Soul Gardening
“Garden Serenity” ~ Photo by Maggie Sale
Creating your own personal space for cultivating inner peace and serenity.
I love gardens. I love sitting in them, walking through them, and visualizing them during meditation. I love beautiful flowers, trees, and the perfume they can create! I enjoy watching birds and butterflies dancing among the foliage. I love everything about them except the actual gardening part.
I really don’t like gardening. I don’t enjoy planning a garden, digging in the garden, pulling weeds, or really just about anything to do with working in the garden.
Lately I’ve been contemplating this resistance to gardening as I think about my future garden. I live in a new house in a new subdivision, with a completely “blank slate” plot of land to garden. It’s small and manageable, just what I wanted. Yet every time I think about planning the garden I resist it.
I know and appreciate the numerous health benefits of gardening, both for our physical and emotional well-being. Gardening involves being outside and communing with nature. It involves bending and stretching both body and mind and, most importantly in my opinion, it is good for the soul.
I’ve been playing with a lot of metaphors lately as I practice my own soul gardening. A garden can be a beautiful metaphor for life. Here are some ways that I see gardening as a metaphor for life:
They are all unique. They can be big or small, wild or neat.
They require planning. Where should each plant go? Do they need sun or shade?
You can’t plant everything so you need to prioritize. What is absolutely essential to your garden? What would be nice but can wait a little while? Do you want vegetables (practical and nourishing) or plants that are more whimsical and pretty? Or both?
Good soil is essential to healthy growth. Do you have good foundational soil? Are there good growing conditions? What plants grow best in your climate?
They need tending. Without care, gardens can get out of control very quickly. Weeds can take over quickly if we don’t watch out.
They require flexibility. We can’t control the weather. Can we go with the flow?
They require patience. It takes time to grow a beautiful garden.
Can you come up with anything else?
What does your garden look like? What would you like to change? How does your garden, or your vision of a garden, relate to your life? Get out your journal and explore!
Metaphors are a very useful tool to help us solve a wide range of problems in our lives. When you play with them regularly you’ll experience a lot of “aha!” moments.
As I reflect on this exercise and how it relates to my own life, I’m reminded that I see myself heading into a new phase with new possibilities. I’m going to have a brand new, beautiful garden. I know I want my garden to be simple and peaceful. When I think of one word to capture that space, it’s “serenity”.
How does your garden grow?
Thank you to my good friend, Maggie Sale, who provided the inspiration for this blog with her beautiful “Garden Serenity” photograph. If you want to see more of Maggie’s pictures, you can find her work at www.maggiesale.ca.
I’d love to hear from you so please send any comments or questions to me at sharon@sharonashtonmindfulyoga.com. Feel free to share this email with anyone else who may be interested.
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