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Arugula and Green Garlic Pesto

ByElizabeth

There’s lots of arugula in the garden.  Some still new enough to save for salad, some that has bolted in the heat.  The cilantro is just about gone with the dry heat.  The basil and parsley have gone to flower.  As I thought about how best to enjoy all of what was there while simultaneously best tending the garden for optimal growth (much like yoga practice), I remembered that I had seen a farmer with arugula pesto at the Dupont Circle Fresh Farm Market last week.  I bought something else from the farmer to honor the idea, fully conscious of my own garden full of arugula calling out to me.

Making pesto was a great way to optimize the bitter tang of the flowers on the older plants.  (I left a few of each type of plant to go to seed for a second crop starting in late summer on a volunteer basis).  I added enough of the young arugula and some tender parsley and basil leaves, along with the basil flowers, to bring out the arugula taste that would have been hidden by the bitterness in the plants that had flowered if not been combined with other foods.  I pureed the chopped greens with olive oil, walnuts, and green garlic.  Salt and pepper to taste.

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    Gardening When It’s Not Quite Time (and Sauca)

    ByElizabeth

    The first of Patanjali’s niyamas (part of the ethical precepts that are precursors to the practice of asana, pranayama, and meditation) is sauca — purity or cleanliness.  The practice of sauca includes in it a literal exhortation to be physically clean.  I think it also carries with it a sense of order, a cleaning out of physical, mental, and emotional clutter, so that we have more clarity.  When we find more clarity, we can be more in the flow with the inexorable sequence of time and space.

    Experiencing how we fit into the pulsation of time and space is one of the exquisite joys of gardening.  This time of year, avid gardeners are eager to get int the garden, and it is tempting to get started to soon, to start new things without cleaning out the old.  When we are more experienced (and know better the optimal sequencing of starting the garden with the shifting of the seasons), we also know that we might have gotten a few days in the 50s F, but it is still winter.

    Emphasizing the practice of sauca now will serve the whole gardening season.  When it is still cold, but the heart yearns for the garden, is the time to be planning, reorganizing, and cleaning to get ready for the days when it will stay warm enough for growing outside a cold frame or protected area.  As I use a lot of containers, now is the time for me to see what containers need repairs, removal of perennials that did not make it through the winter, and new soil.  It is the time to prune what is better pruned now than in the fall.  This is not just trashing everything, but seeing what should be preserved, what should be repaired, what should be cleaned, and what should be discarded or given away.  It is cleaning out what gets in the way of an optimal flow of energy to experience the greatest effulgence of nature.  By practicing the cleaning and clearing out phase with intention and enthusiasm, I am present with the garden and also in sequence with the light and the temperature.  In this way, just as I am when I practice these principles on the mat, I get the bliss of yoga.

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    Too Busy Gardening

    ByElizabeth

    To write about gardening. I spent most of the weekend in the garden and there is still more to be done to get ready for the fullest experience of summer. I did get to the Sunday contact improv jam for a while (these azaleas are in the church yard outside of where we dance). Now I am off to an evening meeting–yearning to get back into the garden, but intending to enjoy connecting with my community.

    Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

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    Yoga of Eating Part I (what it is and what it isn’t)

    ByElizabeth

    Yesterday, a former student of mine stopped me in the hallway at Willow Street and asked whether the “Yoga of Eating” workshop I will be leading on June 13th  will cover Ayurveda.  “I will mention it,” I said, “but I will not be teaching it.”  I didn’t have time to explain further because I was about to lead class.  As far as I got was to add that I was not sufficiently trained to teach it.

    Ayurveda is a wonderful science, and I honor and respect my yoga friends and colleagues who study, practice, and teach Ayurvedic principles.  Ayurveda is a much broader discipline than yoga, though, and is really medical practice rather than yoga.  Asana are among the practices that might be recommended by an Ayurvedic practitioner for a client or patient, but eating in accordance with the Ayurvedic principles is not the same as bringing yoga to how we eat.  For me, many of the principles of Ayurveda I have read or been taught are useful, but it has not resonated for me as a governing system, just as I do not believe in applying all of the principles of Western medicine to how I heal and nourish my body.

    Bringing yoga to my eating, like bringing yoga to all of my life off the mat,  is both simpler and harder than being taught a science such as Ayurveda with fairly clear, but quite complex, do’s and don’ts and then following them.  For me, practicing the yoga of eating, is practicing conscious eating.  It is practicing reverance and moderation.  It is balancing nourishment and pleasure.  It is knowing deeply when the will to eat is serving us or getting in our way.  It is both simple and subtle.  It is easy to say, but deeply challenging and sometime complicated to practice — just like practicing the Anusara yoga principles of alignment.

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