Mindful Gardening

Updated: (19/10/2020).

It is well known that the practice of mindfulness promotes the improvement of our quality of life. It makes us capable of enduring stress, face tough situations and also improves our physical health.

Mindfulness is the action of paying attention to the present moment, to what you are thinking, feeling, what happens in your surroundings, it is also part of the practice that you do it in a non-judgemental, critical or analytical way.

We are going to talk about the experience of being mindful while doing gardening. In this case, different than in psychotherapeutic setting, our experiences with mindfulness will be free and spontaneous.

It doesn’t matter how big is your garden. Even if you live in an apartment, where you don’t have a garden and you only have a couple of vases, the work can be done with some adaptations.

Gardening is such a powerful work. You deal with life in many manifestations. To begin with yourself and how you perceive the world around, then there are the plants you want to take care of. Along with all the plants we love there are many other being who meet you there, interacting with your garden. They are pretty much visible like butterflies, bees, beetles, birds and so on. There are those which you can’t see with naked eyes, they are from microscopic dimensions.

As you see, gardening isn’t just a relationship between you and the plants. How does your consciousness react while being in a state of full awareness during this kind of work? This is what we want to learn.

You’ll really get grounded while working in the gardening. In many stages of the work you’ll have to prepare the soil for planting, in a later stadium make sure that the soil is in appropriate condition to facilitate the growth of your plant.

You’ll make choices like, do you want to use seeds or would prefer to get some young plants. One example is lettuce. At home my wife plant then in little flowerpots inside our greenhouse, later on we move them to the vegetables garden. Sometimes we just by the little plants in the garden centre and plant them directly in the vegetables garden.

This is a little example, gardening is very rich in options and possibilities.

Along with all the work that you have to do, you will be trying to be aware, with that quality of awareness which I wrote above. Though it seems easy you’ll notice, if you are a beginner, how difficult it is to not be distracted and having our thoughts wandering either to thing concerned to the past, with all emotions that come together, or, projecting to the future and doing so, feeling anxiety or fear.

How to deal with all this difficulties?

In our posts we will bring some suggestions on how you can transcend this obstacles.

You may at any time contact me so that we can talk about it if you wish. I’m sure we can find time for that.

I hope you enjoy this work.

Messias Nascimento - Psychologist