
Happy Chinese New Year 2025! 万事如意 Y’all!
As we welcome the Chinese New Year on January 29, 2025, we enter the Year of the Earth Snake—a time of renewal, thoughtful growth, and transformation. Unlike the Gregorian calendar, which marks the start of a new year based on the sun’s orbit, Chinese New Year is celebrated according to the lunar calendar, where the new year begins with the first new moon after the winter solstice. This alignment with the cycles of the moon and the seasons makes the Lunar New Year a time of deeper connection with the natural world, offering us a unique opportunity to reset, renew, and grow in harmony with nature’s flow.
In Chinese medicine, working with this seasonal shift is key to understanding and optimizing our health and well-being. By tuning into the natural world and aligning our lifestyles with seasonal changes, we optimize our health and well-being. Read on to learn what to expect in the Year of the Earth Snake and how to set yourself up for maximum transformation and growth this year!
🐍 2025, Year of the Earth Snake: Time to Transform
According to the Chinese zodiac, the Snake is considered the most knowledgeable and most mysterious animal. The year of the Snake is likely to be marked by revelations of previously unknown or hidden information, as well as the subsequent analytical dissection of this information in order to make strategic, well-planned decisions and evaluations.
Energetic Themes of 2025, Year of the Earth Snake:
Personal growth and transformation, self-rediscovery
Renewal of commitment to goals, passions OR redefinition of priorities and values
Increased creativity, intellectualism, expansion of social discourse
Inventory and reassessment of values and relationships but also ambitions, progress and future-focused endeavors
Balancing and harmonizing individual and community needs/contributions
Biding time, collecting and analyzing information, well-informed decisions, wisdom
🌑 Lunar New Year: Symbolic Meaning
As the first new moon rises after the winter solstice, we enter a new cycle of energy—one that aligns with the growing light, longer days, and the stirring of life after winter’s dormancy. This transition, from stillness and rest to action and growth, is mirrored in nature all around us. In Chinese medicine, the rhythms of nature are deeply intricately interwoven with the rhythms of our bodies. Following this, the Lunar New Year is a time for personal rejuvenation, a moment to shed old habits and stagnation and embrace the new energy and potential that this seasonal transition brings.
This time of year invites us to release and clear away old patterns of thinking and being in order to make space for new growth. It is a time to acknowledge and express gratitude for the blessings and lessons of the past year, and also a time to cultivate an open, receptive space within which to receive the incoming blessings and teachings of the new year. Just as the fields lay fallow during the winter season and must be made ready for a new crop in the spring, the Lunar New Year, also called Spring Festival, is a time of making ready to receive blessings and teachings that will come.
🌿 Set Up For Spring Success: Love on your Liver
Each Lunar New Year offers an invitation to align personal growth with the natural cycles of the year. The Liver plays a central role in digestion, sleep, stress management, fertility, detoxification and emotional regulation. Putting in effort to support the Liver system during this time is a prime opportunity to boost health all year long.
In Chinese medicine, the spring is associated with the Liver organ and the Wood element.
The Liver is responsible for the smooth flow of Qi and Blood throughout the body, and when it’s balanced, it ensures that energy flows freely throughout the body—promoting clarity, vitality, and emotional well-being. Good quality Liver Qi is strong, yet flexible and adaptable, allowing us to set goals and boundaries without being too rigid and over controlling. It gives us the natural capacity to feel and process our emotions without becoming over-identified with them.
When Liver Qi becomes stagnant—whether due to emotional stress, poor diet, lack of movement, illness, or injury-- the free flow of energy is blocked. This directly results in pain and dysfunction both on physiological and psycho-emotional levels. Due to its strong association with the Liver organ, spring is a natural time to detoxify both physically and emotionally. By supporting the Liver with herbs, acupuncture, and mindful practices, we can assist our body in releasing accumulated toxins and clearing emotional blockages, making space for new vitality.
How to Support Your Liver System:
🥬 Eat plenty of Liver Loving Foods: dark leafy greens (spinach, bok choy, kale, collard greens), celery, citrus fruit, pickled foods like kimchi and sauerkraut, dark berries, beets, asparagus, salmon, microalgae, green tea, chrysanthemum and goji berry tea are all excellent to promote bile production, healthy liver enzymes and efficient, clean detoxification.
💧Drink Plenty of Water: every biochemical reaction in the entire body happens in water! Your body cannot operate at 100% if you are not able to efficiently and regularly eliminate waste, and the Liver is no exception. To check your water intake, divide your weight in pounds by 2, and drink that number of ounces of water each day (example: 140 lbs means drink 70 oz water/day).
😴Get enough sleep! At the latest, try to be asleep by 11 PM and aim for at least 8 hours/night to allow your Liver & nervous system adequate time and resources to rest and repair. Sleep is absolutely essential for health of our nervous system and therefore the whole body.
🧘Get a Handle on Stress: stress can be emotional, physical, mental or some combination of all of these. When it is chronically unmanaged, high stress wreaks havoc on our central nervous system, leading to inflammation, pain, dysfunction and disease (detailed explanation of link between stress and sickness here). Meditation, journaling, acupuncture, talk therapy, exercise and spending time in nature are all excellent tools to reduce stress levels, reduce cortisol and soothe the Liver system.
🍷Be Mindful of Alcohol Consumption: alcohol naturally
temporarily relieves Liver qi constraint, which explains why we may crave a drink after a particularly stressful or emotional day. Habitual alcohol use, however, stagnates Qi and Blood more in the long term and leads to buildup of heat, phlegm, and dampness that are often diagnosed in Western medicine as liver damage, gallstones and cirrhosis. Consider swapping out your evening cocktail or glass of wine for a mocktail or adaptogen blend (Kin Euphorics and Recess make great options).
🤸♀️Practice Daily Movement: movements that combine breathing with flexibility and a moderate level of strength such as yoga, dancing, qigong, tai chi, pilates or simply stretching the sides of the body and the hips (areas of the Liver and Gallbladder channels) naturally promote healthy flow of Blood and Qi, preventing stagnation and alleviating physical and emotional discomfort. Just 10-15 minutes a day of moderate stretching and exercise have been shown to improve circulation, reduce pain and improve mood.
If you find you are struggling in any of the areas listed above, don’t wait for symptoms to worsen before you get in touch. We offer FREE 15 minute discovery calls with our licensed acupuncturists and herbalists to answer your questions about what acupuncture, herbal medicine, targeted supplementation and Chinese medicine can do for you.
🌱A Fresh Start: Aligning Your Health with the Rhythms of Nature
By embracing the rhythms of the natural world during this seasonal transition, we restore harmony to our bodies and minds, as well as to the world around us. The Year of the Earth Snake encourages us to nurture our growth with patience, wisdom and care. Acupuncture, herbal medicine, mindful movement practices, and cultivating balance between activity and rest during this time will pay off in the form of reaping rewards through this year and beyond.
Take a moment to turn inward, reset, reflect. Assess whether your actions, routines, and thoughts are aligning with your values, goals and purpose. If not, no need to panic. The deep inner knowing of the Snake and the stable nourishment of the Earth element will help to guide you towards a greater degree of alignment with your own greatest purpose and potential. All that is asked of you is to be present, receive, and give thanks.
万事如意, Happy Chinese New Year! May the Year of the Earth Snake year bring you good health, good luck, wisdom, and the vitality to grow in all areas of your life.
Looking to undergo growth and transformation this year but don’t know where to start? Let us provide support and guidance from the wisdom of Chinese medicine to guide you on your path. Book your appointment or FREE 15 minute discovery call here.