Yep, I found inner peace whilst doing the dishes.

So you may think that I’ve gone loco from being in Mexico for too long. The heat! The guacamole! The beans! Surely something had to give sooner or later. Maybe. But hear me out, my latest epiphany has been a great one.

How to have a clean and orderly house (and hence a peaceful and quiet mind)

1. Have only what you need.
2. Have only things that you believe to be beautiful, that you love to use and see.

I’ve always wondered why a clean home makes me feel good. Actually I haven’t so much wondered this as I have wondered how I could possibly allow my home to get messy when I know how good it feels to have it clean. Doesn’t this sound familiar? How often do we allow our lives to get to a point where we know we aren’t happy? Wouldn’t we all feel better if we only ate nourishing and simple foods? Wouldn’t we all feel better with less computer time and more  exercise time? Of course we would. But somehow what’s best for us isn’t always what we do.

I’ve always assumed that I would hire someone to clean for me. Not in a rich snobby way, but in a practical ‘my time is worth more than this’ kinda of way. (On second thoughts, maybe that is a snobby way). Growing up, we had a lady who came once a week for a while to give the place a good clean. Mum would usually ‘pre-clean’ before she arrived, which I never understood. Here in Mexico there is a cleaner who comes every second day. At first this was amazing. We could be as MESSY as we liked and it would always be cleaned up within a day. Why wash your dish when you can just grab another one from the cupboard?

This mindset started revealing how unhealthy it was when our plans would backfire – the cleaners here are mega cheap and you get what you pay for. Some days she just wouldn’t show up. So one day of living in filth would turn into 3 days. Not so great. Not so healthy.

You would think that by having someone come and clean for us, we would feel freed up to do other things. Sure we were, but how were we developing as people? Strutting around, confident that someone else would clean up after us, leaving dirty dishes in the sink, letting food rot in the fridge, leaving clothes on the floor, beds unmade – this is not the kind of people we wanted to be!

We want to be considerate people. Considerate of our impact and conscious of each action. If we drop something? Pick it up. If we eat off something? Wash it and put it away. If we take something off? Hang it up.

These are the actions that are coherent with the kind of life we want to lead. We had considered being mindful eaters, being present in our conversations and relationships, making sure to move and stretch our bodies daily – but what about being mindful inhabitants? It was like the missing piece of the puzzle, the ultimate ‘d’uh’ moment.

So as I was washing my dish, feeling the warm water run over my hands and knowing that I wasn’t leaving any trace of my actions for someone else to clean up, I felt present. I felt relaxed. I felt strong. It felt like yoga, in a very simple way:

Unite your body with your breath in any shape your body can make. This is yoga. Be mindful of your thoughts. Be forgiving of yourself and others. Honor your intentions. If your intent is yoga, if you FEEL yoga, if you breathe yoga… it IS yoga. From here.

If we don’t have a house filled with stuff and if we take care of the things we do have and if we see our experience with these things as journeys that need to be completed, then we don’t need a daily cleaner.

Having a cleaner in our house has made me feel less connected than ever and it’s been an amazing discovery and lesson for me in my journey to live a mindful, simple and peaceful life. I want to teach Mika these things by leading by example. I want her to see me taking care of what I have and being respectful of the space we live in. I hope that she sees how much her papa and I love washing our dishes together after dinner – seeing it as a time to talk and relax and complete our meal.

This has been a very long post, but it has been something on my mind a lot lately and I wanted to share it. If you have any thoughts about it, I’d love to hear

[images found here, here and here.]

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Since packing up our lives in Vancouver, Ivan and I have been very aware of how many things we own. We’ve packed up our lives 3 times now in the last 2 years or so and each time we try to manage with less and less.

We left New Zealand with 3 very full (and overweight) suitcases. Apart from a couple small boxes with baby clothes and ‘important things’ (notes/love letters/cards etc) that we left at my parent’s home, and a box of nice pots and pans that we had left with my grandma in Vancouver, this was our life. 3 suitcases, a stroller, a ukulele, a diaper bag and a laptop bag.

Now we are packing up our lives again and heading to Seattle and I have been thinking more and more about striving towards a minimalist lifestyle. It doesn’t mean that we are instantly going to renounce all possessions and go live in the bush, but rather that we are going to be proactive in making little changes in our lives and our mindsets to ensure that we never become owned by our stuff.

I’ll accept that because we are traveling this is almost like forced minimalism. By moving so much we are forced to keep trying to lighten our bags for the sake of our sanity (and our backs). But even if you aren’t moving anytime soon, what is the minimum you can survive with and still be happy? That’s the question that we are asking ourselves a lot right now. How can we get by with less? Where can we trim the fat?

I’ve been intrigued in the past by things like the 100 Thing Challenge, which would be a great tool to start minimizing the amount of stuff in your life. I haven’t actually counted the things we own, but I prefer to be guided by this statement from Leo Babauta:

A minimalist is simply one who questions the necessity of things, and who tries to live with what’s necessary, rather than with consumerism.

If this kind of thing interests you, the ultimate resource and best place to start is on one of Leo’s many blogs, here.

I dunno bout you, but this stuff makes me feel so damn good.

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I have this niggling concern for things at the back of my mind. They aren’t pressing or urgent or overwhelmingly concerning, so they stay at the back of my mind until I get an opportunity to act on them or until something changes and I am suddenly overwhelmed.

Recently I had the opportunity to act on a concern. I’d been wanting to give up coffee for a while and what better time to do it than off the back of my sickness leaving Seattle? I was sick anyway, so I knew that the headaches I’d experience would just assimilate into the other awful things I was feeling and the ‘withdrawals’ wouldn’t seem so bad. Perfect.

When I think of giving up coffee, I think of those people who’ve told me not to drink it. Yes, Annaliese, my beautiful shiny white toothed naturopath, I’m looking at you. These non-coffee drinkers with their healthy hair, shiny white teeth, sparkling eyes, perfect skin and calming non-caffeinated energy – are they really onto something? Do they really feel awake and alive and energetic?

I’m on day 8 of no coffee and I feel fine so far. I haven’t even substituted it for something else, I’m like completely coffee and tea free. I have no idea how long I plan on doing this for. Coffee drinkers are addicts. I’m OK with this. I like the club. But I just wanted to see what life was like on the other side for a while. I like knowing that I can do this. It makes me feel in control of my body and my life and when I’m ready to drink coffee again, I will.

Other things of late:

• Mika has perfected the art of climbing down stairs. We never taught her this, so naturally we are amazed.
• It is 35 degrees between 9am and 6pm. It’s a good thing these houses are built like dungeons.
• Did you catch the salad and muffin recipes I posted on Cruz Family Kitchen?
• Did you see that they brought Tupac back from the dead?
• Adele pointed out that this website is the least government-looking government website she’s ever seen. I’d have to agree, it made me pretty happy.
• If you haven’t had your day made awesome by watching Cain’s Arcade yet, please do.
• Wouldn’t this be an awesome job?!
• I can’t wait to watch this documentary. If you’re in Canada, you can watch it on CBC’s website I think.
• I loved this style guide from the Economist.
• I found a delicious use for my buckwheat noodles!

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Health is about so much more than just food and exercise.

When I think about the times that I’ve been the happiest, it’s when multiple areas of my life seem to be thriving simultaneously: my relationships are healthy, my career is challenging, I have creative outlets and spiritual practices, I’m cooking my own meals and not buying too many unnecessary things.

It’s only natural though, of course, that at any point in time one or more of these things can cease to thrive. Maybe finances are tight, or a relationship isn’t going so well. As a result I might stop running and start watching more movies. I don’t sleep so well because I’m worried and stressed and then I stop caring about what I’m putting in my body and I eat junk. It’s a vicious cycle, and it can be tackled essentially in two ways:

1. Backwards. Focus on the food. Start eating better and hence inspire myself to run again. My sleep will improve because of the exercise and then maybe I’ll have the motivation to focus on improving that relationship or tackle my finances.

2. Forwards. Really focus on the core problem. Is that relationship worth working on or not? If not, end it. If it is, work through it. The relief will be enough to pull me back on track and then everything will fall into place. Exercise, sleep and finally, food.

Obviously every situation is different and can be approached differently. It’s like a juggling act trying to balance all the things in our lives that give us fulfillment, which makes it even more important to make sure we don’t get caught up in all the junk out there that can pollute our lives.

Have you ever tried writing a list of the things that really matter to you? The things that really make you happy and that you couldn’t live without? I do this every once in a while to remind myself where I need to focus. I write down all the things that really give me energy in life and then I make a note as to how much energy I’m putting into each thing. The areas that are lacking become my areas of focus and sometimes shifting my focus to these areas can make all other things in my life seem glorious again.

Out of curiosity, where is your focus right now?

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I’m reading that book that every runner should read. Or every one who has feet should read. Or even people without feet should read. Born to Run was recommended to me by a friend and I ordered it from The Book Depository. Free shipping worldwide? Was it too good to be true? Almost. I waited one month until finally a knock at the door one sunny morning in Obregon and voila! It appeared! My book!

So first of all you need to know a couple things about me: I have awful feet. Or so I have been told my entire life. I started playing basketball when I was 8. My brother and I were in a mixed under 10s league and our mum was the coach. It was awesome. We won the B division and I still remember the game as though it was the ultimate underdog story with someone in our team scoring the winning basket just seconds before the buzzer.

I continued to play basketball all throughout my middle and high school years. At one point when I was about 13 I was playing/practicing about 14 times a week for 3 different teams. My feet hurt. They hurt so badly that after practice I’d take off my shoes and cry. When I woke up in the mornings I wouldn’t be able to stand because of the pain so I would crawl down the stairs and complain during breakfast until my feet warmed up and felt a bit better. I have no idea why I didn’t tell my coach. I think I was scared of her, so I just kept going. One day after practice my Dad had had enough so he took me to the A&E. And so it began…

It turned out I had a double stress fracture in my foot. One near my big toe and one near the fourth toe. I was passed from podiatrist to podiatrist to orthopedic surgeon and back to podiatrist. I heard the word ‘pronated’ so many times it just became a normal part of my vocabulary. I wore moon boots, I had moulds made of my feet, I was trialled in many a running shoe. They begged me to get off my feet: just swim instead! they told me. But anyone who runs or plays a sport, knows what it’s like to be told to stop. I needed more opinions and every opinion said the same thing: get good orthodics, get better running shoes, and run less. I actually did eventually stop playing basketball. But I took up running (go figure) and have run many half marathons, 5 & 10kms and a few adventure races.

We were a bit geeky…:P

So I’ve been reading this book born to run and it is so captivating. Even more so when I discovered that a lot of the book takes place roughly eight hours away from where we’ve been living in Obregon. There’s so much to talk about – the whole book is just mind blowing – but what really grabbed my attention was the whole ‘barefoot running’ debate. Prior to reading this book I thought that anyone who ran barefoot was crazy, because every foot doctor I’ve ever seen has told me that we NEED SHOES. But really? When you really think about it, it sounds mental. I read somewhere that it’s like putting a cast around your neck and then taking it off and wondering why you have no strength. Apparently ALL running injuries are modern injuries, ie. have only existed since the invention of the running shoe!

From the author of Born to Run:
I began drilling into running-shoe research, and the further I went, the less I found. There’s nothing there. Nothing. No evidence whatsoever that running shoes do anything. Know why you’ve never seen an ad for a running shoe that actually tells you what the shoe will do? Because there is no evidence that running shoes do anything to prevent injuries. None. In fact, research currently in progress indicates that runners in shoes experience far more impact than runners in bare feet.

I feel a bit silly really. Why didn’t I question the whole running shoe thing earlier? Well duh, because the doctors told me it was the best thing for me. And as a 14 year old, you don’t really question the professionals. But the older I get, the more and more I realise the importance of questioning everything. The importance of keeping an open mind and reading lots and asking lots of questions and testing things out for myself as much as I can and never just accepting one answer from one person or even one answer from lots of people. Because theories are constantly being disproved, new solutions are always being discovered and curiosity is what drives us forward.

So I’m most definitely going to give this barefoot running thing a try. My feet can’t get much worse (way to jinx it though) and I’m so curious.

There’s plenty of places to read more if this kind of thing interests you. I did some googling so you don’t have to:

• Read Born to Run
• Check out the author talking about the Barefoot Running debate
• How to start barefoot running
• So you want to run barefoot?
• An interview with Barefoot Ted (a modern day barefoot running pioneer)
• The barefoot philosophy
• And the complete guide to barefoot running

If you’re a barefoot runner or have tried it out, I’d love to hear your stories!

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