The Calm Christmas Podcast with Beth Kempton

S2 Ep6: CALM (ease + joy)

• Beth Kempton • Season 2 • Episode 6

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A lovely, relaxing episode to ease you into a place of restfulness this winter, including a beautiful meditation, some gorgeous winter poetry, and some tips for finding calm in the chaos. With inspiration from Hakuin, Brian Patton, Roger McGough, Mark Strand, the Royal Horticultural Society (@the_rhs), Joey Hulin (@joeyhulin_writer), Isobel Carlson, Donna Hay (@donna.hay), and Country Living (@countrylivinguk).

Featured in this episode:

Ingredients for the featured recipe (Rocky Road)

Makes six

  • 1kg of dark chocolate (chopped)
  • 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
  • 130g sweetened dried cranberries
  •  200g marshmallows
  • 250g Turkish Delight pieces
  • 50g of coconut flakes 
  • 140g of shelled unsalted pistachios, chopped
If only I could share it:

The soft sound of snow Falling late at night From the trees At this old temple. Welcome to The Calm Christmas Podcast with me. Beth Kempton, that beautiful poem was an untitled one by Japanese poet Hakuin from Three Zen Masters by John Stevens, and this episode

of the podcast, Episode 6:

Calm, is all about finding ease and joy in the run up to Christmas. I chose that poem to open our episode today because it reminds me of a place that I go in my mind when I'm feeling stressed or overwhelmed. It's a forest in Nagano, Japan, deep in the mountains. The snow is thick on the ground, dampening every sound, so all I hear is birdsong and my own breathing. Sometimes the wind blows and the snow drifts, but I'm sheltered by the trees. It's been more than 10 years since I stood in that forest, but I often visit in my mind, and it never fails to calm me. Even if you're blessed with the most congenial family and love every aspect of Christmas, there's sure to come a time when you need to step away and find some calm. Cultivating your own mental space of silence and snowfall, or whatever is most restful for you, can be a lifeline when the festivities, or the preparations for those festivities, all gets too much. To dwell in the stillness is to inhabit a temporary world of calm. If you take one thing away from this week's episode, I hope it is the reminder to cultivate some quiet in amongst the chaos in the run up to Christmas. Besides finding quiet in nature, you could also create a calming physical space in your home, perhaps a quiet room or a secluded corner with a beanbag and a book, or a comfy chair and a bag of sewing. If guests are staying, invite them to use it. This can be really helpful when children are visiting, setting up a quiet corner with some lovely music, paper and pens for drawing, all that kind of thing can really help calm little ones, and grownups at the end of an exciting day. And here's a handy trick if you're ever feeling anxious or stressed in the middle of a crowd, or even in a small group of people. Try imagining you're in a snow globe. There's a sphere of protection all around you, and inside, snow is gently falling. You can see what's happening outside, but the noise is muffled. And you can rest in stillness as the Christmas whirlwind spins around you. Practice mindfulness in the midst of the rush. Focus on the specific sensory details of your immediate environment - the feel of a cup in your hand, the temperature of the air - and allow the dome of the snowglobe to insulate you from the sensory overload outside. You know, it's funny, we are the keepers of Christmas, you and me. If you're listening to this podcast, you're the kind of person who, like me, notices the first scent of pine in the crisp December air as we wrap our hands gleefully around a mug of hot chocolate. We're the kind of people who plan the gatherings, chivvy the relatives, think long and hard about gifts, save the ribbon, stash away the paper, write the cards, stir the soup, stack the kindling, fluff the cushions, knit the stockings, and open our homes and hearts to welcome the magic of the season. We are smart, loving people who just want the best for everyone. So how is it that year in year out we have a tendency to overspend, overprepare and overdo just about everything in a frantic attempt to create the perfect Christmas? And sometimes in doing so end up so frazzled, stressed and exhausted, we cannot enjoy the wonder we have created? If you tuned into the podcast last year, I hope you experience things differently. I certainly did. It was really a wonderful, quiet but beautiful Christmas last year. There is always less that we can do - that's my new mantra. Not 'there's always more we can do', 'there's always less that we can do'. And so I hope this second series really helps you to strip everything back and enjoy rather than endure. This year let's make a pact - the Pact of the Christmas Keepers if you'd like, to keep the magic at the heart of things and choose to focus on one thing for each gathering and then be relaxed about the rest. For our journaling prompt this week. Let's try something a little bit different. So letting go of the notion of the perfect Christmas is not about lowering your expect but changing them, so try exchanging the word'perfect' as in 'perfect Christmas'. For something else, a memorable Christmas, cosy Christmas, or special Christmas perhaps. So in your journal make a list of words that you could use to describe the kind of Christmas you want to experience this year. If you listened to Episode One of this series, you might have set an intention for the run-up to Christmas - that's something we did back in the beginning - but now we're deciding how we want to experience Christmas, how we want to describe it when we look back on it. So have a play with some words in your journal, and then choose one, one that really resonates. You can use that then as a guidepost for all your decisions about your celebrations this year. It will help you avoid stress-inducing things that you don't want to do, and help you find calm as you make more space in your Christmas calendar. You know, over the years, I've discovered that simplicity is the key to a calm winter, and to a calm Christmas celebration. Simplifying 'out there', you know your spaces and your schedules can usher in order and quietude. And simplifying 'in here', as in inside our heads and our hearts, can really really help to foster deep tranquillity through presence and mindfulness. If possible, you might want to try bending and shaping your workload so that you're not buried under a mound of tasks at a time when your body just wants to rest. If you work shifts or if you work in an industry like retail or hospitality, that ramps up as Christmas approaches, take extra care to schedule downtime, and nourish yourself with good food, plenty of hydration and lots of sleep wherever you can get it. And I think one of my most precious pieces of advice, which I keep giving to myself, is to guard against overcommitment. Don't accept every invitation. Give yourself a few nights off each week. If you have children, consider reducing their after-school activities and use the time to do more things together at home. And when I say invitations, I don't just mean celebratory things, I mean other things, obligations in your community, things that work ask you to do, even you know from... if you run a small business, and you're the kind of person who gets asked to do lots of interviews, just take care with what you say yes to throughout this month. It's a really wonderful month to try and rest and rejuvenate and that is going to lead you to a much calmer experience of the season. And also one of my favourite things to do is to try reading yourself some poetry. I find it so calming. Of course it depends what poems you read, but the kind of beautiful ones often nature inspired, that I love, are very calming. And it also leads me into writing my own words, which I find calming to. Here are a couple of lovely, wintery poems that I've picked out for you today. The first is called First Snow in the Street by Brian Patton, and it is in a gorgeous little book called 100 Best Christmas Poems for Children, edited by Roger McGough. I did not sleep last night, the falling snow was beautiful and white. I dressed sneaked down the stairs and open wide the door. I have not seen such snow before. Our grubby little street had gone. The world was brand new and everywhere. There was pureness in the air. I felt such peace, watching every flake, my heart felt more and more awake. I thought I'd learned all there was to know about them trillion million different kinds of swirling frosty falling flakes of snow. But that was not so I did not know how vividly it lit the world with such a peaceful glow. Upstairs my parents slept, yet I could not drag myself away from that site to call them down and have them share the meat miracle that was everywhere. The snow seemed to fall for me alone, how beautiful the grubby little streets had grown. And then we have Lines for Winter by Mark Strand, which can

be found in Poem for The Day:

Two edited by Retta Bowen, Nick Temple, Stephanie Wienrich and Nicholas Albery. I actually stumbled across this lovely poetry book in a cosy coffee shop in Oxford when I was researching one of my books. And so this is pretty special to me this winter. Tell yourself as it gets cold and grey falls from the air that you will go on walking, hearing the same tune no matter where you find yourself - inside the dome of dark or under the cracking white of the moons gaze in a valley of snow. Tonight as it gets cold tell yourself what you know which is nothing but the tune your bones play as you keep going. And you will be able for once to lie down under the small fire of winter stars. And if it happens that you cannot go on or turn back and you find yourself where you will be at the end, tell yourself in that final flowing of cold through your limbs that you love what you are. Beautiful, I found so many wintery poems that seem to come up against really the depths of the human experience. Something about the darkness and light of this season, how there are so many really stark contrasts. It's absolutely fascinating to look at poems that call themselves a winter poem, and are actually about the human experience. So onto our wellbeing tips for this week. I'm actually going to share a lovely meditation for celebrating, which is from Joey Hulin's book Your Spiritual Almanac, this came out recently and I have a copy to give away. So if you want to enter the giveaway for that, come and find me on Instagram @BethKempton, and you might win a lovely bundle of Joey's book and a signed copy of my book. This is a meditation taken from Your Spiritual Almanac which is really lovely. It goes through the year, month by month, offering insight into ideas about what that month means in the calendar, ways to take care of yourself, ways to connect with nature, and ways to really tune in to that time of year I highly recommend it and this is one of Joey's lovely meditations. Allow your awareness to rest for a moment on your ears. Listen to the sounds of life, movement and vibration around you. Notice the gap between sounds, the space of silence that sound comes from and to which it returns. Take a long, slow, deep breath and allow your awareness to rest on your breath. This time. Notice the sounds the rhythm of your breathing as you effortlessly breathe in and out, letting the breath happen all by itself. Now start to allow your awareness to rest on the gap between breaths, where the breath seems to come from and to which it returns. The short pause between the out breath and the in breath. Find a sense of deep relaxation in each arrival there, surrendering into that space. And now offer your awareness fully to the content of your mind and heart. Notice what is there before allowing your awareness to rest once more on the silence between thoughts, rather than on the thoughts or the distractions themselves. Notice the space where thoughts arise and to which they return. Allow yourself to rest in this open expanded awareness. Allow the thoughts, feelings, sensations and breath to come and go, to move through your experience of now. Allow yourself to rest deeply into the seat of awareness. Allow all just to be as it is. Stay here for as long as you need and then close your meditation by taking one last long, slow, deep breath. And now it's time for our Nature Corner. According to the Royal Horticultural Society, any sunshine there is in December will be weak, but sunny days can be quite pleasant and if you wrap up well, you can have a good day in the garden digging or catching up with other clearing up jobs. Now's your chance to carry out any repairs and maintenance jobs that have been piling up during the year and make the most of any good weather by pruning and protecting plants for the winter. I'm taking this from a wonderful book called the RHS Gardening Through the Year, which is a kind of bible, it goes month by month through the year, giving all sorts of ideas for things to be doing in the garden when it is that particular month, and also what is the last chance to do, so what you really need to do this month before it's too late and the next month comes along with all the other things that are to do in the garden, because if you have a garden, you will know that it is a neverending series of jobs but also a neverending joy. So the RHS's advice for the December garden - things to do - It says, "Feed birds in cold weather, prevent ponds, water features and bird baths from freezing over, continue winter digging incorporating organic matter into the soil, repair lawn sheds and fences when weather conditions allow, prune woody ornamental plants, fruit trees and bushes, ornamental vines and grape vines, shake snow off trees, shrubs and hedges if you have any snow, reduce watering of plants that are overwintering under cover to avoid the risk of them rotting, winter flowering houseplants will need attention but avoid overwatering dormant pot plants, lift and heel in celery so that you have plenty of winter supplies, and earth up those tall Brussels sprout stems to support them, and spray fruit trees and roses with a plant oil winter wash to reduce pest and disease problems. And the RHS suggests this is the last chance to protect plants and pots that are vulnerable to frost damage, to insulate garden taps and exposed pipes to stop them freezing, to prune tall bush roses to guard against windrock, and to bring in Christmas bulbs for flowering. I have a very sweet little pocket book called The Seaside Year by Isobel Carlson, and it gives you all sorts of fun ideas to make the most of life by the coast in the UK - it is a UK-focused book. And one of her ideas for this time of year is a scavenger hunt. A beach based scavenger hunt is a terrific family activity, which is especially good for children who have been cooped up inside and need to burn off some energy. I love making scavenger hunts for my children. They're very easy, you just make a list of 10 to 12 items everyone has to hunt for. It might be that you give them a set radius where they can look. And it's more interesting if you make it specific. So this is the list that Isobel gives in A Seaside Year, as example. So a small white pebble no bigger than your middle fingernail, a piece of brown lucky glass, an ice lolly stick, something that is red, a piece of rope or string, a shell that houses a creature, a feather, a piece of seaweed that resembles ribbon, something a fairy would wear as a hat, and a piece of wood that you can dig with. And of course, whoever finds them all first gets a very special prize, maybe something that you found on the beach while everyone else was looking for all the bits and pieces. We often do this on a walk as well and we get the children to find something which begins with each letter of the alphabet. Tha usually takes us all the wa down the river as they find thi gs that begin with ABC all the ay through to Z. And so it's time for our Christmas recipe. This week's recipe is taken from Country Living Christmas it's a beautiful magazine that pulls the best from their archives. I can only imagine how gorgeous their archives are because Country Living has just created the most beautiful Christmas magazines and books over the years. This is a recipe for Rocky Road and I can see here in the magazine is actually extracted from Donna Hay's book'Christmas Feasts and Treats' so you could also find it there. I picked this one because we're talking about calm this week. And while the amount of sugar in this recipe might not make you very calm the idea of making a big batch of something sweet that you can then cut up and use as many different gifts for different people, I think can be very calming because you can create labels and wrapping and tags and turn it into a crafting activity that if you do it over and over again - you know you're stamping 20 different tags and you're tying them and you're wrapping the Rocky Road that you've made in lovely wax paper, that kind of thing - it can feel like a really meditative activity so that's why I've chosen Rocky Road for today. I don't suggest you eat too much of it if you want to be calm yourself today, but it sounds like a very delicious recipe. So this makes six, you might want to make more. To make six you will need 1kg of dark chocolate (chopped), two ta lespoons of vegetable oil, 13 g sweetened dried cr nberries, 200g marshmallows, 25 g Turkish Delight pieces, 50g of coconut flakes and 140g of sh lled unsalted pistachios, ch pped. You can already imagine ho delicious this is going to be from those ingredients. To make it first you want to lign a 25cm x 32 cm baking tin with non-stick baking paper. Put the chocolate and oil in a large heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water and stir until melted and smooth. Then in another large bowl, you want to put in the cranberries, marshmallows, Turkish Delight, coconut and pistachios, and mix them to combine. You want to reserve and set aside 250 ml of the melted chocolate and add the rest of it to the Rocky Road mixture and stir it to combine. Spoon the mixture into the tin pressing down gently to spread it right to the edges, then pour that chocolate that you'd reserved all over the Rocky Road, spread it evenly with a palette knife, anf chill for 30 minutes until set. You don't have to cook it. Remove the Rocky Road from the tin and slice into long bars to serve. Store the Rocky Road in a cool dry place for up to one week. Wrap bars in paper and tie with ribbon to make sweet edible gifts. And finally, this week's get ahead tips because preparation can make all the difference. I'm very excited that Friday 10 of December is Christmas Jumper Day. I'm not actually sure who came up with this but here in the UK lots of charities use it to raise funds. Save the Children suggest you donate 2 as you wear your jumper. Wherever you are in the world, you might want to join in with Christmas Jumper Day. It's a very festive thing to do. And not this week, but coming up 18th December is the last day for posting second class Christmas post in the UK so don't miss that. Other things you might want to do this week to get ahead: Ask those close to what they most want to eat this year if they're going to be sharing Christmas with you and use that as your starting point for planning. You never know they might surprise you with their answer. So if you're not just cooking, what you always cook, you're actually asking people what they might like to eat, who knows what your Christmas dinner might end up looking like. You might really enjoy some time exploring Christmas recipe books and picking a couple of things that you definitely want to make this year. And it's also a really great time to give your house a good clean if you love that fresh feeling for Christmas. So that's it from me this week. Coming up in December we have three more cosy episodes. 'Less noise more quiet' next week, and then 'Less comparison more celebration' just before Christmas, and for our final episode in the week between Christmas and New Year we have'Less doing more dreaming'. I hope you'll subscribe and tune in for each of them. You've been listening to The Calm Christmas Podcast with me, Beth Kempton. For more inspiration and access to a very special free Christmas Care Package, cosy up with a copy of my book, Calm Christmas and a Happy New Year: A Little Book of Festive Joy, which is available now from all good bookshops. For peak into my own perfectly imperfect Christmas preparations come and find me on Instagram@BethKempton. I'd love to hear from you there. Wishing you a wonderful final few weeks as we move towards a calm Christmas and a Happy New Year.