Stability Soup, or Sweet Potato Swiss Chard Soup

Recently, in yoga class, we did some seriously destabilizing things in our flow. Chair pose on the balls of the feet—ok, done that before. But have you ever done down dog with your feet on a blanket and then push back to plank using your feet on the blanket to slide yourself up and out? Did you ever place a blanket on the four corners of your mat, and then put your right foot and right hand on blankets while your left foot and left hand are on the mat, while in plank? How about a Warrior 2 with the back foot on, you guessed it, a blanket?

The point of all this was to get us to really think about the ways in which we are—and are not—engaging in the poses. And the ways in which we are perhaps going through the motions with poses that are very familiar to most of us. In what ways are we going through the motions in life? In what ways are we actually really engaging and feeling all the feels? How do we respond to difficulty? These are some of the questions.

The biggest question, though, is what happens when stability is threatened. When the usual way of grounding oneself in a pose is thrown off kilter? The parameters are blurry, the rules of engagement have changed and they will change yet again.

You can see how this is a metaphor for life.

My adrenals are not cooperating lately, and I’m getting tired more quickly. As a result, my practice is very much in flux. Some days I can handle a flow like this like a champ, and other days my body feels like it weighs a ton and is like a recalcitrant child. I’ve been at this long enough that. I know to take child’s pose, and I don’t have an ego about it. It’s all good. Paying attention to the body is half the battle with yoga. This practice was the sort of all-engrossing type, where you have to be completely present with your body in order to stay aligned and stay safe. Which we did. There is no time or space for the mind to wander. And there were 22 of us in that room, so we were all feeling it together, and falling out of poses and laughing, and expressing our default behavior when things get tough. I found myself adapting to standing in warrior 2 on my towel instead of my blanket, which just kept slipping regardless of anything I did to engage my feet or adductors or outer hips. The towel gave me a little more traction, but not enough to completely do the work for me the way the foot, in direct contact with the earth, would.

I had a rather visceral reaction to this practice, as did many. I was frustrated. I was tired. I adapted. I modified, but I stayed with it. I laughed. I slid like I was on ice. I laughed some more. I had a fleeting moment of tears welling up. In short, I was all over the map. Later on, I realized that the practice was so incredibly challenging because my life has been destabilized for the past two and a half years or so, almost three. The mat practice has been my solace, as it is for many who practice.

What’s all this anatomical nitty gritty got to do with soup, you may be asking.

I decided to make some soup and share it with a friend who was doing me a yogic favor this weekend. I just bought some sweet potatoes at the farmers’ market, and some beautiful swiss chard from a hydroponic grower that’s new to the Easton Farmers’ Market this year.

Potatoes have so many benefits, but mostly, right now, they are a grounding food. We are in winter, contrary to what the thermometer says and the increasingly longer hours of sunlight are telling us. The foods that keep us tethered to winter are root veggies. They grow underground and send their signals out to gather nutrients and strength in order to grow. Winter roots us in similar ways, but we are definitely in a moment of impending emergence and change.

In the meantime, preamble aside, this soup tastes great. Puree or serve it as is—I happen to like the interaction of the flavors when it’s pureed. Something happens with the earthy bitterness of the Swiss chard when it’s pureed with white beans and sweet potatoes. It becomes transformed and less of itself and more of the whole. I know what you are thinking: it looks like baby food.

For this soup, I used purple sweet potatoes and straight up sweets, but you can use what you have on hand. This would be good with Yukon golds, too, but just not as sweet. Sage is the most prominent herb here, which given the yogic element of this soup, seems to make a lot of sense.

I call this Stability Soup, because it is full of grounding foods, because soup is a grounding practice that keeps you both engaged and watchfully detached (chopping and boiling, simmering and waiting, keeping an eye on things from a distance, but trusting it will do its thing while you do something else. And that’s where the magic happens. That’s where you’re on the mat.)

Ingredients

• 1 cup chopped onions

• 2 tablespoons olive oil or butter

• 4 cups chicken or vegetable stock, or water

• 2 cups chopped sweet potatoes, purple or otherwise

• 1 teaspoon dried sage (I used Dalmatian rubbed sage, which is fluffier) or 1 Tablespoon fresh

• 2 cups Swiss Chard, roughly chopped

• Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

Over medium heat in a Dutch oven or other large stockpot, melt the butter. When the butter has melted, add the onions and saute for 4-5 minutes until translucent. Add salt and pepper and stir.

Add in the stock, sweet potatoes and sage, and turn the heat up to medium-high. Cover, and bring to a boil. Once the soup boils, pop the lid so it’s slightly askew, turn the heat down to low, and let it simmer for 15 minutes. Check the potatoes—sweet potatoes cook more quickly than yellow or white potatoes.

Once the potatoes have become tender (they may pierce with a fork), add the Swiss chard and stir gently until it wilts. Season with salt and pepper, to taste, again.

Puree in batches in a high-speed blender, or serve as is.

Serves: 6-8 depending on bowl size and appetite!