Change, blue skies, starry nights & a recipe

Jun 28, 2023

I’VE BEEN THINKING about change. How all things change as humans move through time on this beautiful planet and, perhaps we can nudge the direction, through how we bring ourselves.

Just two weeks ago I was walking along the beach in the above photo, full of gratitude that events had synchronistically come together for me to be able to be there.

The English winter had been long, grey and cold here in the U.K. I amused myself by looking at pictures of far away places, deep blue sunny skies, golden sand, warm air, and the sun shining on glistening sea ripples, as the ocean gently ebbed and flowed. I thought about how my sister had achieved her dream.

My sister had always wanted to retire to the south of Spain, and when Brexit came along, things needed to line up for her to be able to do this quickly. She was still working at the time and had all sorts of responsibilities. During the first Covid lockdown she would sit in her little London back garden thinking about the Spanish beaches, and places she loved over there. Feeling herself there. And somehow everything lined up; A few months later she retired to the south of Spain.

I lost all my work during that first lockdown, and it has taken until now to start to rectify this. I had no savings or anything so there was no way for me to visit my sister. For the past few years I just looked at pictures of beautiful beaches and Mediterranean places, playfully. I really enjoyed doing that, and my sister sent me little videos of her new home that filled me with feelings of being there. I was very happy with the way these photographs and videos made me feel. I did this a lot last winter. And then, a few months ago, as summer started to arrive here in the U.K., everything lined up synchronistically and suddenly I was going to Spain to stay with my sister. I couldn’t believe it.

While there I found myself walking along the above beach, which had little coves, all slightly different. Together they contained all the components of the pictures I’d been looking at during the winter, and I felt myself feeling the same feelings. Here are some more photos from along that beach with its different coves.

When I arrived home, the view from my window had the same sky with the pollarded tree grown back, rich green against deep blue sky – when I went to Spain a week earlier there were just leaves close to the crown. It looked and felt like Spain out of my window!

In the picture at the top of the page, you can see a tower on the land jutting out in the distance. That’s where the battle of Trafalgar took place. As I walked across the beach, soft sand under foot, gentle waves lapping, ebb and flow of the ocean, warm sun, family, friendship and deep peace everywhere, I thought, you would never have known.

So, I find myself thinking about how the human dramas, of nations and within our own lives, ebb and flow like the sea. Perhaps nudged by the way we bring ourselves. And how the natural world continues in its beauty, throughout it all. Like a great big unconditional heart.

And that gets me thinking about how all sorts of things can fill up our mind that generate stress, rather than the feel good emotions we need for happy times, closing our hearts instead of opening them, stopping us from feeling free. Unless we say no to them. Even when times are hard.

During the last three years there have been times when I couldn’t use electricity to heat my flat or water. Times when there was no money to buy food, but understanding how to manage the brain when stress is all around, I just kept focusing on the things that I could be grateful for, and you know, I never went without food. There was one very cold winter that was hard, yet there were really kind people who would pop into my life and make a difference and I was so grateful to each one of them. In the past

And then, this year I was on that beach.

Before I had trained in managing a stressed brain, I would have focused on the challenges, my stress levels would have risen and I’d have been filled with anxiety, unable to feel gratitude or happiness. This simple daily practice of exercising your positive neural networks really can make a difference.

In life everything can change.

And so I just wanted to share all that with you, in case things are feeling hard. To encourage you to feed your mind the things that will nourish it, no matter what is happening in your world, so that you can generate your feelings rather than have them created by the world around you.

And perhaps, just perhaps, that’s how the world will change. By lots of people feeling better, being kind, at peace in themselves with rich dreams. Lots of little individual lives like all the stars in the sky, twinkling. Someone once said to me, it’s how we bring ourselves Lucy, maybe they were right.

Joy dots

Tree branches swaying

Leaves rustling

People in the park lazing

The ordinary

Tea cloth with sun on it

Old teapot with generations of memory

Flowery tea cup

The earth

Smelling jasmine

Watching grasses blow in the wind

Sky, always

Starry night

Recipe

Sweet potato rosti

This sweet potato dish can balance all constitutions and it is cooling for the pitta summer months. It brings the sweet quality for pitta and vata types, and the light quality for kapha types (feel free to post any questions in the comments).

For those moving through the winter season, you can benefit from the sweet potato as a comfort food by including in stews, or pans of roasted root vegetables, to bring a grounded warmth into your body and mind.

The more orange the colour of the flesh, the more beta carotene which converts into vitamin A – for vision, immunity, skin. Sweet potato also supports gut health, providing fibre to feed the bacteria in your colon that produces the short chain fatty acids needed for gut health – the short chain fatty acid butyrate feeds your intestinal cells, helps your gut resist pathogens, lowers inflammation and supports your intestinal lining.

I served this potato rosti with cooling tsatziki a few white beans and some steamed chard.

INGREDIENTS (per rosti)

A sweet potato grated

A handful of chopped cilantro (fresh coriander leaves) chopped

1 tablespoon flour (I used chickpea)

1 egg

Salt, black pepper and cardamon to season

METHOD

Mix the ingredients together, form a ball, squash and sauté until brown on both sides. Serve with steamed chard and a dip - pitta types cooling tzatziki, vata types sweet mango chutney, kapha types pungent harissa.

Seeing the beauty

Whatever is in front of me, I look up at the sky. It’s ever changing shapes and colours wrap their beauty around my mind. They say, it’s ok.

At night, when the sun disappears and darkness starts to fold outwards, I wait. For the stars on clear sky nights, knowing that we come from that immense skyscape, dotted with clusters of diamonds. We are stardust. And when that beautiful star the sun, rises in the morning, I bask in its rays. Every morning there it is, ever so slowly, rising up. We are living life on the most beautiful planet, right now, right here, and it is just so full of good things.

On a day when my mind is quiet I can feel that in my bones. And at night when the sky has no cloud, those stars, they remind me who I am. When my mind is quiet enough to hear, and my bones can remember.