March 20, 2026 · Vernal Equinox · The Great Turning
Today, the sun crosses the celestial equator. Day and night hold each other in perfect balance — twelve hours of light, twelve hours of dark — and the Earth tips, imperceptibly but irrevocably, toward warmth. This is the spring equinox, the Vernal Equinox, the ancient threshold that every living culture on Earth has recognized and celebrated for as long as human beings have watched the sky.
Here in Mesa, we feel it differently than most places. Our desert doesn’t turn green in dramatic waves the way the Midwest does. A lot of our green never left. This year especially it seem like Winter passed us by. While the Sun does it’s thing overhead, our transition of the seasons is subtler, more interior. The brittlebush is already blazing yellow on the hillsides, the saguaros holding their water for another season. The mornings are beginning to arrive earlier and warmer. We’ve already had multiple record breaking days. The quality of the light is shifting in that particular way that makes the Superstition Mountains glow and the cougar is making it’s bi-annual appearance. The desert teaches seasonal living in its own language, and if you listen to it, it has a lot to say about this moment.
I’ve been thinking about the equinox and cycles a lot lately. As someone who works at the intersection of the physical and the energetic — as a mother with a toddler and teen, as a therapist who works on physical and energetic levels, and a woman who has spent years learning to listen to my body and the bodies of others — I’ve come to believe that living in alignment with the seasons isn’t just poetic. It’s one of the most practical, grounding, health-supporting things we can do. And the equinoxes, especially, are doorways worth walking through intentionally.
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What Is the Spring Equinox — and Why Does It Matter for Your Body?
The word equinox comes from the Latin aequus (equal) and nox (night). It happens twice a year: once in spring, once in autumn. At these moments, the tilt of the Earth’s axis is neither toward nor away from the sun, and both hemispheres receive roughly equal amounts of light.
For most of human history, this astronomical event wasn’t just interesting — it was essential. Agricultural communities literally organized their survival around it. The spring equinox signaled the time to plant. It was a resurrection moment, a rebirth, a collective exhale after the long contraction of winter. Cultures as diverse as the ancient Persians (whose Nowruz celebration marks the equinox to this day), the Egyptians, the Mayans, the Norse, the Celts, and Indigenous peoples across every continent all marked this threshold with ceremony, celebration, and intentional ritual.
We’ve largely lost that relationship with the seasons. We live in climate-controlled spaces, eat strawberries in December, and often feel surprised when we notice the light changing. But our bodies haven’t forgotten. Research in chronobiology confirms that human physiology responds to seasonal light shifts in measurable ways — shifts in melatonin production, cortisol patterns, serotonin synthesis, immune function, and mood. When we consciously attune to these shifts rather than ignoring them, we work with our biology rather than against it.
The spring equinox, in particular, is a moment of energetic expansion after the inward pull of winter. Our systems are naturally primed to move outward, to build, to begin. Honoring that — giving it ritual, intention, and conscious support — amplifies what our bodies are already trying to do.
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The Energy of Aries: The Spark That Starts the Fire
The spring equinox also marks the beginning of Aries season — the first sign of the zodiac and one of the most potent energetic signatures in the astrological calendar. Aries is fire. It is the pioneer, the initiator, the spark before the flame. It carries the energy of courage, new beginnings, and the willingness to take the first step even without a clear path.
Coming off the deep Pisces energy we’ve been swimming in — all that water, all that dissolution, all that spiritual surrender — Aries lands like a sunrise after a long night. It doesn’t dissolve. It ignites.
If the Pisces new moon two days ago was about planting seeds in the dark, the equinox is about those seeds feeling the sun for the first time. There’s a momentum available right now that you can either tap into consciously or let pass by in the noise of ordinary life.
What is it that you want to begin? Not what you should begin. Not what looks responsible or realistic. What does the part of you that still dares to want things — the part that the long, inward winter has been quietly protecting — want to step into now?
That question is worth sitting with. The equinox is the time to ask it.
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Living With the Seasons: A Practice, Not a Philosophy
I want to be clear that living with the seasons doesn’t require a dramatic lifestyle overhaul or any particular spiritual belief system. It is simply the practice of paying attention — of noticing what the natural world is doing and asking yourself what that might mean for how you move, eat, rest, and relate.
Here is what I’ve come to understand about seasonal living, both from my work with clients and from my own ongoing practice:
Winter is the season of root and stillness. The body pulls inward. Energy consolidates. Rest is not laziness in winter — it is wisdom. Those who fought the winter contraction, who pushed and forced and stayed busy, often arrive at spring depleted rather than renewed.
Spring is the season of emergence. What was conserved in winter becomes available for use. Energy naturally moves outward and upward. This is the time for beginnings, for planting, for movement — not frantic busyness, but intentional expansion.
Summer is the season of full expression. We are designed to be in our fullest output here — social, active, external. The long days support sustained energy. This is when we harvest the fruits of what we planted.
Autumn is the season of gathering and release. We take stock. We let go of what didn’t serve. We begin the slow, conscious return toward stillness.
When we live in harmony with this rhythm — when we rest deeply in winter, emerge gently in spring, flourish in summer, and release in autumn — we are doing something profound for our nervous systems, our hormonal health, our emotional well-being, and our sense of meaning. We are living as biological beings on a living planet, rather than machines running on override.
Here in the East Valley, our desert adds its own layer to this rhythm. Our winters are mild enough that we sometimes skip the deep inward pull. Our summers demand a second kind of going-in — not the quiet of cold, but the retreat from heat. Pay attention to what the desert is asking of you in each season. It knows something.
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Five Spring Equinox Rituals for Wholeness
These rituals are designed to be simple, embodied, and genuinely supportive of your health. You don’t need any supplies you don’t already have. You need time, attention, and a willingness to be present.
- The Threshold Walk
The equinox is a threshold — a moment of crossing from one half of the year to the other. Mark it physically. Choose a time around sunrise or sunset on March 20th and take a walk with the specific intention of marking this crossing. Leave your phone in your pocket. Notice the quality of the light. Notice what’s blooming, what’s moving, what the air smells like. When you turn around to head home, let that turning be intentional — you are walking out of the old cycle and into the new one. Feel the ground under your feet. This is not just a walk. It is a moving ceremony, and your body will register it as such.
- The Spring Clearing
Every spring tradition in every culture involves some version of clearing — the Persian Khaneh Tekani, the Jewish Passover cleaning, the spring cleaning of practically every household tradition. This impulse is not arbitrary. In winter, we accumulate — things, habits, patterns, identities that helped us survive the cold. Spring asks us to reassess. What still serves you? What can go?
This spring clearing can be physical (your home, your car, your closet) or energetic (a journaling practice where you honestly list what you’re ready to release) or both. I’d invite you to do both. When the physical space clears, the energetic one often follows. And when you name what you’re releasing — actually write it down — it becomes real in a way that vague intention doesn’t.
After your list, go outside and stand in the sun. Let yourself feel the warmth on your face. Say aloud (or silently, if you prefer): “I release what no longer serves me. I open to what is beginning.”
Something in your nervous system will hear this.
- A Seasonal Body Assessment
As a stretch therapist, I see the seasons in people’s bodies. Winter bodies are often contracted — shoulders rounded, hips tight from long hours of sitting indoors, breath shallow. Spring is the natural invitation to open those places back up.
On or around the equinox, spend fifteen minutes doing a slow, intentional body scan. Start at the crown of your head and move downward. Ask each part of your body:
How are you?
What do you need?
What are you holding thats ready to go?
Don’t rush. Let the answers come as sensation, not words.
Where do you feel tightness? Where does your breath not quite reach? Where do you notice a sense of aliveness or readiness?
What you discover in this assessment is an invitation for the season ahead. If your hips are tight, make hip-opening movement a spring commitment. If your breath is shallow, explore breathwork or outdoor movement in fresh air. Your body is already living in the season — this practice simply helps you become a conscious participant in that conversation.
- Plant Something
I mean this literally. The act of planting — of putting a seed or a seedling into the earth — is one of the most primal, grounding, equinox-aligned things a human body can do. There is research (and there is ancient wisdom, which often turns out to say the same thing) indicating that contact with soil, specifically with the microorganism Mycobacterium vaccae found in healthy soil, has measurable mood-boosting and immune-supporting effects. Getting your hands in the earth is genuinely good for your nervous system.
If you have outdoor space in Mesa, plant herbs — basil, rosemary, mint all love our early spring. If you have a patio or balcony, a pot of something green is enough. If you have only a windowsill, a succulent will do. The point is the act of tending something. Of saying, with your hands: “I am investing in life. I believe in growth.” That belief is itself a kind of medicine.
- Set Three Equinox Intentions — and Tend Them
The new moon two days ago was the moment to plant your deepest soul-level intentions in the dark. The equinox is the moment to bring those intentions into the light — to speak them with clarity, to write them in concrete language, and to commit to tending them for the six months until the autumn equinox.
Choose three intentions. Not thirty, not ten — three. Make them specific enough to be real and open enough to breathe. Write them somewhere you’ll see them: on a mirror, in a journal, on a card tucked in your wallet. Read them aloud on the first of each month. Let the season teach you what they actually mean as it unfolds.
The equinox — and the full six months of spring and summer that flow from it — is the growing season. What you tend now, you harvest in autumn. This is not metaphor. It is the rhythm of life itself.
A Note on Consistency: The Work of Tending
I want to say something honest here, because I think it matters.
Seasonal rituals are beautiful. New moon ceremonies, equinox intentions, crystal grids and journal prompts — they can open something real in us. I believe that completely. But they are only as powerful as the daily tending that follows them.
The equinox, like the new moon before it, is a beginning. It is not the whole journey. The invitation of spring is not just to plant seeds in a beautiful ceremony and wait for the harvest to arrive. It is to show up, day after day, and tend what you’ve planted — in your body, your practices, your relationships, your creative work.
The most powerful wellness practice I know of is consistency in small things. Ten minutes of movement every day. A few minutes of breathwork each morning. A moment before sleep to check in with your body. These aren’t dramatic. They don’t make for particularly interesting Instagram content. But over the long arc of a season, they compound. They become the life you’re actually living, rather than the life you occasionally visit during ceremonies. This is especially important for me because habits are so hard for me to make. It was one of the hardest lessons for me to learn, and one I have to keep learning, that it’s not about perfection. It’s about grace and the little choices you make consistently that add up.
Equinox season — this whole spring that stretches now toward summer — is an invitation to recommit to those small, consistent things. Let the turning of the Earth under your feet be a reminder: the season is new. You can begin again.
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Come Find Us in Mesa, AZ
At Health + Healing Studios, we are here for exactly this kind of work — the integration of the physical and the energetic, the practical and the sacred, the body and the soul.
If the equinox has stirred something in you — a desire to open your body more fully, to explore energy work as part of your wellness practice, to receive support as you step into this new season — we would love to hold that space for you.
We offer stretch therapy, energy work (including Reiki and other modalities), corrective exercise, bodywork, naturopathic medicine, and the kind of whole-person care that recognizes you are more than a collection of symptoms or tight muscles. We see you as a being in relationship with the seasons, with your own deep knowing, and with the life you are actively creating.