Spring Equinox: Practices for Strength & Equanimity

Plus downloadable guidebook, playlist and breath practice.

Hello all, and a warm welcome if you are a new subscriber (feel free to come and say hello over here)

This week, I am continuing my series where I track the Celtic Wheel of the Year, and think about how we can harness our creativity through the rhythms and rituals of the seasons.

Below, I share a few reflections, including a recording, on the time we are in, and then, if you would like to take your inquiry further, I have created a special downloadable guide, audio breath practice and a Spring Equinox playlist for Wild Edge paid members. I have chosen to illustrate it with a hare as the central image, as a symbol of transformation and change, which feels fitting for these times.

A reminder too, that the special seasonal Spring Equinox salon is this coming Friday, 21st March (7-8.30pm Irish/ UK time). It’s an evening of poetry, writing and creative ritual and the salons are becoming a firm favourite in the Wild Edge calendar. Tickets are included in Gold Membership, but otherwise can be purchased here.

Thank you for being here. It is an honour for my words and artwork to land at your threshold.

Clare. x

You can listen to me reading this post here:

The year turns again. Always turning. In the Northern Hemisphere, knocking on the door of the Spring Equinox, we turn to face the longer days. Buds bulge. Sprigs will soon be branch, and branch give rise to bloom. In every extension of the root, is a will to rise. I’m already collecting bottles to make my annual batch of elderflower cordial, which will be harvested at the summer solstice. On the blackberry bushes, the blooms which will later become the berries, are in their state of becoming. Even now, the harvest is in preparation. At Spring equinox, with the extended light, it all just seems to quicken.

Within the Celtic Wheel of the year, the Spring Equinox is not one of the central festivals, as Imbolc or Samhain are, but is an important time for celebrating fertility, fecundity and the potential of seeds. And, as with every season, the equinox affords a set of questions and metaphors to work with. Here, we are offered the symbolism of equilibrium, balance and composure. In the time of the equalising of light and dark, of day and night, we are invited into the equalising of ying and yang, the masculine and feminine energies too.

And yet, as I was preparing this post, in many ways it felt antithetical to the times to be speaking about the role of balance. Sure, I’d like a giant global dial to turn down the heat, literally, and also cool off the flared tempers and egos which are fracturing our systems of democracy and civility itself. But asking, ‘could you all be a bit more balanced’ seems too tame an admonishment. It seems to fragile too. What feels more akin however is to speak to a different kind of strength, out of which a difference kind of balanced force can rise, right about now.

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There is a word in the Irish language, ‘nearth’, meaning strength. But it relates too to the quickening at this time of year — a furtive, feminine energy, generative in its intent. It is all about the strength of life-force. It is this force which thrusts the buds to burst, the elderflower to bloom. It is the strength of opening.

In so many ways, strength is perceived as an act of brute force. We fight causes. We battle illness. We even have social impact. It all feels so violent to me. Yet, there is this different kind of strength, which I feel the equinox holds in its symbolic potential too: the opposite of push force. Instead, a strength of being willing to open towards the light. Open handed. Open hearted.

Thinking of strength in this way, made in turn back to Braiding Sweetgrass, the wonderful book by writer and bryologist, Robin Wall Kimmerer, where I remembered she had talked about a word in the her own indigenous language, which captures a similar sense of quickening. In the Potawatomi language, there is a word, Puhpowee, which she explains, translates as ‘the force which causes mushrooms to push up from the earth overnight.”

How beautiful to think there is such a specific word for this. The language of force need not be one of dominance, but of emergence. The language of strength too. Like the force of ‘puhpowee’, the language of nearth, from my understanding, is also a soft, open-hearted kind of strength, the kind resisting push force alone to express itself. Instead it integrates the masculine with the feminine, and remains rooted to place, soul/soil, dream, authenticity and connection.

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In finding alternative words to force, I’m also keen to find an alternative word to balance. As someone who regularly tries to do Tree Pose in Yoga, I know all too well, that balance is not balance at all. It’s rather a series of micro moments or adjustments; a shifting of weight from one side to another, where steadiness can only come from remaining connected to our core and central alignment. It’s all flop otherwise. The word I have settled upon as an alternative, has a similar etymological root to equinox, and that is equanimity; a calmness or steadiness in times of stress, a composure. This feels more spacious to me, and grounded too. Less fickle than balance alone.

Learning how to work with the metaphors and symbols contained within the season brings me also back to the design thinking tool of, ‘what if’, questions. (These are questions which reframe, with open ended enquiry, alternative models or outcomes. Asking the question alone can often be powerful enough to cause a shift in our thinking and perception of possibilities

So here it goes:

What if this equinox is about finding strength, or nearth, from our own inner alignment; then turning towards our own creative quickening, open hearted and open handed.

What if we had the tools to tap into this enlivening, grounded, rooted strength.

What if instead of aiming for balance, we aim for equanimity, as a place of composure, stability, and spaciousness in times of flux.

And what if we resisted from this place of steadiness and equanimity.

It feels so necessary now this re-framing, or reimagining of what both strength and balance can look like. As the equinox opens the door to light, I like to think of the possibilities which might quicken and mushroom from here.

For Paid Members of The Wild Edge

The Spring Equinox Guidebook

I have written and illustrated a Spring Equinox Guide, to support the process of sensing into and prioritising creative stirrings. It is a downloadable, editable PDF (which means you print out or type your responses directly into the guide). It also includes a guided audio meditation.

There are five sections to the guide:

1. Equalising Breath - including an 11 min audio meditation/ breathing practice.

2. Spring Equinox Journaling practice

3. Tending to the Budding

4. Planting your Harvest

5. Spring Equinox Creative Ritual

The Spring Equinox Salon

Poetry, journaling and Seasonal Ritual.

Friday 21st March, 7-8.30pm Irish/ UK time.