Tending our inner garden is a practice that we can use to journey inward and gain healing and restoration. What is it in your inner garden that you value? What is it you hold dear? In your garden, what is it that you are nurturing for yourself and others? Maybe it’s compassion, listening to a calling, or finding peace with yourself exactly as you are. Maybe it’s time for you to plant new seeds, water the soil, smell the new sprouted flowers, or maybe it’s time to lay on the grass and soak up the peace of your inner garden.
Your garden lives in you and it deserves to bask in the rays of the sun. The world and all that is around us is constantly changing. We do not have to be stuck in repeated patterns and behaviors, we can tend to our inner gardens, to our hearts, say no to what no longer works and find a new way forward. This can be as simple as a new thought or feeling state.
The idea that we are stuck is a thought. It is a thought. One minute you are stuck then the next minute you are unstuck. A thought or feeling can be witnessed and we can then decide whether or not we want it to be expressed, how we want to express it, or if we want to be removed from our inner garden. We might even ask ourselves, “Can this thought be pruned like a rose? Can I place this thought into the compost and bring forth a new thought, behavior or way of being? What is it that really wants to grow here?” This is our life and we can find support in creating our inner reality.
We do not have to live in a garden of weeds, we can pull the weeds, pull the old thoughts and patiently allow the right new thought to grow and make its way from the soil. We can water the new seeds we plant. This can shift its energy and become anew and our garden can be everything we dream and imagine.
This is your life, you have choice, you have a right to decide how you want to live it.
In modern neuroscience we know that neural patterns develop in relation to how we think and behave. At the base of every neuron is a structure called a synapse where cell to cell communication happens. At the ends of the synapse there are tree-like branches that extend from neuron to neuron. These connections and communications are keys showing how neurons build networks and have synchronous firing patterns. Did you know that these tree-like extensions change throughout our lives? Dendrites have a process called synaptic pruning which is the refinement and creation of new neural patterns. Like pruning a garden, pruning happens in our brain as we choose to create new thinking patterns. This is the process of neural plasticity. Neurons have an ability to grow new connections and networks!
We literally have the ability to wire new neural patterns and shift our mindset! The awareness of our thoughts and stories is how we begin to tend to our inner gardens. When we begin to shift our minds into a space of love, we can become unstuck and notice how love melts the old ways and shines light for new growth and new flowers to emerge from the earth!