Kissed by the Sun
A Mediterranean Way to Summer
The first thing I remember about summer is the taste of it. A crisp wedge of cold watermelon with no plates eaten while still in our wet bathing suits on the balcony of our summer home after a morning swim. Tomatoes still warm from the manavi that was going through the village in his truck to sell his produce, split open with our hands juicy and unsalted. Lunch at the local taverna that began at one and somehow stretched until four when friends kept showing up and joining— fresh fish, horiatiki, vlita, bread, more bread, my son barefoot all day long running around with his friends, the cicadas loud enough to fill any silence. Nobody hurried. The food was the day.
I think about those summers often, especially in May, when the days here in the Bay Area start to stretch and the light begins to remind me of home.
In Koufonissia with my Bestie Miki
We talk a lot now about “wellness” — and I love that word, I have built my whole life around it — but the truth is, in the mediterranean we were practicing wellness long before anyone called it that. They just called it summer. They called it lunch. They called it “go for a swim.” They called it talk going for coffee with a friend after a long summer nap, that coffee date lasted usually at least three hours….
There was a wisdom in the way Mediterranean people moved through June, July, August — slow, sun-warmed, gathered around tables, in and out of the sea — that I am still trying to honor, decades later, on the other side of the world.
This June, I want to share three of those old summer practices with you. They are not products you can buy. They are rhythms. And they are still some of the most powerful tools I know for living well.
The Table as Medicine
In Greece, lunch was never just lunch.
It was the whole afternoon. The fish came out of the pan, the bread came out of the oven, somebody opened a melon, and we sat for hours. Then dessert and coffee followed. Conversations wandered. Someone always cried at some point — laughing or arguing, sometimes both. The food was simple: olive oil, tomatoes, cucumber, fish, feta, vlita greens, lots of lemon, bread.
What I understand now, is that those lunches were not just feeding us. They were nourishing us — body, yes, but also nervous system, also belonging, also memory. The slow meal is one of the original wellness practices, and the Mediterranean has been protecting it for thousands of years.
I bring this home in small ways. An afternoon long coffee break with a friend, just catching up on life. Watermelon cut into wedges, tomatoes from the farmer’s market, with some crumbled feta and good olive oil (thank you Lejla for sharing some from your friend’s olive trees). It is not the same — nothing is the same as a long August lunch in Kiparissi— but it is enough. The body remembers.
The Power of Pause
Long quiet afternoons in Amorgos during summer
In the village, between two and five p.m., the village shut down.
Shutters closed. The grown-ups disappeared into cool rooms. Children were told, gently and not-so-gently, to be quiet. The afternoon was sacred. You rested.
I have been trying — for years, decades, honestly — to bring this back into my California life. I wrote in February that the siesta is something I’m “working on.” That is still true. The Bay Area is not built for the afternoon pause. The emails do not stop. The calendar does not honor the heat.
But I am more convinced than ever that the siesta is one of the most radical acts of self-care available to us. It is rest in the middle of the day, not at the end of it. It is choosing to be unproductive for sixty minutes because your body needs it. It is the Power of Pause in its oldest, most beautiful form.
This summer, my invitation to you — and to myself — is to take one true afternoon pause each week. No phone. No screen. A cool dark room. Try it once. See how the day changes.
The Sea as Therapy
If I were tired, sad, restless, anxious, heartbroken — I would always go for a swim.
It sounds simple. It is simple. But it is also true. There is something about saltwater, sun, and floating that resets a body in a way nothing else does. The Greeks have known this forever. The sea is medicine.
When the week gets heavy, I find water — maybe it's a salt water pool, sometimes it's a shower. If you live somewhere without a sea, find water anyway. It works.
Overlooking the Aegean on a trip to Kiparissi
Passing It On
I should say — these are not only my memories.
For many summers, I took my son to our summer home in Kiparissi Lakonias. He grew up in California — schedules, homework, screens, the whole thing — and then, every June or July, we boarded a plane and crossed the world to a small village on the Aegean, and within forty-eight hours he was a different child.
He was barefoot. He was outside. He played until the light gave up. He sat through long lunches he would have refused at home. He learned, without anyone teaching him, that food tastes better when nobody is rushing. He came back to California each fall a little more himself — a little slower, a little browner, a little more Greek.
I think about that often. Whatever else those summers were or were not, they gave him that. And they reminded me that the Mediterranean way is not only mine — it is a gift you can hand to the people you love, even briefly, even far from home.
This June
Amorgos overlooking the Aegean on our Big Blue Retreat from our Balcony
You do not need a flight to Greece to live this way. You need a long lunch. You need permission to nap. You need, on the days you can find it, water.
This June, let it be simple. Take the pause. Find the water. Let the sun touch your skin, the way it was meant to. Eat the fruit your body is asking for. Call the friend you have been meaning to call and tell her you miss her.
If a longer pause is calling you — a real one, away from the everyday — I would love to have you with us in our DEEP DIVE RETREAT in California SUR with our Lead Instructor Caramia Tambornino. There is sun. There is water. There are long meals. It is exactly the kind of summer I am describing but in November right before the holiday bustle.
But the truth is, you do not have to wait for a retreat to come home to yourself. You can start today, on your own porch, with whatever the day is offering you.
Kissed by the sun. Slowed by the table. Healed by the water. That is the Mediterranean way to summer — and it has been waiting for us all along.
Till next month, with all my love,
Katerina
