It's Liver Time!
Although the intro to this post is particular to the experience of life in the Northern Latitudes, it can really resonate with everyone. So to my readers in the south of Canada and the USA, in Asia, Australia, Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere - read on!
Well, here we are again. It is nearing the end of March. It is nearing the end of Winter. It is nearing the beginning of Spring.
And yet…
Still cold. Still snow on the ground. Still snowING, for goodness sakes. Where is this “Spring” that allegedly began days ago?!
Welcome to Liver Time, and our uniquely Northern experience of it!
A few years ago I started sending out a warning email to my clients around this time of year, and I posted it to this blog last year:
Then I wrote more about the Liver in my blog about this common formula for Liver Qi Stagnation, including lists of Liver related symptoms:
This Spring, I wanted to expand on it a little bit, because of what I’m hearing, reading, experiencing. Not just in our Northern lives, but throughout the world.
The Liver, in Chinese Medicine, is in charge of the free flow of the energy throughout our bodies - to our organs, from our core out to our extremities, to our ligaments and tendons, up to our head. The smooth flow of the energy throughout our bodies relies on the smooth flow of our Liver Qi. The smooth flow of the energy throughout our lives ALSO relies on the smooth flow of our Liver Qi. Our work, our relationships, our family, our home, our health. All of these areas of our life depend on the smooth flow of our Liver’s energy in order to process.
Our Liver wants flow both inside our bodies and outside, in our lives.
Now, when it comes to our lives, this doesn’t mean they are supposed to be easy all the time. It’s unrealistic (and I believe, unhealthy) to think that our work, families, relationships, or health can all be easy 100% of the time. Nature is not like that - there is always Yin & Yang, “positives” and “negatives”, gains and losses, darkness and light. Experiencing these things is not a sign of failure or imbalance but of balance itself. (Unpopular view, in a society that is always aiming for the light.)
BUT, there is also a sense of when you are on your “right path” in life, and conversely, when that locked door you are pounding your fists upon is NOT going to budge, and is a sign that you are not in fact on your “right path” at all.
(Or, sometimes, maybe accepting that locked door is enough to make it okay? As one of my teachers once said to me, as I railed against the injustices of the school administration’s financial policies (our tuition payment schedule did not line up with our student loan payment schedule, requiring constant cycles of credit card debts), “Anni, you can pay the money and get Liver Qi Stagnation, or you can just pay the money.”)
The element of the Liver is Wood (think trees, growth, green things). Of all of the elements, Wood is the one that is most directly impacted by the environment around it. Yes, you can mine a mountain or dam a river, but these take a LOT of time and energy and work. But chopping down a tree? One person and a few minutes and it’s done. Our Liver Qi is very easily impacted by the environment around us - the people, the events, the systems.
Our Liver functioning also has a “chicken and egg” quality to it . When our Liver Qi is blocked we are more likely to experience and interpret outside events / people / situations as challenging and evoking of anger, frustration, irritability, depression or overwhelm. But / and when the events / people / situations around us are genuinely challenging (hello, 2020…) these obstacles will impact our Liver Qi’s ability to flow as well, contributing to those imbalanced emotions.
Now, when we think about the restrictions, the isolation, the lack of control that has characterized the past year, it is no surprise that our Liver energy may be suffering. And that this may be heightened at this time of year, the Spring time of the Liver. AND that in addition to feeling these emotions, people OFTEN report feeling an extra layer of guilt and shame for feeling them at all, since we feel we “should” be feeling lighter, brighter, more energized and optimistic at this time of year - it’s Spring, after all!
So how do we help ourselves through these challenges, at Liver time and in general? What can we do if we feel stuck? If we feel unusually annoyed, impatient, frustrated, anxious, tired or down (especially if there’s a changeability to these emotions - on & off, up & down - as the climate of the Spring is “wind”, and the wind represents rapid change)?
We can move.
We can flow.
We can wander - without restrictions and constrictions and expectations and deadlines and goalposts.
We can stretch - our bodies and our hearts.
We can soften - our eyes and our minds and our points of view and our expectations of ourselves.
We can grow - literally, grow.
Years ago my first conscious experience of this Liver time phenomenon in the North was when I saw 10 clients one day and all but one of them came in expressing feelings of fatigue, depression, shame, frustration, irritability, anxiety. These are all emotions I work with in clients all the time. But not usually one after the other after the other. Not usually checking off most if not all of those feelings, in each person.
And then there was the one who had NONE of them.
So I gave it some thought. Of course there could be a million reasons why this one individual was feeling the opposite of the other 90%, but here’s the one that stood out for me: The one that was NOT thrown off balance by this phenomena was the one who was an avid career gardener, who had a greenhouse full of sprouts and plants and green growing things and was literally in the midst of the positive flow of the Wood energy all day.
So grab a bag of dirt and some seeds. Or a jar and some edible sprouting seeds. Or just throw some veggie ends in a bowl of water (seriously, it’s fun and it works - go search “growing veggies from scraps”). Nourish the growth of the Wood energy in the world, in your home, in your life, and it will be nourished in you as well. And it will sprout, grow, stretch, flow, soften. And help us through these hard times.
