Thoughts about eating well to feed your body and spirit.
Green Festival is coming to DC again on October 23-24. If you’ve never been (and are in town), it is always enjoyable, if only for the snacks and the comaraderie (odds are high you will bump into people you know). What I find is that I either learn something new about how to live in a more ecologically sustainable way or I get the affirmation that I’m already making a decent effort. Join in the fun if you can.
What if for a whole day you did every single thing with the intention of becoming blissful? If you have them, taking care of pets or kids or elders? Every thing that you did at work? How you went from one place to another? Every morsel of food and drink you selected, prepared, and ate? All your errands? Your getting dressed and undressed? Your correspondence?
Would you even need to “practice yoga” by doing postures or meditating if you were living yoga–fully unifying the day to day with the conscious intention of experiencing the full bliss of consciousness at every moment?
Why not try it for a day and see what happens? And then let us know.
Have too many cucumbers? Perhaps some of them have grown to enormous, beyond salad-eating proportions? It’s time for cucumber soup.
Per person proportions for a generous serving (multiply accordingly):
1 cup peeled, seeded, diced cucumber
1/2 ripe avocado
1/2 jalapeno, seeded and chopped fine (more or less depending on taste or omit for a non-spicy soup)
1/2 cup unsweetened soy milk, nut milk, organic milk, water, or chilled vegetable broth
small clove of crushed fresh garlic (optional)
salt to taste
Greek style yoghurt, chopped scallions or chives, and minced cilantro or parley for garnish
In blender or food processor, puree cucumber, avocado, liquid, jalapeno, and crushed garlic until pureed. Chill for 1/2 to 1 hour. Pour into bowls. Put spoonful of yoghurt or sour cream or non-dairy sour cream in center of soup. Sprinkle scallions and herbs. I only added the jalapeno because in addition to a superabundance of cucumbers, I had a number of not particularly spicy jalapenos from the garden.
What’s a gardener and concerned for the trees and the health of the planet citizen to do? I’ve got enough water in the rain barrel to water the vegetables and herbs once or twice, but what impact does that really have? At work, people were grumbling because it was cloudy. They seemed shocked when I advised them that we are an inch under normal rainfall for August and have a fairly significant deficit for the summer despite the July rains.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could move some of the flood waters that have fallen only a couple hundred miles away to irrigate our fields without disrupting our eco-system? Part of me just wants not to know about the consequences of global climate change, but it is hard not to notice that all the weather patterns I used to know and understand do not seem to apply quite the same way anymore. What do we do when the systems and practices we have in place for our ease, comfort, well-being, and understood day-to-day peace of mind are disrupted?
Yoga will not fix the big outer problems, but it can provide us with the steadiness and ease needed to stay present and be flexible in the face of crisis, upheaval, or disease. It can also provide insight into how we can live in better alignment. In the meantime, I am practicing gratitude. I know how blessed I am that, so far, the wild upheavals I read about in the news have not kept me from all the food and comfort that a person could possibly want. And I pay attention, because to be ignorant ultimately never serves ourselves or others.
I brought sprouted lentil and cucumber salad to a potluck dinner at a neighbor’s house last night. The host had spent a fair amount of time in the kitchen. I commented that perhaps it wasn’t right that I’d brought a salad that only took about ten minutes to prepare. Then I thought about what went into my preparations. First, I grew the cucumber. Then – sprouted the lentils. One of my friends said in response to my saying I’d sprouted the lentils, “Elizabeth, you know there are the Whole Foods and The Harris Teeter. You don’t have to make your own sprouts.”
(Oh, you can just imagine, dear reader, my initial unspoken response in my head.)
“Yes, I do know that,” I responded, but there are so many reasons to do your own sprouting.”
1. Especially in winter, home sprouts are the freshest greens you will get.
2. No salmonella with home sprouts. (This got an enthusiastic back up from a fellow guest who was now thinking maybe she should start sprouting.)
3. Cuts way down on plastic waste. Consider how sprouts are packaged for supermarket sale.
4. Cost savings–a very inexpensive food instead of one marketed as a high-cost gourmet specialty food. (The conversation took on a life of its own; I no longer needed to be the advocate).
The Recipe:
Peel and seed a cucumber or two. Cut into 1/2″ or slightly larger dice. Mince about 1/6 cup sweet onion or white and pale green part scallion (or more or less to taste). Add a couple of generous handfuls of lentil sprouts. Use more sprouts than cucumbers if serving as the main feature of a cool summer light meal instead of as a side salad. Splash with olive oil and then toss to coat. Add a little balsamic, red wine, or sherry vinegar. Toss again. Add salt and pepper to taste. I also added minced cilantro and jalapeno because the main course was enchiladas. For an Italian version, try with fresh basil and a little green or red bell pepper. For a Spanish style salad, use parsley and replace the vinegar with lemon juice. Think of your own variations and don’t be shy about sharing.
The grape vine (seedless red Concord) loved the drought. Other things are now recovering thanks to the rainy week.
I woke up around 4 o’clock this morning, inexplicably agitated and unable to fall back asleep right away. Sully, too, was restless. I went into the yoga room and did a series of restorative forward bends and twists, which provided some ease, but I was still a little restless and unable to go back to sleep.
It was too far out of my usual experience for living in DC and too little impact at my house (compared to what it was reported to have felt like in some of the suburban areas) to have identified the earthquake for what it was.
When I called the weather, which advised of the earthquake, I knew that its immanence was what had caused me to wake in anticipatory anxiety.
It astonishes me how much time is spent complaining that it is hot. It is July, and I live south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Much of what gives rise to the complaints has to do with trying to dress in accordance with traditional office dress, being active according to some preconceived exercise routine, and wanting to eat heavy food from a diet based on habit rather than season.
Yes. It is hot, and being hot can be uncomfortable, especially if we try to fight it.
If we wear loose, light clothing, exercise less vigorously and only in the morning or after the heat of the day has waned, and eat lightly of the fruits of the season, then we can experience less discomfort. We also then can better open to the delights of the heat–stretchier muscles, a call to stillness, and chilled watermelon are a few things that make summer a joy for me.
Every once and a while, I poll my students and ask them whether they find that they need less medication and medical intervention (testing and other procedures) than before they were regularly practicing yoga. Students uniformly advise that they take painkillers less frequently. Some students say they need lesser amounts or have been taken off other medications by their doctors. Others note better sleep, less frequent colds, flu, or other common contagious illnesses. Others have stated they have avoided recommended surgery by working hard to shift their alignment. I personally have experienced great improvements in physical and emotional health from my steady practice, which has led to my doctor of 15 years agreeing that I need less medicine (note: I am not advocating none) and testing. I think my making the commitment to practice to minimize health care consumption as one of the ways I personally take care of the environment.
No matter what it is we are making, consuming, and disposing, and how we are doing those things, the four R’s of consumption to benefit the environment (refuse [i.e., don’t use], reuse, repurpose, recycle), start with not using things in the first place so that we do not have the environmental degradation of manufacturing and ultimate disposal. We do not usually think about this in the context of medical treatment because we want to be out of pain and illness and for the most part, think of medical treatment as a fundamental right.
At an individual level, lots of people would rather just take a pill (or even have surgery) than have to make a consistent change in behavior, physical activity, and diet. There are also times when western medical treatment is the only effective treatment, and we are very fortunate to have it available. Some people are not in a position in society to make a shift easily in this regard or to understand what it means. But for those of us in the know, prevention not just of illness, but of medical consumption, by exercising, meditating, practicing therapeutic yoga, and shifting our diet, is a wonderful way we can personally seek to limit our reliance on fossil fuels and reduce our personal waste output. In addition to eliminating the need to have the supplies manufactured, it will also keep medications that have passed through your body from reentering the water and food supply (which in turn has its own detrimental health impacts to society and to the environment).
Has the practice of yoga changed you as a consumer of health care? Have you ever considered the relationship between being a consumer of health care and your environmental impact?
