Cool as a Cucumber (July 2025 Newsletter)
Photo Credit: Sipra Pimputkar. These cucumbers are growing from seed in a pot on my deck. Twisting and turning to attach the vines somewhere, anywhere.
It’s a good idea to make cucumbers a primary ingredient in your diet during these hot days of summer. It maintains an internal temperature that is 20 degrees cooler than our body temperature and is a good resource to nourishment and fluids at the same time. All without sodium and sugars like most sodas. Diabetes? Keep those cukes handy at all times. They’ll also cleanse your liver at the same time and provide vitamins like B, K, at only 8 calories per half cup of fruit. They have been found to be antioxidant scavengers destroying free radicals that attack our immune system. Did you know that they have been found to be especially effective against women’s breast cancer? That they ease diverticulitis and reduce blood sugar? Want to lose weight? Try the cucumber everyday getting about 6 servings a day.
Cucumbers provide a model for our lives as well. They will grow in poor soil, if rich loam is not to be found. The tendrils want to grow upwards but will twist and turn every which way just to find a firm post to wrap its vines around when needed. Our own direction is based on our ultimate goal. Upward and onward, using whatever provides stability in the moment. The ultimate is always the fruit. It is the fruit that provides satisfaction because that was the long-term intent. So it is with our lives. To create the fruit as perfectly as we can, to share it with others and fulfill our destiny. Good fruit produces good seed. We must all be allowed the time to grow, learn, experiment, make mistakes and correct our ways. Sometimes we lose our way but learn from others and know within ourselves what we want and how to get there. Within ourselves the truth is already resident.
Yoga Sutra 1:12
Abhyasa-vairagyabhayam tan-nirodah
The restriction of the fluctuations of the mind is achieved through practice and dispassion.
One tends to lean towards what is already embedded in the mind or what one has inherited, been conditioned to, or discovered for themselves.
Namasté,
sipra