Springtime is well under way. With it comes the vital refreshment of new beginnings, hope renewed and, of course, the urge to clean.
As nature displays the triumphant beauty of a fresh start all around us in this glorious spring season, many feel inspired to clean house. To clean house: To dust, to remove what is stagnant and not part of the new trying to bloom, to make way and make space for fresh life. Not only does it feel good, but it can also allow new life to come forward with a lot less friction and irritation. (And how many times have you simply cleaned house purely out of irritation. ‘I can’t take this anymore!’ And into a fit of cleaning, we go.)
From the ritual ’shaking of the house’ — a time of cleaning, polishing, celebration and new clothing — in the ancient east, to Celtic, Northern, and religious traditions — the spring season is a time of cleaning and new starts. It is the preparation of, and making way for, the new. This seemingly timeless drive is not just a cultural human made idea. It’s in our ‘bone memory’ so to speak. A biological, mental, emotional and spiritual imperative. If you really want to trace back its origins, you must look back into the deep roots of the rhythms of nature itself, and our interaction with it.
Shaking Off the Season Past
In winter we are generally less active, less motivated, and for good reason. For 99.9% of our species’ timeframe our biology was directly wrapped up with the changing seasons. With less light, with less to harvest, with the onset of the cold, we naturally gravitated more indoors, producing more melatonin, becoming sleepier overall. Conserving heat, storing energy within, as the trees do in their roots. Containing, preserving, slumbering, dreaming.
Dust, fat cells, ‘stuff’, and general lethargy are more likely to gather and make a home with us for the winter season as we ‘hibernate’. Come springtime, it’s time to shake that all off, make space for the new growth, get outside more and feel less sleepy.
New energy in mind and body surge, and space is needed to not stagnate, stifle or frustrate that energy’s growth. For any fresh start, the old must go. Autumn leaves fall, making rich the soil for new life to thrive. If that old form and shape hadn’t fallen, if it didn’t decompose and feed the soil, how could the new sprouts arise?
Ritually Shifting
How do we make this transition a smooth one and avoid the potential frustrations or awkwardness this seasonal shift can come with? As humans always have — harmonizing with the energies of spring, through ritual engagement.
Get out there in nature. Look at the new growth, hear the birds, attune to the beauty and energies of spring. Let it awaken the ‘bone memory’ within you. Truly take it in. The experience you have in nature is actively within you. In fact, in Chinese medicine, we are firmly in the liver’s season now (the great organ responsibility for clearing out those toxins and unnecessary debris within us).
The same sense of renewal, and rebirth, of excitement and newness, the same life force that shoots up as sprouts breaking through the ground, and spring flowers blooming, is the same source of renewal ready to bubble forth in you as fresh thoughts, feelings, ideas, perceptions, actions and wonders. As the Taoists say — reality is as an eternal spring, an ever-outflowing abundance. We just need to simplify, remove what’s in the way, and get in harmony with that outflowing.
So, when spring cleaning your home, you are — on one level — simply cleaning up; but on another level you are enacting a ritual done for thousands and thousands of years. A ritual that runs in the ancestral cellular memory from generation to generation. An energy in tune with the trees, and the land, flowers and birds, and the movement of the sun.
And on a more down-to-Earth functional level, a good deep clean also removes dust particles from the air that agitates sinuses, lungs, and exasperates allergies. If you want to further support the changes on a physical level, reduce inflammation — which effects seasonal allergies — with high quality curcumin; and keep immunity high in this unpredictable season where sun, rain and wind can show up together in a matter of minutes.
It’s also true what they say — spring cleaning our home and workspace is straight therapeutic. Stress relieving and clarifying. As you declutter, quite literally, you reduce the amount of ‘over-stimulation’ on your mind leaving more space to focus on what is more important, what carries deep value and delight. No doubt, this also inspires productivity, helping the creativity and all the new births of the season take flight.
And this is the season of hope after all. (And who doesn’t need more of this these days?) After space has been made, the old cleared, attuning to the bright new season via the energies of hope can put us in the uplifting coordinates we are aiming to go:
- Put concentrated time and effort in focusing on hope-filled messages, media, music, and activities.
- Spend time with people who inspire this.
- Take in the spirit of hope everywhere in nature now.
- If you have a hard time letting go of things, now is a great time to practice. As you pick up and decide what stays and what goes, ask yourself — ‘Will this support that new bright hope trying to be reborn or hold me back in something totally ready to fall away like the leaves of a tree?’
- Take medicinal mushrooms that can help with mood like Chaga, Lion’s Mane or Reishi
- There is an acupuncture point called ‘Liver 14 - Gate of Hope.’ (Can you guess what this point can help with?) A quick search of acupuncture point liver 14 will also show where it is in the body, and you could intuitively, gently, press into this point as you take in all these announcements of hope. Tip the scales in this favour.
Engaging Spring
Rooted in our biology, our mammalian and cultural past, in the cycles of nature and the rhythms of life — the impulse and benefits of spring cleaning are, in a way, timeless, and still very much alive in the present.
If we don’t engage the energies of spring, it can make for an awkward and frustrating time. The new energy and excitement grow anyways but we’re not quite out of that winter sleepiness yet or supporting that growth. It’s kind of like starting a new exciting school or job, while still ending the last one. Everything in you is ready to move ahead and yet something is still calling all the energy in the past. Frustrating and defeating. Whereas engaging with the timeless energy of spring through ritual cleaning harmonizes inner and outer, mind and body, allowing the force of life that is always bubbling and flowing from the heart centre of existence to flow through unimpeded.
Inspired to clean house yet?
If you haven’t already, now is the time.
Now is the time of growth.
(And, if allergies are bad, it’s a great excuse to stay inside and attune to the season through cleaning our home, cleaning body, cleaning mind.)
And remember to have hope everyone — A time of new possibility, and growth, is here. Support it well and live its bright promise. Nature is in love with your productions!
Happy spring!
With love from all of us at PURICA!
