Who knew vitamin D could change your whole life?

It’s Winter in South Africa, and this one has been working hard to let us know just how cold it can get. It has been a wet and windy one, which we are not accustomed to up in Gauteng. Our Winters are usually a formality at best, a tick box exercise thrust upon us by the ticking of time and not necessarily by freezing temperatures. We are used to sunny mornings and afternoons, followed by occasionally chilly evenings, which necessitate light coats and jackets. Not this time. It is the end of July, and this post finds me bundled, gloved and beanied up while sitting indoors as we weather a weekend filled with rain and hail. Even though she (the sun) has been elusive this particular weekend, she has been the highlight of my life the past few weeks.

I have been experimenting with slow(er) mornings for a while now, but something clicked in July which made the whole attempt worthwhile. Up to that point, my version of slow only meant not exposing my brain and eyeballs to the digital scream that emanates from my phone screen first thing in the morning. No checking of notifications or scrolling until I had at the very least visited the bathroom, brushed my teeth, done my self-cav affirmations in the mirror and downed the chronic medication that keeps me normal. On most days, I am able to avoid looking at my phone until I reach campus and sit down to power on my PC. By which time I would have also stopped for a coffee along the way. Usually, enough time I told myself, to engage in human-ing before exposing my nervous system to the horrors of the day that lie in wait once I give the notifications centre the space to spread itself thick, overrunning the hour or two of calm maintained by my ignorance.

The Winter Break at work means I get to stop teaching for a bit, and usually I use it to travel, but this year I chose to sit still. To plan nothing, go nowhere and be moved only by the whims that popped up instinctively from one hour to the next. The added layer which proved to be a gamechanger, included a 10-minute meditation and sunning for hours, after my usual morning routine. And I am not exaggerating when I say hours, I averaged a minimum of two to four hours in the sun every day I practised this routine. Some days the sun was warm enough to necessitate a wardrobe change into shorts and lighter tops, which I did happily, returning to the same spot to absorb even more natural vitamin D. It’s probably prudent at this point to raise the fact that I do have a vitamin D deficiency. I have been medicating the issue for almost eight years now, but that little purple pill I take once a week has nothing on the feel of taking UV rays straight into my skin.

The ritual of direct sunlight and grounding on the faded grass in between helped usher in a kind of rest and restoration I have never achieved but desperately needed. `It helped me sleep better, maintain a balanced mood, and truly feel at ease. Not as pretence or reassurance of being ‘okay’ but actually being so. I would even go as far as saying that the last few weeks felt like living in the beloved Bobby Hebb song below. Sadly, this routine has already been disrupted by going back to work. I will try to hold on to as much of it as is possible but the machine requires less groundedness to grease its wheels.