Gentle Growth, Beets and Back issues!
Oh my
This image really spoke to me when I came upon it last week when I was back home in Edmonton, Canada visiting family. Love comes from deep inside and sometimes feels painful and good and relieving to just let it out all at once. You know? This week I write about the process of surrender and slowness I am experiencing right now and there will be more to come on this in the following weeks. A lot is unfolding. It is hard to feed my body right now, it does not have a lot of appetite, but I feel I am learning great lessons I can bring to you in the future.
This week’s recipe is a super refreshing and bright raw beet and cucumber salad. It may seem unusual, but when it is finely sliced like this, it’s natural sweetness, earthy flavor and light crunch are magnificent. I have another beet and chickpea salad from Good and Cheap that has always been quite popular! It is as simple as using a peeler to create ribbons of beet and cucumber and then tossing it with lemon juice, salt and olives. You can substitute the usual purple beet for the golden of course.
There are a couple of spots left for the May Mini retreat, so sign up soon if you are local to Brooklyn. And we have our third installment of Open Kitchen, this time we have a question about yoga and back pain which is truly hilariously perfect for my own back pain experience this week. I share some advice and a video demonstration! And finally if you scroll all the way to the bottom you will find my episode of the planetarian podcast, which features a wonderful conversation on imperfect cooking and how we can best integrate cooking into our lives for ease.
Thank you so much to all you paid subscribers for your support. Please consider joining the embodied cooking club by becoming a paid subscriber. You get a weekly cooking class that you can tune into live or watch at any time, for just $5/month. You can make requests and ask questions and we can learn and grow this embodied practice together. This past week we did a class on creating cheese/snack platters and it was delightfully playful fun.
Surrendering to Gentleness
I was in Canada all of last week spending time with family. It was tender and special because my family has been healing and growing in extraordinary ways even as we face the reality that my Dad will not be with us for much longer. It was also challenging because my daughter, Io was not with me, she was in California with her Dad, his partner and grandparents. It was our first family vacation apart since we separated late last summer. It hit me very hard, and witnessing Io struggling with missing me and feeling the change was incandescently sad. Like a perfect diamond of sadness that is built from loving each other so much and having to endure the pressure of separation.
I have also injured my low back and it has slowed me down enormously. While I have been working for a couple of years now on opening and releasing the tension in my body, I still have a long band of it that stretches from my neck to hip on my right side and when I push too hard I can pop myself out of alignment. This is what I did. It is a reminder that I cannot carry everything alone and that trying to carry it all serves no one but my own ego. I definitely relate to Luisa from Encanto! So I am humbled, moving slowly and gently, seeking as much help as possible and having to say to no to picking up Io and carrying her around. In order for her to be well, I must be well and I am working on finding that balance.
For my whole life I have suffered under the illusion that I was alone and had no one to count on but myself. I’ve recently realized what a painful delusion that has been not just for me, but for the many dear ones in my life who have been there for me again and again. I am ready to accept with all my heart that I have a grand and extraordinary amount of support in my life and always have. My family is not perfect, but they love me and have always given me what they could—it was me who was unable to accept it. Even with great support, sometimes life is so challenging and scary—and like it or not I am in one of those moments. And I am trying to change. In these moments rather than declare that I have no one and I have no choice but to hurt myself continuing on I can stop and sit for a moment. I can sit and breathe and see who is there. I can see my own brave self, the love I give and the love I receive. And rather than believe a delusion that I am alone to explain the hurt, I can accept that these hard times are a part of life and there is no level of support that can shield us from going through what we simply must go through.
Being gentle and slow when I am afraid is so different and it feels scary, but I know it is right. Allowing myself to be seen in my vulnerability makes me literally shake with fear. I may let others down, be angry, be wrong, be inept—it is all a process that is unfolding. And being totally honest that I may not be able to do everything makes me feel like I will be abandoned. But so far in my life that has never really happened. So I am trusting the process as much as I can. Please know that if you are going through something, that I am here for you too. We can stand together, holding hands in surrender to reality, knowing that the hard stuff will pass and we will find our strength and resilience again.
Golden Beet and Cucumber Ribbon Salad
Serves 2
TL;DR: Slice the beet and cucumber into ribbons with a potato peeler, slice olives and dress with lemon juice and salt. Let sit and eat.
1 medium to large golden beet
1 field cucumber or 1/2 English Cucumber
small handful of kalamata olives
Lemon Juice, to taste
sea salt, to taste
Using a potato peeler, remove the peel of the beet and compost or toss. Then keep going with the peeler and continue to peel ribbons of golden beet until you have used as much of the beet as possible. You can set any bits that are too hard to work with aside for later use or slice them thinly with a knife.
For the cucumber prepare it in the same way, but no need to remove the peel. If using a field cucumber you may want to toss the very center seeds that are too big and unpleasant to eat.
Chop the olives into 3 or 4 pieces each.
Toss the golden beet, cucumber and olives in a bowl and squeeze 1/2 a lemon and a generous sprinkling of salt over it. Toss to combine and let sit for 10 minutes until some of the juices release. Toss again and taste. Add more lemon juice of salt as the demands of your tongue require.
Open Kitchen #3: Yoga and the Back
Here is our question of the week for Open Kitchen, the feature where I answer your kitchen (and anything else in my wheelhouse) questions!
“What is the easiest yoga exercise that doesn’t hurt your back?”
This is a very funny question for me to get this week as I have actually tweaked my low back and am having to modify my daily activities to let it rest! I am finding it very challenging. So many of us struggle with back pain, but yoga really is the remedy to so much common strain from modern life that asks us to place our body into positions (like sitting at a desk or driving) that compress us and create patterns that hurt our body over time.
We should never be hurting our back in yoga. If we feel pain we may have gone too deep and must find a version of the pose that helps our body to open, not strain. Yoga is the practice of opening up the tissue of the body and strengthening it all so we can experience our full range of motion and natural mobility. Traditionally a strong asana practice (asana are the poses we think of as modern yoga) is meant to build a body that can comfortably sit in meditation for hours. This is the great goal!
So really it depends on where your back pain is coming from to know what will and won’t hurt it. Many people experience discomfort and strong sensation when starting a yoga practice because the poses ask you to hold your body in a way that may be different than the patterns our body has become used to. We may sit at a desk all day with rounded shoulders, slumping into our low and mid-back. Over time this makes our glutes weak and our shoulders stiff and everything gets out of alignment. Some muscles become over-taxed while others are weakened. So when we begin to bring our bodies back into their natural alignment, we can feel discomfort as we undo these patterns we have created over time. But breaking the patterns is a celebration, so when we feel those sensations we must rejoice!
That said, I would suggest you start with Cat/Cow pose, and this lovely passive shoulder opener to counter so many of the movements that we do in our daily lives and bring some balance to your body. I demonstrate what that looks like in more detail in this video below. And if that makes you feel good let me know and you can start with some leg opening and strengthening poses—because we must start with our foundation and work our way up when we undo our patterns. This is the safest and quickest way. Best of luck and let me know how you get on!
Please submit your questions for Open Kitchen through this form. The questions will be anonymous so no need to think twice about anything embarrassing. Remember chances are if you are wondering something or having an experience there are many others who are as well and when you have the courage to ask the question you help all those other people too.
Join me for a Mini-Retreat May 20th
The weekend after Mother’s day we will continue to celebrate our divine mother energy inside and outside ourselves with a beautiful mini-retreat.
There are just a couple spots left for the May retreat which will be celebrating parents, so sign up while you can! I will be announcing more retreats and other class opportunities over the coming weeks. The warm weather is a chance for us to practice and grow all the seeds we held and nourished during the winter.
Agenda
9:30-10: settling in with tea 🍵
10-11:30 meditation and restorative yoga 🧘🏼
11:30-12 Leanne cooks and shares embodied cooking practice.
12-12:30 Eat lunch and chat/share 🥗
12:30-1 final breathing and meditation
Float away into the rest of the dreamy weekend feeling released and connected.
Planetarian Life
I had the pleasure of connecting with Maggy over at Planetarian Life Podcast for a wonderful conversation about embodiment and cooking and how we can become better cooks and more comfortable with our eating life by making food we don’t like sometimes.