Breath, Brushes & Banana Bread

Movement

Pranayama for ab strengthening

When you burn fat, you quite literally breath out the fat’s component parts. Think of your exhale as the fumes leaving a car after combustion has taken place. Breathing is crucial for life and breathing fully and intentionally adds to our wellbeing. It makes sense to work out the muscles involved in breathing: your diaphragm, intercostal muscles and abdominals through breathing exercises or pranayama. You don’t have to sweat, or even stand up to work the abdominal muscles, but you do have to use you inner abs to breath with your belly, filling the lungs all the way.

If you use the chrome browser and are looking for some quick, easy breath work exercises I recommend the ChairGuru extension. Created by Soma Breath, you can set the Chair Guru to send you a notification every 30, 60 or 90 minutes. Follow the popup to a short video to stretch and do some simple breath work exercises. It’s a great way to break up your work day with some intentional breathing.

Art + Culture

John Frost

The Pool at Sundown (1923) by John Frost

I recently started taking a landscape painting and drawing class. I used to teach art to high school students on the west side of Chicago and while we dabbled in watercolor techniques, I never lingered on landscapes as a subject matter. I’m humbled by the way the watercolor does whatever it wants running and bleeding across the page, wild and uncontained. So far I haven’t produced anything of note, but these things take time and I haven’t taken an art class in too many years.

Each week the instructor highlights a landscape artist and last week we studied John Frost’s Californian vistas of mountains. Originally from Philadelphia, he made his way to Pasadena via France bringing French impressionism to the American west. He’s not well know, nor was he prolific, his poor health led to a premature death at age 47. His work brings a softness and pastel pallet to the harsh landscape of the Sierra Nevadas and the Arizona desert. I will say I have a new-found appreciation for landscape artists. Frost worked in oils, which I still have never worked with. Maybe if the watercolors don’t scare me away I’ll sign up for oil painting next semester.

Oil-free Vegan Cooking

Banana Bread

By Carolien Dekeersmaeker

I don’t own a loaf tin so I make this delicious banana bread in a cake pan. I guess it’s more like banana cake than banana bread but it is definitely moist and delicious. Overripe bananas are sweeter and easier to smash than less ripe ones. 

Ingredients 

3 ripe bananas, mashed 

1/3 C apple sauce 

1 tsp vanilla

2 C flour (whole wheat is healthier than white)

1/2 C chopped dates or 4 TBSP maple syrup or 1/3 C sugar or 1/4 C agave

1 tsp baking soda/bicarbonate of soda  

1 1/2 tsp baking powder 

1/2 tsp Cinnamon 

1/2 tsp Cardamom 

1/2 tsp Nutmeg 

1/4 C chopped walnuts (optional) 

1/2-1 C Plant based yogurt 

Method 

Preheat oven to 180C/350F if your cake pan (9x9) isn’t nonstick, line it with parchment paper or grease with a few sprays of extra virgin olive oil. Mix the bananas, applesauce and vanilla until blended. Add the flour, sweetener, baking soda/bicarbonate of soda, baking powder and spices. Add the nuts then stir in the yogurt until the batter is wet throughout. Pour into the pan and bake for 45-50 min until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean.