Are you a “free and easy wanderer”? If not, it’s a fun way of being to consider. Plus it’s good for your health!! During the spring months, the 2nd half of my Moon (menstruation) cycle, I take a Chinese herbal formula called Xiao Yao Wan – literally meaning free and easy wandering. ☺ You see, I’m a wood type in Chinese cosmology (a wood rabbit) and in my 5-element constitution. This means, one – I LOVE to move! And I LOVE TREES and feel very at home and alive in the forests and am nourished by moving water. It also means I have a tendency for my Liver Qi to stagnant, especially in the spring, which leads to feelings of frustration and restlessness. I can often feel like I just want to run and lift lots of heavy things! ?
When I take this formula, Xiao Yao Wan, or Free and Easy Wanderer, it helps move my Liver qi and promotes a peaceful sense of ease in my being. AND, the cool thing is, I can take herbs to nourish and support me and my body in this way, AND I can also go out in Nature and do lots of “free and easy wanderings” to nourish and support my healthy qi flow. I like to call these wanderings my “wonder wanders”.
In my family, we prioritize time outside in nature everyday – together as a family and our solo nature time. As a new Mama, while I LOVE my long solo mountain hikes, climbs and backpacking trips, as well as trips with friends, my little baby boy requires me closer to home for awhile. And I’m finding my solo local excursions to the river, our local parks, patches of forest off the Snoqualmie bike trail and to some special wild forests and mountain lakes in the Snoqualmie River valley to be deeply nourishing and epically magical. Because Nature is just that way. Almost all major religions we born out of inspirations/revelations in from solo time in Nature.
Each time I enter one of these local places, I open my eyes, and as Terry Prachet’s Tiffany Aching says in the delightful novel, Wee Free Men, “I open my eyes again” and am in a magical, mystical land of Cascadia, a land where the trees whisper, the ferns wave with joy, the grandmother cedars silently spiral and swirl in stillness and grace, and the ravens’ with their various clucks and calls, open the veils of Mystery.
