Welcome
As a human; as a person concerned about the whole picture; as someone who cares about the people, and the environment, around you; as a mother or parent--as a descendant, and an ancestor in the making; as someone who wants harmony, abundance, and justice now and in the future; as an individual who values the thousands of people who made the path for you to be here today (your ancestors); and as someone inspired to dream and appreciate all that is present within you:
I invite you here for a pause to drink up and assimilate a bowl, or two, of cosmic soup.
May you be inspired, embodied with freedom and agility, and open to the wisdom around you.
With care,
--Ashley
What’s this soup and what’s in it?
The Cosmic Soup Bowl is a virtual space dedicated to informing, reflecting, and connecting others to resources for healing, culture, & motherhood.
If you’ve ever wondered what’s in a name here at The Cosmic Soup Bowl (an acquired taste for sure), today I’m offering a tour in the kitchen.
The online spaces where I’ve shared various reflections, musings, horoscopes, and even academic forms of writing, have shape-shifted and undergone multiple transformations in name and platform location. The Cosmic Soup Bowl seems to have stuck the longest, even though I integrated Heaven and Earth Somatics into the Cosmic Soup Bowl site a few years ago, and created a separate social media account under HAES once I was into my second year of the Somatic Experiencing program.
So why the Cosmic Soup Bowl? It’s an interpreted reflection of the term Hundùn.
In a nutshell, Hundùn is a word cut from the same cloth as Dao.
Everything, everywhere, all at once
The former term, stems from a Chinese mythology about everything happening—and existing—all at once. The past, present, and future are held within Hundùn, a mythological cosmic egg-like entity with no anthropomorphic features (no eyes, mouth, ears, or other orifices to allow the dense, muddled, yolky substance within to escape), yet which knows how to dance and sing.
It is the picture of primordial chaos, and every possible sense of orderliness that could be imagined, or conceived of, rests in that messy, undifferentiated state of the universe, before heaven and earth were separated.
As innocent and full of potentiality as a child, Hundùn is similar to a soup that has a little bit of everything in it. There’s no recipe!
Word play
Linguistically, Hundùn (primordial chaos) shares a common etymological origin with Huntun (huntun，餛飩，馄饨) meaning "wonton; dumpling soup" which is written with the radical for “eat".
That said, the English word “wonton” is a loanword from the Cantonese pronunciation wan tan.
The playgrounds I’ve spent my life digging my hands into, rolling around and getting messy in, range from martial arts, dance, yoga, singing, and writing. The essence of tea rituals, astrology, acupuncture, Chinese medicine and cosmology, have nourished and sustained me the way humans thrive on sunlight, water, and food from the land.
These elements of play and sustenance are my wonton soup. It is rich and sharing it brings me so much pleasure. This is also what informs my practice of somatics with people who are actively recovering their nervous system from chronic stress, burnout, and trauma, and cultivating greater capacity to access their life’s energy.
Okay, so how do these words Hundun and wonton connect?
Open wide
"The undifferentiated soup of primordial chaos. As it begins to differentiate, dumpling-blobs of matter coalesce. With the evolution of human consciousness and reflectiveness, the soup would have been adopted as a suitable metaphor for chaos.” (Mair, V)
Sip slowly
Other variations of the Hundun myth view the state of muddled chaos as villainous, shameless, vile, ignorant, and obstinate. Others warn about the way the human intellect dissects and drains the life force that is behind potential through our ideas and ideals about aesthetics. It’s a cautionary tale about speed, and the way we try to control our environment and others to reflect what we perceive by forcing labels and ideas of “normal” through social identity.
There’s no rush or need to change or to become. It’s okay to be as you are. When you feel into what’s under all the false pretenses and befriend your animal body, you’re closer to your nature and to the cosmic soup that has nourished you the way it nourishes all humans. You might have to slow down to really taste it, though.
The polarity between the former interpretation and the one being offered from the Cosmic Soup bowl is stark in the same way that these ingredients that have coalesced together in this space tend to attract love or hate. The views and flavors served here seem to be quite polarizing, yet
I can’t stop myself from cooking when I’m hungry…and I have a big appetite.
I intend to offer reverence to and reflect on our origins and Nature in a world where the polished or “finished” product is put on a pedestal. In a kitchen, and in our lives, the magic often unfolds in the messiness (whether it is hidden from our awareness or ritualized and embraced through embodied practices and acceptance).
In the way that soup and tea have been universally served as healing, and comforting, tonics, so too is it most delicious to share this nourishment together. The complexity of the ingredients unfold in surprisingly satisfying and wholesome ways and taste better together than on their own too.