Learning to Sea (Beans).

Made with Sea Beans, a type of flowering succulent plant that provides a salty, briny bite to foods.

These Sea Beans were part of an assorted package of mushrooms from FarWest Fungi (they have stores in Santa Cruz and at the SF Ferry Building Farmer’s Market).

Looking to improve your physical and mental health post-PANDAemic? 🐼

Aim to include as many diverse plants into your meals (30+ is ideal) per week to support your gut microbiome.

Make it a game to add new plants each week. I recently discovered Sea Beans, also known as Sea Asparagus, Sea Pickle, and Salt Daddies (!), that add a salty, briny, umami crunch to stir-fries, pasta, and salads. Even though they’re salty, they don’t impact blood pressure. They also contain trans-ferulic acid, a phytochemical with proven antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anti-aging benefits.

What new plants can you include in your meals this week? 🌱✨

The Spectrum.

If you’ve ever participated in Toastmasters, you’ve experienced what I call The Spectrum. You have professional speakers who get paid to speak at large events. Also in the room are beginners, whose hands visibly shake while they’re holding their notecards. What’s incredible about this atmosphere is how it holds space for everyone. The newer speakers can learn from the more experienced speakers. The professionals can celebrate how far they’ve come with practice and repetition. The room is a place for growth, trial and error, learning, and community.

I had the honor of being one of eight artists chosen to perform last week at Chopstick Alley Art’s CreativTEA open mic in San Jose, CA.

If you’ve ever attended or performed at an open mic, you’ll notice The Spectrum there too. It’s a container of bravery, vulnerability, and experimentation. Everyone in the room is either there because they’re supporting someone on stage, or because one day they want to perform. Of all the open mics I’ve been to, there’ve been flawless, breathtaking performances. There have also been moments when an artist forgets a stanza or blanks out in the middle of the song. Moments when it’s silent and awkward and we all hold our breath, finally exhaling and erupting in cheers when the musician remembers the chords and relaxes into the music. Moments when you feel a complete sense of awe and inspiration when an artist finishes a poem or song and you can only smile and shake your head knowing this is what they were created to do and share with the world.

At all the open mics I’ve attended and participated in, there’s a sense of community. The audience is rooting the performer on, thanking them for their bravery, their courage, and for sharing a piece of themselves.

Whether it's Toastmasters or an open mic, you’ll find The Spectrum. It’s a beautiful way of celebrating how far we’ve come, and how much more we can sharpen and hone our craft.

With each scenario there’s a commonality- someone has something to say and the bravery to share it.

Interdependence.

When I flipped the new page of my Morning Altars calendar to the month of July, my eyes caught something special. On the 4th of July, Day Schildkret made a tiny (but powerful) edit. He changed “Independence Day'“ to “Interdependence Day.”

I loved it, and immediately sent him a message. It’s a reminder of how our growth and flourishing as an individual, community, and culture happens with interconnectedness and interdependence. Everything at the macro level is witnessed on a micro level. Cancer cells are the most damaged and isolated cells whose repair mechanisms have been destroyed. They’ve lost their natural function and cell identity.

We are meant to thrive together in community. When we are isolated, alone, and disconnected is when dis-integration and dis-ease are created. Conversely, when we work together and are in healthy communication with others, we thrive. Nature exemplifies this:

“You can check this out for yourself simply by looking up into the forest canopy. The average tree grows its branches out until it encounters the branch tips of a neighboring tree of the same height. It doesn't grow any wider because the air and better light in this space are already taken. However, it heavily reinforces the branches it has extended, so you get the impression that there's quite a shoving match going on up there. But a pair of true friends is careful right from the outset not to grow overly thick branches in each other's direction. The trees don't want to take anything away from each other, and so they develop sturdy branches only at the outer edges of their crowns, that is to say, only in the direction of "non-friends." Such partners are often so tightly connected at the roots that sometimes they even die together.”

-Peter Wohlleben, The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate: Discoveries from a Secret World

Scarcity mindset is everywhere in society. That ideas are sacred and the only safe space to create is in a vacuum. That’s not true. We thrive in a scenius. We all grow taller and healthier together. There is enough sunlight and air and water for all of us to thrive.

The Practice.

I’ve recently started reframing everything as a practice. It frees me from the binary categories of “success” and “failure.” You may have an art practice. A meditation practice. A daily movement practice. Perhaps you practice nourishing and fueling your body well. Practice bravery and courage.

When something becomes a practice, it inherently provides room for mistakes, experimentation, and growth. It makes space for curiosity, playfulness, and self-compassion. Life becomes an ongoing series of opportunities to show up again for yourself daily- believing and trusting that you’re still learning, growing, and ever-becoming.

Growing up, I had to practice the piano for 1.5 hours a day. This was in addition to swim practice and basketball practice. It was full of tedious scales and drilling measures over and over again until muscle memory took over. But practicing the piano taught me the meta-skills of perseverance and discipline. These same skills of showing up day and day, even and especially on the days I did’t feel like it, all translated to triathlon, #the100dayproject, and writing my first book.

Creative work doesn’t come with a guarantee. Learn to separate the process from the outcome. First and foremost, focus on the practice.

The People Compass.

A lot of folks are in between jobs or standing at a career crossroads. Perhaps the work you’ve been doing isn’t satisfying anymore, or it’s not what you imagined it would be when you started.

Enter the People Compass. It’s a guidance system for finding the job/career/calling that matches you best with the people you seek to serve.

If you can’t stomach working with sick people and the smell of urine/feces/vomit makes you nauseous, probably a nursing career isn’t going to be the best fit. On the flip side, if you love being around children and their wild imaginations and energy, perhaps becoming a teacher is a good career path to follow.

At the end of the day, we all have customers- people we are serving and helping through our work. We spend the majority of our waking hours working. So it makes sense to invest our time and energy in the clients and causes we care most deeply about.

Start here.

Who are the people and groups you seek to serve?

Follow your People Compass. Do work that matters for people who matter to you.

A.D.D.

These days, many people suffer from A.D.D.

Awe Deficiency Disorder.

When we experience awe, mental noise and clutter fades. Our inner critic is silenced. We experience a rush of positive emotions. Perspective shifts. The big things in life don’t seem so heavy.

If you’re feeling signs of burnout, fatigue, low energy or lethargy, perhaps the answer isn’t found in a new exercise routine or supplement. Maybe it’s a sign to check out that new trail at sunrise. Set up camp and look up at the stars. Attend a piano concert and sit on a wooden bench in a music hall and listen to the unequivocal amount of talent present in the younger generations. Maybe it’s time to be inspired by something bigger and greater than yourself. And experience the vastness of life for the first time in a long while.

An awe-inducing sunrise in Maui.

Yes, eat well and move well.

But above all, pursue awe. Persistently and relentlessly.

Love Says...

Made with Lion’s Mane mushroom.

Love says ALPACA your lunch. I’ll hug you when you’re sad. Celebrate your wins. Love says I believe in you and wholeheartedly support your dreams. I’ll do the dishes tonight because you’re exhausted. Text you that I’m thinking of you. Love says I’m sorry. I’m not going anywhere. Let’s work this out.

And sometimes, love says you deserve more than I can give you. Spread your wings and fly. I will be rooting for you always, loving you from afar.

Far West Fungi in downtown Santa Cruz.

In modern herbalism and plant medicine, the term “Doctrine of Signatures” is the belief that the physical characteristics of a plant often mimic the body organ it supports. Lion’s mane, which resembles a brain, is an example of this. Lion’s mane is known to support brain health, prevent cognitive decline, and decrease symptoms of depression and anxiety. As Hippocrates said, “Let food be thy medicine, and let medicine be thy food.”

Just another reason to fill your plate with plants. After making art with it, of course.

You're My Person.

With Valentine’s Day around the corner, here’s your opportunity to surprise your special person with a customized card- whether it’s your partner, your lover, your work wife, your best friend, or whoever came to mind as you read this.

These are made to order, with an option to customize at checkout.

Get a jump on V-Day and place your order today.

(A quick story: Back in 2017 when my friend Brian and I were dreaming up our ideal futures, I mentioned how one day I’d love to make customized Valentine’s Day cards. It seemed like a pipe dream. I made this proclamation before I had any cards in any stores. And now, here we are. Dreams really can come true if you keep iterating on your ideas and have a supportive and wonderful community.)

Remembering With Nature and Ritual.

Dedicated to my Mark, my meditation teacher. This altar is filled with the number four. Representing the four years he sat with me weekly. The time we hiked and he faced the four cardinal directions and said, “There’s different energy in each direction.” I foraged mallow and dandelion and placed them around the center. These plants are often seen as weeds, but are in fact, medicinal plants that aid with digestion and immunity. In our work together, he taught me the weeds of life (pain/death/suffering) can be powerful portals of healing if we learn to see them differently.

If you’ve ever experienced grief, you know how numb and disconnected it makes you feel. What if we could weave our inner and outer landscapes- our memories and stories and nature- into meaningful beauty?

Yesterday I had the privilege of sharing the sacred practice of Morning Altars as a way to remember and honor our loved ones. I asked each member of the group to wonder and wander in nature, and find memories of their loved one in the leaves, branches, flowers, berries, mushrooms, stones or feathers. The natural world holds memory and can help us call them back to us. I was drawn to the symbolism of the plants themselves. Ivy, always climbing walls and growing upwards and sideways, similar to the way my love for Mark continues to grow even though he is no longer here. And the bright color of berries, a reminder that sweetness can be experienced even in times of grief.

We sought out beauty and symbols generously offered by nature. Arranged them in a meaningful way, speaking directly to our loved ones as we wove memories and stories into our altar. It was a way of making a map of meaning. Re-membering, in every sense of the word.

Recognizing the abundance that exists all around us. Even in the dead of winter. Even in the depths of grief.

This practice is an invitation to pay attention to what’s here, all around us. To gather the fragments of nature and our hearts. Arrange them in a meaningful way. Then offer it all up. Let it go. And let it be.