An Herbalist's Guide to Spring

6 Ways To Recalibrate, Nourish, & Feel Good in Your Body This Season

Spring doesn't arrive all at once. It seeps in like a slow reawakening after a long nap. A warmer afternoon here, a few green shoots there, the sudden reappearance of birdsong at an hour that used to be dark. And then, one day you look up and it's everywhere. Spring has sprung!

We talk a lot about spring as a season of renewal. But if you're paying attention, you'll notice it's also a season of recalibration. Your body is shifting, your rhythms changing, and the long, slow compression of winter is releasing. It's a transition that asks not for a dramatic, new-year-new-me overheaul, just a little extra tending.

Here are 6 things worth doing this spring to help your body recalibrate to the changing season.

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1. Wake Up Your Digestion

Winter eating tends to be heavier, slower, and more inward. But as the season turns, your digestive system is ready to shift gears, and it may need a little encouragement to do so. 

This is where bitter herbs come in. Bitters have been a fixture at the table for centuries, not as medicine, exactly, but as part of the practice of eating to live well.

Spring is the natural season for bitters. The first wild edible plants to emerge, like dandelion, chickweed, and purple dead nettle, are almost universally bitter, some noticeably more than others. Nature has always offered this particular tonic right when we need it most.

What this could look like today: a few drops of a herba bitters before a meal. It signals to your body to start producing digestive juices before food even arrives: saliva, stomach acid, bile, digestive enzymes. All of it, triggered by the simple act of tasting something bitter. 

Our newest addition to the apothecary, Gut Flora Digestive Bitters Elixir, is a living vinegar-based, alcohol-free herbal bitters blend of dandelion and burdock roots, chamomile, calendula, coriander seed, and yarrow, rounded out by the perfect nip of raw Appalachian honey. Two dropperfuls before meals, straight on the tongue. That's it.

2. Eat The Weeds

Before their were farmers markets and grocery stores, spring was the season when the land fed you first. Mineral-rich wild greens came up before anything else, as if Nature knows we're in need of deep nourishment after a long winter. Dandelion, violet, chickweed, nettles, and wood sorrel, all tender and bright and intensely nutritious after a winter of root vegetables and stored food.

We don't need to forage out of necessity anymore, but there's something worth reclaiming in the practice. Wild greens are more nutrient-dense than most of what we grow in our gardens. Plus, they're "free", seasonal, and eating them connects you to the particular place you live in a way that a bag of supermarket spinach simply cannot.

Dandelion leaves are easy to identify and available almost everywhere. Bitter, yes, but their bitterness is easily balanced beautifully with good olive oil and something acidic. 

Violet leaves and flowers are mild and sweet, perfect scattered over a salad.

Nettles, once blanched, lose their sting and taste something like spinach with more personality.

Not sure where to start? Check out this guide: 5 Edible Weeds Growing in Your Backyard Right Now.

And if you're cooking with foraged greens, or any spring produce, really, a pinch of Wild & Weedy Finishing Salt, made with lots of stinging nettle, plantain, chickweed, and wild alliums, really ties in the theme of the season. Gotta get those minerals in.

 

3. Support Your Nervous System as Life Speeds Up

At some point during the spring, the slow unfurling of the world seems to speed up exponentially. Life accelerates quickly. Friends and social gatherings come back. The to-do list expands with the longer days. Energy returns. Most of us welcome it all with enthusiasm until it begins to tip into towards too much, too fast.

Adaptogens and nervines, herbs that support a healthy stress response and soothe the nervous system, are valuable in any season, but especially this one. The transition from a slower pace to a busier one is a real physiological adjustment, and the right plants can help you move through it with more grace.

Chill Pill Herbal Honey is for exactly this. A spoonful stirred into warm water or tea, spread on toast, or eaten straight from the jar. It's the kind of support that fits right into the life you already have, and makes it more delicious.

4. Protect Your Sleep as the Light Returns

Something that might surprise people is that spring is one of the most common reasons for disrupted sleep. The days get longer, light comes in early, the birds start singing at an hour that seems ungodly. Your circadian rhythm, carefully calibrated to winter's darkness, has to shift. Sometimes that adjustment can show up as lighter sleep, earlier waking, or a general sense of not quite feeling rested even after a full night's sleep.

It's a worthy transition to support. A few things that help:

• keeping your bedroom darker in the morning
  
• maintaining a consistent wind-down time, even as the evening stay light longer, 
• and giving your nervous system a genuine signal that it's time to rest.

That signal could be a few dropperfuls of Moon Garden Herbal Sleep Elixir about 30 minutes before bedtime. Made with tart cherry, a natural source of melatonin that can help deepen sleep quality, skullcap to help quiet a racing mind, passionflower to help ease physical tension, and ashwagandha to help build long-term stress resilience, Moon Garden Herbal Sleep Elixir checks all the boxes needed to wind down at the end of the day.

 

5. Tend Your Immune System Through the Transition

Season changes, especially the dramatic ones, like the shift from winter to spring, are genuinely taxing on the immune system. Temperature fluctuations, shifting allergens, the return of more time spent around other people. In spring, our bodies are playing some heavy defense.

It's not the time to abandon immune support just because we're no longer in the thick of cold season. It's the time to keep tending.

Elder & Lemon Thyme Elixir, an herbal oxymel built for both daily immune care as well in-the-thick-of-it support, is a delicious and easy way to tend your immune system through the transition.

Elderberry is one of the most well-studied herbs for immune support. Thyme brings both antimicrobial properties and respiratory benefits, and also a flavor that makes this elixir genuinely enjoyable to take. A few dropperfuls a day, in water, tea, or straight. Think of it less as a sick-day remedy and more as a seasonal tonic for the transition ahead.

6. Plant Something

This is the most practical advice and also, maybe the most profound: put plants in the ground.

There's something that happens when you grow the herbs you use, a different kind of relationship forms. You notice things you never have before. You intuitively start to understand why certain plants were revered for centuries before anyone knew the chemistry behind them. And you're guaranteed to find new inspiration in the kitchen.

Here are a few of my personal favorites for a home garden:

Chamomile - for the reminder that something small and dainty can be quietly powerful. And for teaching me to never take another cup of chamomile tea for granted, because if you've ever harvested chamomile blossoms by hand, one tiny flower at a time, you understand that hard work and patience are also ingredients.

Lemon balm - for the days when everything feels heavier than it should. Lemon balm has a way of helping you find the sunny side of things. It's gentle, almost effortless to grow, and a handful of fresh leaves steeped in hot water or tossed into a pesto is one of the simplest pleasures of summer.

Yarrow - for strength. Yarrow is one of the oldest medicinal plants we know of, used across cultures and centuries as an herb of protection and resilience. Its scent is something wild, verdant, and ancient. And it will spread if you let, which feels appropriate for an herb with such a generous spirit of resilience.

Rosemary - for a reminder of the romance in the ordinary. There's an old phrase, rosemary for remembrance, and what I think it means is this: that scent is the shortest path back to a moment, a place, a feeling. Crush a sprig of rosemary between your fingers and something shifts. It's the herb that makes a regular ol' Tuesday feel like somewhere worth being.

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Spring's spirit of renewal doesn't ask for a new version of you. I think it only wants your attention and your presence to both witness and play your integral part in the shift too.

The plants have always known what the season asks of them. In paying attention, we're just learning to follow their lead.

BROWSE OUR ✿ SPRING APOTHECARY

Gut Flora Digestive Bitters for Healthy Digestion

Chill Pill Herbal Honey for Stress Resilience 

Wild & Weedy Finishing Salt for Mineral-Rich Nourishment

Moon Garden Herbal Sleep Elixir for Deep Rest

Elder & Lemon Thyme Elixir for Immune Support

 

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Disclaimer: The information given in this article is intended for educational purposes only. Always consult with your healthcare practitioner before consuming certain herbs & medicinals foods, especially if pregnant, nursing, or taking prescription medications.