12 |Ayurveda & Clay: Longevity

A reflection on longevity through Ayurveda, clay, bees and the body, asking whether a long life is really about more years, or a wiser relationship with the life already moving through us.

It is a cool Nairobi morning. Despite a slightly moth munched woollen polar neck jumper that I picked up at a flea market in Berlin, there’s a shiver that keeps escaping up my spine into the base of my neck. I ought to move inside but I find the fresh air and tinkering bird song softly stimulating post another night where I struggled to fall asleep. This lack of sound-snooze has made me wake pondering longevity. A word that contains the premise or the promise of living a long life. Yet it abruptly fails to contain any such notion of how well that long life was lived. It seems to be missing the idea of relationship - to self, world, other.

A Long Life, but Lived How?

We humans seem increasingly obsessed with the idea of expanding the number of years that we place physical feet onto these ever depleted shared soils of existence. I can’t help but wonder if it is because for so many there is this stark realisation that - yikes the years I’ve lived were a little thin on presence, on meaning, on the things that really mattered…so I best add a few more so that I can make up for lost time? Or for others that there is this palpable fear of death that a quest for longevity kicks down the line a little bit? But like every weathered pebble that we skim across peaty loch water, regardless of the flick in our wrist, the pebble will eventually tumble to meet the slimy weeds and graceful brown trout.

The notion of deep time is one that I’ve been curious about for some years now. I think first when beginning to investigate systems thinking and change - a little jaded by the short time frames I was having to develop project timescales over whilst working at the UN. Both my grandfathers and my own parents have taught me the medicinal act of planting trees; I’ve watched them tenderly put hundreds into the ground over the years and often helped too. Short time frames simply dont feature in the language of a person who is devoted to stewarding the land. What if the UN and other organisations - public and private - had that same humility; plant away yet need not personally see the day where acorns form upon the end of branches planted many a years prior? And then secondly, upon experiencing discombobulating health challenges, the idea of deep time became ever more curious to me. At this point I wasnt thinking about longevity, I was trying to learn how to live inside a body that no longer felt predictable. With time, the fear I was experiencing grew much less intense when I began contemplating and letting go of the idea of my being as limited to this physical form. There will be a formless continuation. There has been. Has to be.

So where does longevity come into play, if the soul, the essence of who we truly are, fades not?

Longevity Through an Ayurvedic Lens

In Ayurvedic terms we would say that the goal of Ayurveda is to ensure the body is in harmonious health - mind and spirit too - so that we can best fulfil our dharma and simultaneously leverage this sense of vitality for our spiritual growth. The healthier we are then the more able to see the lessons that are being presented for our souls’ evolution. And, it is a rare gift to be born into a physical body for exactly that same reason. So, the longer we can inhibit the body then the greater the opportunity to clear our past karma and samskaras.

When I do things for my health, it tends to still be for the purpose of helping me feel the optimum zest in my body and my mind. And yet I do believe that with time this will evolve and take on a higher meaning. And I do already see how the healing of tendencies, particularly in my mind, does carry the subtle sweet fragrance of greater freedom. Like that honeysuckle growing through Mount Kenya’s rich forest ecosystem, warmed by the morning sunshine, the aroma pierces through and momentarily melts the veils of illusion that there is a separate self anyway. Anything we do for our own health, we are doing for the collective health of everyone and everything.

What I appreciate about Ayurveda’s approach to longevity is that it is by and large free. Wake up with the rising sun and get that morning light into your eyes. Breathe in fresh air, fresh prana, consciously and slowly and deeply and rhythmically. Better still, control this intake of breath with pranayama techniques and notice the subsequent effect on the mind and subtle body too. Move that body. Every single goddamn day. Twist it. Shake it. Dance with it. Breathe into it. Turn yourself upside down once in a while and allow a beginner’s mind to blossom. Sleep enough. Bed before 10pm. We want to ensure our tissues are strong and our nocturnal night time healing can indeed happen. That glymphatic system mustn’t be left in a cob-webby cupboard and ignored. Eat well. Not just in terms of the nutrients we put inside us but in terms of HOW we eat. Chew. Pause. Be grateful. Have presence. Stop before full. Make sure to support the clearing of toxins. Few of us live in utter paradise, free of emotional and physical toxins and stressors. And sadly, the quantity of these that we are exposed to are simply too great in comparison to our body’s natural capacity to clear. So know the herbs for your constitution to support clearing. Be wild. Do a purgation. Get in hot baths or saunas. Self massage….fall in LOVE with self massage; as an act of falling in love with yourself. Our lymphatic system doesnt have a pump like the circulatory system, so it is our delightful fingers and body twists that need to squirrel away.

You don’t see me talking about peptides and red light machines do you? Longevity ought not be a privileged thing. The basics are accessible and don’t let any technology company tell you otherwise…

Ayurveda also talks about a topic that I’ve yet to hear popular longevity conversations speak about which is the third pillar of good health. Maintenance of one’s sexual (or creative) energy. Even if we have proper food and proper sleep, if we do not look after this third pillar we are not fully honouring our potential for longevity. I dont know about you, but whenever I have felt unwell the last thing on the PLANET I feel like doing is allowing this energy to be dispelled. My fragile dandelion self wants to stay hidden from the wind, holding on. Yet this can be harder when faced with long term health complications and chronic conditions whilst simultaneously being in a romantic relationship. Likewise, if we are operating at near-burn out, a fullness to life that’s slowly making our system weaker (often without us paying much attention). Because functioning in this dysfunctional way or feeling less than zestful has become normalised we might not consider that maintaining our sexual energy is important. But it could be the very thing that is preventing us from getting fully better, particularly if we are a vata constitution or have a strong vata imbalance.

In certain states of depletion, engaging in sex can draw on energy the body may be trying to use for healing. For many this can be challenging to hear, but when we learn that our sexual center is indeed one of the same as our creative center, we can realise that we can satisfy these needs and desires in other ways. It may seem strange, but engaging in a beautiful art project instead will actually scratch the same itch! Personally, I think it is why I have such a strong creative practice. Knowing that my immunity, my ojas, needs to be tended to a little more than many, it has felt important to develop this energetic center in different ways. In ways that ultimately don’t deplete.

Bees and the Ecology of a Long Life

A month or so ago I co-curated a gathering at the Living Food Campus around longevity. I thought getting the chance to hold a fireside chat with a longevity expert might be my highlight but actually it was the time I spent facilitating with bees and honey. Again, my grandfather and father kept bees so tending to these majestic creatures is something I’ve been exposed to for as long as I can remember. But I hadnt ever got intimate with stingless bees before. Their hives felt almost impossibly small, these tiny architectures of intelligence. I remember tasting their sour honey honey and thinking how strange it is that something so minute can gather a whole forest and transform it like this. Mindbogglingly intelligent!! (Far more than coding a script!?)

When I was researching for the workshop I learnt that in Kakamega Forest, stingless bee honey is something forest people reach for when the body feels off. The whole forest distilled into a drop by a minute creature. The bees are collecting the chemistry of a landscape. Every flower is a different library of compounds. The bee moves between them and the hive transforms that diversity into something shelf-stable, antimicrobial and alive. However, if our landscapes are becoming simplified in the way that they are, our diets become simplified too. And when this happens our biology also becomes simplified which equates to a fragile biology.

So even if we do the acts that Ayurveda encourages, if we are not also actively demanding regeneration of our planet, if we are not contributing to that mission ourselves then our bodies simply wont be able to get the nutritional diversity and density that they need to perform all the countless functions that they do day in and day out to enable a long life, and a long life well lived. Back to systems thinking…all dots have to be connected. Our health and that of the planet’s are deeply, intricately intertwined. Always have been, always will be.

Longevity through the Cool Molecules of Clay

There’s a lot the practice of making a pot has also taught me about longevity. When we craft a piece, we have to allow it to dry slowly, we have to be patient or she will crack. Again, when we put her in the kiln, we must slowly increase the temperature or she will shatter. The body is not so different. Even when she has been baked and adorned in glaze, it doesn’t mean she is safe from life’s hardships. We must take care not to drop her, wash her up lovingly by hand.

And yet if we do so, we can pass her on for generations to come. She can live in the garden of one soul; the bedroom of another; atop the beehive of a third. One day she might get buried only to be resurfaced by the hands of an inquisitive child.

And when the day comes that she does disintegrate into a thousand small fractures, it is earth she will transform to, return to. Minerals. Elements.

Holding a Wise Relationship

So when it comes to Longevity for me. It seems like it is more an opportunity to hold a wise relationship with ourselves rather than a quest to tie ourselves to smart-watches. If we can understand how our own actions might be leading to our current state of dis-ease then we have the chance to course correct.

Perhaps a pesky beaver built a dam further upstream we never saw and our system flooded. Perhaps that little thing we had normalised in our digestion is actually a quiet signal to put something different into our bodies. Perhaps that niggling thought in our mind is an invitation to change a habitual pattern or view we’ve been holding that no longer belongs.

And all the while, the more we can do these course-corrections in commune with nature the more we will quietly erode that sense of separation I mentioned earlier. Do you notice how your brain naturally moves into a more alpha state when you are in nature? She’s generously enabling your relaxation and your physiology to become more balanced. Mother nature allows us to taste what longevity feels like each and every day that we choose to pay attention. And, that deserves a word of thanks. I hope my view might resonate that longevity is less about outrunning death and more about learning, slowly and daily, how to be in right relationship with life.

With peace, Tash x

What’s been sparking my curiosity?

Hearing: the sounds of Leif Vollebekk for the first time. Within the space of a few hours I have become obsessed with this album. It accompanied me as these words fell to the page today.

Seeing: speckled beans in all their beauty. To think how we so often eat these potentialities without first seeing them in their raw form. When we cook the colours fade and merge together. The speckles cannot be marvelled. There’s been campaigns around connecting the dot between chicken thick to feathery creature but what about beans on toast to their climbing mother?

Tasting: The dance between crushed coriander seeds and beetroot to the lyrics of millet risotto. Some flavours simply belong together and coriander and beetroot are one.

Smelling: the resin of a peculiar root given to me by a special soul. Used to protect Maasai and Samburu peoples. The notes are indescribable and I think that is what is so special about it. It dares to be nameless. Dares not to categorise itself.

Touching: my warm skin as I lay in the bursts of sunshine in the afternoons fleetingly this week. It’s been a restful week experimenting with a castor oil purge. And I’ve found the softness of my skin post eating so much ghee, in combination with the gentle afternoon sun quite soothing.

Feeling: abundantly grateful as I start to see Ayurvedic clients. Their openness, their trust, their willingness to experiment with the mysterious is both humbling and encouraging. After a year of study it is such a privilege to now be practicing!

“The best definition of happiness is the ability to approach your life as this gorgeous, unfolding work of art that’s always changing, and never quite what you expect it to be.”

― Natasha Lunn, Conversations on Love