Wednesday, November 3, 2021

Heartfulness Practice

There are two types of meditation that I practice, mindfulness and heartfulness.The focus of mindfulness practice is on your cognitions, or how you think. The focus of heartfulness practice is on your emotions, or how you feel.

The relationship between how you think and how you feel isn’t binary or mutually exclusive; as it happens, my view is that your emotions are a compound of the cognitions of your mind and the sensations of your body, which is exactly what makes them so very strong and complicated.

As a matter of fact I could practice a third type of meditation that focuses on my sensations, such as a body scan. The good feeling run is this type of meditation, although it has a strong emotional and kindness component. In any case, the exercise is the same in all three meditations—observing yourself without judgment, you’re just applying this to these different aspects of yourself. One thing that you’ll observe is that your cognitions, your emotions, and your sensations come and go, whereas you who observe don’t come and go. I’ve heard it said this way: you’re not your thoughts or your feelings, you’re the one who’s having these thoughts and feelings.

In other words, you’re not to be ruled by your thoughts or your feelings.

The object, though, isn’t that you should rule your thoughts and feelings with an iron fist! They’re pretty powerful, and there’s a lot of them. The exercise is to observe them without judgment as they come and go, and get to know them before you start telling them what to do. This is where I've stayed with mindfulness practice since I started.

Whereas that which is popularly called lovingkindness practice, but following Bodhipaksa from Wildmind I prefer to think of as just kindness practice, has a bit of something that you're working on, the aforementioned lovingkindness or kindness. He doesn't call it heartfulness, but he does say something about this is the soil and this is the seed and I would say that heartfulness is the soil and kindness is a flower that I'm trying to grow in the soil.

Anyway. I wrote a guide, here you go: Kindness Practice. Well, you probably don't have a chain of planets. You could use mala beads or make flashcards or whatever.

[ETA: Here's a shorter version with just the reflections to direct at yourself and one other person, which I actually recommend limiting to if you're just starting out: Short Kindness Practice.]

[EATA: I keep going through iterations of this, this is the best one yet: #thegoodfeelingrun kindness meditation.]

Saturday, October 30, 2021

Golden Milk a.k.a. cafe Au lait—get it, Au :)

More often than not, I make this on top of the tail end of my morning coffee after it's gone cold. So the half cup of water represents the coffee, if you're not up for drinking twelve ounces of milk. But IRL I'm never going to measure out water and milk with a measuring cup to make a drink, I just fill the cup I'm going to drink out of with however much milk it holds and sometimes it has coffee in the bottom.

1/2 cup water
1 cup any milk, I use soy
1 tablespoon honey, or IRL a glug
1/2 tablespoon ground turmeric, or IRL a plastic spoon that lives by the spices
1/8 tablespoon ground black pepper
1 tablespoon butter

Whisk the milk, honey, and spices in a saucepan over high heat. When the milk reaches a strong simmer, add the butter and keep whisking so that the butter is incorporated.

Saturday, August 28, 2021

Pickled Stems (or really, pickle anything)

I got the idea of pickled stems from a recipe for loaded fries, IIRC it was oven fries topped with yogurt and some other stuff and pickled stems. Pickled stems, what! At around the same time I started going to the farm to pick up my CSA shares and have been getting plenty of real stems, so now I have real pickled stems all the time.

Stems I have pickled in alphabetical order: bok choy, carrot green, collard green, kale, purslane, tatsoi. I think the only one I didn't do was lambsquarter, those might have been too tough. I just bite a stem and if it tastes okay, I pickle them.

Pickled stem applications: #1 is that I put a big spoonful of pickled stems as the vinegar in a green salad. #2 is they're great in place of the relish and/or sport peppers in a Chicago-style hotdog. #3 I haven't even made those loaded fries yet, haha.

The pickle part of the recipe I adapted from this recipe for Avocado Pickles, which are also very good although it's annoying to get the pit out of a really hard avocado and to get it out of its skin, whereas a ripe avocado is easy to deal with and just as delicious. And by adapt, I mean I just halved it and rounded everything to whole measures because it was destroying me to measure out two tablespoons, a teaspoon, and a half teaspoon of sugar. And as my title says, you could pour this pickle over anything and have quick-pickled whatever.

1/2 cup vinegar
1/2 cup water
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 clove garlic, thinly sliced
any stems

Combine everything except the stems in a small saucepan over high heat and bring to a boil. Remove from heat.

After you pluck the leaves off the stems and do whatever you do with leaves (blanch, chop and freeze for stew; process into green sauce, as pictured; spin and store for salad), give the stems a good rinse and I think it helps (of course I do) to arrange them in a neat bunch with all the stems going in the same direction.

Chop the bunch into little bits of stem and pack all the bits into a pint jar. Pour the pickle in the jar over the stems, it seems to work out so far that the stems fill the jar and the pickle fills the spaces in between the stems.

Put the lid on, obviously, and refrigerate until ready to serve—I don't know how long that is, the avocado pickle recipe says three hours. I just stick the jar in the fridge and it's generally there for a couple weeks.

Sunday, November 22, 2020

Apple Bread Pudding

two apples
8 slices day-old bread
1/4 cup white sugar
2 tablespoons butter
4 eggs
2 cups milk or kefir, which I always have
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 cup raisins

Peel, core, and chop apples. Put them in a bowl, mix them with the sugar, and let them sit and give off some liquid, stirring occasionally. Don't forget you can make Crispy Apple Sticks with the peels.

Heat oven to 250 degrees, place the bread on a rack on a baking sheet, and put it in the oven to dry out until hardened but not browned. I'm not sure how long, maybe fifteen minutes? When you start to smell the bread.

Increase oven heat to 350 degrees and generously butter a quart-size casserole.

Beat the eggs and milk in a large bowl, then stir in vanilla, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

When the bread is ready, take it out of the oven and roughly chop it into pieces. Add the bread to the egg-milk mixture and let it soak. If it still seems liquidy after it has absorbed all it can, I add a couple more pieces of bread (usually soda bread, which I generally always have.)

Stir in the apples with their juices, and the raisins.

Scrape bread mixture into the prepared casserole and bake for a hour. It's okay to eat out of the oven, but to me that tasted not quite sweet enough. The flavors and sweetness were melded better after several days in the fridge, ymmv.

To reheat a single serving: Fifteen minutes in the oven at 350 degrees.

Oh, the topping. Yeah, idk. I made it at the beginning of shelter in place and I've had a ton in the freezer since then, and also I mixed in some leftover cornbread that I also had the the freezer from making stuffing last Thanksgiving. Google crisp topping, or I'm sure it's fine without.

Sunday, June 7, 2020

Breath Counting x The Parade

Updated from a previous entry. This is how I do these days, YMMV:

Breath Counting

  • I have an intention set in my mind, which is to say in my chart, that I will meditate every day after I wake up, except Monday and Friday when I meditate after work. And I almost always do, and now and again I fall short. Falling short is part of meditation. Soo much is part of meditation, it's really hard to say everything that I have to say about meditation; but I'm giving it a shot. Giving it a shot is also part of meditation.
  • After I wake up or after work, I sit on the couch, no special way, just comfortably, and grab my mala beads that are hanging on the shelf next to the couch.
  • I close or unfocus my eyes, breathe naturally, and count my breaths in my head, holding the beads generally in my hands and the first plain wooden bead specifically in my fingers. I count on the exhale, up to four. When I get to four, I move my fingers to the next bead and start again at one. Rinse and repeat, until I get to the last plain wooden bead. And that’s it!

The string of mala beads that I'm using now is twenty-seven plain wooden beads x 4 breaths per bead = 108 breaths. 108 is a woo woo number for meditation, take that as you will. The other beads are just spacers and decoration, although sometimes I start and finish with a big cleansing breath on the fancy wooden bead.

It’s not that the part where your mind stays focused on counting your breaths is perfect meditation and the part when your mind wanders or you lose count is failed meditation. The whole enchilada is meditation: your mind staying focused on your breath, your mind wandering away from your breath and you not even realizing it, you realizing that your mind has wandered wayyy away from your breath, you bringing your mind back to your breath; mediation is all of this.

Written larger, meditation is also ticking off seven days of meditation last week and just managing two days this week. Or even larger, consistently meditating for twelve weeks and then just not being able to hang for a month and then starting it up again—all this is meditation.

When I was teaching one-foot balance to my learn to skate class, I would tell them that there are two kinds of balance: one, where you're a calm buddha, perfectly centered and strong in your core; and two, where your arms and free leg are windmilling all over the place. And they're both valuable types of balance; the real discipline of balance is being able to transition from buddha to windmill to buddha, letting yourself out, bringing yourself back. Same with meditation, one moment you're calmly counting your breaths by fours, and the next moment you're in the middle of an imaginary rant at somebody who hurt your feelings or busily planning a practice plan. Or haha, halfway to a hundred breaths.

The Parade

To accommodate this I use an additional technique called the parade, which in itself can be your whole meditation practice:

On any given day, the parade in my brain includes a wide variety of interesting attractions: mundane logistical thoughts that plod past me like the marchers in a high school band; silly thoughts that tumble through my head like clowns, noble thoughts striding along magnificently like the Budweiser Clydesdales, and humble thoughts that follow the Clydesdales to shovel up their inevitable load of crap. I don't judge or control the elements of my thought procession... I simply call them by name and watch them move on by.

—Martha Beck, The Joy Diet

The above is how I started with meditation, I switched from that to breath counting with the parade as my recovery mechanism because breath counting gives me a quiet place to return to. I guess I didn't feel like the parade encouraged me enough to go to the quiet place. I know I say this all the time, but now more than ever YMMV.

So when I notice that I'm in the middle of a rant, I quietly name it "rant," or even more truthfully "hurt," and go back to counting my breaths; when I notice that I'm busily planning, I name it "busy busy," and go back to counting my breaths; when I notice that I'm up to 47 breaths, "haha, whoop" and start back at one.

If I ticked off all seven days last week and only two days this week, I quietly name it "gah, so busy," because sometimes it is so busy, and then I ask myself, how about now? And if now seems good, I sit on the couch and grab my beads.

If I consistently meditated for twelve weeks and then just couldn’t hang for a month, I name it "away," and then ask myself, ready to come back? And if I'm ready, I reset the intention in my mind.

The larger point is at no time am I beating myself up over this. Or if I do notice that I'm beating myself up, I name it “beating myself up” and gently forgive myself for that, too.

Last but not at all least, the really wild thing is how it turns into so much more than just counting your breaths. Because basically you're practicing calmly bringing yourself back to the task at hand, over and over, one bead at a time, one string of beads at a time, day in and day out, week in and week out, and so forth. That’s a lot of practice, a ton of repetitions. You know what it is, it's WAX ON WAX OFF. You wax on, wax off one string at time, and then somebody tries to sweep your leg and WAX ON comes out of nowhere! Except not out nowhere, it came out of that string. I use it to focus on work when I'm obsessing over some stupid drama, I actually used it to stay calm while being fed half-paralyzed into a CT tube! In How to Meditate, Lawerence LeShan says that people who meditate might be thought of as otherworldly, but actually are quite grounded and good at things in the real world. Which I initially took with a grain of salt, but now I see it, and tenfold since 2014 when I wrote the original version of this post.

Tuesday, February 18, 2020

Pumpkin Egg Oatmeal

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pumpkin oatmeal for my defunct blog

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A can of pumpkin puree happens to be a little more than three half cups of puree. Open the can, scoop out the first two half cups and put them in containers to be fridged (or freezed), then use the rest (and then the future containers) as directed.

1/2 cup rolled oats
1 tablespoon collagen,
optional
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
2 eggs
1/2 cup pumpkin puree
1/2 cup whatever milk
1 tablespoon maple syrup

Stir the oats, collagen, cinnamon, and nutmeg together in a microwave-safe bowl.

Blend the eggs, pumpkin, and milk, I use my rocket blender. Pour them into the bowl with the oats and stir.

Microwave for 75 seconds, stir, 60 seconds, stir, 45 seconds, stir, 30 seconds, stir, 15 seconds, aaand stir. I like my oats to be thick enough to form an island, so I can pour more milk in a moat around the island and then drizzle the island with maple syrup.

Thursday, November 28, 2019

Stuffing

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oooooo

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Looky, I made this with four kinds of bread: hawaiian, corn, pretzel, and rye. It was okay, I thought the rye was the best. Maybe a mix of rye and corn next year.

8 Tbsp unsalted butter, plus extra for baking dish
1 large onion, chopped medium (about 1-1/2 cups)
4 medium celery stalks, diced medium (about 1-1/2 cups)
1/2 tsp each dried sage, thyme, and marjoram
1/2 c minced fresh parsley leaves
1/2 tsp black pepper
12 c dried 1/2” cubes French or challah bread
2 c chicken stock
3 large eggs, beaten lightly
1 generous tsp salt

Adjust oven rack to center positon and heat oven to 400 degrees (350 degrees if using challah). Heat butter in large skillet over medium-high heat, until fully melted; pour off 2 Tbsp butter and reserve. Return skillet to heat; add onion and celery and sauté, stirring occasionally, until translucent, about 8 minutes. Stir in sage, thyme, marjoram, parsley and black pepper; cook until just fragrant, about 1 minute longer. Turn onion mixture into large mixing bowl. Add bread cubes, stock, eggs, and salt, and toss gently to distrbitute dry and wet ingredients evenly. Turn mixture into buttered 13 x 9 inch baking dish, drizzle with reserved melted butter, cover tighly with foil, and bake until fragrant, about 25 minutes (30 minutes for challah). Remove foil and bake until golden brown crust forms on top, 15 to 20 minutes longer. Serve warm.

Sunday, June 16, 2019

Sucker


Man I have the longest thing to write about dance classes so far.

SO. I was prepared to suck, beginner’s mind, yadda. Knowing ahead of time that you’re going to suck is one thing and feeling in the moment like you suck is another thing that required stronger management than I imagined, but I managed it 😤 and after my one-week unlimited pass was up, signed up for a three-week unlimited pass.

Okay so I’m a very specific kind of trainer, you know? For me it’s not about spending [x] time a week sucking at some thing so that in time you won’t suck at it; the thing itself is not important, the person doing the thing is important. So I’m not so much about bringing the person up to the thing, I’m more about finding a thing to spend [x] time a week awash in good feelings. That may seem stupidly warm and fuzzy, but it’s a cold hard world and what are we talking about—an hour, three times a week? So like 1.78% of your week dedicated to warm fuzzies, I don’t think that’s over the top. Okay fine, even assuming that sleep is warm fuzzy time, which is why people friggin love sleep, it’s still only 2.67% of your waking hours. So I gotta ask myself, can I find a better use for my 1.78 / 2.67 percent than intermittently standing lost and frozen at the back of the room. I mean, it’s not like I don’t like running.

The thing is, I only like running. I love dancing. Like love love dancing. If I could only learn these choreographed dances! At this point I was starting to look into Dance Dance Party Party, which is unchoreographed and would be an end run around learning these dances. The only thing about DDPP is the times it’s offered are exactly when I’m already climbing with Splatz. Which is not insurmountable, but my current dance classes work perfectly with my schedule apart from beating my head against the brick wall between me and learning choreographed dances.

The way you learn in these classes is, the teacher dances at the front of the room and you do your best to pick it up—that's it. Which I had a lot of thoughts about. Like I can see how this works for their business model, but I don’t think this is going to work for me. I can see how this could work for some people, but I don’t think this is going to work for me. I’m not a trained or gifted dancer, I can’t just pick shit up; I need somebody to break it down and show me very slowly. It’s fine, everybody’s fine! Everybody’s doing their best, no blame. I’m not going to quit in the middle of my three-week pass; but when that’s used up imma see about redoing my whole damn schedule around DDPP, gnar, wotta pain.

Literally that evening: I GET IT. I’M DOING IT. Not 100%, not even close. But like the difference between when you’re sick and don’t feel like doing anything and then you’re well, just not 100%! So what’s the most important thing I learned here, holy shit I can just pick shit up. I don’t need somebody to break it down and show me slowly. Just because that’s the way that's always worked for me, that’s not the only way that works for me! Becauuuuse my brain is always picking up so much more than I’m conscious of picking up, and processing it in the background, and blurping the partially digested dance back up for the conscious me to do something with.

Or in the words of the Jonas brothers:
I'm a sucker for all the subliminal things
No one knows about you (about you) about you (about you)
And you're making the typical me break my typical rules
It's true, I'm a sucker for you, yeah
(This is one of the dances, I’m not just randomly singing a Jonas Brothers song.)

ANYWAY. All of this is just an intro to the thing I just decided, well, a couple hours ago because it took a while to write all this up. To wit, I made a summer bucket list—boy there’s a whole other long thing to say about that, I wrote a little bit of it on my instagram—and one of the items was to master one complete dance. My favorite teacher very nicely has a public playlist of the songs we dance to, which opened a whole other room of stuff to pick up. Like the names of the songs, helpful for communicating with teacher when you’re trying to figure out a set of steps and she asks what song they’re from ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Or like the words to the songs, the basic structure of the songs, intro outro verse chorus bridge etc etc etc. I have a google document now with the words to all the songs on the current playlist, you know I do.

I ripped two holes in my hands climbing last Wednesday, and the one isn’t quite healed enough to climb on today. So I signed up for an extra dance class, figuring I could work on my bucket list item—sit in the back of the class and write down the steps next to the words for the one song that I have yet to pick to master.

But I just decided, No. I’m not going to do that. I’m going to leave my document at home and in my brain, and just go dance. See how it comes together, whenever it comes together, wherever it comes together.

Sunday, March 24, 2019

Crossing The Streams


full disclosure: i woke up this morning and thought i'm getting sad, this going into the office on sunday is wearing me down. saturday i have to hop to and get stuff around the house done, i have no day where i can just lie around. why is it necessary again to climb twice a week? are you being honest with yourself, is it the climbing or are you stealth trying to get work done. i legit need to get some shit done before tomorrow that i ran out of time friday for.

but i got up, just to see how it would go. it's going fine. i wanted to return some leggings to old navy that didn't fit and got cheaper cuter leggings, so that made me happy and now i've already walked two miles today. i haven't started work yet, i'm just chilling drinking my cardamom coffee and about to read my reader. i might put up my hooks in my closet, which will be boss. maybe i'll read, put up my hooks, and then eat my lunch. then settle in to get shit done. then climb!

however, your concerns have been duly noted. in theory you should be able to take a sunday to just lay around, so we're looking to see if every single sunday you feel like you can't. and sundays when you have plans with other people don't count, because you know you will take time off for other people and not so much "just" for yourself

haha crap now i want to put that on my blog so i can find it later, so now i have to go back in change it all to sentence case. BAH SEZ WHO

[ETA: I think part of me knows that even an easy thing like putting up Command hooks actually does take an hour that I don't have, or that I would not be able to quiet my brain to do, during a work day. (Especially when you put the hook for your running bag too high and have to move it lower, WHICH YOU CAN because Command.) But if you can't quiet your brain on a Sunday morning, when can you? Sunday morning is for quieting your brain. It's the time to put up Command hooks that will make you happy every damn day that you grab your climbing gear or pick a thing on a string to wear. Oh, I can include a photo! Brb.]