Spring fever: loosening the body and the mind
April’s recipe for a Clay & Peppermint Masque is simple and sweet and can make you feel brand new.
Jump to recipe + excercise
We are now truly entering into full-on, glorious, blooming Spring. In some places this will look like flowers popping off and in others it will still just be little buds peeking out. (New England, I’m talking to you.)
In either case, it’s time to peel back the winter layers and let the fresh breeze touch your skin. It’s time to let the rains fall and melt away the winter stagnancy and watch as each new budding life forms peek out and celebrate!
For the next couple of months we will be focusing on spring detox, on spring fever and on loosening and lightening the body, and the mind. We want to help you pull out that fast moving spring inside you, the bright and long days that await you in summer, that spark of energy that lasts into the late twilight filled with fireflies. In addition to plants that are moving, clearing, and unblocking — also called deobstruents — other tools for this kind of spring prep are clay and salt. We talked about salt last month and now we are moving into the full mud, clay, earth element.
Our plant hero for this month is Peppermint, a plant many of us are familiar with. Upon smelling, Peppermint makes you feel instantly clear and bright. Peppermint can soothe and clarify, and can most definitely clear out stagnancy in the body and the mind.
“Peppermint is a cool mist on a frayed mind, and the delicious crispness of an early morning. When you are swimming in clear waters, and you open your eyes and see the ripples, bubbles and life around you. When you float and your mind is still. This is Peppermint medicine, wide and true. When the filters of your mind are expanded, and you find the distilled down, crystalized knowing inside of you, Peppermint is standing beside you”
(From The Dirt Gems Botanical Tarot Deck, written by Anne Louise Burdett)
Imagine your body as a lit-up electrical system whose connectors have become a bit rusty, dusty, and covered in layers of time and decreased use. It’s time to polish up and let the circuits fly, and Peppermint will help us with this.
April’s recipe is simple and sweet and can make you feel brand new. Ready for a new season, for a deep clean of the house, for a hot cup of tea, and ready to watch the bulbs come out of the softened ground.
THE RECIPE: Clay & Peppermint Masque
A masque to help dispel stagnancy and help jump start your Spring.
Ingredients
- ½ cup bentonite or green clay
- ¼ cup Baking soda
- 2-3 tablespoons Almond oil
- Juice of 1 large lemon
- ¼ cup Ground almonds (not almond flour!)
- 3 drops Peppermint essential Oil
- 8 drops Lavender essential Oil
- 6 drops Rosemary essential oil
How to make the masque
Mix the dry ingredients well — clay, salt, ground lavender, ground almonds —before adding the wet ingredients — oil, lemon juice, and essential oils.
Mix everything thoroughly together and put in an airtight jar. It will be a sort of damp, crumbly consistency. When you are ready to use your masque, you will need to hydrate it with a little water to the consistency that you like. Use within a few weeks of making and use with caution around your eyes and genitals as the peppermint can be irritating!
How to use
To accompany the following activity, gather some peppermint herb and make a strong hot tea, adding honey, rosemary, lemon balm, and milky oat if you wish or just keep it simple with peppermint.
Now, a true springtime activity is to engage with the changing season as part of our natural cycles, as a reviving fresh blast of spring air and that taps into a new time of year.
Find a private place to step outside, in that new light that comes with April, in the breeze and the shimmering sun that’s moving towards summer. Even in the rain.
Wet your body (with water or the rain!) You can be clothed, but naked would be a true delight. Cover yourself in this clay body masque and take your time. Feel every inch of yourself with this mineral rich earthen substance. Imagine yourself drawing out, out of thickness, out of coldness, pulling anything you don’t want to harbor any longer, releasing and renewing.
Give yourself small massages and strokes. Remind your body how much you love it, how grateful that you — spirit, mind, heart, body — are one. Let the clay dry and tighten as much as you can and then rinse off in a fresh body of water or with a hose or bowl of water. Let all of the unwanted experiences, memories, feelings just wash away with the cloudy water and see your fresh new self there, waiting for all your dreams to come true.
