Happy Spring Equinox to you! The middle point, equal space between the shortest and longest days of the year…we are moving out of the darkness and into the light. Hope returns, potential bursts forth, rebirth is all around!
So why do so many of us feel TIRED?! The season change does that to the body it seems…we are in transition, it is not an event (even though we mark the exact day). The Germans have a word for this shifting-gears-feeling: Frühjahrsmüdigkeit – spring fatigue – it is thought to be related to a shift in hormone production with more light exposure. Suicide rates even spike this time of year.
So, if you are feeling a little less than springy in your step, you are not alone.
I want to encourage us all to look around, to notice…notice who in your tribe, in your circle, might need a little extra love right now. It has been a hard run. If you are feeling the need, let others know…likely we all have both a desire for more support and the ability to offer a little extra kindness too.
Reflection and Practice
As our days and nights come into balance, it is a perfect invitation to breathe and notice…where in my own life am I in balance and where am I out of balance? Perhaps the better inquiry is – where might I cultivate more harmony and a dynamic working balance? This implies the ebb and flow, the dynamic balance of health and general well-being rather than in/out, good/bad, right/wrong comparisons…it is an invitation into curiosity, spaciousness and compassion.
The invitation into harmony invites us into the center of our own experience. Questions to honor and attend to the intensity of this past year might include: Where am I feeling acute awareness of the the impermanence in life? Do I feel grief, loss or pain? How does this show up in my body? What does it move like? Allowing this inquiry time and space to unfold. Then, exploring the juxtaposition…Where am I feeling joy, aliveness or quiet contentment ? How do these and other feel-goods show up in my BodySpirit? What do these qualities move like? Give yourself time and space to embody this rich experience. You might ask…where can I build capacity to be more comfortable with more life experience? Can I open to more range of feeling, can I bring more presence to all that life is bringing me now without shutting down some experiences and only allowing others?
When you practice being attentive to this wide range of feelings, awarenesses and experience – from an embodied practiced place, you build your fluency and skill to have a more alive life.
Then you can begin to wonder…what might begin to GERMINATE with the practice of a greater embodied range of experience? How might I COME TO THE CENTER of my own direct experience?
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