideal morning, an ideal start to an ideal day.

Get to know that version of you.

In practicing a knowing of our ideals, we begin to see how our lives may be flavoured with bits of that ideal already, or perhaps where a few extra dashes of that ideal are very well possible. If nothing else, rehearsing that ideal day in our minds eye primes our nervous system toward attunement with the rhythms that suite us, that connect us and that weave us into the natural world we live in.

I have a bag or two in stock of the above Spring Tonic Tea if you’re seeking some extra nourishment this season. As always, I can also blend a custom spring tea that fits exactly you - too. Reach out!

DIY Spring Bitters

Seasons of transition can take their toll on our overall wellbeing. Through late winter into early spring, our bodies are beginning to feel the building energy that comes with increasing daylight juxtaposed with the fatigue of winter dragging on and the release of spring upset by inevitable March storms. It’s not uncommon to hear complaints of sluggish digestion, restlessness, dragging cold and flu symptoms and energy issues in the clinic this time of year. Caring for our digestive health becomes an important aspect of supporting the whole even more-so in these transition seasons.

The best description I’ve ever received relating to our digestive system was comparing our digestive function to the function of a compost pile. As you may know, a healthy compost pile requires just the right balance of moisture and heat in order to appropriately break down what’s added to it and produce effective product. Our digestive system works in much the same way. Digestive fluids like bile and stomach acid function as the necessary “heat”, initiating breakdown and absorption through the gut. The gut lining, made up of mucous membranes and microbiome, houses the moisture that helps move food-stuffs and waste along the chain for either absorption or elimination. This is of course, a very simplified and summarized nature of events.

Photo by okeykat on Unsplash

Bitters are commonly made using a combination of literally bitter herbs and plant materials. The list of potential bitter inclusions can be quite long. Some of my favourites include chamomile, citrus peels, wood betony, vervain, mugwort, Angelica, burdock and dandelion leaves and root.