GLORIOUS SUMMER DAY prepares to rest. Gazing without focus, vision becomes wide nestling me into my environment. There's new green leafy branches on the tree out front, gently moving in a cool breeze. Cloud formations are shape shifting, ever so slowly. Other tree tops along the road are dancing to a rhythm, red roof tiles and chimneys hover in the end of day sky.
My window boxes merge into this silhouetting scene, as little slithers of the sitting room, slowly disappear into dusk. I listen hard but there are no sounds. This end of day scene, shimmering, silently puts itself to bed.
When I was a kid I loved this time of day, making mud pies in the garden out back. Not wanting to come in. Wishing I could fly up into the trees and cuddle with the owls, before they went out hunting, moon shining down and stars sparkling like diamonds through the twiggy treetops. I once dreamt that someone threw a bag of diamond stars into my heart. It was a nice dream.
Looking with wide vision is something I learnt at a place called Embercombe, it was one of our practices on the young leaders course, when playing nature awareness games. The kids quickly shifted into a relationship with their surroundings, in a way that rooted them, soothed the memories they carried.
We would walk through the wood toe to heal using the outside of our feet, slightly crouched and gazing with 180 degree vision, rather than focused vision. When you master the art of this way of moving through a wood, you don’t set off the bird and other animal alarm calls. It’s a different experience, to enter and walk through a wood in this way, you shift from being a tourist to becoming part of the wood. You get the chance to lose your stories.
Once, when I was on a course, we were planted. Which I can imagine sounds very odd. Yet, it was a peaceful, energising, grounding, sane experience. When we came out of the wood, I felt the most peaceful, energised, healthy and at home within myself, that I had ever felt.
More recently, I discovered there is a lot of research into how both the free electrons of the earth, and the microbiome in the soil, would have been responsible for the incredible way I felt after just half an hour.
You can find some interesting reading here here here and here
Before I moved to Bristol, there was a little falling down tree wood I could get to on foot in about 20 minutes. I went there a lot. There were 3 tiny slivers of stream that trickled through, causing lots of the young trees to fall down. I loved it there, a place where time stood still.
I'd love to know where you find your still moments, perhaps you'll tell me in the comments.
Ayurveda
I thought it might be nice if I introduced you to the Ayurvedic approach to the seasons and food.
Ayurveda explains that our outer environment (the season and world around us) and our inner environment (our body and mind) are connected, with the outer environment effecting our mind and body.
Life is a flow of energy that expresses different qualities. Ayurveda refers to these qualities through the doshas of vata, pitta and kapha – I’ll talk about these in another post. They are ways of understanding the qualities of energy that make up our constitution.
We were born with our particular balance of these qualities and need to keep them in balance to be healthy. When they go out of balance we are creating the ground where the incredible intelligence of our mind and body, will start to be compromised – dis-ease – leading to disease and premature ageing further down the line, if it isn’t corrected.
The seasons are described by the doshas and their qualities too. Summer is pitta season, it brings heat.
People with a lot of pitta in their constitution will have strong heat in their body/mind system. If they consume too much heat this can go out of balance leading to impatience, irritability and anger. Or physically heat related problems like skin rashes and inflammation. The summer season is a time when pitta types in particular need to consume cool qualities to avoid becoming too overheated.
And so, as we are moving through the pitta summer season here in the U.K. where I live, I thought I would play with cooling recipes to help keep pitta dosha balanced, and share them with you. Today’s recipe is one I enjoyed yesterday, there’s a meat and a vegan version. I’ll post other recipes that will cool pitta down in the posts I put out throughout the rest of the summer, as well as some that aren’t for those moving through the cooler seasons of autumn/winter.
Coconut and chicken soup (with a vegan option)
Ingredients (per person)
4 cups stock
1 lemongrass
2 lime leaves
1 inch ginger root sliced
1 tablespoon coconut oil
1 courgette about 8 inches long sliced
1/4 fennel bulb sliced
1/2 cup sliced green beans sliced
Some sliced cooked chicken or cooked white beans
1/2 can coconut milk
Fresh lime juice
Rock salt
Method
Make the broth by simmering the stock with the first three ingredients. In a heavy based pan melt the coconut oil and sauté the vegetables. Once soft add the broth and coconut milk, and the cooked chicken or beans. Simmer for about 10 minutes then partially blend adding the lime juice and salt to season for your taste buds.
You could cook the chicken in ghee, take it out and use this pan for making the stock.
Dosha variations
This is a very pitta friendly meal. If you know your constitution, or current balance of the doshas, here are some ideas for vata and kapha balancing.
Vata – add a good amount of olive oil or ghee.
Kapha – leave out the coconut milk and add in some green chilli.
Joy dots
Changing sky
Sunshine and shadow across the carpet
Cool breeze
Glistening sea water
Surf across sand
Seaweed and rock pools
Holiday memories
Flowers in my vase
Lettuce in my window box
Salt lemon butter
The smell of fresh limes
Distant sounds of humanity
Little robin
Bumblebee in my window box
Trees rippling
Orange marigold
Wishing you the warmest.
Till Sunday,
Lucy x