By Kate Barton, Lac

If you live in the Northeast, chances are spring is not your favorite season. Lingering cold, mud, lots of rain, and pesky seasonal allergies are typical complaints for why Spring is our least favorite season. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, Spring is the time of year ruled by the Wood element.

Having lived in the Northeast for most of my life, when I think of wood, I typically think of hardwoods such as oak or maple, or of our beautiful towering pine trees. Too often this leads us to think of hard, rigid trunks that are immovable and virtually irreplaceable.

In China, however, wood means bamboo. Bamboo is an incredible plant! In a bamboo forest, all of the stalks you see are all one plant that are all interconnected and able to communicate effectively with one another. It is an incredibly regenerative plant, with new stalks reaching full height in one year or less. Bamboo also lacks the rigidity of the aforementioned hardwoods. It is able to move and sway with the wind, allowing for greater movement within the forest itself.

Every spring coming out of winter, when my joints still feel more stiff, the weather is still a little grey, and the wind still whips from the north, even on “warm” days, I have to remind myself to be a little less like oak and more like bamboo: communicative, regenerative, and adaptable. I think all of us can remember as Spring begins her long waltz into summer to be more like the bamboo.