Three Ways Plants (And My Roommate) Taught Me Routines
From NYC to Portland, Maine…I Barely Made It!
I’ve always had a bit of a nutty professor vibe when it comes to routines. My previous life in NYC spurred me to jam pack as much as possible into a day, while carrying several satchels around, feeding myself, recovering from regular hangovers and squeezing in a jog along the smog shrouded Williamsburg Bridge. Sounds like fun with a capital ‘F’, right?! Eye roll.
Suffice it to say that wasn’t an ideal lifestyle for me anymore and especially lent itself to exacerbating my already scattered, ‘moving in six million directions’ thought process. I also know that as an ‘X-ennial’ with an existing short attention span, the cultural shift towards digital everything toggled my brains into a scrambled egg frenzy of “I need to see and do everything in as little time as possible.”
I’d get ready in the morning for work, waking up as late as the three-transfer subway commute would allow and focus on making myself presentable before feeding or hydrating my body. I’d jet around the subway tunnels like a bat out of hell, and still show up to work a few minutes late. In the hallway I’d make sure to take off my coat before walking into the office in order to give off that casual ‘I’ve been lingering here for, like, a while” vibe. Then, I’d think about food and wait until it was a respectable time to run out and grab a coffee and a nosh from the food truck underneath a highway overpass.
NOT IDEAL. I’m exhausted just writing this.
Deep breath and cut to Maine where I live now. I am aware of the wind chimes jingling outside my window, take multiple breaks a day to notice if the plants growing around our house are happy, and am sipping on a CBD-infused Cacao concoction at 12pm after having already had two calm meals today. Who is this person?! I’m spending my day doing things that I enjoy, including making time for stillness, learning about entrepreneurship, reading, nature walks and skin-care rituals. I also make significantly less money, but I’m well rested and feel a thousand times better than I did five years ago. And I am even starting to look forward to waking up in the morning.
My relationship with hemp has been one of the biggest catalysts for change in my daily lifestyle routines. I’ve learned from it that healing takes patience, practice, intuition and forgiveness. I’ve come back to CBD time and again, more than any other herb to work with painful emotions, insomnia, internal balance and to spark creativity. It’s an ally and it makes me feel safe and in a healthy amount of control. This is what routines do.
I am not talking ‘As Good As it Gets’ manic Jack Nicholson routines, although his hand washing obsession is actually looking spot on attractive right now. Either way, everything is a balance, and your normal is always going to be different from another person’s normal. Start small and start by starting.
So, here are a few ways that I learned healthy routines from and along with plants
Note to the wise: Creating an environment for healing also necessitates that you not beat yourself up or wish that you were someone or something else. Be you, that is enough
1. MAKE TEA
This is one that I always had down, even in the midst of my most nutty adrenalized days. I grew up in a family that made tea as a communal activity. It was a gesture of love, a remedy for sickness, a break. As a kid, my family called Earl Grey tea with milk and sugar ‘Pussycat Tea’ and even though I was allergic to cats and lactose intolerant (story for another day) I’d clap my hands and feel warm and loved and like I could just be. Later I’d fart and have a stomach ache, but I’ve rectified all that now. Hooray!
I also spent two years in Japan where green tea was being consumed daily by everyone including the little Kindergarten kids that I was teaching. It contains caffeine, and they were nuts, but healthy and full of antioxidants.
There is something so meditative in the process of making tea, whether you’re popping a teabag in your cheesy quotable mug (dogs really ARE my favorite people), or steeping a french press of wild foraged herbs.
I encourage this as a gateway routine:
make your tea
cover the top of your mug for a few minutes to keep the volatile oils from escaping
sit with it, breathe in the warm air and notice that you’re actually engaging with plants that grew out of the ground and made it to your cup
Believe that these herbs, while subtly, are delivering minerals, nutrients and vitamins to your body
don’t burn your mouth (haven’t mastered this yet)
It’s as much about allowing yourself to be present and mindful with a tiny luxury as it is about the health benefits. So simple, and so effective.
2. LEARN GOOD HABITS FROM OTHERS
We live in a culture where we get so stuck in the ego of ‘I got this’ and the drive to be so completely independent that we miss out on the very human way of learning which is simply by observing others and noticing their successes.
When I first moved in with my roommate in Maine I noticed she would get up sometimes and go jogging and watch the...wait for it...SUNRISE! In the...wait for it...MORNING! Holy shit, who ever thought of such a thing? I’ve seen plenty of sunrises on the other end of a wild night out, but it hardly holds the same restorative factor when you’re scraping mascara off your tank top (How did it get there? Your guess is as good as mine) and shielding your tired eyes from the rays. I feel exhausted again.
We don’t all need to get up at 5am, but finding a way to take some time in the morning is crucial. I was invested in holistic health when I lived in NYC, and worked with a variety of herbs for adrenal fatigue and stress, but my problem was that I could never get myself to take anything consistently. My days had no consistency, so there was no space to ensure that a potentially supportive herb could be incorporated in such a way that it would make any difference. I was living life, damnit! I’m happy that I did, but I’m happy that part’s over.
Just a little time in the morning to infuse lemon in hot water, consume a couple of droppers full of Holy Basil or Lemon Balm tincture, or make a Hibiscus tea with an herbal allergy blend, helps me to feel like I can open the door for plants to do their work. Consistency is key, because herbs generally take longer than traditional Western medications to act on symptoms. They work to repair broken systems, rather than mask them and this is a process. So, creep on your friends and roommates who do this well and steal some little routines from them. Even if that just means getting up slightly earlier so you can boil a pot of water and stand quietly in the kitchen.
Wow, I barely recognize myself.
What if we nurtured a little growth in our homes or a little calm in our gut for just a few minutes, so as to create more of that energy in the world?
3. GET YOUR ASS SOME PLANTS
Plants are intelligent beings and they have complex ways of communicating with each other and navigating the world around them. They are sensitive to light, smell, taste, touch and sound, and while we’ve become quite disconnected from communicating with them, they are receptive to us and the environments we cultivate.
They can give you something like the joy of a pet (and endless opportunities for Instagram backdrops if you need more superficial motivation). Sajah Popham says, “Plants exposed to classical music tend to grow faster and produce more abundant fruits with greater nutritional quality.” So, if you talk or sing to yourself a lot, you can justify this on account of how they grow better when wooed. Basically, you’re a botanist, not a neurotic hermit. There you go!
In the same way that walking a dog can get you out of a miserable funk, even when all you want to do is eat freezer pizzas and watch Gossip Girl, plants ask you to take just a few moments out of your day to stop wallowing.
Doing this at the same time of day can lend an element of predictability and control to our frenzied lives. Again, the morning is an option, but maybe it’s in the evening before bed or whenever Netflix annoyingly asks, “Are you still watching?” Take a walk around the house, visit all the little plants, give them a pet and some water and some pep talks, and voila! You’re a master of routine!
This is also especially helpful in uncertain times (ie: say, a global pandemic), when we tend to spend an inordinate amount of time obsessing over a future we simply cannot predict. What if we did something that required nothing of us other than to be present? What if we nurtured a little growth in our apartment or a little calm in our gut, for just a few minutes so as to create more of that energy in the world? Your stress is waiting for you right where you left it.
Happy routine-ing. Whatever you do, make it yours. The whole point of Being Here Now is to practice what it feels like to be present and cultivate a bit more of that over and over in order to wake up from the potential of sleepwalking through our lives.
“You wake up at the rate you wake up.” -Ram Dass
