I usually take on one new hobby per break. This winter break, I happened to get super into fermenting.

I’d already experimented with kombucha, yoghurt, and simple pickles in the past, but suddenly my parents found our kitchen at home this winter full of bubbling bowls and jars and crocks (my fault entirely).

Now that I’m back in Ithaca I’ve committed to experimenting seriously with kombucha, sauerkraut, sourdough, and home-brewed beer.

The beautiful process of fermentation is dependent on the variety of healthy bacterias and yeasts in our home environments. When lactobacillus, the bacteria on the vegetal surfaces, consumes sugar in cabbage it produces lactic-acid in turn protecting cabbage from harmful bacterias. Lactobacillus also helps acetobacillus and wild yeast to ferment sugars in dough, which in a few days develops into a complex and nuanced sour flavor.

Kombucha and beer require the introduction of specific cultures and yeasts. To make kombucha, a brewer adds a premade kombucha SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast) to a large, open mouthed vessel of sweetened black tea. In a week, during the first fermentation, the bacteria and yeast convert the sugar in the tea to gluconic and acetic acid. Similarly for beer, after adding hops and yeast to a sugary liquid from malted grains called wort the mixture ferments for a week in a bucket. The time allows the yeast to feast on the sugar and turn the concoction into a palatable alcoholic beverage.

After the first fermentation of kombucha and beer, brewers typically subject their mixtures to a second fermentation to continue developing flavor and add carbonation. The initially fermented beer or kombucha is transferred to a smaller, anaerobic container while bacteria and yeast feed further on the remaining sugars.

At this point, the risk of a huge mess looms. A sealed container with ambitious yeast and bacteria, which are constantly converting sugar into carbon dioxide, can cause explosions — soaking the floor of your dark closet in sugary, stickiness.

Brewers address this problem with two techniques: burping their bottles and using airlocks.

During the second ferment it is common for someone making kombucha to daily check their bottles. As they notice the caps bowing outward with pressure, they untwist the cap just enough to let the pent up gas out, and then tightly screw the cap back on.

A tool designed for the same purpose, an airlock is attached to the cork in a jug of beer. Pressurized CO2 pushes up a cap inside the outer airtight chamber, allowing out only the pressure that needs to be released to keep the jug from exploding. The airlock maintains a balance of release and pressure, while also protecting the beer from aggressive or harmful outside bacteria.

And here I will — finally — make the connection to violin teaching.

It occurs to me, as I prepare to start school again on Monday, that human beings are a little like the vats of fermenting liquids tucked away in my closet. We allow healthy influences, both naturally found in our environment and specifically transplanted into our lives, to transform us into something new. With time, the process happens pretty naturally.

However, in order to stay healthy (keep from exploding), we need to release the pressure pent up within us from the fermenting process.

That pressure release will look different for every individual, like the difference between kombucha burps and an airlock chamber for a beer jug. But what is necessary is a tried and true process of releasing. A process which needs to be treated with the respect because of the importance it has in the health of our lives.

A brewer would never neglect their brews without a system for handling pressure release, and we should never neglect the health of our development by not setting up regular opportunities for stress release and recovery.

Through trial and error I have found three activities that faithfully bring me back to myself, releasing the pressures of stress, fear, adversity, and fatigue.

They are

• spending time in nature,
• practicing violin,
• and meditating.

When I’m neck deep in the complexity of a school semester, I know I can find solace walking in the woods, giving my undivided attention in a practice room, and sitting silently with myself. Furthermore, I know that setting up times in advance to be outside, practice undisturbed, and meditate will guarantee the steady release of pressure required to keep me healthy.

Looking forward, as I transition more and more into the professional suzuki violin teacher I want to be, it is important I also plan to incorporate these ‘airlocks’ into the fabric of my life.

Nature, practice, and meditation can be the foundation of my life if I choose to make them the foundation. I want to live as often and as deeply in nature as possible, which has led me to a national park every year and to find an unblemished property to build my own dwelling on. I am pursuing a graduate degree in violin performance and violin pedagogy, which requires I spend time daily with my instrument. Every day I commit myself more and more to the practice of zen, which hinges upon the art of seated meditation.

So as I look at my brewing tools, and the bowed caps of my kombucha bottles, I see the opportunity and the necessity for all of us to develop the tools of pressure release.

Yours might be grilling the perfect steak, or making homemade gifts for others, or doing social organizing. You might need to take the time to read the news every morning, or travel to a foreign country twice a year, or write a personal blog. Is journaling where you find your release? Or running? Or Netflix?

Whatever it is, figure out what revives you, what excites you, what restores you. And once you do, commit to those actions as the necessary airlocks in your life. Implement them daily, and plan your life in accordance. You will be a better Suzuki violin teacher as a result.

Take a lesson from the process of fermentation, and save your metaphorical closet floor from pent up, pressureful explosions. Plan ahead, and the bubbly, fermented nectar of life is yours.