the swim

Johnny Dawes

  "What you learn helps you to find out who you are. The rock will show you exactly in what way you are not being you." --Johnny Dawes (via archclimbingwall)

How we taste different colours

"When I think of flavour perception, noses and taste buds primarily spring to mind. Sure, other factors such as texture, temperature and touch sensations play a part, but taste and smell are the dominant senses here, right? Well perhaps not. You only have to consider the insatiable public appetite for food porn masquerading as cookbooks to see there is meat to the old adage: we eat with our eyes...."

Read on here

'Love is a physical act and kindness is tangible.'

"I was having a Skype chat with my mother on Sunday. She was smiling from ear to ear, pleased that I was clean-shaven for the role I am currently playing. “I can see your lovely face,” she kept saying. She was also trying to share a bowl of peanuts with me by bumping it into the laptop’s monitor every few minutes. She has stage-two Alzheimer’s, you see. In that futile gesture, however, laid a thought. Love is a physical act. Kindness is tangible.

It seems to me that this is a concept that largely eludes many of us nowadays. We talk about the prudence of military action, of participating in the bombing of this faraway place or that. We use terms such as “surgical strike” and “collateral damage”. Anyone who is unsure about the wisdom of war is met with the response “fine then, let’s do nothing and let innocent people die”. But inaction is not the opposite of bombing, and indifference not the only alternative to war. Pointing to actively working to bring about peace as the alternative, in such a conversation, one is frequently met with a look or a comment that implies you live in some dreamworld where concepts like this exist.

Yet it is not so. To the thousands of people who volunteer at home and abroad, to the people marching to preserve a free and universal national health service, to the millions who care for their elderly relatives, to parents staying up with a child who has a fever, to my confused mother trying to feed her son through a Wi-Fi connection, love is a physical act and kindness tangible...."

Read the rest of this article by Alex Andreou at The Guardian 

"... exercise is not purely physical, as if we might carve off the flesh, leaving the spirit behind. And this is a crucial philosophical message: of wholeness. The human condition involves a continual to-and-fro between the body and the mind. In fact, the nouns make these aspects of self seem more divided than they are. Thinking is embodied, and acting is mindful. We are not a ghost in a machine, to use philosopher Gilbert Ryle's phrase: we are bodies, and these bodies are conscious."

-- Damon Young

If exercise was good for Charles Darwin, it's good for all of us.

"...exercise is not purely physical, as if we might carve off the flesh, leaving the spirit behind. And this is a crucial philosophical message: of wholeness. The human condition involves a continual to-and-fro between the body and the mind. In fact, the nouns make these aspects of self seem more divided than they are. Thinking is embodied, and acting is mindful. We are not a ghost in a machine, to use philosopher Gilbert Ryle's phrase: we are bodies, and these bodies are conscious...

...For example, swimming can evoke the sublime, and gesture at the precariousness of human life. As the ancient Greek poets remind us, sprinting can prompt pride: not simply in fast legs or fit lungs, but in the commitment to striving before mortality claims us. Regular jogging can promote consistency of character, and keep us from losing the plot. Rock climbing can encourage humility and caution: attention to our flaws, and to the subtle details of rock or wall. This state-of-mind then allows "flow" to arise: we feel free, timeless, as we skilfully negotiate a challenging task. Ballet and karate can turn pain into a curious pleasure – we choose bruised ribs and aching toes over a life of anaesthetised comfort.

The point is not that we have to be Olympians, tracking personal bests with tailored dawn training schedules. We need not be the fastest, strongest or most agile. The point is that exercise can be a commitment to wholeness; to a life enriched and enhanced by physical and mental striving. Darwin was no professional athlete: but he knew about fitness and flourishing."

LOVE this article from Damon Young at The Guardian.
Click HERE to read it in full.

There is power in hope.

Nawal El Saadawi — who has been imprisoned, censored, and exiled — still talking about hope.

Recipe: Finnish salad with orange blossom dressing

I'm a bit in love with this salad...the combination tastes like summer...i might start eating it daily to bring out the sun!

 It needs to be served up quickly, otherwise the watermelon will give over its liquid to the bottom of the salad bowl and dilute the sunny dressing that goes with the salad.

Serves 5-6
½ medium watermelon
½ cucumber, sliced into circles

750g broad beans, unshelled and blanched
200g feta cheese 

For the dressing
1 tbsp orange blossom water
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
3 tbsp olive oil
Salt and black pepper 

1 Cut the watermelon in half and chop the flesh into cubes. I never bother extracting the seeds, finding their gentle crunch a welcome contrast to the sweet yielding flesh.
2 Arrange the cubes in a shallow platter or bowl. Scatter over the sliced cucumber and broad beans, sprinkling lightly, and crumble the feta over the salad (barrel-aged feta crumbles well). All of this needs to be done with a sense of urgency, since any ripe melon starts losing its juice with the first cut.
3 Mix the dressing ingredients together in a small jug and spoon gently over the salad. A direct hit of salt and pepper on the melon works well, but also acts as a catalyst for drawing out more water from the melon, so go easy on the seasoning.

From Miranda Gardiner's A midsummer Finnish feast in The Guardian.

Matilda's story: a matter of life and death

Matilda Tristram has written a beautiful account of what it's like to find out you have colon cancer when you're 18 weeks pregnant. Her comic about the experience is raw, funny and still unfolding.

I read an extract in The Guardian, and then on her website, and it made me laugh and cry in equal measure. I recommend taking a look!
www.mmaattiillddaa.com
Matilda is also tweeting about it from this account.

Important stuff...

Sugar, not fat, exposed as deadly villain in obesity epidemic

It's addictive and toxic, like a drug, and we need to wean ourselves off it, says US doctor 

Sugar – given to children by adults, lacing our breakfast cereals and a major part of our fizzy drinks – is the real villain in the obesity epidemic, and not fat as people used to think, according to a leading US doctor who is taking on governments and the food industry.

Dr Robert Lustig, who was this month in London and Oxford for a series of talks about his research, likens sugar to controlled drugs. Cocaine and heroin are deadly because they are addictive and toxic – and so is sugar, he says. "We need to wean ourselves off. We need to de-sweeten our lives. We need to make sugar a treat, not a diet staple," he said.

"The food industry has made it into a diet staple because they know when they do you buy more. This is their hook. If some unscrupulous cereal manufacturer went out and laced your breakfast cereal with morphine to get you to buy more, what would you think of that? They do it with sugar instead."

Read the full article here
(Sarah Boseley, health editor at The Guardian)

"Morning yoga? Ouch! Participants exercise during the inaugural session of World Yoga Conference in Jammu, India. The three-day conference will host over 300 delegates from different countries." Photograph: Strdel/AFP/Getty Images
Found via The GuardianTumblr

Did you know that people with a great deal of extension in their lower back are born like that? It is something determined by the thickness of the intervertebral discs.  

Acrobats and contortionists have very thick discs which allow a great deal of movement, particularly in the lumbar spine. No amount of practice will turn someone with genetically thinner discs into someone with thicker ones so trying to emulate the deeper backbends if your body is not built that way will only end in tears!

What is Love?

"What is love was the most searched phrase on Google in 2012, according to the company. In an attempt to get to the bottom of the question once and for all, the Guardian has gathered writers from the fields of science, psychotherapy, literature, religion and philosophy to give their definition of the much-pondered word...."

Click here to read the full article.

This answer from the psychotherapist Philippa Perry was my favorite...

Unlike us, the ancients did not lump all the various emotions that we label "love" under the one word. They had several variations, including:

Philia which they saw as a deep but usually non-sexual intimacy between close friends and family members or as a deep bond forged by soldiers as they fought alongside each other in battle. Ludus describes a more playful affection found in fooling around or flirting. Pragma is the mature love that develops over a long period of time between long-term couples and involves actively practising goodwill, commitment, compromise and understanding. Agape is a more generalised love, it's not about exclusivity but about love for all of humanity. Philautia is self love, which isn't as selfish as it sounds. As Aristotle discovered and as any psychotherapist will tell you, in order to care for others you need to be able to care about yourself. Last, and probably least even though it causes the most trouble, eros is about sexual passion and desire. Unless it morphs into philia and/or pragma, eros will burn itself out.

Love is all of the above. But is it possibly unrealistic to expect to experience all six types with only one person. This is why family and community are important.

Recipe

Three good things on a plate...Scallops, peas, spring onions.
Love this as a starter, snack or light lunch.

Serves 4

1 large bunch of spring onions (150–200g)
100g peas – either frozen petits pois or very fresh baby peas
2 tbsp olive oil
12 scallops, cleaned, with corals attached if you like
A knob of butter
1 garlic clove, very finely chopped or grated
A squeeze of lemon juice
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Trim the spring onions and remove the outer skin. Cut into 5mm–1cm slices, on an angle.

For frozen petits pois, put them into a sieve and pour a mug of boiling water over them.

Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a heavy-based frying pan over a medium-low heat. Add the spring onions and let them sweat gently for about 5 minutes, until soft. Add the peas and toss for a minute or two. Season with salt and pepper, remove from the pan and set aside.

Wipe the pan with kitchen paper. Add another tablespoon of oil and turn the heat up high. Season the scallops and add when the pan is very hot– they should sizzle when they hit the pan. Leave them for about 1 minute, then carefully turn one over: if golden brown, flip all the scallops over and cook until caramelised on the other side.

Reduce the heat to medium-low and return the peas and spring onions to the pan, along with the butter and garlic.

Toss, take off the heat, add a squeeze of lemon, then transfer to warm plates and serve.

Recipe from Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall's book Three Good Things
Found via The Guardian
image by Simon Wheeler 

Yoga won't help me walk again. But it has allowed me to 'feel' my legs for the first time in years

The mention of this ancient exercise system may conjure images incense-filled rooms, but its principles can offer practical benefits to the disabled

• 
• • Tim Rushby-Smith
  • guardian.co.uk, Monday 26 September 2011 21.00 BST

Matthew Sanford, right, with Tim Rushby-Smith. Photograph: Frank Baron for the Guardian
I have never tried yoga, so I arrived for a class at Triyoga in Chelsea feeling pretty intimidated. My inner cynic expected sinewy people standing on their heads in a fug of incense, but instead I find a large white room scattered with purple mats, foam bricks, blankets and other participants. I choose a space and sit on a mat on the floor.
When our teacher, Matthew Sanford, arrives he lays a calming hand on my shoulder and in a soft American voice describes me as sporty and determined to the point of bloodymindedness. He recognises this, because I am on the floor with my wheelchair parked next to me – and we are both paraplegic.
Sanford was just 13 when his family's car hit a patch of ice and slid down an embankment. His mother and brother survived, but his father and sister were both killed. Asleep at the time of the accident, he suffered a broken neck and back, among other injuries. He was in a coma for three days.
"I was a very athletic kid, and I loved feeling my whole body," he tells me. "After the accident, doctors told me I didn't have sensation and I believed them. They called the tingling and burning in my legs phantom feeling, in case I took it to mean I would walk again." Actually, as I know myself, the constant "noise" in my legs, which can be anything from an almost pleasant, warm tingling to excruciating pain, may not be functional, but it is certainly real.
Sanford duly followed the traditional approach to rehabilitation: "I learned to make my upper torso really strong to overcome my body. That's a metaphor for everything, because you can't overcome your body."
Then, 12 years after the accident, Sanford was in graduate school studying philosophy when he met a yoga teacher. "We explored what the principles of yoga meant for a mind-body relationship such as mine. I started to feel that [phantom] sensation again, and I thought: 'I belong here. I can't do the poses like everyone else but I can feel the wholeness that is at the core of the poses.' That's the true heart of yoga."
To read more click here

• © 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.