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Monday, March 19, 2018

Yummy Sweet Beet and Cocoa Milk

If you're looking for a quick, fun pick-me-up, extra snack, or treat, one of my new most favorite beverages is sweet beet and cocoa milk. It's easy to make, full of vitamins, frothy, and (best of all) pink! Yay!


Ingredients

  • 2 teaspoons of beet powder 
  • 1 scoop of cocoa powder
  • 1 cup of hemp milk (or substitute)
  • Honey (as much as needed)
Blend all the ingredients together and you've got your drink :). It's fun and refreshing, and beets are excellent for anyone looking to give their liver or gallbladder a boost. Cocoa and honey are great for energy and for your skin, and hemp is a great source of plant protein.

<3 Frances

Thursday, March 8, 2018

March Musings: Mindfulness, Amelie, and Romanticism

We learned about the Romantic Period in my Humanities class yesterday, and I left filled with the words of John Keats and the art of Caspar David Friedrich. The Romantic perspective on life and emotion and creativity is (needless to say) quite inspiring, especially with its emphasis on the uncontrollable, terrifying, beautiful nature of the natural world, and when I got home, I took a little bit more time to really pay attention to what was going on around me. 
The birds. 
The flower leaning delicately against the edge of a vase on the kitchen counter. 
We don't notice these things as much as we should, and, while this is partly due to a lack of time (bills, work, etc.), it's also partly because we've become accustomed to the fast pace of life. I wrote about this a bit in my last post, and it's on my mind again because I was at work (substitute teaching for the win) the other day and noticed that, as soon as one activity came to an end, my students immediately needed to know what was coming next. Next. Next. Next. They were so anxious for the future that they completely missed the present, and what's sad is that one day they'll be grown up and look back on their lives and realize just how quickly time slipped away. But we've become dangerously comfortable with speed and stimulation. It bothers me how often my heart rate quickens and my jaw clenches when I'm waiting longer than I thought I'd be for something or when I'm uncertain about the future. I'm a worrier. I angst about whether or not I'll be able to control what's going to happen in my life, and little schedule changes can throw me for a loop. But I wasn't always like this. I was once much more flexible, patient, and calm, and I'm realizing that the constant bombardment of information and stimuli that we're all exposed to nowadays has a scary effect on our brains. Our attention spans are getting shorter, and today it's harder for us to focus on and appreciate things than it was forty years ago. 
The average attention span for the notoriously ill-focused goldfish is nine seconds, but according to a new study from Microsoft Corp., people now generally lose concentration after eight seconds, highlighting the affects of an increasingly digitalized lifestyle on the brain. (Kevin McSpadden, TIME Magazine)
I keep thinking of Amelie Poulain in the movie Amelie. (You know, the beautiful Jean-Pierre Jeunet film about the quirky girl with the cute haircut and infectious optimism?) Amelie is genuinely fascinated by the simple things in life. She lives each day with love and enthusiasm and adorable uniqueness, and she's never scrolling mindlessly on the Internet searching for things to compare herself to. If she were, she wouldn't be Amelie, and the world would be such a sad place without Amelie in it! 

From http://quoteideas.com/amelie-movie-quotes/
Lately, I've been reading some books on yoga and mindfulness, and a theme I've come across is that mindfulness practitioners maintain their childlike fascination. Note that "childlike" doesn't mean immature or unworldly; it simply implies that one is open and receptive and interested. Instead of beginning each day with baited breath and angst, we could "inhale lots of love in" (as Adriene Mishler would say) and "Carpe Diem" (thank you, Mr. Keating of Dead Poets Society). By living with compassion for ourselves and what's around us, we could help make the world a better place. I'm not trying to get all cliched here, but wouldn't it be nice if we all felt love for one another? Change starts from within.
One of my best tips on going "within" (from someone who's still trying to get there, LOL) is to think about the things that make your spirit happy and that make you feel connected to the world around you on a deep level. My brother, for instance, is genuinely enthusiastic about insects. He's even got a blog about it (fortheloveofinsects.blogspot.com), and his love for the environment motivates him to do his best in school and be the best version of himself because he believes that, if he tries hard enough, he can help the planet heal. So far, he's managed to convince many of his classmates not to step on stink bugs, and that's a big accomplishment for insect-lovers everywhere ;).
So what is it that inspires you to be the best version of yourself? Know that it's totally okay not to have a single defined passion! You don't have to be a die-hard super-fan of any single thing . . . just look out at the world with compassion and interest like Amelie does. Cracking creme brulee can be an amazing experience in and of itself, regardless of whether or not you consider yourself a culinary aficionado.

<3 Frances 

Tuesday, March 6, 2018

Stepping Out of the Spiral

I watch the empty boxes in my calendar fill up more and more every day, and I have a new appreciation for the quiet moments in between this and that. I know I still resist pause and stillness, but I'm realizing more now just how important it is to step back and take a deep breath and then act form a place of intention instead of just dropping into the spiral and letting it take you away. Move with life, not against it, and draw your energy from compassion and gratitude and thoughtfulness, not stress and anxiety. This is a practice I am definitely a beginner in. 


My grandmum's Pema Chodron and Louise Hay books seem particularly relevant now, and I keep wishing that my grandmum hadn't died so young. I thought fifty-eight was old when I was little, but now I realize that she should've been around longer than that. Ghosting immunological diseases and a heart that felt too deeply pushed her too far, too fast, and I'm grateful for every day she woke up and hid arthritis and inflammation behind a smile and pretended she was okay. I have to think of her every time I feel scared or uncertain or resistant and remind myself that there is so much to be grateful for and that, if I really want to do something good in the world, I need to step out of my spiral.  
It's very easy to get caught in the drama and energy and push of the moment. We spend so much time staring into the addictive blue light of our screens that the world can at time seem to be made up entirely of what's online and what's glorified by our society as "admirable" and "worthy." Just this morning I read Zan Romanoff's article on the culture of fitness:
The deification of “better, harder, faster, more” can also be damaging to so-called “healthy” bodies, ones which are relatively fit and free of injury. The fetishization of never-ending accomplishment, which thrives by one-upping itself, can create a perpetually striving mindset that’s very good for selling class packages, but very bad for finding any kind of actual mental peace. And so the same drive that brings someone into an exercise class, and keeps them attending even when they’re tired and it’s tough, can become a liability when the challenge facing them is that they need to take a week off. 
It's great to appreciate your physical self and want to take care of it, but Romanoff's article brings up a good point: our modern, Western culture has developed a fitness class obsession. SoulCycle. Barry's Bootcamp. CrossFit. When taken too far, fitness can become dogmatic. Doctrinal. 

If you're not pushing yourself, you're not trying hard enough. 
If you don't hurt, it doesn't count. 
If you're not ___, you're nothing.

But why do we think this way? Movement is part of a healthy lifestyle, sure, but it's not the be-all, end-all, and it's not as complicated as we make it out to be. Fitness classes are a luxury, and everyone's "healthiest version of themself" is different. Some people are sick. Some people are in pain. Some people have dealt with an unhealthy relationship with exertion. The bottom line is that movement should be for mental health and physical refreshment, not to achieve some sort of media-hyped body goal or to fuel an obsession. Prioritize compassion, love, and a positive mindset. Let the rest unfold.