From each phase of the creative cycle, gifts and teachings ...

Spring/Wood

In the spring, life burgeons. Young animals are born.
Young plants force their way up through the frosty earth. 
Spring's imperative: Grow and create.

Practical suggestions for cultivating the gifts of spring.

• Start a garden, or at least a window box, and think about the unique potential in each seed or plant as you place it in the earth. Grow an unfamiliar kind of flower or vegetable and expect the unexpected.
• Reorganize your desk.
• Begin new things — at home, in your work, and in yourself. In this season when nature reinvents itself, we too can see people and situations with new eyes. Let new tissue grow over hold hurts, and take fresh hope. Be creative. Make things, do things. Begin!
• Feel your ability to bend and be pliable, as well as to stand tall and firm. Emotionally and mentally, do your thoughts and emotions bend with ease and grace? Can you take a stand in life? Be fully yourself? Be true to your inner nature?
• Eat foods that cleanse and refresh the body/mind/spirit: lemons, spring onions, and greens such as dandelion greens and leaf lettuce. All are plentiful at the time of year.
• Take lessons in t'ai chi or yoga to keep tendons and muscles supple and mobile.
• Fly a kite. Have an adventure. Go someplace you've never been.
• Begin the new projects you've pondered in the winter: Plant seeds of ideas and creativity in your daily life and nurture them to their fullest potential. Follow their growth and have patience as the master plan of these seeds unfolds in your life — and beyond.
• Learn from your frustration: If you plan isn't working, what does that tell you? Have you lost the "big picture"? Are you bogged down in details?
• Notice your anger, your level of irritability and frustration. Remember that you can review your plans, then make a change or decide to persevere. By being alert to changes in your energy, you can recognize when it gets stuck and discover new ways to help it move smoothly.
• Make a list. Stop procrastinating!

These suggestions by Ann Bailey and Elise Hancock were originally published in Meridians, Special Issue, Winter/Spring 2003.