Zen and the Art of Massaging Kale

"Zen and...." whatever you fill in the blank in has become an expression of the practice of mindfulness through that given activity.  Mindfulness is the practice which has grown out of Buddhism of really being totally present to any activity.  The expression "Zen and..." evolved from the popular  Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the 1974 book by Robert Pirsig which has been called one of the most important books in the last half century.

This afternoon I practiced Zen and the Art of Massaging Kale.  About two years ago I discovered a delicious and ultra-nutritious salad--Winter Kale Slaw*--in the pages of O Magazine. Preparation is quite time-consuming but has big pay-off from the wonderful flavors and nutritional value. The foundation of the salad, as you might guess from the name is kale, that hard, coarse, bluish leafy vegetable which is professed to have countless health benefits.  I'd never been a fan of kale before discovering the recipe, but my commitment to healthy eating enticed me to try the recipe.

The recipe starts by asking the preparer to massage the kale with lemon juice and olive oil for five minutes.  Five minutes! Really?! In the beginning I would watch the clock through every painfully slow second. It seemed interminable. Most of those early times, somewhere around two minutes, I would decide that was enough.  What more could be accomplished in the last three minutes that hadn't in the first two.

The answer: a lot. But, it didn't have much to do with the kale.  I really can hardly tell the difference to the kale between the two-minute massage and the five-minute massage, but similar to my bodywork earlier this week, I can really tell the difference inside me between my 60-minute massage and a 90-minute one.  That extra time is internally transformative.

As preparing the salad became a weekly ritual, I got into the kale massage more and more.  I stopped watching the clock so much.  At some point I stopped watching the clock at all and started to just enjoy it until a timer that I had set signalled that my five minutes had passed.  Now I just enjoy it.  No timer. Just allowing my fingers massaging the kale.

A remarkable thing has occurred.  When I stopped watching the clock and was just present to my activity, time fell away.  I began to feel the leaves transform in my fingertips, the unyielding leaves softening in my hands.  Then, I could notice the kale started to massage me--really giving back to me, especially two knuckles that have a little arthritis in them. Somewhere between the beginning and five minutes, my shoulders soften and drop.  Rather than attacking the kale, the exercise has truly become a mutual massage.

Last summer when I was taking the Psychology of Happiness class, I wrote a number of times about the importance of mindfulness to our happiness.  What better experience than that my vegetables had started giving me a massage.  I'd been in bed sick since about 9 last evening when I retired early.  The Art of Massaging Kale erased the discomfort from my experience and filled my mind instead with a desire to write.

Spiritual teacher Carolyn Myss has said that our most important spiritual work is learning to be present.  As long-time readers will acknowledge, being present has been a major lesson for me to learn, and what a gift this afternoon to learn that being present to my kale could have such a wonder impact on me.  Thankfully, I may never approach making the salad in the same way ever again.





*http://www.oprah.com/food/Winter-Kale-Slaw-Recipe