Asherah, Ancient Hebrew/Canaanite Goddess of Fertility & Renewal. Reprinted With Permission.

by Golda Poretsky, H.H.C.
www.bodylovewellness.com

Listen to the podcast of this post here:

Spring!  All Winter long you look forward to it.  You plan for it.  “As soon as the weather gets warmer, I’m going to go to the park all the time/rearrange the furniture in my apartment/ get new clothes/ never watch television again, etc. etc. etc.”

Then Spring comes and you feel kind of off.  Maybe you’ve got pollen allergies that knock you out.  Maybe the weather shift feels weirder than you expected. Maybe you find yourself getting angry at people or situations that hadn’t bothered you before.

Both of these seemingly contrary effects are part of the energy of Spring.  Spring is about newness, movement, and beginnings, but it’s also about clearing out the old as a way to transition into the new.

In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), springtime is the time when your liver is particularly activated.  Although the liver has about a gazillion functions in the body and even more functions in terms of TCM, anyone who took high school biology could tell you that the liver helps to detoxify the body.  When detoxification in the body goes into high gear, it can lead to both physical symptoms (digestive issues, skin issues, fatigue) and emotional symptoms (anger & sadness).

I know.  It’s a bummer!  So what do we do about it?

As a holistic health practitioner, I’m all about supporting the body rather than suppressing symptoms.  So here are some great ways to support your body and mind to release that which it needs to release.

5 Ways To Support Your Transition Into Spring

1) Add In Healing Foods & Water — What foods to you associate with Spring?  Chances are, those foods will support you and your liver.  Baby greens and parsley help your body to cleanse and tonify.  Citrus fruits are also cleansing and give you added immune support.  Adding these fruits and vegetables to your meals and snacks can give your body the added boost it needs to transition in to the new season.  In addition, drinking water at this detoxifying time of year is particularly important.  If you don’t love drinking water (or even if you do) add some lemon juice and a little agave nectar to create a delicious and cleansing lemonade that you can drink all day.

2) Get Your Anger Out Of You –It may not always be a good idea to communicate your anger to others, but it’s not a good idea to keep it to yourself either.  And, being that it’s Spring, writing in a journal about it might not be enough.  Do what you can to move the anger out of your body.  You can do this consciously by dancing and singing along to an angry song, adding some martial arts moves to your workout, or punching a pillow.  (Warning, you may feel incredibly goofy doing any of those things, but trust me, it’s invigorating to physically move your anger.)

3) Try This Healing Herb — Milk thistle is one of my favorite herbs.  It supports the liver in a very gentle way. Take it as a tea (available at every health food store), tincture, or supplement.

4) Wear More Colors — In the past, as a New Yorker, I had adopted the black and gray uniform.  And while black and gray may seem solemn and energetically protective in Winter, once Spring rolls around it just feels terrible.  Experiment with colors.  Wear what you like.  It can change your mood immensely.

5) Be Gentle With Yourself  — Just because it’s Spring, you needn’t overwhelm yourself with all the things you had intended to do when Spring arrived. Take it easy.  Enjoy the new season with all of your senses.  Be gentle with yourself as if you were the tender bud of a soon-to-bloom flower.

As always, lay some comments on me and let me know how it goes!

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Golda Poretsky, H.H.C. is a certified holistic health counselor who specializes in transforming your relationship with food and your body. Go to http://www.bodylovewellness.com/stay-in-touch/ to sign up for her newsletter and get your free download — Golda’s Top Ten Tips For Divine Dining.

Looking for more support with intuitive eating and getting off diets? Click here to sign up for your FREE Body Love Wellness Consultation.

by Golda Poretsky, H.H.C.
www.bodylovewellness.com

Listen to the podcast of this post here:

Earlier this month, I attended a group led by one of my mentors, Rick Jarow. The group was comprised of more women than men, with an age range of about 30 to 80. As we passed a talking stick around the room, more than half of the attendees complained of feeling excessively tired this week.

I knew just how they felt, because just a few days prior, I had felt the same pull of lethargy and fatigue. For about 2-3 days I felt like staying in bed, watching mindless television, and ignoring as much responsibility as possible.

Can you relate to this?

In our society, being tired can be a source of shame or a badge of honor. Either way, it’s omnipresent. We work crazy hours, stay out late, spend nights watching television as minutes drift by. We wake up with coffee and drink more as the day goes on, we eat sugary stuff to keep us going, and spend millions of dollars on energy drinks and supplements in the hopes that we’ll make it through our day. In the end, we are left with burnt out adrenal glands and a nagging fatigue that dogs our lives.

I’m not writing this to blame you or anyone. Not at all. A lot of us are pressed with an array of commitments that seem to constantly grow and expand.

But what if we were to take a moment, just a short moment, to listen to our tiredness? What if we asked our tiredness what it was trying to tell us? What if we got into agreement with our tiredness, our right to be tired, and kind of went with it?

Last week, after fighting a losing battle with my tiredness for about a day, I decided to listen. And my tiredness was telling me a few things. It told me that I had had a few ups and downs that I needed to process and that my immune system was fighting something that could get worse if I didn’t rest a bit. I checked my Witches’ Datebook and saw that the moon was in its 4th quarter, a waning moon, which, traditionally, is a time for letting go, going within, and having more quiet time.

So I decided to listen to what my fatigue was telling me. I rescheduled one or two things. I took an extra day to get back to emails. I basically did the work I really had to do and set aside anything that didn’t feel nourishing or relaxing. I watched some silly television shows. I spent some time relaxing with creative visualization. I wrote in my journal.

And within about a day and a half, I felt like myself again. I had revived myself by trusting my body and acting on its messages.

In Romeo And Juliet, Romeo begins to swear his love to Juliet by swearing upon the moon. But she protests, “O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon/That monthly changes in her circled orb,/Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.” All subtext and literary criticism aside (and putting aside that Juliet, of course, is a fictional character) her distaste for the variability of the moon always irked me. The moon changes each night but she does so in an understandable rhythm. And just as the tides ebb and flow and the moon waxes and wanes, our bodies’ hormones ebb and flow and our energies wax and wane. Our bodies are more like the rivers than like the rocks, more like the oceans than like machines. The more we can respect the cycles and changes and needs of our bodies, the more we can move with the flow of our lives.

In other words, swear by the moon.  Or, trust your body.

So this week, ask your tiredness what it is asking of you, and act upon it. As always, please share your experiences in the comment section below.

Want to learn more about re-energizing your body?  Then click here.

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Golda Poretsky, H.H.C. is a certified holistic health counselor who specializes in transforming your relationship with food and your body. Go to http://www.bodylovewellness.com/stay-in-touch/ to sign up for her newsletter and get your free download — Golda’s Top Ten Tips For Divine Dining.

For more tips on how to increase your energy, join me for Re-Energize Your Body Simply & Naturally this Tuesday, March 16th!  Click here for more info.

Looking for more support with intuitive eating and getting off diets? Click here to sign up for your FREE Body Love Wellness Consultation.

As I noted in my tip this week, the Summer Solstice (occurring on June 21st at the end of the week) is often a time to celebrate the abundance of Mother Nature. A great way to celebrate this abundance is to take a moment to be grateful and thankful for the food we eat.

In much of Western culture, we’ve been taught to be critical of food. We’re taught to assess and evaluate its contents, whether it has the right vitamins, the right amount of calories, carbohydrates and fats, where it comes from, who makes it, whether it’s “junky” or “healthy” or “bad” or “good.” We toss so much opprobrium on our food that it might as well be a condiment!

As someone with a degree in integrative nutrition, of course, I am an advocate for having fresh, organic, well-made food available to everyone. I believe that the more people have access to whole, non-chemicalized foods, the less prevalent certain diseases will become.

That being said, the way most of us talk about our food may be more unhealthy than most of the food we eat. When we talk about how “bad” or “junky” or “crappy” or “unhealthy” our food is, we create a variety of problems. Below is a list of just a few!

1. Stress Response – When you eat and think that you’re eating something bad for you, this creates a stress response in the body. Your body is getting two signals: digest this food but it’s bad and you should stop eating! This conflict between what you’re actually doing and what your brain thinks you should be doing creates a stress response, also known as a “fight or flight” response. When you’re in fight or flight mode, the blood rushes away from the core of your body (where digestion takes place) to your limbs (where fighting and fleeing take place!). As a result of stressing yourself out about what you’re eating while you’re eating, you become unable to fully digest your food.
2. Negative Messages – By telling yourself that what you eat is bad or wrong or unhealthy, you’re also telling yourself that you are only worthy of such food; i.e., that you’re bad or wrong or unhealthy.
3. Oh, The Guilt! – With all of these negative messages, you also set up a guilt response. As a result, you start to feel guilty about what you eat and then seek out (often unconsciously) more sweet, salty or carbohydrate-packed foods – foods that provide a chemically soothing response – as penance for your guilt.

Luckily, shifting negative thoughts about food is actually quite simple, and I’d like to share one my favorite methods with you right now!

Take a moment, every time you eat, to bless your food. Take a moment to thank Mother Nature, another deity, the food itself, or yourself for feeding your body and nourishing yourself so well. Make this blessing truly your own and have fun with it. Your blessing can be as easy as a quick gratitude list for your food. You can think it to yourself or say it aloud. Getting your friends in on it will make it even more pleasurable. And if you’re accustomed to already blessing your meals as part of a religious practice, pay even more attention to the words you use. Feel the gratitude for the food in your body.
Comment below and let us know if you notice any changes in your relationship to food this week or tell us if you come up with any particularly great blessings!

And don’t forget to check out my blog at More of Me to Love.

Also, please stop by Golda’s Facebook group and become a member of the Body Love Wellness Group!

One of my best friends loves to say that he loves the Spring because it’s “when all the ladies come out.”

I always found it adorable that he said this, not merely because most people think of Spring as “when the flowers come out,” but because, well, he was right. Spring is when all the ladies come out (and the men, too, thankfully), because it feels so good to be out at this time of year. Trees are blossoming, the days are getting longer, and there’s new warmth enveloping us. April in New York City may not be April in Paris, but there is an aliveness in the air that’s definitely palpable.

Thus, I absolutely love that Earth Day (April 22nd) is at this time of year, when we all want to be outside enjoying Mother Earth. It’s a time to celebrate her and our connection to her, and celebrate what it means to be alive.

So this week, take time to be out in nature. Got to a park or the beach or the mountains. Reclaim all of your senses by noticing each one. Notice the way a breeze feels on the back of your neck. Notice the way the sunlight flutters through the leaves of the trees. Notice how the waves sound as they lap against the shore. Get close to flowers and breathe them in deeply (unless you have allergies, of course). Taste the difference in the air. Engage and enjoy all of your senses and still your mind as much as possible.

This practice of being in nature and engaging your senses has numerous benefits. It allows you to get out of your head and into your glorious body. It allows you to be here and now, in the present. It allows you to honor the beauty and wonder of the Earth and weave you back into the fabric of life.

Try it this week and let me know how it goes!

Want some individualized attention on other ways to stay present? Check out www.bodylovewellness.com to set up a free consultation with Golda!

Also—attention New Yorkers! There are still two more Body Love Wellness workshops this April. For more info or to register, go to www.bodylovewellness.com/UpcomingWorkshops.html. The next class is Tuesday, April 21st!

[Cross posted as always to More of Me To Love.]