What Skiing, Ceramics, and Pie Crust Have in Common
Hear me out. Plus, trying something new on here with 3 bite-sized things.
As I stood there on the bunny slope last month, listening to the ski instructor describe the mechanics of how to use your body to turn left or right in your skis, my brain was working in overdrive to keep up.
Wait, what did he say? Turn your hips the opposite way of the direction you want to go, or the same way? I’m confused, I think I need him to repeat that…
I watched as the students in front of me all seemed to turn, no problem. When it was my turn to go (no pun intended), I was frantically trying to recall the instructions he’d given. While I didn’t fall or go the opposite direction, I didn’t exactly turn in a precise manner. Having just watched the other students do it seamlessly I scolded myself for having not gotten it right away.
It was then that I remembered my Aunt Jana’s voice from four years ago on the mountains in Colorado, the last and only other time I had skied. “Look where you want to go!” she had repeated to me throughout that day.
So the second time I went down the bunny hill, instead of trying to remember what the hell the instructor had said, I simply repeated my aunt’s mantra to myself over and over. Without thinking about how to do it, I simply looked in the direction I wanted to ski and what do you know, my body turned! I was amazed as this happened over and over throughout the rest of the day. How could something so simple work so well, and so much better than detailed instructions?
Herein lines the power of feeling versus thinking. We spend so many of our waking hours with our minds on hyperdrive, processing up to 60,000 thoughts per day. As an analytical risk-averse thinker, I’m prone to overthinking things a lot.
So it should come as no surprise that when trying to learn something new, especially a physical activity, it can be hugely beneficial to quiet my mind a bit and let my body take over. We have physical instincts literally bred in us for survival, yet as our brain capacity has evolved over centuries, we often default to thinking before feeling.
After I left the slopes that February day, feeling pumped and grateful for being able to trust my body and quiet the fear in my brain, I began to notice similar patterns with other activities that followed.
Acting on a curiosity I’ve had for a long time, I started a ceramics wheel class a couple weeks ago. I’m not going to lie, the first class was really challenging for me. I couldn’t help but compare myself to the other eleven students, most newbies like myself, and notice that I was the slowest one in the room. I struggled to remember all the steps the instructor had described in her half hour demo, feeling like I was left behind as the students surrounding me got to work. I couldn’t remember what came after her first step of the process and my anxiety was kicking into hyperdrive. But I hung in there thanks to a few tips from my neighbors and ended the evening with something resembling a bowl. Wow, this is hard, I thought as I left that evening.
So when I went to my second class last week, I walked in with more patience and grace for myself as well as an open mind. I was going to approach it with more feeling and less thinking, for I had observed that seemed to be part of the puzzle. A critical first step to learning the wheel is “centering” your piece of clay on the rotating disk, or bat as it’s called. This is essential for making a piece symmetrical and for better controlling your clay.
I won’t try to describe all the steps to centering here, for I’m still learning them myself, but I can tell you that when I paid more attention to how these steps felt versus concerning myself with replicating them in the “right” way, I improved. At one point during class that evening, the instructor came to check on me and noticed that I had somehow corrected the mistake I made a few minutes prior. “I don’t know what you did to fix and re-center your piece, but keep doing what you’re doing! I’m not going to say anything more.”
I wasn’t even sure what I had done to re-center the piece but clearly something good had happened. So I spent the rest of the evening just trying to focus on the feeling and the doing with as little verbal instruction as possible.
The power of feel came into play yet again when I attended a baking class with my mom last weekend. The theme of the class was winter pies, with an emphasis on perfecting homemade pie crust. The instructor Chef Luca kicked off class by telling us that mastering the crust is the most important part due to its finicky nature. The key to quality pie crust is consistency and controlling your variables, whereas pie filling allows a lot more room for creativity and experimentation.
His most important tip was to not follow the prescribed amount of water a crust recipe calls for, but instead to add water a tablespoon at a time until you feel the dough has the right amount of moisture.
Use the eyes and the hands to assess the dough as you continue to add water to it, looking for it to just barely hold itself together when pressed against the side of the bowl, and feeling barely moist, but not sticky.1
Phew, I thought to myself as we mixed our dough—this requires a lot of patience and practice! I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that I became impatient with the process, feeling like I was lagging behind my neighbors (are you sensing a theme here?), so I haphazardly dumped two tablespoons of water into my dough when it was well underway.
Immediately I regretted my mistake as it was instantly too wet and sticky. Well, at least I know what not to do next time! I chuckled to myself. I’m not sure when I’ll make pie crust again, but next time I will do it when I have no time constraint so I can focus on molding the dough, little by little, drop by drop.
Much like there’s an art to being one with the potter’s clay, I realized it’s the same with the hands and the dough, or the skis and the snow.
I don’t partake in any kind of regular meditative practice, but I trust that I’m onto something here with centering myself in the feeling of something. Here’s to feeling where you want to go!
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What’s something new you’ve learned or an activity you do that is better experienced though feeling than thinking?
Bite-Sized: 3 Things I Consumed This Week
In the spirit of trying new things (let me know what you think in the comments!), I’ve been thinking about how to share other smaller things on my mind that aren’t full-fledged ideas. Using consumption as a lens, here’s three things I chewed on this week:
📞 The Rich Roll Podcast: Charles Duhigg: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection — My partner and I talk a lot about the concept of community and meaningful connection with other human beings, so when he recommended this episode to me, I knew I’d enjoy it. One thing I keep thinking about is the power of asking deep questions to seek to understand people, especially when they think differently from you. Note to self to try asking, “why is that important to you?”
🍠 Roasted Squash with Tahini and Za’atar from ‘Jerusalem’ — I rediscovered this recipe this week when trying to figure out what to do with the winter sweet squash from our CSA. Having made this a lot in years past, I’d completely forgotten about it this winter since our CSA hasn’t given us much butternut squash. Let me tell you, it might be 10x better having subbed sweet squash. It was SO. FREAKIN. DELICIOUS. Possibly my favorite “fancy” veg dish I’ve made at home. (Trust me when I say the toppings are well worth the effort.)
🍺 Distinguishing between a desire to socialize versus drink — I usually sit out on the post-practice drinks my tennis team partakes in every Thursday, but this week I was craving the socialization. Upon walking into the bar and immediately feeling the need to get a drink, I asked myself, do I really want a beer right now, or do I just want to hang out with my teammates? I knew one beer would negatively affect my sleep, so as much FOMO as I felt, I opted to drink water instead. No one cared (surprise surprise) and while the totchos we shared would’ve been slightly better washed down with a pilsner, I still enjoyed hanging out and was proud of myself for pausing to evaluate what I really wanted in that moment.
My sweet mom wrote more about our class here! https://www.kitchenistics.com/blog/perfecting-pie-crust