Tips for a healthy spring

These simple practices nurture and support the uprising of energy of Spring (called pran). They also support the liver, which is needing some TLC in the spring, and balances any sluggishness (Kapha) that might be accumulating in the body.

Spring is the time of rebirth.  After a long, quiet, cold winter, spring is the time we feel our inner stirrings, our inner enthusiasm start to rise.  If you don't feel it in yourself, just look at all of the twitterpatting wildlife all around! They are overflowing with it.

Just like the tiny buds and sprouts emerging, we want to encourage and ease our own transition into spring time so that we too can be twitterpatting with life too.  To do that, we support ourselves through diet, herbs and exercise.  

Here are some helpful spring time tips to stay in harmony with the season.:

• Eat lighter to help stimulate the digestive system,
• Add fresh, bright, bitter greens to your smoothies, salads and daily diet,
• Exercise – find a new daily routine that gets you excited.  Some ideas include jogging, tennis, team sports, jump roping and dancing,
• Wake up earlier, 
• Incorporate backbends into your morning stretching/yoga routine,
•  Get outside and enjoy the sun (but protect yourself from the wind), and
• Get creative – springtime is a great time to let your creative juices flow.

Because we want to support our body, brain and heart and NOT just our looks, I also recommend avoiding any magazine, email, or facebook post promising a bikini body or any different body in 21 days. After all we are so much more than just the vehicle of this physical form, which can't be photoshopped like all of those magazines.  Instead, remember you body is beautiful as it is, even as you may be working towards a specific goal.

We live in a world of modern convenience, mostly disconnected from the natural world.  Yet our bodies evolved in that natural world and continue to be most healthy when we stay in harmony with it.  So go back to your roots, eat some wild greens, get out in the sunshine and do some creative work, welcome this exciting rebirth of spring into your home, heart and life.  And enjoy all of the delights of spring.

Jackie Dobrinska is a nutritional coach, yoga instructor and herbalist.  She writes for SE Wise Women and Red Moon Herbs.  Find out more at www.TheAlchemyofTransformation.com 

Celebrating the Earth

Happy Earth Day.  Many of us take this day or week to celebrate with festivals, drinks, bands and maybe some attention to environmental movements.  But it is more than a celebration, it is a day of honor.  A day when we kneel to the ground, touch the earth and give thanks to the beauty of this green world.  For without her, there is no way we could exist.

She is a marvel in every way.  Just the right distance to the sun - not too close, not too far.  Enough water.  Proper mixture of molecules in the air.  Rich soils.  All of this supports life...and her cycles of death and rebirth keep everything in harmony.  

A few decades ago most of mainstream America was oblivious to environmental concerns. We were slurping lead gas, dumping raw sewage and waste into our waterways, and air pollution was commonly accepted as the smell of "prosperity".  Underneath this there was an emerging consciousness - for example Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" had made the NY times best seller list.  After a massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, Sentor Gaylord Nelson from Wisconsin decided he wanted to help put environmental concerns front and center stage, so in 1970 channeling the anti-vietnam war protest energy of the day, the first earth day was born.  

It became a national movement almost immediately.  Twenty years later, it became a worldwide movement.  Today, 43 years later while we are still having massive oil spills, and are probably not as far along as many of us would like to be, we've come a long way baby.

We have biodiesel, electric car stations, the Clean Water Management Act, Land Conservation initiatives, Farmer's Markets, Slow Food Culture and the permaculture movement, which is more about being regenerative rather than merely sustainable.  Yes, we also have Monsanto and Exxon, a new state of garbage floating in the ocean, and fracking, but as Voltaire one said "Perfection is the enemy of good."  We're hopefully making progress.

So as we honor the many, many small and large steps we as individuals and a culture have taken to become more earth aware, we also ask for you to make this day more than a mere celebration.  We ask you to make a commitment to this mother that feeds, nurtures, and takes care of us and our wastes the best she can, even as we treat her as a thing rather than a being.  

Commit to regeneration.  Commit to taking radical acts on her behalf.  Commit to taking responsibility for our use of her.  

The Earth Day Network, which also calling for women to be equal partners of leaders in the new green economy, is calling for 2 billion green acts.  I wonder, what will yours be?

Chickweed Love

Last fall, after most of the lush greens had died back, I was researching some of my favorite plant allies.  Tucked away in some obscure website was the briefest of sentences that caught my attention.  It said that the Greeks washed with Chickweed juice to "remove spots.".   What did that mean!?  Where they removing age spots?  Freckles?  Cancer spots?  I HAD to find out.

So this spring, when the lush leggy "weed" was in full ripeness, I harvest bag loads of her sweetness, and proceeded to take her home to juice.  It took hours for my little juicer to process, and as I stood over my sink, counter strewn with green carnage, I decided to shoot a little of the fresh green juice back.

I took off.

It was like drinking high-octane, rocket fuel, but of the very natural kind.  My fire was lit.  My energy revitalized.  I felt the best I'd felt in months...maybe even years.

Apparently this wasn't unusual.  A little more research shows that Chickweed is a brilliant little plant eaten by wisdom keepers for decades (centuries even) to treat:
~ exhaustion
~ disorders of the blood
~ kidney disorders, as well as
~ itchy eyes
~ skin issues
~ and much much more.

Perhaps it helps with exhaustion because it is so packed full of nutrition.  It contains some hard to get nutrients - like selenium and niacin, and for vegetarians iron.  It has magnesium (of which 1 in 4 Americans is deficient) as well as calcium, phosphorus, potassium, zinc, Vitamin A, B-1, B-2 and C

Needless to say, the "wash" got side tracked and I've incorporated chickweed into my morning routine, stepping down my mined, industrialzed multivitamin for this natural friend at my feet. This leafy "weed" is found in your lawn, garden, even the cracks of sidewalks (though I suggest harvesting from a cleaner source!).  Since it is most lush in spring and fall, I'm freezing my juice to keep me well supplied and on Fire throughout the year.

So keep an eye out for chickweed. You may find her everywhere, waiting at your feet to give you a rocket boost too!