Somatic Spring

Spring doesn’t hit the body like a light switch, and that might be exactly the point. We’re slowing down to explore “somatic spring” a simple, meaningful way to notice how seasonal change shows up inside us as small shifts in breath, energy, and the quiet urge to move. If you’ve been pushing for a fresh start and wondering why your motivation isn’t matching the longer days, this conversation offers a gentler path. 

We talk about how spring arrives in real life: brief warm spells, sudden cold snaps, buds that open a little more each day. Then we mirror that same rhythm in the body. After months of wintering, we may feel tiny signs of waking up, a deeper breath, a desire to stretch, a moment of presence that feels like color returning. Rather than demanding a dramatic transformation, we practice somatic awareness and nervous system friendly pacing, trusting that your body remembers how to come back to life. 

You’ll also hear a closing reading from Dinah Ashworth’s Wild Hope, a reflection that captures the tenderness of renewal and the way spring “gently shakes out our hibernating toes.” When you finish listening, try one small experiment: notice a single moment of somatic spring today and let it be enough. If this helped you slow down, subscribe, share the episode with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find a calmer rhythm too.

To learn more, go to mycreateharmony.com 

Transcript

Welcome And Intentional Rhythm

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Welcome back to the Create Harmony Podcast, and you have found a place that we set an intentional rhythm and we really focus on savoring life's blessings. We're trying to learn how to use our imagination as a way of listening to God. So if you are longing for more stillness and gratitude, if you're longing for maybe a gentler way to move through your days, you are in the right place. In this place, we'll take a few moments to notice everyday joys and reconnect with the peace that's already within you, and sometimes we forget to notice. And we will be quietly noticing goodness that's all around us. So this is episode 165, and I am your host, Sally Burlington, and today we're gonna slow down together and explore a really simple concept, but it's I think it's pretty meaningful. It's what I'm calling somatic spring. Somatic. So somatic is all about like how you feel in your body. So when spring begins, it doesn't come all at once. It comes in small little ways. And I talked about this last week, particularly our our the way that we experience spring here in the south is lots of little bursts of warmer weather, and then we're back to cold, and then bursts of warmer weather. And it, I mean, it really feels like okay, it's time to, you know, get out around the pool. We have a pool in our backyard, it's time to be out there, it's time to start putting on our bathing suit, and then the next day back to the coat. So it comes in these small little bursts, a slightly warmer day, maybe a breeze, a longer stretch of light at the end of the day. You start to see things greening up. You see buds, and a lot of my plants that die back in the winter are starting to blossom out or at least leaf out. And you really have to pay attention to notice some of these subtle changes. And in the same way, spring is happening within our body. So remember, I said somatic spring. It begins quietly inside of us. So after months of winter when our body is naturally slowing down, when we're naturally sort of turning inward and conserving our energy just to shore up, shore us ourselves up through the winter. Now we're starting to see a shift. It's not a dramatic shift, it's not a real obvious shift, doesn't happen all at once, but gently your body begins to remember how to awaken. You might feel a little bit more energy each morning. You don't feel like you need to sleep all of the time, or maybe you sense the quiet urge to move, to stretch, to step outside. And all these things are they're very, very subtle. So maybe you're not noticing them at all. Maybe you're completely unaware of them because you just have been, you know, running through life and doing all the things, checking all the lists. But maybe this this episode will help you remember it's just a gentle nudge back towards those subtle changes within you. Your body wants to move with the change of the season. And just be just like the earth begins to thaw and soften, your body's gonna do the same. But one of the hardest things about spring in our culture is that once we start to have longer days and more light and everything, we expect it to feel like a sudden burst of motivation. We have a fresh start, a new surge of energy. Let's clean all the closets out. Let's new year, new day, all the new things. We want it to be more, begin all at once. But that's not how it works. Remember that I said how we experience our season changes slow. The ground gradually warms, buds open just ever so slowly. Each little day they open a little bit more. And sometimes they have to take a little bit of a pause because back to winter. So they just hold on until the next warm day, and then they open a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more. And your body is gonna follow that same rhythm. So, somatic spring, this discussion of somatic spring is inviting you to just trust that process, to let your energy return slowly, to let your body listen to what your body's trying to say and let it lead the way. Notice inside of you, in your moments of silence, if you take some time to center yourself and be silent, notice what feels like it's emerging. Instead of rushing and demanding and pushing, just notice that feeling of like something rising gently to the surface or something or something emerging that you can feel inside yourself. There is peace in this allowing. So you don't have to force it, you don't have to do anything. All you're doing here is noticing it. That's what somatic spring feels like. Not a dramatic transformation, but a gentle remembering, a return to more movement, a return to your breath, maybe a deepening of presence as you start to, you know, the the dormancy of winter is sort of bland, the colors are sort of blah. And spring invites you to notice a little bit more, to see those buds, to see those flowers, to notice all the little subtle changes that are happening, and maybe most importantly, a return to trust. Trust that your body knows how to come back to life. And trust that even the smallest shift matters. You don't have to bloom all at once. You don't have to have everything figured out. You can simply begin in the smallest of ways. So today, as you move through your day, see if you can notice just one moment of somatic spring. Maybe it's a deeper breath of that fresh spring air. Maybe you go outside and let the sun warm your face, warm your skin a little bit for just a few seconds. It doesn't take long. Maybe it's a stretch, just a little bit more possibility and stretch. Let that be enough because spring doesn't all arrive all at once. It arrives in tiny little moments, and all of those moments are already here. So for our closing today, I'm gonna read a reflection from the book Wild Hope by Dinah Ashworth, and it's all about the coming of spring, and it goes like this. It gently shakes out our hibernating toes and whispers, wait now, your wintering days are done. And so with each eager sunrise, we emerge, we reignite, and we re-energize. And as with the nature around us, we begin to rise and renew. Come on in, spring. We have much longed for your light, for your joy, for your new. We are slowly rousing from slumber. Welcome back. Hopefully, you will be noticing all of the awakenings and the arisings that are going on within you. We'll be back next week with some more energizing and uplifting content, and hope you'll join us then too. And until next time, peace.