“When we aren’t grounded, all that energy has nowhere to go except up.” I nodded my head in agreement. “You’re living from your heart up, and as beautiful as those top chakras1 are, they are part of a bigger whole.”
I have to spend as much time in my body as I do in my heart and mind. It’s easy for me to live in my heart space. It comes easily to me, and so does communication and expression, and for the most part, spirituality. What’s hard though is when I’m overwhelmed by those things and the energy has nowhere to go. The lower half of me, responsible for sexuality, creativity, confidence, and safety- gets far less attention. And that creates quite the storm in me.
“Okay, what do I do?” I asked in a continued attempt to have a cognitive answer instead of an embodied one. “Nothing except to be human, and to enjoy the things that only us humans can enjoy.”
“You know, the angels don’t get to do all the delicious things we do.”
The medicines of being outside barefoot, having great sex, eating delicious food, and spending time very mindfully in my physical form were suggested.
The next morning, with these insights tucked away for me to work on, I attended a writing workshop. “What was delicious this year?” the facilitator asked. There was that word again. Synchronicities like this are not to be ignored. “The answer lies in our senses,” she continued. What did you taste, touch, hear, smell, or see this year that was delicious? What did you simply gobble up?”
The list immediately unfurled in my mind, as if the question of deliciousness was all my soul had been waiting for, to present the sensory feast it had been preparing for me all year:
I remember the taste of the pasta on my birthday, my mother’s citrus coffee cake. The soup dumplings in Denver bursting open and offering their broth. The spicy candied nuts eaten from a paper cone. The charred sweet corn, and the pizza slices showing off their cheese pull.
Fingertips gliding through Jeffrey’s fur, facials that turned into sacred naps, and the massages that ended that way too. Two gloved hands desperate to make contact on a cold walk. Feeling Michael’s sturdy arms around my core, and the feel of our chilly bathroom tile floor beneath my feet before climbing into a bed warmed by love- and electric blankets.
The sound of the baby mouse hiding in our garage last summer, and the way Jeffrey pips and whimpers while he dreams. The Vernon Spring album-A Plane Over Woods. The sound of our doorbell when my parents arrive, and the signature perfect melodies of my best friends’ laughs. My parents singing Happy Birthday to me, and the symphony too.
Sneaking smells of his cologne before we leave for dinner. Coffee brewing before the world wakes up. The distinctive sweet aroma of a chicken that’s perfectly roasted. The mineral musk of mud on the trails and the weeds that care not how they stink. My mother’s house and the way its scent lingers on the now-too-big-for-her sweatshirts she offers me. The Russian sage lured the bees and the lavender I grew, dried, and burned on my altar. Its aroma is strangely familiar for something so new to me.
The moon through our skylight that one night I caught it. Every single sunrise and sunset. The wild turkeys in our neighborhood started as babies, smaller than crows, and grew to match their parents. The snow that broke the branches, and dried needles of the houseplant I couldn’t please. The flower mandala for my sweet friend’s birthday and my mom in a hammock. The tree bark, and my clients’ tears. The glow of thousands of Christmas lights at the botanical gardens. The scrunching of my dad’s nose when he gets irritated enough, and the way his eyes close from the force of his undeniable smile. The dog that rolled on the beach just when we missed Jeffrey too much on vacation. The aquarium, the magnitude of creation, and his bare body meeting the day.
Our bodies, our senses, are our way back to the earth, back to our humanness. It’s not enough to meditate or reach for the Divine—we are meant to feel the messiness and beauty of being human. To taste sweetness, to hold warmth, to see the moonlight, and to cohabitate with all the creatures.
The angels may have wisdom, but they’ll never know the joy of skin meeting sun, the simple decadence of good bread, the smell of a dog’s paw, or the quiet ecstasy of bare feet on the cool grass. This is what it means to live fully—not just in the heart or mind, but in the body that holds it all.
We are here to savor, to sense, to love the world through every inch of our being. That is our work. That is what’s delicious.
What was delicious in your year? Take a moment to go through each of your senses- what did you simply gobble up?
What did you taste?
What did you feel?
What did you hear?
What did you smell?
And what did you see?
I hope 2025 is even more delicious for you, and for me too. And maybe, if we set out for it to be, and we keep ourselves open and grounded and focused on all our humanity has to offer us, it will be the most delicious year yet.
Chakra means “wheel” and refers to energy points in your body. They are thought to be spinning disks of energy that should stay “open” and aligned, as they correspond to bundles of nerves, major organs, and areas of our energetic body that affect our emotional and physical well-being.