Spring Self-Care to Boost Your Immunity and Avoid Illness

Happy Lunar New Year friends! We’ve officially crossed the threshold and are dancing within the beginnings of the Lunar New Year. Happy Spring! 

This seasonal shift is an important time to really maintain and even up your selfcare rituals to avoid illness and to weather this rocky transition. 

This transition from Winter to Spring can feel a bit like hide and seek. We might feel Winter one day then get a taste of Spring again only, alas, to dip back towards Winter again. Alas! 

To stay well and to keep your energy grounded and sane, I recommend a few things in particular as we cross this playful and shifting seasonal boundary.

1. Stay bundled. The temperatures will begin to climb but please keep yourself covered. Spring is the season of wind in Chinese Medicine. Wind helps with pollination and the scattering of seeds but wind can also carry pathogens and viruses. 

To mitigate this, please keep the nape of your neck and your low back covered. Scarves and tucked-in shirts or underlayers like tank tops will help you keep your low back (your pilot light) warm and will prevent pathogens from penetrating the exterior to lodge within. Keep wearing those hats and scarves and keep your hands and feet warm as well.

2. Hydrate. Drinking water, especially warm liquids (please avoid ice at this delicate time of year especially) will help you move the sluggishness of winter outwards and will also support your liver, one of the primary Springtime organs in Chinese Medicine. The liver detoxes your system in Chinese Medicine by helping to spread the qi. 

You can also add some hydrating foods–celery, sprouts, cucumber, radishes, some lettuce–to help lighten up your system and release some of the heaviness of wintertime.   

3. Mitigate stress with gentle movement. I’m not going to tell you to “avoid” stress because I personally find that advice fairly presumptuous and, to be honest, annoying. Stress is part of life and learning how to move with it is part of being flexible but grounded, like a tree with solid roots and supple branches, a perfect image of Springtime, the “Wood” phase of the year. 

That being said, the natural movement of the Springtime energy is up and out, so if you’re feeling restless as we transition seasons, especially this particular seasonal shift of Winter to Spring, that’s totally natural. 

Light exercise, walking, dancing, singing, sighing, shaking, laughing will help you move energy and move through the stress response without depleting yourself. Super sweaty exercise might feel exhausting this time of year, as the energy is still somewhat contracted and cold in nature, but gentle movement will help you move through the stress response and reanimate yourself. 

4. And my last tip, maybe as expected, is to reground yourself in routines. Finding a few touchpoints of regularity in your day, whether it’s a five minute meditation or a monthly acupuncture appointment to look forward to, will help you find a resting place and some stability amongst the wild transition that is Winter-into-Spring.

If you’ve fallen out of place with your regular acupuncture appointments, whether you come every-other-week, monthly, or every 8 weeks, contact me to recommit to your groove. 

I would be happy to help you reactivate and reinvigorate your preventative care routine.

And, did I mention, I now have a heat lamp in Center City? The gentle infrared light warms and soothes the body from the inside out, warming first at the deep muscle layer. Come enjoy some infrared sun with me downtown.