Harnessing the energy of spring through herbs, foods, and fasts

The Spring Equinox is upon us and that means a huge shift in the earth. We have been dormant, grounding, warming, and nourishing ourselves over the winter. But now that the energy in the earth is rising, our body is ready to clean house! 

Spring shows this to us with an abundance of weeds... I mean herbs that are so healing and cleansing to your liver, your blood, your heart, and your hormones. Nature provides everything we need, we just need recognize it! 

The plants and foods have a different flavor, these flavors help to stimulate detoxification which our society would benefit so much from!

Let's dive into the details of spring and learn how to harness it's power and clear our bodies!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello, welcome to another episode of the Modern Sage Podcast. I'm Megan McGill. Today we are talking about the spring equinox. So, as of right now, it is the equinox upon us. It is really an exciting time because it is one that I think is so pivotal for our health is this going from winter to spring. So I've spoken about it in other episodes about just the importance of deeply nourishing the body, but then also the importance of cleansing. And there's different seasons for those different modalities. And it can be healing for some, and it can be maybe not so helpful for others. So I would like to talk today about what the season of spring represents and what that means for you, how to harness the energy of spring, and to make sure that it is something that you're doing it and going about it in a way that's really helpful for your body. Because we're going to talk about, you know, depletion and um, but also excess, uh, when is a good time to cleanse? When's a good time to nourish? Like I was talking in the probably the last three or four episodes, a lot of this was about winter time, deeply nourishing the body. But now that is starting to change because if we've done our winter work properly, we are deeply nourished, deeply grounded, calm, and we are ready to rise with this rising energy in the earth and start to cleanse. So that's really what's happening is that the energy in the earth is rising. So in traditional Chinese medicine, they see this starting in the kidney one point, which is like right in the middle of the bottom of your foot, and it rises up through the kidney meridian through your body, passes through your liver meridians, and comes up. So, yes, this is the time when you can get more sinusy, more allergy symptoms because there's usually a stagnation in the body that when the energy is rising, now all of a sudden you feel it and you think, oh, you know, I'm allergic to outside. Well, actually, your internal body isn't able to clear what's going on outside. So it's not outside's fault. It's actually an internal project that we need to clear the internal body so that you're not reacting to the outside. That's a little um something I'm really passionate about is just the topic of especially seasonal allergies, um, because it's become such a thing that anytime someone has a cold, you almost hear them go, Oh, it's my allergies again, you know, like, oh, the pollen, and you know, just like they can just write it off, like they don't own it, right? They're kind of victims to it. And um, I think that's a very misused way of discussing allergies because there has never been a species on earth that is allergic to the earth. Think about that. So if our species is becoming allergic to the earth, what are we doing wrong, right? Like that's not normal. So, what do we gotta do? We can't be victims of it and keep popping our antihistamines, right? Every year, saying, Oh, this just is what it is. No, your body is congested, so you're feeling it now as the energy is rising, and we need to make sure we clear it. We need to do this every year. You can do this four times a year at the change of each season because each season has its own transition, and it is nice to clear through the body and clear out to reset for the new energy coming. So you could do it at each equinox and solstice. Um, but really, I mean, if you can do this once a year, that is pretty life-changing for most of us. Um, and it is something that we have seen in religions, in every culture for thousands of years. Every single religious practice has a cleanse involved with it, right? So in the West, we are very dominated by the Christian religion, and so we understand about, you know, Easter is the end of Lent, and Lent started. I live more in the South, so there was Mardi Gras, right? Fat Tuesday, where you kind of binge on everything before the fast. That is what Jesus did, is he fasted for 40 days. Again, he didn't do it because he was condemned to the desert for 40 days. He did it intentionally because he could feel how dense the physical human body is and how it needs to cleanse and release in order to open up the mind, the brain, the physical brain, but um, you know, that seventh chakra and above to have mental clarity to speak to God, right? Um, every other religion does this as well. That you know, Friday, I think, is the end of Ramadan. Um, you know, there's just endless um religious practices where you are fasting, and then it's like chicken and the egg. Well, pre-religion fasting was also a thing because they saw how it was so cleansing to the physical body for health reasons, right? We cleanse, we have more longevity because we're not so burdened, right? A lot of the times, probably cleansing wasn't an intentional thing, it just was reality, right? With maybe food not being as plentiful during certain times of year. So food is very important for the physical body, but it's also not everything. And we have constructed our lives around three meals a day, which yes is very important, and I can go off on a whole thing with that, especially for women. We need to eat way more than what we think we do, but at the same time, it is okay, and it is actually very beneficial for your body when you do cleanse or fast. You're not gonna die, you can live without food for a very long time. There are people who literally live on sunshine and not even water, so it is possible. Um, it kind of goes to the Buddhist monk thing, you know, they're not gonna be able to have a full family, you know, work in society, no, no, no, you can't do that on that kind of thing. But if you live in like the Himalayas and you're a Buddhist monk and you're able to do that, then yes, it is actually physically possible. There is a man, and I'm forgetting his name, who lived in India who literally didn't eat or drink for I think it was like 30 or 40 years, and you know, of course, people were like in denial if that was actually true, and the Indian government um was able to bring him into a hospital and and um and observe him, and they even saw his bladder uh fill up with with uh fluid and then release fluid, but not like as you know, urination or something, but it would just like it would fill and then it would it would empty, and it's like, how is that possible? He's not even drinking anything, like, where is this water coming from? And this is something I'm really passionate about too is um you know, fourth phase water and uh this topic in general, um, but just the fact that your body can actually create its own water, um, and drinking hydration isn't necessarily the way that you get it. So, anyway, it's just it's really a cool thing. So, my whole point to that is just if you do cleanse or fast, you're not gonna die. Don't worry. It's actually one of the best things that you can do. It's like giving your body an oil change, right? You have to do that to your car every year, every six months or so. Your body is the exact same way, and really the organ that's related to that is the liver. So in Chinese medicine, the spring is the season of the liver, and again, that um energy is rising. And if there's anything stuck and congested in your liver, it will rise too. So the liver is really good at like suppressing things, so this could be a season that it's really hard to suppress stuff because it's just coming up, right? Um, and so uh the liver loves to cleanse, it loves to clear, and it needs the help, right? So the liver is like your oil that has to change, and the liver produces bile, which is that, right? And so bile is like liquid gold, it is secreted into the large intestine to help with digestion, or excuse me, in the small intestine, and then it's reabsorbed usually in the large intestine. Um, it is super vital for digestion, especially with um fats and carbohydrates. So we really need to have good, strong, healthy, clear bile so that we're having good digestion and absorption of nutrients. Um, but when the liver is compromised and it's too busy, then the bile will be secreted, but just a little bit, right? So it's like the body is so smart, it's like I'm trying to survive. So instead of using more bile, which takes more energy for the liver to produce, the gallbladder will just secrete a little bit, or the gallbladder will concentrate the bile so it gets thick and sludgy, right? And then because it's it's trying to hold on to its really prized possession, which took a lot of energy to create. So now we're not getting enough digestive fluids into um our intestinal tract, which is where we are absorbing all of our nutrients and breaking them down. This is how we get candida overgrowths, bacterial overgrowths, um, you know, unappreciated pesticide overgrowths or pesticides, parasites, excuse me, overgrowth. I guess that's what maybe the Western world would do, is just throw a pesticide at that uh for your gut. Anyways, so um, so that's what's going on in the digestive tract if we are not cleansing and we're not clearing out the liver. So this is a really good practice to do once a year. Um I also plan on talking more about cleansing in a following episode where we're gonna go more into each individual type of cleanse. Specifically, one that I like a lot is the master cleanse. Um, and so that one I'm gonna go more into detail. But I also want to talk about just outside of doing an actual fast or an actual cleanse, as we transition into this year, we have things coming up as you can see. Spring is sprung, right? So weeds are growing in the grass. That's probably the first thing that you see, even before little buds on trees. You start to see the weeds in the grass come up. Um, my favorite one is dandelion because it is a I don't want to call it a weed because it's not it's an herb. Um, and it has three different properties that are edible. It has the roots, the leaves, and the flower. Not the white puffy flower, that would be kind of hard to eat. That's more of the you know, etheral spiritual element, I think, of the dandelion is the white puffy part uh that you make a wish. But the rest of the plant is edible and it has different energies in each of the areas of the plant. So the roots are very bitter. I mean, most of the dandelion is bitter, it just is a bitter. Um, but the the most bitter part are the the roots and that you can use in a tea. Um, you can steep them. Of course, all of these you can make tinctures out of them, you can grind them up into capsules, you know, all of that. You could just eat it. Um the leaves, you could just eat them, you could throw them in a salad, you know, they're very bitter. You could just pick them and eat them when you walk by them, um, as long as you know that the yard hasn't had a roundup, which maybe it hasn't since the dandelion is there. Um and uh with other things like that. But you could just pick it and eat it. Same thing with the yellow flower. And flowers are really incredible because they have such a uh such a dynamic uh kind of energy to them, right? Like uh flower essences and things like that that you can um, you know, just even put flowers and alcohol and extract just this very like vibrant high energy frequency from flowers. Um, but anyway, the yellow flower of the dandelion you can eat. That's the one that actually looks like a lion or like a dandelion. Um and it's also in the logo of Modern Sage because I think it's so good at representing what health is. Health is physical, but it's also, you know, spiritual. Um it has that element of fun, of magic, which is like the blowing of the dandelion in the wind. Uh, one of my favorite songs that the kids listen to is this song called Dandelion, and it's like um it says uh does the wind make wishes too? Oh yeah, that's it. Does the wind make wishes too? And it's just it's like so pretty because it is. There's something really magical about it, but then something really bitter and really intense and really clearing. Um, and it's the first thing that we use the most toxic chemicals on to spray them. So here we are thinking, where does cancer come from? Where does sickness and disease come from? Heaven forbid I have a dandelion in my yard, so I will spray it and with a carcinogenic chemical, and then I won't have an herb at my free disposal in my backyard that would actually cure me of cancer and disease if I were to be eating them my whole life long or you know, in these concentrated forms, right? We have completely lost connection with the earth and with the medicine that is right there in front of us, and we are paying the price for it. I, you know, I know this is a sensitive topic, but it's just something I'm really passionate about because I see it and it just is so upsetting when you see the commercials and you know, just how people are spraying things here and there. It literally happened to me um walking my dog, and I normally never say anything to anyone because I'm so gun shy about that kind of thing. So I I have a podcast instead. But this woman had it hooked up to her hose, and my dog and I were walking by, and I looked at her, and instead of saying good morning, which may have been a little bit nicer, I was like, Oh, I was like, Oh, we'll stay away from you. And I pointed at her, you know, her gun, her loaded roundup in her hand, and she goes, Oh, I'm not gonna spray it at you. And I was like, I know. And I just keep looking at her as my dog is sniffing her roses before she starts to spray it. She goes, Well, they get aphids this time of year, and and I'm like, Okay, and then I just kept walking. Um, and of course, like, I mean, I'm not gonna get into a confrontation that was pretty, in my opinion, a little confrontational for me. Um, but I'm like, I don't know, my mom growing up would put soapy dish soap bubbles and like put it over the plant, and that seemed to kill aphids pretty well. Uh, I don't know, there's so many different remedies out there that you could, you know, help control pests with, right? Uh, get ladybugs at the local hardware store and put ladybugs on your plants, and they love aphids. So, right, like there's so many things that you can do, but it takes maybe more effort, and we're really lazy. And anyway, so I'm just hoping maybe that sinks in for her a little bit, like next time she picks up the bottle. Hmm, you know, toxic carcinogenic chemical, but uh, and so with these herbs that are popping up out of the ground, these are the things that are healing us, they are here for us, and they're free. That's another thing. There is a bounty and abundance in nature. We have been sold a bill of sickness and slavery by thinking we have to buy everything and nothing is free, and there's not enough to go around. That is not true. You can see it, like literally, you are trying to get rid of the weeds and they keep coming back because you need them. Like the earth is giving them to you for a reason. You need them, and here they are in your backyard for free, right? Like, you can't even get rid of them. You have to keep spraying them over and over and over again, and nature is so resilient, it keeps coming back, right? So, like, let's be resilient, like nature, let's take advantage of these herbs. Another one that pops up is clover flowers and red clover flower that you might see a lot, right? They're like little, like you know, half dome kind of clover flower with a little bit of pink or red on the petals. Um, and so you can eat again the flower or the leaves themselves. Um, again, they both energetically have slightly different properties, but in general, clover is really good at lymphatic movement in the body. Um, so again, when you're thinking about rising energy, you want to increase circulation when energy is rising. If you have stagnation, then a rising energy is gonna be like slamming into a brick wall. It's really hard. So you need to get movement and lymphatic movement, and that is clover. Clover flower is incredible at that, so you can have you know red clover tea every night before you go to bed or in the morning to help with your lymphatic system. And your lymphatic system uh parallels your bloodstream, um, blood system, but it doesn't have a uh a heart to pump it around, right? It doesn't have its own pulse uh to pulsate it throughout the body. Uh the way that it moves is your movement, and it is actually your foot, um, you're walking your footprints, so that that noise that you make when you walk, the boom, boom, boom, boom, right? It's like a heart. That is the pump for your lymphatic system, are your feet is movement. That's why the best movements for your lymph is usually speed walking, right? You want to really get that lymph pumping, not so much running. I'm not saying running doesn't help, but it can almost be too impactful that it can kind of, you know, again, I'm not saying it's bad, but it's um, it's not as like, I don't know, uh free and and really circulating. It can be a little bit too pounding. Um, but anyway, moving your body in general is gonna pump the lymph. So of course we don't pump our lymph enough, uh, but that is a quick way to do it is to do like a brisk walk for 15-20 minutes. And you might even feel like I do, I always have a sluggish lymphatic system. I really have to work on it. So I will feel like like this little twitching right under my skin, and sometimes you can almost just see it. And those are like your that's your lymphatic system, and that's the lymphatic system working, right? And the lymphatic system is going to all your lymph nodes around the body and collecting different toxins and things and escorting it throughout the system to your uh liver to go through um or it goes through the blood and then it goes to the liver to then get filtered out. So again, if the liver is congested, your lymphatic system is also probably congested as well because it's a whole backup in the system, right? So cleansing the liver will also help, you know, alleviate, it's like dumping out the dumpster. Now all of a sudden, oh cool, everyone can bring their little trash can from around the house and put it in, and it's like, okay, now we're cleaning up, we're getting somewhere, right? Versus the dumpster overflowing, and no one can empty out their little trash cans. And so now the house starts to overflow with trash, right? So it's that whole thing. Um, and so your lymphatic system is really important to keep that moving. Other exercises that are really good for the lymph is like rebounding on a trampoline. Um, again, walking, basic, stretching is really good too. It really opens all of those meridian pathways, the channels in your body, energetic channels, and the lymph itself. Um, you have so many lymph nodes like all over your face, down your neck, right? So a lot of people are doing like that guy shaw uh before they go to bed. I do sometimes. Um, and actually, a really important way to do that with the lymph is to start to start on your chest first, then go to your neck, then start working from bottom to top, because that same idea, if you start just doing, you know, your eyes or the top of your head and down, the lymph at the bottom hasn't drained yet, right? So you want to start draining that out first and then going up top, you know, the bigger lymph is down here, kind of right around your collarbones, and then you have smaller little lymph nodes around your face and your your nose, your sinuses, all that kind of stuff under your eyes, um, above your eyebrows, uh, all that kind of stuff. So that's really good uh for lymphatic movement. Another one is um, oh, and one more is just dry brushing, um, which again you could have like one of those little spa dry brushes, and what you want to do, but you could also do it for free with a washcloth or your own hand, like I'm kind of doing it right now with my hand. Um, you know, you start um from like for example, from your hand and you do short strokes up your arm, all around the arm, and just short, fast little strokes, and you're working it all the way up. I can I can feel it right now. It feels really nice, but you can see how it's kind of like you know, in a way, like squeezing the toothpaste out of the tube, right? So you're starting to move. Move that and you move towards the heart, right? As it moves towards the heart, the heart can then help circulate it, get it into the bloodstream, circulate it around, get it to the liver, and then the liver can then uh flush it out. So dry brushing is a really good thing to do. I like to do it before bed, but it would be even better maybe to do it in the morning to get your lymphatic system moving. Anything that was sitting and sluggish at night, um, you could get that circulating, and it's a very like um awakening kind of sensation. You know, you do it, you feel like you've gotten a new like breath of energy. You're like, ah, I feel so light, you know, it has a good feeling to it. Other herbs that you might see pop up, primrose. I see a lot down where I live, and the girls love to pick them, they're really pretty flowers. Um, primrose is really helpful with hormonal balance and skin conditions and even joint pain. So uh all of those things have to do with the liver. So the liver processes most of our hormones metabolizes them, it also creates some hormones as well. Um, good liver health will then help feed your gut. Many of our hormones are created in our gut. So if we can clear the liver, then our gut will be healthier and then our hormones will be able to produce and to metabolize much better. Also, excess hormones can leave our system a lot better when both the liver and the gut are clear because they're trying to get rid of hormones like, for example, estrogen, you know, um it's a beautiful hormone, but when we have too much and too much can't get out of our system, our body reabsorbs it and it becomes more of these toxic forms of estrogen so we can get estrogen dominance. But that can happen with any hormone, you know, cortisol, adrenaline, all that stuff, right? Like it needs to, it's used, it needs to get out of the body and clear. Um, but skin conditions, joint pain, those are liver conditions too, according to Chinese medicine. It's the inability for the body to detoxify, right? So now it's using the skin to get out of the body, which is fine to a certain degree, but when you're having rashes or anything like that flare up, it's showing that the detox the main detoxification pathways of the liver, the kidneys, is compromised. So now the body is having to utilize the skin to get rid of something, and uh that can look really uh really hard and be really painful. Um, so again, clearing the liver, and I think this a lot with like teenagers with acne. I mean, gosh, I wish I would have known this back in the day. I had it really bad, but I see it was a lot of congestion. I think it was a lot of congestion from vaccinations, to be quite honest. Um, I think that has a high correlation with teenage acne, with the hormones and everything. It just like there's just too much toxicity circulating in the body and the body can't get rid of it. And so it's like, oh, it's hormones from a teenager. That's just the like the tipping point, right? That's like what you know, yes, just flared everything up, but without the other toxic things in the body, I don't think the body would flare as bad as that because you look at traditional cultures, they don't have acne, right? It's a modern condition. Um, but anyway, I think it has to do with that congestion. Also, uh the joint pain as well. So we're talking about circulation. Think about joints as like an intersection on a road, right? There's always gonna be congestion at that intersection. You want that intersection to be running smoothly. So if everything else is slow and backed up and you have traffic everywhere, then those intersections are gonna be even more painful and slower, right? No movement or energy going through there. So again, creating more movement throughout the body, more circulation, and then cleansing the liver, cleansing the liver. Um, my mom actually did a master cleanse with me uh for the first time in January of this year, and her arthritis joint pain in her knuckles and her hands went away. And her and my grandmother have had like, you know, my grandmother had this really bad, she's had it really bad. Um, and it's just something she like lives with. And she goes, Oh my gosh, I almost didn't even notice because I wasn't, I realized I noticed that I wasn't having pain. You know what I mean? It was just like it had just slowly easily disappeared after three days. She goes, Oh my god, nothing has ever taken it away. And it's that it's she cleared her liver, and now all of a sudden things can flow through the body, and those intersections aren't painful anymore. You know, they're not all jammed up. Um, another amazing herb is nettle, stinging nettles. You might have heard of them if you go hiking or walking, um, they grow pretty fast in the spring, and yeah, they do have like those little tiny micro, like little prickly, soft-looking prickly things that grow on the stalk of the plant. Um, so if you go to pick them with bare hands, they will totally sting. Um, but you can harvest them with gloves, and it's so funny because as soon as you dry them or cook them, like the stinging property goes away. So you can saute them, steam them like you would spinach, and you're not gonna get stung by them. Um uh so that's a really amazing herb. The reason it's so incredible uh is because it's so nutrient dense with minerals. Oh my gosh, like you think you know, spinach, kale has a lot it does, it has great minerals, but you times that by like a hundred, and that is what nettles are. Nettles are so mineral dense and so high in chlorophyll, they're super dark and green. Um, again, are essentially a bitter, and um, so I love making nettle tea. Um, I'll even make it for the girls. Um, I'll put some licorice root in there, which um helps sweeten it a little bit, but um yeah, the nettles, and you can even when you make nettle tea, the best way to make it, which honestly I haven't made it this way in a while, um, but you put uh it in like a French press and just leave it for 24 hours to steep. And so while it's steeping for 24 hours, I mean you are getting everything out of it, and then you can drink it, and that's like probably the most uh the easiest way to get everything out of the nettle, unless you were just to eat it whole and saute it like spinach and eat it in that way. Um, but if you are mineral deficient, feeling nutrient deficient, feeling like malabsorption, nettle is one of the best herbs that you can incorporate in any way, like anyway, I don't care. Capsule, tea, yeah. If you can harvest it in the wild, oh my gosh, that's the best. Um, but it's it's amazing. So all of these herbs that we're talking about are bitters. Again, the season kind of lends towards that. Technically, in Chinese medicine, um, again, it's the season of the liver, spring, and the liver also loves sour. So we are talking about a lot of bitters. Bitter technically in Chinese medicine is good for the heart, it's very toning, it has like an astringent property, but that again, it's almost like they play so closely together that the liver health is what benefits the heart. So the heart loves bitter stuff because the liver is almost getting the help of the astringency of the bitterness to then help the heart, but then it also tones the heart and it tones the blood vessels. Um, so it's a really toning um flavor of food. And flavors of food are are very, very important. That's another thing. Um, getting all of these flavors into your everyday or into your diet is very vital because they play certain roles, just the flavor itself, right? Uh, something sour, all of a sudden you'll pucker up, right? It's a it's also a toning kind of property. Um, something bitter, but you'll also notice that you'll start to salivate um your digestive juices start to flow. So flavor outside of just nutrients is very vital for your health. Um, so these bitter foods are blood or the blood cleansing properties of the herbs. So it's gonna clear the liver to help clear the blood. Bitterness is clearing, a clearing energy. Then the the foods that are growing this time of year, plants like asparagus, right? It's it's also that very astringent, bitter kind of flavor. Um, really high in things like inulin, which is like a prebiotic, which is gonna help really feed your gut. So after being a little bit more dormant in the winter, now we're gonna be feeding more with this new diversity of micronutrients to diversify your microbiome in your gut. So all of these spring foods coming up, artichoke is another one. Oh my gosh, the liver loves artichoke. Uh, milk thistle. Whoa, okay, I forgot to write that one down. Milk thistle, that one is incredible. Doing dandelion root and milk thistle together is an incredible combo in the spring. Oh my gosh, that would allow the liver to detoxify. And then what milk thistle does is um again, it's like this little purple thistle that comes up, and you'll see thistles like everywhere that are grown the spring, right? And again, artichoke is a thistle. Uh, but milk thistle, um, you can have the seeds, you can have um the plant itself. A lot of times you can get it as a tincture, um, and it helps to regrow new liver cells, which is incredible. Like your liver is, I'm not gonna say the only organ that regenerates itself, uh, because I believe I mean we turn over a hundred percent of our cells every seven years. So, in some way, every part of your body regenerates, like when you really think about it that way. But the one that is the most active at it is the liver. And so it's the most transformative for your health. If you feel that your liver health is not good, there is so much promise there for you because it really regenerates itself daily, um, and you have so many opportunities to have whatever is growing back in this moment right now, you can help that become a healthy liver cell, and milk thistle is the herb for that. That's what it does. Oh my gosh, I love it. Oh, that one made me really happy. I think I need to start incorporating milk thistle after this call. Um, so um, yeah, asparagus. Then there's also still these um, you know, artichoke, there's still these winter veggies like that are still hardy, like cabbage. And I'm just thinking about St. Patrick's Day, right? So even though it's spring, we still are in this like changing of the guard. So we still are incorporating some wintertime foods, but we are really switching into that springtime. So, like, this is a time when you can have fresh asparagus on your plate and like a stewed cabbage, you know, like you can have them both because both of those energies still kind of exist right now. We're in um a switch, a change of the guard. Uh, so it is good to still continue a bit of winter uh style of eating, especially if you know, a lot of times in the spring you could go from freezing cold to all of a sudden, oh my god, it's the beautiful 70 degree spring day, and like, okay, let's eat lighter, and then another like random cold snapper snowstorm comes through, and it's like, okay, let's do the soups and stews again, right? So I always used to think almost it was, and I didn't grow up in an area with seasons, but when I moved to the East Coast, and I would see like the tulips coming up out of the ground, and I'd be like, oh my gosh, it's spring. And then I would be shocked when there'd be like a snowstorm and the tulips would get buried, and I was like, oh no, like like it was almost a mistake. Like either the tulips didn't know that it wasn't time yet to come out, or or there's something going on with our weather because there shouldn't be snow when there's tulips, you know. Like I couldn't almost figure that out. And um, the thing is, is like nature is so resilient because when the snow would go away, like the tulips were kind of fine, like it didn't really bother them that much. Uh, they can kind of handle that. Um, obviously, they were underground as bulbs freezing in the winter, and they love that. Uh, so it's just, you know, really fascinating, and that's kind of how we are, right? Like you're starting to become this tulip, and then all of a sudden you get dumped on by snow. It's like, okay, let's just change and adapt, change and adapt. The more we're changing and moving, the easier transitions will become, right? The more we try to stay stuck and stagnant, that's when we get wiped out by the wave that's that's coming towards us. Um, this time of year, other than cleansing and fasting, you can be again eating lighter, eating these seasonal foods. Um, you could do a lot of juicing. So, this is a really good time to get your juicer out, get your blender out, start to blend things, juice things. Um, more like liquid-style diets are really good this time of year too, because again, it has that like simplicity of more pre-digested. Your body doesn't have to work so hard to break it down. Um, and so it's just it's very hydrating as well, and it's just pushing a lot of uh fourth phase water through, to be quite honest, um through your body, and so that's really easy for your body to absorb. It's um you know electromagnetically available for your body to hold on to. It won't just, you know, go right out. Your body will actually utilize the uh the water from the plants. Uh, so juicing is an amazing thing to do during the springtime. Eating vegetarian, eating vegan, this is this could be the time to start doing something like that if you were curious. Um, again, I don't recommend that for lifetime lifestyle, but if you are really wanting to clear and cleanse, those are good ways of doing that. When it comes to meat, uh, something like fish is gonna be a lot lighter. There's a lot more movement in fish, right? They're like little slippery, wiggly, you know, and they're they're floating in a body of water, right? There's it's a cooling uh energy. So when it comes to animal meat, fish is gonna be the lightest and most cooling animal meat that you can eat. And again, you look at religion and see how during Lent it was fish on Fridays, right? You wouldn't eat meat on Fridays, it was a way to clear and cleanse. Um, and the fish had that cleansing property to it. Um, it also is a very Piscean way of eating uh from Pisces, um, which was 2000 started 2000 years ago, um, and the symbol for Jesus is that. So, but we're we're also kind of switching out of that, going into uh Aquarius and and all of that, which is a little bit different, but anyway, that was a very symbolic time and and food for the time that goes along with the stars in the sky. So then cleansing versus nourishing. Um, I just want to bring that up too. Again, I was talking so much in previous episodes about the energy of winter, the importance of deeply nourishing, how to do that with the energy of winter. And the reason this is so important is because cleansing does clear the body of a lot of things. You can release a lot of minerals, um, you know, releasing bile, it takes a lot of energy. You don't want to be doing this if you are severely depleted. But at the same time, if you feel sluggish and congested and you're like, am I depleted or am I just, you know, a three-day cleanse, I don't think is gonna be any harm. Um, it's just it could be what it does a lot of times is it becomes this catalyst for change because all of a sudden now it's like you walk in and your house is sparkling clean and you just feel like that breath of fresh air, and you're like, Oh, I I now have a clear mind. I can go take on that project that I was procrastinating and felt so overwhelmed about. But now that my house is clean, like I can go do this. It's that feeling that you get after a cleanse, you're just like, oh my gosh, I feel so much better. Now I have this catalyst of change that I can keep my momentum going. That's what it does. Um, but again, if you are like postpartum, if you are breastfeeding, if you, you know, are severely um, you know, mineral deficient, iron deficient, things like that, we need to do a bit more building uh before you do a cleanse. And I I really just want to say that that can happen to women a lot, um, where we can be extremely nutrient deficient. The way to embrace and increase your nutrients is mostly through minerals. So um our society focuses a lot on vitamins. I don't really know where that came from. Because what is a vitamin, actually, to be honest, there's no definition of it, it's not a generalized thing. Uh, vitamin D is a hormone, it's not even like you know what I mean, it's not like vitamin C. So it just it's so anyway, I I could go on and on forever about that. But at the end of the day, minerals are your building block to your health. If you like, we are made of the elements of the earth, literally. Um, so the elements of the earth are minerals. So if you do not have enough minerals in your body, then there is nothing for, let's say, a vitamin to hold on to. So the vitamin will just go through. And we see that all the time, right? We take all these vitamins and then we go to the bathroom and we're like, oh, we just let go of that entire hundred dollar bottle into the toilet, right? Because you probably don't even have, first of all, it's too concentrated and they're isolated nutrients that are made in a chemical laboratory most of the time. So if you are taking vitamins, they need to be in a whole food form. Uh, that's a whole nother topic. But um, if you don't have enough minerals, there's no way that your body's even going to be able to utilize all of that. So we need to have minerals, they're super soothing and calming for the nervous system. Like, think about magnesium. Everyone's like, oh, magnesium calms me down. It's like, yeah, totally. Potassium does the same thing. Sodium is so incredible for your adrenal glands and your kidneys. So when you're stressed, you're usually also very sodium deficient. And a lot of times, what are you grabbing at three o'clock in the afternoon? A handful of salty potato chips, you know, because that's what your body is needing, right? It needs these minerals, they are your foundation. Um, and a study that I'm really interested in is called HTMA hair test mineral analysis. Um, and it's instead of doing a blood test, it's a simple hair test. So you're able to see your mineral um availability in your body and you know what what that looks like and how that has such a massive impact on your health. Um, but for right now, without even knowing, the quickest thing that you could do, if you don't like to cook organ meats, organ meats are so nutrient and mineral um abundant. There is so much in there. Um, I mean, it's like I can't even almost believe that sometimes we eat different parts of the animal because it's like the organs is where all the nutrients are. Like that's it, that's the gold mine. And here we are, I've been throwing it away and never putting it on a plate for probably a hundred years now, and it's been lost from our cookbooks, and our grandmothers are no longer making it because maybe they weren't, you know, being fed it because it's just been going out of style, but it is so nutrient abundant, it's incredible. So, organ meats you can take as supplements, do a liver. Here you go, a liver supplement, the season of the liver, not only does it need to cleanse, but it also needs to be nourished, right? And the best way to nourish a liver is with a liver. The best way to nourish a kidney is with a kidney, the best way to nourish, yes, even hormone balance and ovaries and all of that is with those organs too. And there are amazing supplement companies out there that are working with pasture-raised, beautiful, you know, even a lot of it's from New Zealand, um, which is really nice, organ meats in capsule form, so you can just take it as a capsule that has been so helpful and transformative to me, especially postpartum. Um, and I like I've said, I think after you have kids, you're always forever postpartum, you're just at a different stage. So I'm like, how did I not do this pre-having kids? I mean, if you're thinking of having kids, you need to be taking organ meat supplements. If you are pregnant, you need to be taking organ meat supplements, and if you are postpartum and breastfeeding, you need to be taking them. Like, this is your number one thing, and that is gonna like totally ground you and totally nourish you on such a deep level. Um, and it's like I think the best way because it's also you know, pre metabolized nutrients as well of minerals. Like these minerals were in the grass that the cow was grazing on, and has you know, through its own alchemy, digested that through its four stomachs that we don't have, and now it has this bioavailable mineral content that. You couldn't get elsewhere, or if you yourself tried to eat the grass, you wouldn't get that from it, right? It's it's a beautiful thing to be able to utilize animals for that. Um, and it's very transformative, and again, it's like an infusion of nutrients directly into the body of the exact energy of those specific organs. So I would highly recommend looking into that. I think it's a great thing to do while you are cleansing or like after your cleanse, you wouldn't want to be taking them while you're cleansing, um, but before and after. So it's not just this whole like all or nothing, like, oh, we're just cleansing, we're just fasting, we're not eating, we're avoiding this. You know, that's a very like depleting way of going about this. Say you're gonna do a three-day cleanse, a three-day fast, okay, great. And then you start to bring foods back in. We're eating very seasonally, but then we're also gonna be bringing back in those deep nutrients and minerals because we want to re-fortify our body with things that yeah, may have passed through during um the cleanse because we're not trying to deplete our overall body, we're just trying to clear the body. So a three-day cleanse again isn't gonna do any harm. Um, but especially if you want to be doing this practice more often, then we want to be kind of going on both sides of the coin. We want to be cleansing, but then we want to be deeply nourishing with deep minerals. Remember those nettles. Nettles are so high in minerals. Also, seaweed, incredibly mineral dense. Um, so you can cook with seaweed, combu is one of my favorites. You just throw it in a pot of boiling water when you're boiling pasta or cooking rice or you're making a stew, anything with like a liquid, you could throw it in there and it softens up and turns back into what you would think seaweed looks like, and it's imparting all of its minerals, all the iodine, right, that's in seaweed is so good for your thyroid, of course, and hormone function. You can even take that piece after you've cooked it. And I used to have clients put it on their thyroid, like lay on the couch, and just put it over their throat, and the iodine literally will go through the skin and just absorb into the um into the thyroid. It can be used in that way. It feels like you're going to the spa at the same time by the ocean because it kind of smells like the ocean, or you take that piece and you just chop it up. So I do this a lot with like a uh pasta sauce, right? I'll cook it in the pasta water, and then the pasta's cooking in there, so it's absorbing those minerals and nutrients, and it's getting the natural sea salt from the seaweed, and then I take it out when it's done cooking and I chop it up really fine and I put it into my pasta sauce and I stir it around, and I guarantee you, not one person will notice. They literally don't. And they're eating seaweed in their pasta and they don't even realize it. It's super nutrient dense, full, full of minerals. Um, quickly talking about minerals is electrolytes. That word is thrown around so much I don't even think people know what electrolytes are. I used to work with clients very often who would come to me and say, Well, I don't cook with salt. Like, don't worry, I'm I'm really good at this nutrition thing. Like, we don't, we haven't cooked with salt for years. You know, we're not those people who like overindulge with salt. Um, but I have this really great electrolyte powder that you know my doctor recommended, or that you know, whatever they were pushed on, of course, by by some marketing. And I'm like just sometimes like shaking my head laughing. Like, okay, do we need to talk about what an electrolyte is? I guess it is sodium, it is potassium, it is manganese, it is copper, calcium, chloride, phosphate, you know, um all of these incredible minerals are electrolytes, and people, you know, are avoiding salt. So sea salt is amazing. Ancient sea salt is great. Sometimes they mine for that, um, and that has a lot of can be a little bit more complex, right? So, like uh, it can have different colors to it, like reds and pinks. Um, you're getting a lot of variation too, other than just pure sodium, you're getting copper and all these other incredible things in there as well that are really important for you. Um, and it's good to switch it up too. I also got this beautiful sea salt from Vancouver when we were just there recently, and like, oh, I love it. You know, it's still kind of like damp, so it's like sitting in a little bowl next to my oven, and it's just like I go to pinch it and it's just like playing with sand, right? It kind of like still forms itself. Um, I love that. So it's good to like switch it up as well just to get different elements of minerals into your into your life. Um, but please cook with salt. I mean, please cook with really good salt, throw away that, you know, terrible, you know, maybe it's a certain type of kosher salt or something like that that has the umbrella girl on it, the table salt, whatever. Just get rid of it. It needs to be some type of sea salt, an ancient sea salt or a regular sea salt. Um, please don't cook with anything else. Um, and then that way you're benefiting from it and it's an electrolyte. Just going a little deeper on electrolytes, they are electromagnetic, right? That's part of their their um their name. They also carry light, right? So it's like an electromagnetic form of light that then attaches itself beautifully to water. Um, oh my gosh, I this is a series I really want to get in on uh with Veda Austin's work in fourth phase water. Um, it's just this, I think it's such a beautiful symbiotic relationship between water, salt, minerals, um, this electromagnetic property within them, the light that they carry, the light that stimulates them. Um, so electrolytes are so important to absorb nutrients and absorb water. It like suspends it like a matrix or like a plasma within the body when there's the right balance of minerals of the electrolytes that then attach themselves perfectly to water. So if we are drinking filtered water, it's going right through you. So you're like, yay, look at me. I'm drinking my really cool, what are those water bottles girls carry around now that are like super trendy, and they're drinking tons of those of you know purified water. And I'm like, gosh, first of all, I'm sure they're going to the bathroom every hour, which they think they're doing a great service to themselves. Hydration is so important, absolutely, but what they don't realize they're doing is they're not hydrating themselves, they're flushing themselves out, and what flushes out with that? Your own body's minerals, because in nature, like attracts like, like what is normally attached to something has to complete itself. So if you are drinking a purified water that has zero minerals in it, right, it's just like, oh, it's purified, it's this, it's whatever. And it's like, okay, good, I'm glad it doesn't have, you know, chlorine and toxins and fluoride in there. But, you know, if it literally has nothing, it's basically like drinking distilled water. The reason that's so bad is because when the water, this purified water goes into the body, now the minerals in your body start to attach to the water, and then there's so much of it, it just starts to flow out, and then you pee it out. Now you're actually depleting your body of nutrients and minerals. Full circle of just how important it is to mineralize ourselves, how important it is to cleanse, but we gotta do this in a smart way. We have to mineralize ourselves, we have to have these nutrient-dense stores that we have done so well during the winter to get us to spring. And now that it's spring, we can cleanse when we drink water. Let's make sure it is a, you know, I mean, yes, I don't have access to it either. But if you do filter your water, I do have a reverse osmosis, then you're gonna add minerals back in, right? There's these great um sea salt minerals from um from the Great Salt Lake in Utah, and so it's like a little bit of a liquid form. So I put drops into my uh water, right? So I'm remineralizing it because water needs to be mineralized. You never see water in nature that doesn't have minerals in it. So if you are drinking water that has been purified in a water bottle or anything, or just out of your reverse osmosis, that is too empty. So you are just going to be depleting yourself. It'd almost be better not to drink the water, to be quite honest with you, and to eat get your water from food, because at least that's already a fourth phase version of water that comes with all of its constituents together. Um, but just drinking purified water is too cleansing. Um, so there you go, too cleansing, uh, but we also need to cleanse. But like let's do this in a really smart way so that we're supporting our body and then we're clearing it out so that it can function more and more optimally all the time. So this is energy of spring, and I'm really excited about it. I hope you are too. I hope this was really helpful. Um, I hope it kind of helps frame how to live for the next three months before the summer solstice, right? Every season has three months. Um, so let's start eating like this. If you want to do a cleanse, I'm gonna do an episode coming up about cleansing specifically, um, and we're gonna talk about that, which which ones we like, what options you have, um, the benefits of certain types. So stay tuned to that. And thank you so much again for joining me on the Modern Sage podcast. If you love this episode, please share it with your friends. Um, I've definitely been shy to share, but um I'm getting really excited about where this podcast is going. So if again, if you enjoyed it, please share it. If you want to give me a review, that would be amazing. I would love, especially a comment would be really fun to read. Um, and I really appreciate you. Thank you so much. I'll see you next time on the Modern Sage podcast.