Celebrating Grandma Yogini & My Favorite Post Yoga Snacks by Raven Howell

 

 

Henry and his sister, Meredith, can hardly wait for Grandma to arrive for a visit. But what should they expect? Among the children's diverse friends and their grandmothers who bake, create art, and speak Spanish, will Grandma be able to share something unique and fun with the kids? Henry's fears are alleviated when, not long after arrival, they flutter like butterflies, slither like snakes, and enjoy other challenges of stretching their muscles and calming their minds. This is no run-of-the-mill grandma, and when it’s time for goodbye, the kids know this was the BEST grandma visit ever.

Celebrating Grandma Yogini & My Favorite Post Yoga Snacks

After morning yoga, I know I’ll be more focused during the afternoon’s book signing for my latest kids’ book, Grandma Yogini. But first, I head to the kitchen to prepare some snacks. I make sure to drink plenty of water. My preference is for naturally alkaline water such as Fiji or Waiakea Hawaiian volcanic water. But as long as you rehydrate, drink what you like or works for your budget. Some people prefer coconut water, a drink that’s growing in popularity and a good choice for replenishing electrolytes lost during exercise.

Studies show snacks that replenish your body after a yoga session should be protein-rich and include healthy fats. Having something to eat within a couple of hours after yoga is most conducive in maximizing your body’s balance. Usually, I’ll eat a lightly sweetened vanilla Greek yogurt with dried fruit mixed in. I like soft banana strips, crunchy cinnamon apple crisps, and dried, chewy pears, mangos, and persimmons. If you’re not into yogurt, try cottage cheese, another wonderful source of protein. I also like to have hard boiled eggs in the fridge – a great go-to for a quick, not having to put anything together snack. And protein smoothies are super yummy! My choice is a peanut butter blend. 

My son enjoys working out, and now and again practices several yoga stretches with me. His favorite post-work-out snack is hummus. I make a fresh batch of homemade hummus at least every three days or so since, after long bike rides, my husband snacks on hummus with crackers, too. Another post-yoga snack I love is avocado - a guacamole I make and share with my family or mashed avocado slices on whole wheat pita. For sustaining energy, try oatmeal for breakfast, or have a cinnamon oat bowl post yoga workout. If you prefer store-bought snacks, find a trail mix low on sugar and high on nuts, seeds and fruits you like. Ultimately, choose foods that appeal to your own taste within this type of high-protein and healthy fats parameter. And happy snacking!

 

About the Author 

Raven Howell is an award-winning children’s book author. She works as a writer, journalist, columnist, poet, and publishing advisor. Raven's work is featured in magazines including Story Monsters Ink, Ladybug, Highlights for Children, Humpty Dumpty, and The School Magazine. Her books have won several awards, including Excellence in Children's Literature, Creative Child Magazine's Best Children's Book, Mom's Choice Award, and the NYC Big Book Award. She writes preschool storybooks for educational publishers worldwide. Raven enjoys library and school visits and has been practicing yoga for over four decades. 

You can find her online at:

https://www.ravenhowell.com

https://twitter.com/atpearthkeeper

https://www.instagram.com/atpearthkeeper/

https://www.facebook.com/raven.howell.75/

https://www.facebook.com/RavenHowellAuthorandPoetPage/

https://www.pinterest.com/pickward

https://www.linkedin.com/in/raven-howell-5a813015b/

https://www.tiktok.com/@ravenhowell22

https://bsky.app/profile/ravenhowell.bsky.social

Nature as Guide through Wilderness of Heart by author Cheryl Grey Bostrom

 

If I were a gambling woman, I’d bet my right leg that at one time or another you’ve lost yourself in an emotional or spiritual jungle, where your mental understory is tangled, and your inner landscape, dank. It’s a dim, internal swamp shaped by illness or accident, lies or misunderstandings. By selfishness, fear, grief, or death. It’s a wilderness we’ll all experience, if we live long enough. Wilderness through which we must choose our paths. Characters in my contemporary novels grapple with conflict like this in nature’s “thin places,” where the seen and the unseen worlds overlap. Like us, those characters must choose how they’ll navigate personal darkness. If they’re listening, nature can be a wise guide through that wilderness of heart.

 Three examples from my novels for you:

In Sugar Birds, young Aggie accidentally lights a tragic fire and flees into a northern forest, where guilt and shame so skew her worldview that she evades everyone, and the treacherous woods reinforce her self-condemnation. But when nature’s protection and healing at last reach her psyche, love and forgiveness bring her home. In this scene, Aggie realizes that creatures she’d considered vile may actually have saved her.

The itching subsided. Weak with shock and hunger, she crumpled onto the forest floor and inspected her injury in the growing light. A few white wigglers still squirmed inside the cut. From fly eggs, she remembered. Grimacing, she extracted the creatures one-by-one and flicked them to the ground.

Maggots eat dead things.

Maybe death had been closer than she thought . . .

She forced herself to study the wound. The angry swelling along the sides of the cut had shrunk and paled. Red streaks shooting out from the gash had retreated, and a clear serum now wept from the wound, instead of that nasty green pus.

Wait a minute . . .

The maggots had eaten away her infection. Without them . . . she shuddered, as the ground she counted on shifted, and her thinking took a turn.  

In Leaning on Air, ornithologist Celia—bereft over the loss of her premature child—leaves her autistic husband Burnaby and holes up near a remote, wild prairie. As the prairie and a red-tailed hawk recover from wildfire, Celia realizes that she and her marriage can heal, too. Here she explains the insight to Burnaby.

She snapped her fingers. “Quick as that, the fire was about more than the land. It was an embodiment of all the destruction in my whole life—a flashback reel of the trauma with Mother, the losses of people I loved, the hopes that never materialized. A grand finale of carbon fibers, up in fumes. Though I was in no physical danger, I felt like my days were over, right then and there, and I was as close to giving up on living as I ever have been.”

She continued before he could shape a reply . . .

“That little redtail started hopping down the creekbank in my direction, off-balance from a tail of kebab sticks in her pincushion rump. Her entire world, and her ability to navigate it, had just been destroyed, but she was still trying to fly with everything in her. She didn’t seem frightened at all. Just . . . determined.”

Celia’s hands went to her head, her fingers a skullcap.  “Right then I felt a surge in me of something from beyond myself—nothing I had manufactured or talked myself into. I was confused for a minute. I couldn’t understand why I felt happy while this ruined, stub-tailed little buzzard was stumbling around in a charcoal dust bath. Then I realized it wasn’t happiness I was feeling. It was hope . . .”

What the River Keeps tells parallel stories about the demolition of generational strongholds. Reclusive biologist Hildy Nybo, mentally imprisoned and confused by a wilderness of lies, takes a job near her childhood home, where she joins a team of scientists working the Elwha River as two century-old dams fall. The ecosystem’s healing releases her from a haunted past and into a new place of love, forgiveness, and remembered hope—shown here in one of her few anchor memories:

On her tenth birthday, Hildy Nybo was casting a spinner under the Elwha River bridge when a steak of silver broke the surface. She whistled softly and pointed as the fish flicked its tail and disappeared into the pool’s shaded depths.

Upstream, her father glanced, then threaded a night crawler onto a hook’s shank. “I saw him.” He raised his brow, aimed the hook toward the river like a dare.

The fingertips working Hildy’s reel stalled, and she eyed the water, rapt. “They hush me, Daddy. Every fish I see.”

“I noticed,” he said. “Why, you think?”

She gazed into the water, considering. “It’s like . . . like if I’m talking, I’ll miss their music. It’s like they’re all little banjos, and somebody’s strumming happiness on ‘em.”

She didn’t notice her dad approach until he palmed her blonde head. Then he lifted his chin toward the forested foothills rimming their family’s fishing resort, where the river entered sapphire Lake Aldwell. “Could be you’re hearing his riffs.”

“Whose riffs?”

“Your Banjo-Strummer. The Fish-Maker. Same, same.” Dad shrugged, then thrust the tip of his rod toward his work-shop like a band conductor’s baton. “The music’s in heartwood and burls for me, but maybe you’ll hear him best through fish.”

Hildy bobbed her line to her dad’s words, sending concentric circles from the thin filament into the current. Would she? She’d love nothing more.

In all three books, nature offers a path through wilderness— to love and forgiveness, restoration and healing. To hope. It can do the same for us.

Book Spotlight: What the River Keeps by Cheryl Grey Bostrom

 

Reclusive biologist Hildy Nybo returns to her childhood home on Washington’s Elwha River, where she untangles her mysterious past. Hildy Nybo is a successful biologist, her study of the Pacific Northwest’s wild fish both a passion and a career. But behind her professional brilliance, Hildy’s reclusive private life reflects a childhood fraught with uncertainty. Haunted by the confusion of her early years, she now records her life in detailed diaries and clings to memory-prompting keepsakes. Then her mother’s health fails, and Hildy accepts a job near her childhood home, joining a team of scientists who will help restore her beloved Elwha River after two century-old dams fall. There Hildy settles into a cabin on her family’s rustic resort—a place she both loves and dreads, for reasons she can’t fully explain. 

When a local artist rents an adjacent cabin for her pottery studio, Hildy resists the intrusion—until intriguing Luke Rimmer arrives to help with the cabin’s renovation. Now a few years beyond a tragedy that brought him to his knees, Luke recognizes a kindred soul in Hildy. As he earns her trust, they uncover her mysterious history, and Hildy dares to wonder if she can banish her shadows—and follow her river’s course to freedom.

Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/What-River-Keeps-Cheryl-Bostrom/dp/1496481585/ref

About the Author

A keen student of the natural world and the workings of the human heart, Pacific Northwest author Cheryl Grey Bostrom captures the mystery and wonder of both in her lyrical, riveting fiction. Her novels Sugar Birds (Christy finalist, Amazon bestseller, and Book of the Year) and Leaning on Air have won more than two dozen industry honors, among which are CT’s Fiction Award of Merit and American Fiction, Reader’s Favorite, Carol, Nautilus, Best Book, Foreword Indies, and International Book Awards. An avid birder and nature photographer, Cheryl lives in rural Washington State with her husband and three irrepressible Gordon setters.

You can follow the author at:

Website: https://CherylBostrom.com

Birds in the Hand (blog): https://cherylgreybostrom.substack.com

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/cgbostrom/ and https://www.facebook.com/cherylgreybostrom/

IG: @cherylgreybostrom  https://www.instagram.com/cherylgreybostrom/