Feel grounded
& at ease

Welcome to your online retreat! We hope this provides a comforting and inspiring reprieve from everything that is happening in the world right now. We know that introverted states of being can be confronting and challenging so we hope this retreat at home package acts as a support tool and a balm for uncertain times. 

About Hope

“Hope, for me, just means… coming to terms with the fact that we don’t know what will happen and that there’s maybe room for us to intervene.” - Rebecca Solnit

It’s hard to think of the words that can hold the enormity of what the world is experiencing right now. This is the kind of disaster that hurls people unwillingly into the present, igniting an immediacy that wasn’t asked of them before. Incalculable events make us ask ourselves who we are and how we live. Disaster can break us, but it can also bring us closer, it can redeem our lives, both solitary and public.

Author Teju Cole shares in a podcast episode an innuit word, “qarrtsiluni,” which brings about the beautiful image of “sitting alone together in the dark, waiting for something to happen.” This image couldn’t be more vivid and tangible right now. Millions of people around the world are confined to their homes during a global quarantine. Together we wait, in a moment of global crisis and pause, suspended, and listening in, to the destiny that awaits us. 

More than ever before there is a universal feeling of uncertainty. Author of the book, Hope in the Dark, Rebecca Solnit speaks to this feeling of uncertainty saying, “hope, for me, just means… coming to terms with the fact that we don’t know what will happen and that there’s maybe room for us to intervene.” Amidst the uncertainty there is an opportunity for us to respond and practice solidarity with each other. 

This pandemic has exposed how interconnected and interdependent we are as humans. Everywhere communities are galvanising to support one another. It’s as though, in some kind of violent gift, people have been awakened to the fragility of their individualism. The more aware of our mortality we become, the more precious everything seems. The people in our lives, our intimate relationships, begin to shimmer once again. It becomes easier to let go of personal narratives in order to make space for shared experience, shared grief, as well as shared hope. 

No disaster is welcomed, lives have been lost, as well as people’s livelihoods. It’s hard to counterbalance grief with a sense of hope, but it’s always there. This experience of a shared life has made us question how we can find the same sense of connectedness, generosity, compassion and engagement with each other, without disaster occuring. What if breaking apart was the only way we could become closer. And what if this deeper sense of a shared life can offer us more insight than our private lives ever could. It is from this question that we draw hope.

Cooking

Warm plant based recipe

Nina’s Recipe for Zousui, Japanese savoury rice porridge

For the Broth:

• Olive or coconut oil

• Ginger

• Garlic

• Dashi stock (two and a half cups)

• Miso paste (one tablespoon)

• Shiitake dried mushrooms (five single dried mushrooms sliced)

  
  Vegetables:

• Baby spinach 

• Pumpkin

• Edamame *frozen is fine

• Broccoli

• Carrot

• Daikon 

  
  Topping:

• One boiled egg per person

• Tamari or soy sauce

• Sesame oil

• Kelp seaweed flakes

• Chilli flakes

• Sesame seeds

• Shallots

*white or brown rice cooked separately and stirred into the broth before serving

Process (preparation time is about 20-30 minutes)Dice vegetables and place the rice to cook on the stove or in a rice cooker (half a cup per person). Prepare the Broth first by frying the garlic and ginger in oil. Then add the vegetable stock and bring to boil. Add miso, sliced shiitake mushrooms and dashi to the broth and simmer for about 10 minutes. Add diced pumpkin, carrot, daikon, broccoli until cooked and then add spinach and edamame last to cook. Before serving add cooked rice to the broth and stir together. Add toppings either to the broth for taste or on the side once served. Add a boiled egg if you like as well or crack the egg into the soup and stir through to cook for 5 minutes.