5 reasons spring is harder on your body and what to do about it

Your body is a reflection of nature, a microcosm of the same forces moving through the world outside your window. And in spring, those forces are unmistakable. All winter, your circulation has been consolidating — pulling inward and downward, protecting the vital flame at the core, conserving resources the way a good general conserves his troops in winter quarters. Now, as the temperature rises and the light lengthens, that deep blood begins its outward journey again, moving from the tissues and muscles into the greater circulation of the body, like rivers swelling with snowmelt. You may feel this as a kind of aliveness returning to your skin, a warmth in your extremities that was absent for months. You may also feel it as vulnerability — a rawness, a sensitivity, a sense of being suddenly more permeable than you were in January.

This is seasonal intelligence at work.

The organ system that governs this entire transition is the Liver — and its partner, the Gallbladder. In Chinese Medicine, the Liver is not merely a detoxification organ, though it is certainly that. The Liver is the General of the organ networks. It holds the vision. It makes the plans. It ensures the free and smooth flow of Qi and Blood throughout the entire body. When the Liver is healthy and its energy moves freely, you feel it as clarity, creativity, decisiveness, the capacity to see where you are going and move toward it with both courage and flexibility.

The Liver governs the tendons and connective tissue — all the sinew, all the fascia, all the fibrous structures that hold the body together and allow it to move. This is why spring is the season when so many people suddenly notice aches and stiffness in the hips, the shoulders, the sides of the legs. The Liver and Gallbladder channels run along the inner and outer legs, up through the hips, through the ribs and the sides of the body. As Wood energy begins to rise and move, these channels can feel tight, tender, or blocked — like a garden hose that has been kinked all winter and is suddenly asked to carry full pressure again.

Be gentle with these places. They are waking up.

The Influence of Wind & Damp

Spring is also the season of two powerful environmental forces: Wind and Damp. Wind is the great carrier. It moves quickly, unpredictably, and penetrates the body through the back of the neck and the joints, looking for any opening where the Wei Qi — the body's defensive energy — is thin or tired. Wind is responsible for sudden headaches, the stiff neck that appears overnight, strange neurological symptoms that seem to come and go without explanation, pain that moves and shifts from one part of the body to another. If you've ever noticed that your pain wanders — today in the shoulder, tomorrow in the knee — that is Wind moving through the channels.

Damp is slower, heavier, and more insidious. It accumulates over time, often from a combination of cold, wet weather, irregular eating, and a digestive system that is still waking from its winter consolidation. You feel Damp as heaviness in the limbs, foggy-headedness, sluggish digestion, a feeling of being waterlogged or swollen, a body that feels difficult to lift out of bed in the morning. Damp and Wind together — a particularly challenging combination that peaks in the unstable weather of spring — can settle into the joints and create the kind of deep, achey pain that worsens on cold, wet days and is difficult to shift.

The antidote is consistency and warmth — we will come to that.

The Emotional Landscape of Spring: What's Frozen Begins to Flow

Spring and early summer are the peak seasons for depression, anxiety, emotional crisis, and suicide across every country, continent, and hemisphere in the world. The research is consistent and striking. We tend to assume that winter — with its darkness and cold — would carry the highest rates of mental health crisis. It does not. Spring does. From a Chinese Medicine perspective, this makes sense.

The Liver stores the emotions. Not metaphorically — functionally. The emotional residue of experiences we have not fully processed, the frustration we swallowed at work last autumn, the grief we didn't have time to feel, the resentment that calcified quietly over a long winter — all of this is held in the Liver's energetic field. When Wood energy rises in spring, it moves everything. Including what has been stored.

This is why so many people feel an intensification of depression, anxiety, frustration, and a particular kind of emotional restlessness in spring — a feeling of being almost agitated from within, of something pressing outward that cannot quite find its expression. The classical texts describe this as Liver Qi Stagnation moving and stirring the Heart fire — and when the Heart is disturbed, the Shen becomes unsettled. We feel it as irritability, insomnia, a racing mind, palpitations even, a sense of being slightly more unhinged than usual.

And in the Year of the Fire Horse — a year already characterized by heightened emotional sensitivity, by the Heart's energy running high, by the invitation to move with clarity and focused intention toward what truly matters — this spring carries particular potency. The Fire Horse does not do things quietly. It asks you to feel fully, to see clearly, to know where you are going and why. This is a year that will not allow you to sleepwalk through your life. The rising Wood energy of spring and the Fire Horse's intensity are moving together, amplifying each other.

So we must work with this energy— consciously, skillfully, and with self-compassion,  so that you can move into the year with greater clarity, freedom, and a truer sense of your own direction.

Five Practices for Navigating the Spring Transition

There is an art to moving with the season rather than against it. Here are five practices I return to again and again — both in my own life and in my work with patients — for navigating this powerful and sometimes turbulent time of year.

1. Breathwork: Moving the Qi from the Inside Out

Of all the practices available to us, breathwork may be the most direct, the most immediate, and the most profoundly underestimated tool we have for moving Liver Qi, releasing stored emotion, and supporting the body's seasonal transition.

The breath is the only function of the autonomic nervous system that we can consciously control — and through it, we have access to everything else. A specific breathwork practice in spring is not merely relaxing. It is physiologically active: expanding the lungs, oxygenating the blood, stimulating the vagus nerve, moving the diaphragm in ways that massage the Liver directly, and creating a biochemical environment in which stored emotions can actually release from the tissues.

In my work, I offer breathwork sessions specifically designed to support the Liver and Wood element — working with the breath as medicine, using rhythm, depth, and intentional release to move what has been held through the winter months. If you have never experienced a guided breathwork session, spring is the perfect season to begin. Your body is already asking for it.

Spring Equinox Breathwork + Harmonic Sound Ceremony

Sunday March 29th 4-6 PM

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2. Qi Gong: The Language Your Body Already Speaks

Qi Gong is spring medicine in its most elemental form. The gentle, flowing movements — rooted in the same classical Chinese medicine framework that understands the Liver, the channels, the seasonal rhythms of the body — work directly with the body's energy pathways to encourage the free flow of Qi that this season demands.

Specific Liver and Gallbladder Qi Gong forms stretch and open the channels running along the sides of the body, the inner legs, and through the hips — precisely the areas where Wood energy tends to stagnate. The practice is slow enough to be restorative, but active enough to move Qi that has been sitting still all winter. Twenty to thirty minutes of Qi Gong in the morning, practiced outdoors if the weather allows, is one of the most complete spring medicines available to you — touching body, breath, mind, and spirit simultaneously.

Spring Qi Gong

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May 11th - June 17th

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3. Hot and Cold Hydrotherapy: Waking the Circulation

The tradition of alternating hot and cold water therapy is ancient — found in Finnish sauna culture, in the Roman baths, in the naturopathic medicine tradition I practice, and increasingly validated by modern research. For spring specifically, it is extraordinary medicine.

Here is what it does: the heat dilates the blood vessels, drawing circulation to the surface of the body; the cold contracts them, driving blood back into the core. Repeated alternation creates a pumping action in the circulatory and lymphatic systems — moving stagnant blood from the deep tissues into active circulation, clearing metabolic waste, reducing inflammation in the joints, and stimulating the immune system. It also generates a remarkable sense of aliveness — a full-body awakening that no cup of coffee can replicate.

You do not need a plunge pool or a Nordic spa. Begin in your own shower: three minutes of hot water, followed by thirty seconds to one minute of the coldest water you can bear. Repeat three times, always ending cold. Do this three to five mornings a week and notice what shifts in your energy, your clarity, and the way your body feels in the changing spring weather.

4. Acupuncture: Direct Support for the Liver and the Channels

Acupuncture in spring is, in a very literal sense, working with the season. The Liver and Gallbladder channels are at their peak energetic expression from late February through April — which means they are both most active and most responsive to treatment during these months. A skilled acupuncturist can work directly with the points along these channels to move Qi stagnation, reduce the joint pain that accumulates from Wind and Damp, support the emotional detoxification that spring invites, and strengthen the body's Wei Qi — its defensive energy — against the unpredictable weather shifts of the season.

In my clinic, I design spring acupuncture treatments specifically around the Wood element — using a combination of Liver and Gallbladder points, specific Wind-expelling points along the upper back and neck, and constitutional points tailored to each individual's pattern. If you have been carrying tension in your hips, your ribs, your jaw, or your eyes — all Liver-associated areas — spring acupuncture can offer genuine relief.

A series of three to four treatments through March and April is one of the best investments you can make in your health for the year ahead.

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5. Rhythm, Routine & Early Rising: Becoming the Wood

The Wood element has a direction: upward and outward. It is the energy of expansion, of growth, of a plant that knows exactly which way is light and moves toward it without hesitation. In the Year of the Fire Horse, with its invitation toward clarity and focused intention, this directional quality of Wood energy becomes even more important.

One of the most powerful — and least glamorous — spring practices is simply this: go to bed and wake up at consistent times. The Liver does its primary metabolic and emotional processing work between 1 and 3 AM. Gallbladder time is 11 PM to 1 AM. If you are awake during these hours, you interrupt a biological process that your body has been waiting all winter to complete. And in spring, when this processing is amplified, irregular sleep is one of the fastest routes to the irritability, the emotional volatility, and the foggy-headedness that characterize a Liver in distress.

Rise with the sun if you can, or close to it. Walk outside in the morning light — this single act resets your circadian rhythm, supports cortisol regulation, and sends a clear signal to your Wood energy that it is time to move in the right direction.

Know where you are going this year. The Fire Horse demands it. Not a vague aspiration — a clear direction. The Liver is the General who inspects the army and holds the reins of power. Generals do not wander. They survey the field, they see the horizon, and they move with intention.

A Final Word

This is a potent season. It asks something of you — attention. Attention to what your body is telling you. Attention to the emotions that are surfacing and what they might be asking for. Attention to the direction you are growing toward, and whether the conditions of your daily life are actually supporting that growth.

You are not separate from the world waking up outside your window. The sap rising in the trees is the same intelligence rising in you. The buds breaking open on the bare branch are made of the same impulse that is pressing against the inside of your chest right now, looking for expression, looking for light.

Let it move. Support it consciously, with grace and flexibility.

We're in this together,