Easy Healing Drinks Sustainable International Sleeper
I wrote a book Easy Healing Drinks from the Wisdom of Ayurveda with photographer Renee Lynn seven years ago. We wanted to create something beautiful and useful in the field of Ayurveda. We succeeded in this, yet stumbled in other ways. In past posts, I’ve written about other people’s creative strengths. It’s easier for me to do this than claim my own. Yet now’s the time to write about Easy Healing Drinks Sustainable International Sleeper.
The Journey: Sustainable Values & Actions
Causes lead to effects, however small or large. In the face of the continental-sized pile of plastic in the Pacific, how can my shopping, cooking, and eating matter? So miniscule, my impact. Yet this is the only life I’ve got in this moment, and I value doing what I can, however tiny. If enough of us lean in a particular direction, our shared actions will have an impact. This was my impetus in writing Easy Healing Drinks. Using less plastic, making it easier to use fresh foods quickly and simply, creating balanced dishes from an Ayurvedic perspective, these are the means used in Easy Healing Drinks for a more sustainable impact.
Return to Traditional Packaging
Ayurveda dates back some 4 – 5,000 years or more. For most of Ayurveda’s duration on this planet, plastic wasn’t around. Yet we act like it is irreplaceable, this juvenile fossil fuel product clogging our waterways and vessels.
Seeking to counter this, Easy Healing Drinks offers vegetarian recipes that can be stored and served in traditional packaging: glass Mason jars, stainless steel tiffins from India, ceramic cups – just what always used to be used. Plastic doesn’t contain some secret ingredient that adds something extra nourishing to our foods. It’s mostly extended as the only choice. To make other choices, it’s not so easy. Yet given the state of things, why not assert ourselves in healthier ways?
Using traditional packaging while shopping can take some chutzpah. Even to divest a little from plastic takes effort: bringing our own bags to stores, using recycled bags for produce, finding places like local markets, CSAs, and neighborhood sharing settings where this is accepted and welcomed. Gardening and sharing with neighbors are enjoyable ways to reduce plastic use. Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass speaks eloquently about mutuality and reciprocity as bases for healthy living in her new work The Serviceberry.
Open to Innovation
Traditional Ayurveda can offer some balance away from less healthy paths we’ve created planetarily. Yet new plants, ideas, and patterns of action have also risen independently from this ancient system. These innovative ideas can be woven with its principles into our lives. Easy Healing Drinks Sustainable International Sleeper (aka Easy Healing Drinks from the Wisdom of Ayurveda) works with these.
For one example, Easy Healing Drinks uses hulled organic hemp seeds; they’re not found in the ancient Ayurvedic pharmacopoeia. Yet they’re Omega 3 rich, good for mood, rich in protein, and easy to spin into a smoothie like The Vata Classico Shake, stir into some oatmeal, or sprinkle into a stir fry. At a dollar per 10 grams of protein, thy’re pricy, yet with a gentler environmental impact and cost than steak.
Traditional methods of food preparation offer grounding. Taking the time to be present, pull out your metate or molcajete or mortar and pestle, grind spices freshly – wow. There’s healing simply in standing and smelling the aromas of fresh ground black pepper, coriander seeds, and/or toasted cumin seeds wafting out of the molcajete. Then to mash freshly steamed ingredients into the dish – sheer delight. Yet many of us, including me, will choose to get present at least sometimes in a different way: getting the immersion blender out, whipping up the spices and hot veggie in the warm Cauliflower Smoothie with ajwan and turmeric this way. There are choices, and Easy Healing Drinks often offers modern methods.
One value in Ayurveda that could be considered retro-innovative is fresh food. Our culture has strayed away from fresh. There’s more prana and vitality in fresh food than frozen or canned ones. When you can make and eat something fresh, you may feel the perk. This week after a hard day of work, my husband Gord was slumbering over a book as he waited for dinner. He literally woke up when he began to sip a glass of Hydration Plus Veggie Juice from Easy Healing Drinks. Wow! he exclaimed. I can read again!
Successes and Setbacks
Why have I been calling this book Easy Healing Drinks Sustainable International Sleeper? Because while it is sustainable, it’s literally asleep almost everywhere on the planet. It’s not well-known. A few thousand hardy souls have bought it (Thank you!!). Fate and my ignorance about marketing have been stumbling blocks to a wider audience.
Renee Lynn and I worked hard to create a simple tasty book with every shot done in natural light. Nataraj Books Inc did a great job connecting us with a US based printer who worked with biodegradable inks for the 4-season high quality print paperback edition. We were able to create two of the four seasons, winter and spring, as affordable individual eBooks, downloads that can be accessed places where shipping is prohibitive (mostly anywhere outside the US).
It was our first venture in publishing a book through APTYI, my institute. It felt good to publish a book. Yet the biggest snag to distribution was a mistaken perception. Ingram, the key link for wider distribution, took one look at our print book and said, No, they weren’t interested in carrying it. It’s just another drinks book; we have plenty of those already. They didn’t see its Ayurveda basis, food dynamics, and simple charts as valuable. We were shocked and dumbfounded. This possibility had not crossed our radar. No discussion was possible. With Ingram’s decision, Easy Healing Drinks Sustainable International Sleeper’s entry into both bookstores and libraries was closed.
It can only be found on our website, at local businesses: Sweetwater Harvest Kitchen in Santa Fe – Sanjevani Integrated Medicine – and Organic Books in Albuquerque, NM – and on Amazon. (We are still on Amazon, a point to contemplate.) The two eBooks are available for $4.99 each on our website; the 4-season print book is on Web special for $15 plus shipping.
Next week I look forward to joining Kate O’Donnell of The Everyday Ayurveda Cookbook for a shared explore in her podcast May 6. Discover more about how Ayurveda came to the West, sustainability, and how we’re each applying its principles and practices now. Do join us.
Pope Francis was a great spokesperson for sustainability and respect for the Earth and its peoples. He passed remarkably enough between Easter and Earth Day. Bill McKibben wrote an wonderful tribute to him on Substack.
If you’re looking for more resources on how to live sanely with respect to the Earth and all its inhabitants, Beyond Plastics, HipHop Caucus, and 350.org are all great places to start.
Amadea Morningstar is a writer and health educator working in the US. Her latest book is Easy Healing Drinks from the Wisdom of Ayurveda. Feel free to check it out here. This blog can also be found on Substack.
Image: Tulsi Arugula tea with bee thanks to Renee Lynn