The Wellness Scoop - Mindfulness, Baking and Slowing Down

Episode Date: September 22, 2020

Pauline Beaumont – therapist, author, mum of six and passionate baker – outlines the importance of slow, calming, mindful activities for nurturing our mental health. We talk about why balancing the frenetic, technology led parts of our lives with activities that allow us to find more presence, creativity and community is so important, why we need to celebrate life’s imperfections, what simple ingredients like flour and water can teach us about life and how emotional eating plays a role in our everyday.   Pauline Beaumont, Bread Therapy See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com. Hi, and welcome to the Deliciously Ella podcast with me, Ella Mills. So I have been getting super organized. We normally record the intros and the episodes actually themselves like right ahead of time but I know the baby's coming imminently. So we'll be getting a little bit ahead of time and I'm recording this a few weeks early so maybe she'll be here maybe she won't when this comes out but I have been slowly easing into shorter work days over the last week or so trying to get everything washed getting everything ready getting the Moses basket out folding up all the teeny tiny clothes already for her and

have to say as someone that pushes themselves probably a bit too hard sometimes I have absolutely loved going a bit slower tuning in a little bit more being a bit more kind of introverted and I guess being a lot more mindful in my days as I kind of lead up to birth and getting myself in the headspace that I would like to be in when we get to that point. And that's really exactly what we're talking about today, mindful ways to feel better and the art of slowing down. And, you know, I know you will have all seen it too, that mindfulness and mindful activities seem to have become more and more popular over the last few years. You know, we've had those massive crazes like mindful coloring books, which I have

to say I got really into. Knitting, baking, you know, obviously sourdough is the coronavirus trend and so much more. And it's really anything to balance out the frantic, sometimes frenetic, hectic technology-led parts of modern life, which we all have as our lives. I think it's important to acknowledge. And today's guest, Paul Pauline Beaumont is a therapist who is really passionate about this about the need to slow down to tune in to be more creative to use our hands our imagination to create play and to share with others in a way that really allows us to be truly present and in doing so create that sense of balance and she's written the most beautiful book called bread therapy which really uses the idea of baking bread the symbol of 2020 also as a symbol for all of this for mindful activities for turning something so simple into something

beautiful and for finding joy and respect and mindfulness in those everyday activities so as well as her work as a therapist, Pauline is also a mum of six, which is quite unbelievable. So she does really know a thing or two about being busy. And she was one of the most calming guests that I have ever had the pleasure of talking to. Honestly, I left feeling like I was floating on a cloud and had such a spring in my step all day. So I'm hoping that you'll get lots of that peace, that calm, that mindfulness into your day two after listening to her. I'm absolutely thrilled to welcome Pauline to the podcast. Thank you so much for joining us today, Pauline.

It's an absolute pleasure. Thank you. So Liz, who's both of our editor, has been talking about your book for so long and just saying it's like so, so special. And obviously it's kind of really resonating I'm sure with people as well because everyone's loving sourdough and cooking and baking and bread making this year and you know flowers like gold dust it feels like in the UK or at least it has been over the last six months but but what I love about the way you talk about bread is that really it's kind

of symbolic of making time for slower, more mindful, more introspective activities that kind of are grounding and relaxing and self-soothing. And I wondered if we could kind of really start there and how it was that Bread for You was able to create this sort of space of calm in the chaos. Sure. Well, it's quite a few years since I started making bread. And now that I've written the book, I think I should remember exactly when I started making bread. But of course, when you start doing something, you don't realise quite how significant it's going to be for you. But I think it was about 15 years ago when I really started in earnest baking bread. And at around that time, I was living quite a frenetic life. And like many of

us, I was too busy. And like many of us, I was just spending so much time in my head. And I just remember having this really strong urge that I wanted to make something real. I wanted to make something with my hands, and I didn't quite know what I wanted to do. And I thought, is it pottery? What do I want? I want to make something. And I started to make bread and I immediately felt this sense of coming home that I'd found something that was all of those things that you just said. It forces you to slow down. It creates these gaps in your day and in your week where you have to concentrate on what you're actually physically doing. And I think that's an important element of it, this reconnecting with our physicality. And you're

absolutely right, it's soothing. There's something about repetitive movements, I think, which is terribly soothing. And grounding is slightly different from that, but massively, massively important. And I suppose in psychological terms, we think of grounding as being a feeling of safety and a feeling of belonging. And again, I think I get that from baking bread. So straight away, I think I realised this was something that I wanted to incorporate into my routine and my life because it felt so positive. And as a therapist, I'm sure you understand this better than most of us, but that actually that's something that we all quite need as a kind of

way to counteract the modern lifestyle. Well, that's absolutely right. I think with so many psychological variables and so many ways of being, balance is the key. So I suppose in our lives, particularly before COVID anyway, there was just so much rushing and so much hurry and not enough time that there's always been this need for slowing down. I suppose that what I'm thinking as I'm saying this is that you can't have too much of a good thing, Ella. And what we need is a balance between comfort and challenge. So finding something that provides both of those things is great. But given that most of us are needing to slow down, this is the sort of activity that works really well. But if we're completely in our comfort zone,

then we're not going to be feeling very fulfilled. And if we're completely pressured and stressed and challenged, then we're not going to function well either. But we need a balance between those two. I absolutely love that. I couldn't agree more. I think it's like anything. It's like you can't be happy if you haven't been sad. And I think life's about creating that perfect balance between the two. You talk about how mindfulness, which is obviously kind of such a, effectively like a buzzword at the moment, how that comes into it and how it allows us to kind of such a effectively like a buzzword at the moment how how that comes into it and how it allows us to kind of tap into our senses and and it seems to me from what I understand that

there's a lot about how tuning into our senses can be incredibly calming in itself and allow us to kind of create presence you're so right absolutely and and you're right it's it's almost become a cliche but that doesn't mean it's not very valuable and it's not very true. And you're absolutely right that focusing on our senses is probably the simplest approach to mindfulness. And something like baking bread, and I talk about this a lot in bread therapy, gives us a perfect opportunity because it's so multisensory to be able to close other things down and focus on our senses. So it does help us to slow down. It helps us to narrow our focus. And when we're making bread, we can focus on the smell of the flour. People might think flour doesn't smell, but actually good stone ground organic flour has the most

wonderful delicate scent. And it varies from spelt to rye to wheat, the sound of the utensils as you're using them, the feel of the dough in your hands, the sound of the oven buzzing, the smell of the bread as it's baking, all of that. If you can keep bringing your attention back to what you can hear and what you can see and what you can feel, then you can't be thinking about what happened last week,

what might happen next year, the silly thing you said at the party you were at the other night if you were at parties, which is, I suppose, not happening these days. I mean, I think our attention is a much underrated commodity, and we take it for granted. But effectively, it's what creates our consciousness. It's what we put our attention on that creates our everyday awareness of the world and ourselves. And it might sound an odd thing to say, given that we multitask so many times, but we can only really properly focus and concentrate on one thing at a time. So mindfulness,

as well as being something that's soothing and that slows us down is an incredible way of developing and training our attention. So this is something we can get better at. We can get better at being able to redirect our attention to what we want to put it on. So sadly, when we're very anxious or if our mood is very low, then our attention will be pulled onto negative thoughts, onto catastrophizing, onto what-ifs. And if we have the ability and we can help ourselves to train it by doing things like mindfulness exercises when we're making bread, then we can choose to say, no, I'm going to not think about that. I'm going to shift my attention onto something else. I'll think about that later. And that, again, is an incredibly

valuable tool to give us more freedom and more control over our own mental state. It's so easy to think these things are completely automatic, but they're not. We do have some power to be able to influence what we're thinking about and what we're feeling, not completely, and we wouldn't want to be able to completely control it. But we sometimes we're freer than we think we are to be able to make these changes. And I think that's a very, very positive thing. Yeah, I completely agree. And the thing that I love, and it's a question I want to ask you about later, but you know, obviously, you've got six children, and you're working, and you've written a book I mean you're as busy as it comes and I've only got one child and one to be but I definitely feel that and I know I find that actually it's

activities that help me slow down and I think sometimes you want to kind of sit quietly and listen to music or meditation but when your mind's really really busy and you've been in that hectic state that can be quite hard whereas chopping and sorting and roasting and cooking and stirring or you know knitting for some people needing the bread like something that that draws you in but that is almost like a distraction from a distraction and I know it's a bit of a cop-out but is it fair to say it's a kind of easier way to get into that zone than possibly saying right I'm going to sit in silence and not look at my phone? Yeah, I think it's a real paradox that quite often the answer to some of the psychological struggles we might have can be found in the physical. So in our behaviour and the things that we actually do. So although I just said before that it's possible to manage

our thinking styles and processes sometimes, it's also possible to shift the way we're thinking and feeling through what we actually do. So you mentioned other sorts of cooking as well, and I absolutely agree that there's something very grounding and soothing. And because of the physical activity and the repetitive nature of some of the cooking processes. Walking is another very good example of something that seems to be highly therapeutic. As a psychological therapist, of course, I'm a very strong advocate for therapy. But over the years, I've come to realize more and more that there are so many things that we can do to help ourselves, which are free, which are highly therapeutic, but are not therapy. And for me, baking bread is up there and other sorts of cooking too, but walking, gardening, knitting,

crafting, doing art and things like that seems to have the same sort of effect. And if somebody's feeling very stressed and really, really struggling, then often what you're drawn to do is go out for a walk, do something like that, as well as phoning friends and other things that we might do. So, so yes, the mind and the body are so absolutely inextricably intertwined. It's not surprising in a way that things that we do with our bodies will have a major impact on our mental state. So you're right. Because I think in the modern world, there is again this sense that like to do something,

you've got to be really good at it. You know, so if you're going to knit, you need to knit like a nine coloured, beautiful turtleneck jumper. You can't just knit for the sake of knitting. And if you're going to bake bread, it's got to be the perfect loaf of bread and it's got to be Instagram friendly

and all the rest of it. And what you talk about is the kind of beauty, actually, especially in learning these sorts of crafts, in celebrating the fact that it's always changing and that there is a sense of imperfection and that actually we really need to kind of enjoy and celebrate the imperfections. That's absolutely it.

And I can remember when I first got my agent and she was asking me about my social media. And I'm afraid I was somebody who was a bit of a refusenik and didn't have any, which raised some eyebrows. And then I started my Instagram account and I was very consciously wanting to present the imperfections as almost as an antidote to the perfect loaf of bread. And one of the things that I repeat in the book is this idea that the imperfections as almost as an antidote to the perfect loaf of bread. And one of the things that I repeat in the book is this idea that the imperfect loaf that we bake, you know, can represent the imperfect life that we all live. And that that's actually a very healthy thing to be

able to recognise that. So perfectionism, which there was a very good podcast of yours recently about, which I loved, I must say, is a cause of so much anxiety and low mood. You know, I work with students and the commonest pattern I see, obviously there's huge variations and everyone's an individual, but there are sort of chain reactions in psychological problems. So somebody might present with anxiety. And then when you start looking, well, what's behind that anxiety? So often, what is behind the anxiety is perfectionism, fear of failure, fear of being judged. And then what's behind that is often a certain amount of low self-esteem. And what's behind that is experiences we might have had in our earlier

life of being judged or criticised or bullied even, or having some difficult life experiences. So perfectionism is up there and anything we can do to counter it is going to be very, very helpful. So there's a bit of a win-win when it comes to recognising this existential reality, which is that we are all flawed. It's normal. It's fine. We all make mistakes. We all say things we regret. We all do things we regret. And the reality is we can't stop and start again, Ella. We have to keep going. And finding a way of living with ourselves and our own imperfections is massively important because it both allows us, as I say, to counter perfectionism, but it also allows us to develop self-compassion. And that is a very, very big building block in our good mental health, being able to be

as kind to ourselves as we would be to a vulnerable child or a dear friend. And the reality is that often we're not. Often we're able to be incredibly compassionate and thoughtful when it comes to other people, but we will be quite harsh when it comes to how we treat ourselves. We all talk to ourselves in our heads all the time. That's completely normal. But sometimes the voice that we talk to ourselves in our heads with is not a kind voice. It's an echo of maybe unkind voices that we've heard in the past. And we might find ourselves telling ourselves that we're stupid, or that we're no good, or that we're ugly, or that we will never have a good friend, or that we'll never be a success, and

those sorts of things. So learning to cultivate a kindly inner voice so that we can feel compassion towards ourselves is massively important. And being able to have that liberation of recognising it's okay, I'm not meant to be perfect. Everyone is like this. We all have flawed lives and have imperfections and it's okay. So yes, I suppose it's one of the central life lessons that I've derived from baking bread because so many things go wrong. I have posted on Instagram a few times some of my favourite photographs of loaves stuck to the tin. I think my very favourite one is of a loaf cut in the middle with a giant elastic band stuck in it. And it was, I can remember when I was clearing up on that particular bake,

thinking, now where's the elastic band off that bag of flour? And oh, well, it'll turn up somewhere. Well, it did turn up, sort of bang in the middle of the loaf, which was quite funny. But these things happen. And if we can practice learning to accept the little things that go wrong, the sunken loaves, the under-proved, the over-proved, the raw in the middle, then it's all good grist to the mill of being able to learn to accept imperfections in ourselves and the things that go wrong in life as well it's all good practice and it also feels like so much of the time we always say oh you know life's about the journey but we kind of say it we don't necessarily mean it and we're always kind of looking to to the next step and the next achievement and I have to say I've really enjoyed trying to learn to bake bread this year and it's definitely been a lockdown activity for me and I really really enjoyed it and I have to say I definitely it was one of my biggest takeaways from it is completely accepting the fact that it's different

every single time and that you've got to enjoy the process of making it because the results are always different and you just can't do it perfectly every time and sometimes it looks perfect and it doesn't taste as good other times it tastes, but it doesn't look great at all. Other times it was literally flat as a pancake. But we loved it anyway. And I think there is a real kind of joy and a beauty in that. Absolutely. And it reminds us how precious food is.

I think that's one of the many downsides of food culture in the Western world is that we've devalued food. When you make your own bread, as you say, even if it's flat as a pancake, even if it's a little bit soggy in the middle, you can still make toast with it. You value it. You've made it with your own hands. You know exactly what's in it. I'm a great advocate of real bread and making bread that doesn't have any artificial additives and preservatives and things like that, which is one of the very important reasons to make your own bread. And as you will know very well, even more so with gluten-free bread, that you know exactly what's

in it. So it's precious. I don't think I've ever thrown away a slice of bread I've made myself. But yet, statistics tell us that when it comes to food waste, bread is one of the most wasted products because it's regarded as such a cheap and disposable commodity when it comes in great big shelf fulls of white, over-refined processed sliced bread in plastic bags. You know, easy come, easy go. Whereas if you make your own bread, you recognise the value of it. And somehow, you know, as well as grounding us psychologically, there's something very profound about recognising the relationship, but literally between the ground and the bread that we make, and the short journey between the soil and the grain and the flour and the bread and us, is it seems a very healthy reminder of how dependent we are on the

earth so that all ties in with this feeling of of preciousness and i every time i get a loaf of bread out the oven it's it's a surprise it's like it's like a present it's it's you never quite know and it's because there are so many variables and you know we we've mentioned before about it being quite a dull feels like an early autumnal day here. And depending on the humidity, the temperature, what the oven's doing that day, what sort of flour you've got, there are so many things that can affect the quality and the sort of loaf that you produce. But as you say, that's absolutely fine. The weather affects your mood in the same way.

And it all just feels so connected. And on that, we actually did a podcast ages ago with the amazing founder of a charity called Oleo. It's all about food waste. And I think it's over 20 million slices that we throw away just in households in the UK every day, which is about 9 billion slices a year. The lack of appreciation is pretty strong there. And one of the things that you mentioned there, which is something that really resonates with me and that I really appreciate is finding, and I think this year has been a really, really great actually for a lot of people. And there's obviously been a huge amount of challenge, but there's also been a great zoning in on taking pleasure in slowing down and the art of slowing down and in appreciating the small things, the simple things.

And I think what's so beautiful about the way you're talking about bread and what I certainly found from learning to bake bread, you're turning flour and water to really simple, simple, simple things into something that is such a joy and creates such a sense of community and connection and bringing together of people and that power in the simplicity is unbelievable. It is. And I think for me, of all the things that we can cook and bake, bread has great, great resonance with us. I think it has such powerful symbolism and culturally and socially and in so many ways. And I think reflecting on it, I think that there's something about bread and the making of bread that represents the primary relationship, something that you're very aware of at the moment, this relationship between the mother and the infant, and this primary relationship, the first thing that happens is the feeding of the child.

And there's something about that that somehow carries through in the symbolism of bread and bread making and giving people bread. It's different from just, you know, the mechanical act of feeding somebody. It's nourishing. It's giving something of yourself. I write in the book about the Buddhist attitude to food in monasteries and how there's this incredibly joyful and respectful attitude to ingredients and food. And the person who's responsible, as I'm sure you know, in a monastery for making the food for the whole community is called the tenzo. And that person is usually quite a senior person because it's not regarded as a menial task. It's regarded as something that's

very, very important. And when you read the texts about the sort of instructions for the tenso, it has this incredible power, this idea that every grain of rice matters, that you treat the most humble, slightly mouldering vegetables with the same respect as you would treat some terribly valuable ingredient. And that by giving your whole self to the process, you're somehow imbuing it with something of yourself. And there's something almost spiritual about it. It might sound a bit corny, but it feels very real to me. And I think that there's something of that in bread making. We put something of ourself into it, and then we give it to somebody else. And that that's very, very powerful. It reminds me, I don't know if you ever read the novel Like Water for Chocolate, that Laura Esquivel novel. And the emotions that the protagonist feels goes literally with her tears into the food and it all tastes horrible because she's so angry or she's so upset. And it feels a little bit like that, that when we make food,

we put something of ourself in it. And that that therefore becomes an expression of something very deep. And as I say, for me, it represents and symbolises this very, very basic human relationship. I absolutely agree. And I love that. And I have to say one of the proudest things when I was in my like peak of bread obsession a couple of months ago, and I was trying to bake every day to just learn because I was in my like peak of bread obsession a couple of months ago and I was trying to bake every day to just learn because I was so enjoying the process of learning and trying new things and feeling like I was taking steps in in my understanding of the process of baking and I we went to stay with my dad he just moved house with his now husband and I was thinking

oh what what can I take them that would be nice? And I thought, you know what, I'm going to bake them bread because this is a three day process. I'm going to, you know, put that time, that TLC into it. And the morning before we drove down, I baked the loaf and I wrapped it all up. And it was my favorite gift I've, I think, almost ever given anyone because I was like, wow, there's so much time and effort in this bread. I don't know, it was such a lovely thing to be able to to give that to someone and share that with someone and that sense of connection she said was huge but one of the things I'm sure people will possibly be thinking is I couldn't agree more I absolutely love what you're saying in an ideal world I would would take that time, that love, that respect for everything. But in reality,

I'm juggling 7000 things. And I just need to like chuck something on the table or in the oven. And I don't have time for these kind of mindful activities. When am I meant to do them? And obviously, you're a mother of six and you're working and you've written a book and I mean you've got certainly sounds at least like you've got your hands very very very full and I wondered if you had any kind of thoughts in that like how and also what you kind of recommend to any patients and people you work with is how do we find time for these more mindful activities the things that give us that sense of balance and counteract the busyness? That's such a good question. And I don't want to give the impression I'm too much of a saint because my children are mostly grown up now. But it's absolutely true that the pressures on,

and it is on women in particular at home, to be doing everything and there's no respite. All I can say is that with so many people I work with, with myself, the importance of self-care cannot be overemphasized. It's a complete false economy to burn out, to be exhausting yourself. And sometimes, you know, the period is where we've got no choice and it's just completely full on. But part of good self-esteem, part of having self-compassion is being able to have the quiet assertiveness needed to be able to ask for what you need. And that creating this time, you need to consciously do it. If you wait until there is a spare hour to start

baking a loaf of bread, it ain't going to happen. Recognising that your own self-care and creating these little pools of quietness or slowness is actually essential and necessary for your mental health and your wellbeing means that you need to carve that out, whether it's getting up earlier or being brave enough to ask somebody else if they'll have the children for an hour or organising things in such a way that you're not always at the end of the list, that when everybody else has had their needs met, then you might think about getting your needs met, but you're so exhausted that you can't even sleep. There's something cultural, isn't there, about the way we sometimes think about motherhood. And I think quite mistakenly, it's sometimes associated with things like self-sacrifice and being so devoted

to everybody else that you're not looking after yourself properly. But that doesn't work. And I think that very importantly, it's not a very good example to set our daughters or indeed our sons. So recognising that if we don't do anything, then we won't have those little periods of rest and respite. So we have to do something consciously to try and create them. And that sometimes that means we have to ask for what we need because otherwise we're really running the risk of not being any good for anybody because we're just so so exhausted yeah completely I definitely find that and and I've definitely had to have a lot of conversations with myself actually last night I was in the office yesterday afternoon and then my husband and I decided we would get someone to babysit Sky, our daughter,

and we would actually go out and have dinner together and take some time for the two of us before the next little one arrives. And part of me was kind of wracked with guilt. And you just think, actually, oh, you've got to do it. It's so, so important. And it's amazing the energy and love that you then have to give when you just take. We were literally out for an hour, that hour is just magic. And one of the other things that in bread therapy you talk about is actually the link between self-care and emotional eating as well, which feels like a very interesting link and a really important thing to talk about. Yes. So I mean, I do mention in the book that if anyone has seriously disordered eating, then that's the sort of thing that very definitely needs professional help. And going to a doctor is the first stage for that. But for many of us, we've developed habits over the years of using eating, not just to nourish us and to give us pleasure, but to serve another function. And it's very, very helpful to work out

if we are finding ourselves using food to try and cope with some psychological distress, to understand what is going on, because it's not always the best way of dealing with, say, anxiety or, say, feeling upset or feeling low. And it's something that's the sort of habit that can grow right from childhood. But with all of these things, it's never too late to change it. So if we, for example, were to recognise that if we're feeling a bit upset and low, that we tend to comfort ourselves by eating and that we find we're eating too much or eating a lot of processed food or something that we know is not very good for us, then the

helpful thing to do is to ask ourselves, so why am I doing this? Why am I eating all these biscuits at 11 o'clock at night? And to work out, okay, so I'm feeling a bit low and I'm sort of rewarding myself or I'm trying to give myself a present. I'm trying to make myself feel better by being kind to myself. So having established that, we can then ask ourselves, so are there any other maybe more adaptive ways I can find of giving myself a present, of being kind to myself, of soothing myself? And giving ourselves a wider repertoire of things

that we might do. And it might be that, you know what, I'm going to curl up in a blanket and watch a film, or it might be that I'm going to have a lovely hot bath, or it might be that I'm going to go for a walk or whatever it is, so that we have other options when it comes to how we comfort ourselves and how we soothe ourselves. Absolutely and again I think it's exactly how those mindful activities obviously bread being the kind of symbol that we're using here comes back into it and it feels like the need for these nurturing activities comes up time and time and time again. One of the things that I talk about a lot in the book which again is one of these key building blocks of our good mental health is, which again, mindfulness is a step towards is developing this inner observer. So

it's very true to say that we are not our thoughts and we are not our emotions. And there's a part of us that can be observing what's going on. So it's that inner observer who would be saying, oh, there you go again, Pauline, eating a huge pile of toast and you're not really hungry. And what's going on here? What are you feeling? What are you thinking? So you're noticing what you're doing so that you're not just an automatic pilot, that you can recognise that maybe you're feeling stressed or you're feeling upset or you're feeling angry or whatever it is. And then to be able to think, well, what's going through my mind? What am I thinking? I'm thinking it's not fair that such and such happened. And now I'm comforting myself with eating all of this toast. So by bringing those things into your conscious

awareness, you're buying the freedom to be able to do something differently rather than just being an automatic pilot. And this inner observer is absolutely key. And it helps us in so many ways to be able to monitor what we're doing, realize what we're doing, because when we want to make any changes psychologically, then the starting point, I suppose, of any sort of change is to know where we are now, what's happening now, what am I thinking, what am I doing, what's going on here. And for many of us, we can get stuck in automatic pilot where we're not really reflecting and considering what we're thinking and what we're doing and what we're feeling. So being able to monitor that and notice it allows us to then be able to create a little

bit of space and time in our own minds to think, oh, hang on, do I want to keep on doing the same old, same old, or do I want to do something differently? I feel like I'm going to listen to this episode about 700 times. I think you're the ultimate voice of reason and wisdom. And yeah, no, I couldn't agree with you more. And one of the last things I wanted to ask you about that you also touch on is the power of creativity as well and that to me definitely feels like something that again we lose sight of that playfulness and creativity and new activities and hobbies and doing something just for the fun of it feels like something as adults that we're not very good at doing and it's slightly for me taps into what we talked

about earlier about the fact that it feels like you can't paint or craft or bake if you're not good at it. And A, you'll never be good at it if you don't do it. And B, it doesn't matter. But I wondered if we could talk about the power of creativity and why that really is actually so important. I think it's massively important. And I think you're right to ally it with play. Sometimes when I'm kneading dough, it reminds you of things like Play-Doh and things that you've done with your children or did yourself when you were younger. And I think one of the many joys of having children is it gives us permission to play again. It's so, so important. And there's something about creativity, which, you know, I said earlier how

I didn't really know what I wanted to do, but I had the urge to make something. There's something about creating with our hands, or indeed writing music or making art or knitting, that we're putting something outside of ourselves. very, very deep psychological importance and resonance and goes back to this primary relationship again between mother and infant and the way that the child develops a sense of self from having their own reactions and emotions mirrored back to them by an attuned parent. And we don't all have the perfect upbringing that psychologists might like us to have. So we all have various deficits in how well our caregivers were attuned to us and how well they were able to mirror us and give us a sense of our own autonomy and agency and individuality. Creativity and making things as an adult, I think is one of the ways that we can recreate that relationship. So yes, it's fun. Yes, it's a wonderful way of expressing ourselves.

But also, it's, I think, serves this very, very fundamental need that we're creating something that is of ourselves we are putting it into the world and people respond to it and react to it and it reflects back to us something of ourself so i think it's there's nothing very very fundamental about it it's serving a need that we all have and i think it's one of the reasons why making things and being creative is just so very deeply satisfying. That was lovely the way you described putting all that time and effort into making the loaf for your father. And absolutely, you're putting something of yourself into it. You're putting it

out in the world. You're offering it to somebody else and he's loving it and he's telling you it's delicious and it's feeding back to you something positive of yourself. So making bread for me, I'm always experimenting. I'm always trying different combinations. And it doesn't always work. I've been making some gluten-free bread, you'll be glad to hear. And in some ways, there's a bit more precision required. You can't interchange ingredients in quite the same way. But you can still think of

new things to include and maybe put some seeds in or some nuts in and, oh, I just love it. And I remember once asking a mathematician friend, I don't think they ever got around to answering, if they could tell me how many permutations there would be with, say, three different raising methods of making bread, five different flours, and 10 different things you could add, like sunflower seeds or pumpkin seeds or flax seeds or whatever it was. And it's almost infinite. So even with that limited number of different ingredients, the number of permutations, the number of variations you could come up with is almost beyond calculation, certainly to me. So there's never an end to the experimentation and the creativity that you can try. it brings me back to this imperfection idea and one of the other metaphors which I mentioned I think in the book this idea that it's like climbing a mountain that you know you're never going to get to the top of but you're still going to keep climbing because it's just so great

and it's like that you know you're never going to make the perfect loaf there's always going to be something else to try and you're always going to be going on learning. And all of those things, creativity and carrying on learning, we know are very, very good for our brain health and to keep us fulfilled and to keep us happy. So it just does feel like there are so many rewards that we can reap from baking our own bread. Yeah, I absolutely love it and i i really can't thank you enough pauline for sharing so much wisdom with us today honestly it's just incredible something as you say that we can really take for granted and and it can feel like a

commodity to some extent bread flour and water can actually symbolize just so much and and that art of slowing down in tuning into these sorts of activities can just be so powerful and come to represent so much of what I think really we all need in our lives you just put it so beautifully and so eloquently and I couldn't recommend bread therapy more it's also got some delicious bread recipes in it as well but just huge thank you for your time I'll put the details for the book in the notes below the episode and really hope you've all enjoyed it and you can get baking. Thank you very much.

My pleasure. We will see you guys back here next Tuesday. Have a lovely week, everyone. Bye. You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad heard only in Canada. Reach great Canadian listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libsyn Ads. Email bob at libsyn.com to learn more. That's B-O-B at L-I-B-S-Y-N dot com.