Riding Hun: the Energy of the Spring Dragon

Do you ever wonder how your vision for life comes about? Where does it sprout from? The Hun, the spirit of the Liver and the Wood element, is the dreamer within us. It takes the insights we have, those flashes of clarity, the call of our North Star, and begins to weave them into vision. From insight comes imagination, daydreaming, and the root of a new possibility.

The Hun is the part of you that sees beyond today. It’s your ability to dream, to hope, and to picture a future that feels worth moving toward.

So where do all the restless and pent-up feelings that belong to Wood come from?  

When your Hun is strong, you feel inspired. You can see the next steps ahead and you have compassion for yourself and others because imagination lets you step into someone else’s shoes. You feel possibility opening.

But when Wood energy gets stuck, the picture shifts. Instead of vision, there’s frustration. Instead of hope, there’s anger or sometimes even a flat heaviness, like depression. Your emotions might swing, your energy might spike and crash, or you might feel trapped in the same loops with no way forward.

Anger itself isn’t “bad”; it often shows us something important is being protected. But when it just circles inside without being felt or understood, it blocks the very movement that Wood is meant to bring.

This is where self-compassion helps you pause, feel the anger, and notice the vulnerability underneath. That’s what opens flow again and that’s a gift of the Hun.

Another challenge with Wood energy is that vision alone isn’t enough. You can imagine endlessly and still feel stuck if you don’t act. This is where the Gallbladder comes in.

Physically, the gallbladder stores and concentrates bile, which helps us digest fats. Bile salts are unique: they’re amphipathic, meaning they have a part that loves water and a part that repels it. 

In Chinese medicine, this dual nature reflects the Gallbladder’s role in decision making. It sits right in the tension of “this or that,” helping us move beyond ambivalence into choice.

The Gallbladder is also what gives us the ability to change direction, to find a way around obstacles instead of getting stuck behind them. Its channel winds across the head like a protective net and then zig zags along the sides of the body, awakening the “lateral line,” an energetic vestige from our fish ancestors, a kind of vibratory awareness that opens us to communication, adaptability, and connection with the world around us.