Spring Blog

Spring has most definitely sprung down here on the south coast of England. We have enjoyed glorious blue skies and sunshine in the last week and it feels my heart with joy and warmth.

Spring is my favourite season, full of hope and energy. For me this feels like the natural 'new year'. This the the perfect time to start cleansing, both mentally and physically and to set goals for oneself.

Cleavers, Galium aparine

Spring Cleaning

Pretty much all cultures from around the world have embraced Spring time and used this new emerging energy and light to clean their homes and communities. I love getting out in the garden, washing away the sludge of winter, tidying away the damp and letting the new sunshine penetrate the new buds of leaves and flowers.

Inside the home I tend to do a deep clean, look through our wardrobes and cupboards and offload anything to charity that doesn't serve us anymore. We tend to hold on to so much 'stuff'. I love practising minimalism and I think this acts a bit like Feng Shui, allowing us to hold on only to a small amount of things that bring us joy and that are purposeful. For those of us with kids, that isn't always an easy thing to practice when they want to keep every stone, stick and leaf they find on their adventures! If you have any tips, send them my way!

Physically, spring is the perfect time to cleanse. Often, and I have mentioned this is my January blog, people tend to cleanse in the new year when our bodies are still naturally in hibernate mode (this goes for those in the northern hemisphere). So that is something I don't recommend until now.

Do we have to do anything drastic to cleanse? No, we really don't, our bodies are designed to detox and cleanse continuously, all the time - our livers filter 1.5L of blood every minute. We can help it do this process better though and luckily, all the lovely local foods in the spring are natural 'cleansers'.

Spring greens are natural cleansers, things like watercress, radishes, asparagus, spring onions and sprouting broccoli. Herbs like nettle and cleavers are popping up around hedgerows and paths. These can be eaten, but I do recommend picking from cleaner areas, always wash them, blanch and juice them or put them in a spring soup. There are lots of nettle soup recipes online, such as: https://foragerchef.com/classic-nettle-soup/#recipe.

Hydration is also key, ideally from filtered water. Getting the body moving and stretching. I love walking, Pilates and yoga, these are my go-to and don't excessively stress the body. Although spring is a perfect time to increase energetic workouts. You should be starting to feel the increase in energy with the lighter and days and warmer sun.

Dry skin brushing can be helpful too. You can pick these brushes up from most pharmacies or health shops. It is a quick hack you can do in your shower before you turn the water on. Make sure you starts on your outer limbs and work your way toward your heart. This helps move the lymph. What is the Lymph I hear you ask. It is a rarely talked about system in the body. It has channels, a bit like blood vessels, that follow the circulatory system. They act like a garbage shoot, so toxins and waste get dumped into the lymph from the blood, but unlike blood, the lymph channels cannot pulsate, so the only way for the toxic sludge to move is via our muscles aka us moving. This is where dry skin brushing comes in. It helps move this waste along the lymph, which eventually drains to a duct in your chest, hence the brushing toward the heart! This is a great practice if you tend to be prong to bugs, and especially colds that hit the lymph nodes in the neck. Cleavers, that herb I mentioned earlier, is a great lymph cleanser. Rebounding, walking and hot/cold bath therapies are also great ways to stimulate lymph drainage.

Vitamin D is usually at pretty low levels this time of year, as we are coming out of winter. In fact as many as half the population of the UK are deficient or insufficient in vitamin D. You are more at risk the further north you live in the UK and even more so the darker your skin is. Around April time, we can start to make vitamin D from the sun. I always recommend getting outside from this time of year around midday, and exposing your underarms to the sun for 15 minutes or so...the paler the skin, the quicker the conversion.

I would like to take this opportunity to mention a very insightful book that I am reading at the moment called, 'The Menopause Brain' by Dr Lisa Mosconi. Her and her team are the first to properly research the female brain and how it changes throughout different life stages. It is amazing, and a fab read for not only women but men too. Understanding that the female brain and the menopause brain works differently is important for us all.

I hope you have a lovely April. Spring and Easter are such abundant times.

Rosie Rayner, ND, NT, mBANT, mANP