Springtime Stuck-ness

Stuck-ness in the Springtime...

It’s actually April!  I’m still not sure if I think that March went out like a lamb, but I’m certain April showers will bring May flowers.  I see a lot of flowers coming up already, which is exciting!  I have to say though, I still feel this kind of lingering stuck-ness that March seems to produce.  I was talking about it with one of my acupuncture patients the other day and he really made me realize how weird and confusing March really is.                                                                                  

Especially this year.  There’s an energy that’s reawakened and asking you to burst out of the winter stuck-ness, but then there’s this cold that you keep thinking is gone for some reason but it’s still going to be hanging around for a little while.  A lot of people have been feeling this, myself included.  It’s almost like an impatience for Spring that generates stagnation because we’re not really going anywhere.  At least that’s what it feels like.  It’s probably just not as fast as we want it to be or think it should move.  But it’s the way it should be I suppose.  It’s almost like the feeling when you're lined up to run a race with thousands of other people and you hear the starting gun go off and you have been psyching yourself up to take off and run, but then you are actually standing still for several minutes, then finally slowly walking, and then quicker and quicker until you start to approach the actual start line and eventually you can start to run, but you still can’t run as fast as you want to because of all the people in front of you, and you get kind of antsy or frustrated, you start trying to dart in and out and around other runners.  Eventually you reach a place where you can go your own speed with out stepping on anyone’s heels.  But to get to that point you had to go through all this start-stop, in and out, thinking you're on your way but then being held up.  I guess traffic jams on the highway are like that too.  It’s frustrating and there’s nothing you can do about it.  Well you can do something about it.  You just have to let go of your impatience and expectations and flow with the natural pace of things.  But sometimes I find this is easier said than done.

This is exactly what is known in Chinese medicine as "Liver qi stagnation," which is fitting as Spring is the Liver time of year and Wood element.  I'm feeling that very strongly this year.  I think a lot of people are.  I have some acupuncture patients that tell me Spring is not their favorite season and they feel very frustrated and stagnant.  Usually I'm just so looking forward to Spring (actually Summer) that I don't even notice it, but this year it is hitting me hard.

This past weekend I went up to my mother's house to spend Easter with our family.  I was feeling so stuck in my body after the trip up there. I felt tired and lazy any antsy and bored all at once. I had thought I would go for a run in the morning but it turned out to be pretty cold and I was enjoying having an easy morning catching up with my grandmother.  Then my mother was excited to show me the results of all of her hard work these last several weeks to get her greenhouse full of beautiful plants and flowers for the season.  

The walkway to the greenhouse was all mud lined with piles and piles of snow slowly melting.  There were a lot of recent developments since I had been up there. She has a big chicken coop with lots of happy chickens and a couple of rabbits too… a joint effort between her and some other residents of the house.  The chickens were standing ankle deep in mud happily soaking up some sun and hoping for some food, and in the meantime have been busy laying eggs and making then difficult to find. (How appropriate for Easter!)

We had fun together out there; I helped her upgrade some little seedlings to 6 packs ready to be sold and planted in the ground.   (Actually, I pretty much watched her).  It was a beautiful, vibrant oasis of color and growth in the middle of a snow-covered, gray field.  There were thousands of little baby plants growing. We went out there dressed for the cold but in the greenhouse the sun suddenly came out and it immediately became so hot we began to sweat. 

We went back inside and after a little while I felt this incredible stuck-ness return.  I was stiff, achey, cranky and didn't have enough brain energy to focus on anything productive, or even want to do anything like watch tv or read a book. I kept saying I was going for a run soon but I didn't have the energy or interest to get dressed up for a run in the cold. 

My mother Anna in her greenhouse at Liliana  Flower Farm

I just really needed to get out of the house.  My mother lives on a dirt road and it feels like the middle of nowhere, even though you can hop in the car and be downtown with access to everything you need in 15 minutes… it's still not just outside the door like here in New York, and it can feel a bit isolated.  But what is outside the door is a nice quiet walk.  I said to my mother "I want to get out!" thinking maybe we could go into town with no real reason, and she said "why don't you go walk up the hill?"  It was really not what I had in mind and was totally resistant to the idea, so I knew it was probably what I needed to do.

Actually I had options; A walk up the hill through a farm with cows and horses to go visit, or a walk through the swampy woods on an old, rustic road built by the Shakers in the 1700's, now only passible by snow mobiles and dirt bikes.  I didn't come prepared to go hiking in mud and snow, in fact I wasn't even prepared to walk around in the mud in my mother's yard, but I took off headed up the hill.  I had to drag myself out and force myself to go on this walk.  All the stuck-ness I was feeling made me me feel angsty and lazy and all I wanted to do was go hide.  But I knew I'd feel better if I got outside and moved.  Cranky and dragging my feet, I set off telling myself it was too cold and taking a walk in the wind was insane.  But after a few minutes of walking I started feeling lighter and noticing all of the inspiring activity going on outdoors, while noticing at the same time a profound and assuring sense of stillness.  Just being outdoors and moving, my stuck-ness started to move.  I started getting nostalgic and remembering being a kid, going out exploring in the woods.  I began to take pictures of all of my new rediscoveries and remembered being a teenager exploring with my camera.  I used to go all around the woods taking pictures of nature, of old abandoned car remains you could find in the middle of the woods, and ruins of foundations and other structures, stone walls that once marked the edge of a pasture which was now a thick forest.   But the stillness was what I noticed the most.  The the busy growth and activity among the stillness, or maybe it was the stillness within all the bustling activity and growth.  Either way, stillness versus stuck-nesss is a profound, familiar sense and energetic experience that I was accustomed to growing up but now have mostly forgotten exists.  Instead I've become accustomed to a sense of buzzing, whirring energy around me that I operate in spite of.  On that walk I felt renewed, inspired, optimistic and engaged.  Here I feel a frenetic movement on the inside from the outside.  I'm not saying I didn't create any of it on my own when I was a kid, but I think it was kept in balance by the time I'd spend communing with nature.  I used to say you have to get back to nature a few years ago, a bit mockingly- knowing it was important, but saying it half joking the way you do when you're feeling a little sheepish when new concepts seem foreign and awkward, but also speak to you.  Like you're trying on something new you're drawn to, but your not sure what everyone will think.  Now I understand the concept in a deeper and practical level.  When you're in the middle of Manhattan you really can't remember what that energy and stillness feel like, and when you're on a quiet hill top with only the wind and birds and farm animals around, you can't really remember that Manhattan even exists.

I lived in Prague teaching English for a year or so after living in New York for about 5 or 6 years.  The Czechs I knew would always tell me "you have to go to the nature."  And that city is actually dead quiet on the weekends.  In the center where there are tourist sights to see it feels busy, but the rest of the city is deserted because most everyone has a "cottage" somewhere outside the city they flee to for the weekend, or they go on little day-time outings.  There was a pub where EFL teachers would go on Wednesday nights and Czechs who wanted to practice their conversational English would meet.  One of the older gentlemen Jiri (who liked to go by George at the pub, the English version of his name), started an outing club there and every weekend he organized a hike, or a nature walk, or even a rafting trip, always beginning and ending with a stop at a local pub in the area.  We'd all meet at the train station in the morning and share slivovice, a kind of Czech brandy, and have a great time getting out to where we were going and then follow George to the pub for some morning soup and beer before we headed off on our adventure.  

After a year in Prague and another year between New Hampshire and California, I was feeling the best I ever had, maybe in my life.  All these digestive issues I had and frequent colds and flus, mental fogginess and difficulty focusing and remembering things and all these other issues were completely gone.  I was energetic, happy, healthy and clear.  I thought I had healed myself, which I had, but after several months of being back in the city, all of those things started to creep back up.   I know that meditation, acupuncture and a regular exercise routine or yoga practice really help to keep all those things in check, and my body balanced, but I just realized this weekend they really can't actually replace getting outside and communing with nature.  It's essential to have a health maintenance routine, especially in the absence of that accessibility, but there is still a unique basic need that only the quiet of the forest, or maybe the beach, or even desert can meet.  There's something essential going on around us which gets drowned out by modern life and the hustle.  Czechs and other Europeans seem to recognize this as an important ritual for maintaining health and happiness, but for whatever reason, in New York, and probably a lot of American cities, on the East coast at least, we seem to have forgotten it.  Maybe we're too busy or focused on achieving things we think are important.  Life seems to go by a lot quicker in a fast paced city like this, and I always hear this quote I heard from Rabbi Harold Kuchner in my head, "no body on their deathbed has ever said 'I wish I had spent more time at the office.'"  It's like when you're entrenched in all of it, you forget what else is there.  But it's an important connection to maintain.

...So I had a nostalgic walk up the hill.

I tried to get the attention of a horse who was peering out from behind a stone wall. He was perfectly content where he was and simply looked at me without moving. I strolled on and noticed some skulls of steers on a shelf, an open, uninhabited rabbit cage, then a single hen roaming around pecking at things on the ground, and a holding pen with young looking calves.  I walked on along the road that wraps around to the right.  It's part of the original road but it gets interrupted by a gate and eventually a housing development (which wasn't there when I was a child, in fact it was only the road and the old house and barn).  On the left is an old cemetery where the original inabitants of that land are said to be burried.  Actually my mother just told me that the man who owned the house before us is burried there now.  But all lined up along the wall of the old cemetery were all the rest of the cows, standing and laying at the edge of the snow in the sun.  They were all looking at me.  Immersed in the stillness.  As I walked along the road they calmly kept their eyes on me, interested enough to observe me but not enough to be bothered to come over towards me (or run in the opposite direction for that matter).  I spoke to them, but honestly I was quite happy that they remained where they were… they're quite imposing!  And that little wire doesn't looks like much of a deterrent.  They're so sweet and gentle, but the thought of being charged by an angry bull or defensive mother is always at the back of my mind when they fix their eyes on me like that. 

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