Spring Is Here. So Why Does Something Still Feel Heavy?

The cherry blossoms are out. The mornings are lighter. Everyone around you seems to be stepping into something new — a fresh energy, a sense of beginning. And yet, somewhere inside, there is a weight that the season hasn’t touched. You smile at the flowers, and then quietly wonder: what’s wrong with me?

Nothing is wrong with you. Nothing at all.

In fact, what you are feeling has a name — in Japanese, it is called 木の芽時 (konome-doki), literally “the time of budding.” It is the moment when the earth shifts dramatically and the body, the nervous system, the soul, all try to keep up. Spring is not just a season of joy. It is a season of enormous change. And change — even beautiful change — is hard to carry.

Your Body Is Doing Something Extraordinary Right Now

When the seasons turn, your autonomic nervous system — the part of you that regulates sleep, energy, digestion, and mood — works incredibly hard to recalibrate. Light levels change. Temperature fluctuates. Your circadian rhythm, which spent all winter in one rhythm, is asked to shift overnight.

This is why so many people feel inexplicably tired in spring. Or irritable. Or hollowed out in a way that doesn’t quite match the brightness outside. It is not weakness. It is biology. It is the cost of transition — and it is real.

“You are not failing to feel spring’s joy.
You are feeling spring in full — including the part that asks something of you.”

Western medicine is only beginning to understand what Eastern traditions have known for centuries: that the body is not separate from the seasons. We are made of the same elements as the earth. When the earth moves, we move with it — whether we are ready or not.

Three Small Things You Can Do Today

These are not cures. They are not programmes or regimes. They are simply quiet acts of kindness toward yourself — small ways of saying: I am here. I am listening to what I need.

Each one takes less than five minutes. That is all. On the days when even breathing feels like effort, five minutes is enough.

Three Moments of Returning to Yourself

1
Morning — Open the Window Before You Look at Your Phone

Just for thirty seconds. Let the cool spring air touch your face. Breathe in once, slowly. If you have a citrus oil — sweet orange, bergamot, yuzu — place one drop on a tissue, an aroma stone, or let your diffuser carry it softly into the room. Citrus wakes the nervous system gently, the way sunlight does. It tells your body: today is new. You don’t have to carry yesterday.

2
Afternoon — A Breath of Frankincense

Around 3pm, when the heaviness often returns, take a moment to pause. Place one drop of frankincense on a tissue, an aroma stone, or let your diffuser carry it softly into the room. Close your eyes. Breathe slowly. Frankincense has been used for thousands of years to quiet the mind — in temples, in meditation, in moments of transition. It has a way of slowing the breath without asking you to try. It does not ask you to be different. It simply holds you where you are.

3
Evening — Write One True Sentence

Not a gratitude list. Not an affirmation. Just one sentence that is honest. It might be: “I got through today.” Or: “I made a cup of tea and it was warm.” Or simply: “I am tired.” Writing one true sentence is an act of witnessing yourself. It says: I was here. This day happened. I am still here.

When You Want to Disappear

Sometimes spring’s brightness feels like an accusation. Everyone blooming, everything beginning — and you are sitting in a room wanting to simply not exist for a little while. To step out of yourself. To be somewhere else entirely, or nowhere at all.

I want to speak directly to that feeling, because I believe it deserves to be spoken to directly.

That longing — to disappear, to escape, to stop — is not a character flaw. It is exhaustion. It is what happens when a sensitive person has been carrying too much for too long, and the world has not yet offered them a soft place to set it down.

“Nature does not ask the flower to bloom before it is ready. It simply holds it, in the dark and the cold, until the time comes naturally.”

You are allowed to be unblossomed this spring. You are allowed to still be in the root, in the quiet, in the not-yet. The season does not require your performance of joy.

And if those feelings are very heavy — please, reach out to someone. A friend, a doctor, a crisis line. You do not have to carry that alone. Scent and ritual can soften the edges of hard days, but they are companions, not replacements for human connection and professional support.

You Are Allowed to Be Here

This is what I want you to know, more than anything else I could tell you about essential oils or the autonomic nervous system or the Japanese concept of seasonal transition:

You are allowed to take up space in this world. On your heavy days and your light ones. On the days you join the spring and the days you cannot. You do not have to earn your place here by being joyful, or productive, or healed.

Kindness to yourself is not indulgence. It is the most radical and necessary act you can perform — for yourself, and quietly, for everyone around you.

So tonight, if you can, open a window. Let the spring air in, just a little. And know that somewhere, someone is sending gentleness your way.

With care, always — Nora