S2 Ep2: BREATHE (inhale the season, exhale the stress)

From watching starling murmurations to cooking up a vat of hot soup, from long wintery walks and forest bathing to practicing calming breathing exercises, this episode is full of ideas for gentle ways to slow down, inhale the season and exhale the stress. And with a host of get ahead tips to make sure your holiday preparations all come together in good time, you’ll feel more ready than ever for the approaching winter. With inspiration from Nick Acheson, Melissa Harrison, Charles Dickens, Jilly Shipway and Ali Roff Farrar.

Beth Xx

Featured in this episode:

·      Essay by Nick Acheson in Winter: An anthology for the changing seasons edited by Melissa Harrison 

·      Calm Christmas and a Happy New Year: A Little Book of Festive Joy by Beth Kempton

·      Bleak House by Charles Dickens 

·      Yoga Through the Year by Jilly Shipway

·      The Wellfulness Project by Ali Roff Farrar 

Transcript

0:05

Sometimes in midwinter, between the many days that lurk like cold dishwater or hurl their almost frozen rain on us, there comes a day of clear skies on which the low rays of the sun ooze across the Norfolk landscape like egg-yolk, basting gold the wintry trunks of birches and gilding everything they touch. This is a day for shelving jobs at home, for donning gloves and woolly hats, for slipping binoculars around your neck and heading to the Broads. Those lovely words are from Nick Acheson in Winter: An anthology for the changing seasons edited by Melissa Harrison. Mid-November is approaching. Christmas is still a few weeks away, and it's the perfect time to inhale the season. And exhale the stress. Welcome to Episode Two of the Calm Christmas podcast. This is the 'less manic more magic' episode and it's the one all about slowing down and tuning into the season. Walking in winter is different to walking at any other time of year. Cold air splashes your face as your breath turns to candy floss. Everything crunches underfoot you since the beginning of a slip on a patch of ice, then feel the correction that comes with a quick in-breath as you steady yourself. The trees are vulnerable in their nakedness. Their leaves now serving another purpose as worm food. Branches cleared for robins and other feathered friends to meet and natter. The freezing air traces a path all the way to your lungs, snapping you into the present and giving you a sense of vitality. The skies are different in winter too and I love to linger by the seashore and watch them. I live on the Jurassic Coast near a town famous for fossils which are revealed at the bottom of the cliffs like tiny gifts after every storm, disclosing their 180 million year old secrets to anyone with a hammer and some patience. An ancient town that featured in the Domesday book, it has a historic Cobb and a bustling harbour and the best fish and chips for miles around. I love to order grilled sea bass from the tiny hut by the harbour and lick my salty fingers in the slashing rain as I shelter by the lifeboat, laughing is my littlest one insists on splashing in the puddles instead of taking cover. This is my kind of November moment, a welcome alternative to shopping malls and the online hustle that begins earlier every year with the approach of Black Friday and continues right up to Christmas. Shopping for that special gift can be a delight if you're in the right frame of mind, especially when you start early and aren't in a hurry. But the constant call of sales can be really stressful. Taking regular breaks from the high street and the promotions in your inbox can do wonders to keep you calm in the run up to Christmas. Nourishing your mind can be as simple as turning away from overstimulation, to-do lists, screens, loud music, bright lights, toxic conversations, and making your way into nature - open spaces, fresh air, peace and quiet. Try counting the shades of evergreens, inhaling the aroma of wild herbs, listening for signs of life. On cold sunny days, look for berries, or different leaf shapes or visiting birds. Seek out hardy plants emerging from cracks in the pavement. Make bark rubbings with a little person. Fill up a feeder for the birds. I find the ever-changing sky at this time of year a powerful tonic for the soul. For you it might be the nearness of water, or the bare bones of trees stripped of their leaves. Seek whatever you need. Document your finds, photograph them, sketch them, forage a few samples for a nature table. Weather has been part of our associations with Christmas for as long as we have celebrated Christmas. What kind of weather do you associate with the season, I wonder? When I was researching my book Calm Christmas, I spoke to hundreds of people all over the world about their experiences of the season, and I was struck by how christmas feels different in different places often simply depending on whether it is hot or cold, sunny or rainy, and whether there is snow or just hopes of snow. Us Brits do love to talk about the weather and sometimes this is dismissed as a cultural quirk but I love it. I think it's a gentle way of making small talk with anyone, sharing an experience of a blustery day, or unexpected sunshine, or the cosiness of a cafe window seat as the rain pours down outside. But beyond that, noticing the weather is also a great way of making ourselves slow down and really notice the place where we are, to observe nature at work, and tune into the season. If you like to write writing about the weather is always a good idea. It can help transport a reader into the place or experience that you're writing about and it's a real challenge actually, to write something new about something so familiar. And challenging yourself is always a good idea too. I love how the weather descriptions really transport us to Victorian England, in Charles Dickens' Bleak House. I'm going to read you a snippet from that- the place is talking about, Lincoln's Inn Hall, is situated by Lincoln's Inn Fields, the largest public square in London, which was laid out in the 17th Century. The Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn is one of the four Inns of Court in London, to which barristers of England and Wales belong, and where they are called to the Bar. It was founded in 1422. So this is London, a long time ago, even in Dickens' age, Lincoln's Inn had been around for a long time. Now I used to work around the corner from it, and I have many happy memories of walking down nearby Regent Street, and gaping at the angels strung across the road in a gorgeous display of Christmas lights. There was a very different version of that area in winter in Dickens' day, as we can hear in this little passage from Bleak House. London. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincolns Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets, as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes - gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green acts and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the muddy streets are muddiest, near that leaden-headed old obstruction, appropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old corporation, Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincolns Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery. Wow, just so much atmosphere. Winter definitely isn't all snow. In fact, it's hardly ever about snow here in England, really, although we dream of snow and we wish for it and we associate it with Christmas. It's more often about wind and rain and fog and sleet, cold wet weather that makes you appreciate a good coat and a warm fire. For this week's journal prompts, I encourage you to try answering these questions. I've got four questions for you this week. Firstly, what's the weather like where you are this time of year? Give me details. Then secondly, what kind of weather describes how you feel this week? And then thirdly, what have you been doing to the extreme this year that you could ease off off over the winter? And then lastly, what would'less manic more magic' mean to you in terms of Christmas this year? And what do you need to start or stop doing to make that possible? Feel free to come and share your thoughts with me over on Instagram @BethKempton where I will be asking the same questions this week on my feed and you're very welcome to come pop your own thoughts in the comments. And if you fancy winning a copy of the book that I read from at the beginning, Melissa Harrison's anthology Winter, be sure to pop over to my Instagram as well this week because I'm going to be giving away a copy along with a signed copy of my own Calm Christmas. Okay, it's time for our nature corner. This week's nature tip is to watch for starlings. I remember one particular long, early winter walk by the sea in Brighton when I was very heavily pregnant with my oldest child, who ended up being born on Christmas Day. A murmuration of thousands of starlings appeared over the water. It was astonishing, like a cloud of iron filings moving to the swirl of an invisible magnet in the sky. Pure magic. Apparently each bird in the murmuration actually tracks those birds in their immediate vicinity so there is a slight time delay as each one catches up, which is what leads to that beautiful ripple effect. If you don't have starlings living and flying and nesting near you, then why not look up a murmuration on YouTube just to watch its magnificence and then go in search of what birds you do have in your local area and take a look at what they're doing at this time of year. Okay, for our wellbeing tips this week... This episode is themed, less manic, more magic. And when we talk about Christmas magic, it's easy for the mind to go to stories of Santa and piles of gifts and twinkling fairy lights, but there is magic happening in nature all around us too. As Jilly Shipway says in Yoga Through the Year, autumn is turning to winter now and the leaves are falling from the trees; the days are getting shorter and cold frosty mornings whisper that winter is on the way. In many traditions the point where we enter the darkest phase of the year is seen as a new beginning, rather than an ending. We pass through the darkness only to be reborn into the light at the Winter Solstice next month. Now is a lovely time to reflect on the year gone past and ask yourself what being now is such a lovely time to reflect on the year gone past and ask yourself what being reborn into the light could mean for you? This week's wellbeing tip is simply to take a walk in nature, perhaps pondering such a question. You might combine this with looking for birds in your local area this week. Put your phone away, go slow, look all around you and really listen. And now slow down by half, and halve that pace again. Now slow your breathing to match the pace of your walking. Be present, notice what's going on around you and use all your senses to experience where you are. You might want to pause this podcast, take out your earphones if you're walking along listening and just be where you are. In the modern world, we spend so much of our time shut up in sanitised boxes, in our homes, our cars or offices, especially when the weather is grim. But taking time to step out of those boxes and get close to the wild outdoors, sharpens our senses and reminds us of the preciousness of life which is unfolding all around us. We sometimes need everything to be stripped away to reveal true beauty. We need simplicity to remind us that life isn't all about accumulating stuff. And we need the birdsong and the big skies to remind us that we are part of nature. Wildness is part of who we are. By now you've probably heard of shinrin-yoku, a Japanese term, which means forest bathing, which is scientifically proven to be good for us. But to me, the medicine of the forest is far more than a contemporary wellness trend. People have lived in forests since ancient times. Nature is in our blood. It's in our bones. It's in our very human spirit. It's the haunting call of the mountains and the swirling pull of the sea, the whispering of the wind and the secrets in the trees. To me forest bathing is not about doing something new. It's about something we know deep down already, but many of us have forgotten. When you spend time in a gentle forest and experience moments of mindfulness among the trees, you feel held, supported, transported. It's like coming back to an old friend who will pull you in and close and whisper secrets in your ear if only you'll show up at their door. So keep walking. Notice the feel of the ground under your feet, the taste of the air, the wind in the trees, the light and the shadows. Look up, look down. look all around. Touch things. Notice how different bark, branches and leaves feel. Notice where things are in their lifecycle. What is emerging? What is growing? What is fading? Breathe deeply. Breathe it all in. If you like you can try this lovely yogic breathing practice to help you feel relaxed yet energised. I'm going to read you some directions which I've adapted from Ali Roff Farrar's lovely book, The Wellfulness Project, and you may well recognise it from a yoga class that you've taken. It's one of my favourite breathing practices. Ali says,"Alternate nostril breathing or nadi shodhana pranayama, energy cleansing breath practicee is easy and can help you to feel relaxed, yet balanced and energised. It's had some inspiring scientific discoveries around it too. It calms the nervous system, making you feel less stressed, reduces blood pressure, improves mental performance, and increases your attention span. It can be done before or after yoga, before or after meditation, before bed or on waking, during a break at work, when you're feeling stressed or out of balance, or simply as one of your daily rituals." And here's how you do it. So you want to sit on a chair on the floor cross-legged, and if you're out on your walk listening to this, perhaps find a lovely tree to sit up against. Bring your attention to your breath and allow yourself to follow it. You aren't trying to control it here you're trying to go at any certain pace. You're just placing your awareness onto your breath, as gently as a butterfly resting on a flower. And once you've settled into your space, take your dominant hand and raise it to your nose. Exhale fully. Then use your thumb and fourth finger to pinch both your nostrils to close them. Release the left nostril. But keep the right one close to your thumb. Breathe in slowly and fully through your left nostril. And now close off the left nostril with your finger and release the right then exhale through your right nostril. Keep your right nostril open and breathe in again through it. Close the right nostril and exhale through the left. And that's one round of alternate nostril breathing, complete. Let's go again - in through the left, out through the right. In through the right, out through the left. If you're doing this now you might want to pause the podcast and do 10 rounds on your own. In through the left, out through the right, in through the right, out through the left. Off you go. And then when you've done that as you're ready, bring your attention back to your natural breath and allow yourself to settle. If you're out on your nature walk listening to this get walking slowly again, and see how different you feel now after that lovely breathing exercise. Okay, and now it's time for this week's recipe. I love making soup. Last year I had a field day with veggies from the garden having gone a bit overboard building a lot of raised beds using half the garden during lockdown, and Mr. K did an awful lot of earth shifting. I was grateful for that and I had a wonderful time learning how to grow vegetables. Some of them worked better than others. I had a lot of success with potatoes, and I had a lot less success with my favourite daikon or sometimes it's called mooli. It's a kind of white radish and I absolutely love it. It's common in Japanese cooking and I was so desperate to grow it and they looked like they were doing really well. The tops were huge and the leaves were healthy. But then when I went to pull them from the soil, just a couple of inches below the surface of the soil they were short and all knotted. It was very strange. A complete mystery to me. My gardener friends also didn't know what happened. If you've got any ideas feel free to DM me on Instagram@BethKempton, I would love to know how to grow daikon properly. But anyway, I cooked up lots of soup last year with the things that did work. Since then we've moved house and we don't have any raised beds at the moment. Hopefully we will again at some point, but we do have a lot of farms near us. So this week, I'm going to stocking up on root vegetables to make some lovely soups. I thought I'd share a couple of simple and delicious ones from a slim but wonderful cookbook that I use, which is called Seasonal Soups by Fraser Reed. If you like the sound of these, why not treat yourself to the whole book. So the two recipes are Beetroot, Parsnip and Horseradish soup, and then Chestnut, Carrot and Thyme soup. For the beetroot, parsnip and horseradish one you're going to need a tablespoon of olive oil or butter. One onion, which you will need to peel and dice, a clove of garlic, which you'll need to peel and finely chop, about 400 grams of raw beetroot, peeled and roughly chopped, three medium parsnips again peeled and roughly chopped, a thumb sized piece of fresh horseradish, which you're gonna want to grate, two stock cubes and salt and pepper for seasoning. And you want to put the kettle on the board as well because you're going to need some boiling water. This recipe serves four people and Fraser tells us to heat a pot on a medium to low heat and put in the oil or butter and then fry the garlic and the onion in that for five to 10 minutes until it's all nice and soft. Add the beetroot and the parsnips and give everything a mix and then stir in about half the grated horseradish. Pour in 1.2 litres of boiling water, chuck in the crumbled stock cubes and then bring it to the boil. You want to reduce the heat and simmer that with the lid on for 25 to 30 minutes. And when that's done, blend everything together. Season it well, have a taste and if you feel like you can handle some more horseradish, sprinkle it straight into your bowl. Yum. Talk about a warming soup. And then the second one is very Christmassy: Chestnut, carrots and thyme. For this you're going to need a tablespoon of olive oil or butter, a peeled and roughly chopped onion, two cloves of garlic, again peeled and finely chopped, a stick of celery, finely chopped, 200 grams of vacpac chestnuts roughly chopped - that's what's in the book but it might work with tinned chestnuts, I don't know, give it a try - four carrots, peeled and roughly chopped, a sprig of thyme, just the leaves, two stock cubes, salt and pepper for seasoning and again, some boiling water. This again serves four, sounds lovely having three friends round for lunch right for nice hot soup? So what you need to do is heat a pot on a medium to low heat and add the oil or butter, and same as before fry the onion and garlic but also the celery, chestnuts, and carrots for 10 minutes. Then sprinkling in the thyme leaves and continue to fry for another minute or so. Then add a litre of boiling water this time, with your crumbled stock cubes, bring it to the boil, turn down the heat and simmer for 20 minutes and then blend it until perfectly smooth and season to taste. I know what we're having for lunch this week. Okay and to the final part of this week's podcast are get ahead tips because preparation makes all the difference. One thing I know I'm going to be doing this week is a really lovely thing to do. If you can get to the beach or get to a forest perhaps go foraging or beach combing to stock up on natural treasures for making decorations and for adding to wrapped presents. You might find feathers, seedheads, seaglass, leaf skeletons, dried seaweed perhaps or even driftwood. And you can turn those into gift tags. You can pop them between the ribbon and the wrapping paper on a gift to make it look extra special, or turn them into gifts and decorations themselves. You can do all sorts of things with a piece of driftwood. Or you can even ink them up and use them as stamps for creating lovely natural wrapping ideas. You know if you stamp on brown craft paper, with a leaf skeleton, you can get really beautiful patterns. And then another thing that you might want to do at this point, if you're a visual person is to start a Pinterest board or a folder of inspiration for decorations, wrapping, recipes and so on. Or maybe less tangible things like images that represent the atmosphere you want to create or the values you want to keep close, or quotes to inspire you through the winter. And then it's a good time to go through your existing decorations and see if anything needs replacing or recycling. I find that with every passing year I fancy the shiny tinsel-y things less and less and I love the combination of natural decorations and fairy lights even more. Another lovely thing to do at this time of year which I mentioned on last season's podcast that lots of you tried, is to have a crafternoon or an evening making paper snowflakes and other simple crafting ideas. You might want to try making a Japanese kokedama which is the kind of hanging bonsai moss ball which is made by taking a plant out of its pot and into a ball of soil which is held together with moss and string. And then it's hung upside down from the ceiling or from a curtain rod. It's a really beautiful sculptural hanging plant and it makes a wonderful gift, or it is just a very interesting decoration to have in your own home. And I've popped a link in the show notes to a video where you can learn how to make a kokedama. And if you fancy giving yourself some inspiration in December, remember, if you haven't done it yet, book your place now for my free writing course, the Winter Writing Sanctuary. It's a two week course, it's going to help you nurture the writing habit. And it's going to see you through the season. I know it's a really busy time. But that's extra reason to sign up for something which is going to make you carve out a little bit of time for yourself. It will run from Monday 22nd November online and there's daily inspiration and exercises from me, and you get to share with a community of writers from all around the world. It's really a wonderful thing to do. It's for all levels so even if you haven't written anything before, you're very welcome. Even if you've published 20 books before you're very welcome. It's all really just a very special way of tuning into the season and spilling with words. You can book your place at dowhatyouloveforlife.com. And that's it for me this week. I hope you have a lovely gentle week. I'll be back next week with a very special episode on nourishing ourselves with the theme 'less stress, more goodness'. I hope you'll join me then. You've been listening to the Calm Christmas podcast with me Beth Kempton. Remember to subscribe so you don't miss any upcoming episodes and tell your friends if you think they'd enjoy it too. 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, available now from all good bookshops and for a peek into my own perfectly imperfect Christmas preparations. come and find me on Instagram @BethKempton. I'm also doing a weekly giveaway of lovely lovely Christmas books between now and Christmas so do come and follow and have a go at that too. You might get something very special in the post. And I always love to hear from you over there. That's@BethKempton on Instagram. Wishing you a lovely week and looking ahead to a calm Christmas and a Happy New Year.