The Spring Clean Your Body Has Been Waiting For

Why many women feel irritable, tight, or strangely exhausted as spring arrives

If you've been feeling unusually irritable, tight through the shoulders, or strangely wired yet exhausted lately, you’re not imagining it.

Many women notice these shifts as the seasons change - especially after a long winter.

There’s something about April that makes us want to throw the windows open. The kitchen cupboards get reorganised. The cosy winter clothes, hats and gloves are packed away. The garden, perhaps neglected since October, finally gets some attention.

We do this every year, almost instinctively - this urge to clear out what’s accumulated, to make space and to start fresh.

And yet at the very same time, many people notice something else happening inside themselves.

A shorter temper than usual.
Tightness across the shoulders or neck.
A restless, wired feeling - but also a little exhausted.

A sense of pressure building without anywhere obvious for it to go.

In Chinese medicine, this seasonal shift isn’t just about the weather changing. It’s about the body responding to spring.

Spring belongs to the organ of the liver

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, each season is linked to a particular organ system - and spring belongs to the liver and its partner, the gallbladder.

The liver is responsible for keeping energy moving smoothly through the body. When that flow is balanced, we tend to feel clear-headed, emotionally steady, and able to move forward in our lives.

When that flow becomes stuck or congested, the opposite can appear. Irritability. Frustration. Tightness through the sides of the body and shoulders. A sense of internal pressure that’s hard to explain.

Spring is the time when the liver naturally wants to move again - to release what may have been quietly building over the winter months.

The body is ready. It’s asking to be supported.

What accumulates over winter

Winter, in Chinese medicine, is a season of drawing inward. A time for rest, reflection, and conservation of energy. That inward turning is healthy and necessary.

But it can also mean that emotions, tension, and unprocessed experiences quietly accumulate - like dust gathering behind the furniture.

The liver is often associated with the emotion of anger. But not always the explosive kind we usually think of.

More often it’s quieter:

The resentment you didn’t voice.
The boundary you didn’t hold.
The frustration that got swallowed because there wasn’t time, space, or safety to express it.

I work with many women who tell me they don’t feel angry at all.

Instead, they feel tired. Flat. Slightly disconnected from themselves.

In my experience, both from my years as a nurse and from the work I do now - that flatness is often what happens when energy that needed to move has been suppressed for too long.

Spring is the season that gently invites it to move again.

Supporting your inner spring clean

The good news is that supporting this seasonal shift doesn’t require anything dramatic. No extreme detox plans or juice cleanses (thank goodness!).

What the body responds to best is often far simpler… Movement.

Movement is one of the most powerful ways to support liver energy in spring. Not punishing exercise, but flowing, intentional movement that stretches the sides of the body, opens the ribcage, and encourages the breath to deepen.

This is exactly what Qigong does so beautifully. Many of the Wood Element movements focus on gentle lateral stretches and spiralling movements that help release tension and restore flow.

Breathwork is another powerful ally. Slow breathing with a longer exhale activates the parasympathetic nervous system - the branch of the nervous system that signals safety and allows the body to soften and release.

Sometimes movement and breath are enough to shift what’s been held.

But, sometimes the body is carrying something deeper.

This is where energy-based therapies like Reiki can offer support. Working with the body’s own subtle energy system, Reiki can help ease areas of congestion or tension that are difficult to access consciously. Many clients describe feeling noticeably lighter or calmer afterwards, even when they struggle to explain exactly why.

A gentle invitation

This spring, I’d invite you simply to notice what feels stuck.

Not to force it.
Not to analyse it.
Not to try to fix it.

Just to notice.

As I often say in my Qigong classes and when working with private clients… be curious, not critical of yourself.

Is there tension somewhere in the body that’s been there a while?
A frustration that hasn’t quite found its outlet?
An energy that wants to move but hasn’t yet been given permission?

The season is already doing its work. The light is lengthening, the trees are budding, and something in you may be stirring too - whether or not you’ve fully named it yet.

Sometimes the most important spring clean happens quietly, inside the body.

Five minutes of gentle Qigong in the morning.
A slower, conscious exhale when tension rises.
Or an hour resting on a treatment table while your body remembers how to let go.

The cupboards can wait.

Breathe & Believe 💫
Lorraine

If you'd like support this spring

If this blog resonated with you and you feel like your body could use a deeper reset this spring, I currently have Reiki sessions available in my wellness cabin, as well as distance healing sessions. Simply email me, if you’d like to explore that: hello@wellnesswithlorraine.co.uk

Or if you'd prefer to start gently at home, you'll find several spring Qigong flows now available on my YouTube channel. Click here for link ‍ ‍