PEACHES & CREAM SMOOTHIE CRUMBLE PARFAIT.

Body had a very intense run of the show (of my life, that is) for many, many years. I grew up dancing and doing Pilates and yoga and performing almost every weekend of the school year. In college, I deepened my practice of yoga and began studying to be an instructor. After many child and teenage years spent dedicated to the rigorous cultivation of my mind, I allowed myself to go beyond mind into body.

I taught yoga for seven years, harmonium and veganism and mala beads and ascetic meditation practices and all. I had lots and lots of quasi-tantric, breathwork-heavy sex. (I say this in the most frank way possible, knowing that my dad reads this. Hi Dad. Is this awkward yet?)

Soon though, all things body failed. My mother—ostensibly the healthiest yogini anyone knew—was diagnosed with cancer and died. An injury stopped me from practicing the physical components of yoga, and I realized that many of the philosophical components were not actually my own truths. They were platitudes I had inherited or coopted. They were ways of making myself someone other than who I was.

So I let go of all of it. All the pretense. All the asana. All the labels. All the rigidity. And, with much work, I stripped everything away until what was left was just me. My mind. My heartbeat. My cells. My body in the world. Without answers. Open.

I returned to the first and most constant love I knew: Writing. I wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote. I discovered what it meant to be fucking honest and fucking angry. To fucking swear. To deal with rafts and rafts of grief. To get to know my family all over again. To be real.

Body took the back burner. I still walked and swam and did Pilates and ate food that was healthful and fresh and beautiful. But I didn’t have a practice (like yoga) that came before all else. I felt so much more sane, so much more free.

This month, though, I wanted some of my old strength back. I would return to Pilates. And of course, me being me, I would go to a Pilates studio that kicked my ass and played Drake while doing so. Flash forward to last Friday: Me on the reformer (the reformer is my boyfriend) at Pilates Platinum, beading droplets of sweat and praying for divine intervention.

I spent the weekend in utter shock as obliques and intercostals and adductors yelped and yipped and hollered their disbelief at me. I was unspeakably sore. I didn’t look so different on the outside after these years of mind, but the inner map of my musculature had a much different (read: weaker) terrain. I wanted more. I wanted to be strong.

With a mind much more stable, I am getting back to body. It feels so good, too. I don’t have the same ego wound up in my physical performance as I did when I practiced and taught yoga. I know I’m not the best in the room, and I am so, so fine with that. It feels good to learn, to be alive to the subtleties, to go slow.

This smoothie crumble parfait is vegan but rich with luscious summer flavor, as well as plant power and protein to refuel after a good workout (mental or physical, of course). It’s also just extravagant enough to be served as a whippy, frozen summer dessert.

Click over to Intuitive Eating with Kale & Caramel to get the recipe!