Gardening Meditations – Growing More Than Just Your Garden

Gardening transforms. And we’re not just talking about landscape. 

When we get in the garden, we open ourselves up to growth and peace. Gardens are places of tranquility, meditation, and life. That’s why we partnered with Cristina Schooler of the Rooted Method to bring you three meditations specifically designed to do in your garden. 

Next time you find yourself watering the plants, set aside a few extra minutes to get on the ground and practice mindfulness. You’ll be amazed at what you can grow. 

Quick Two Minute Gratitude Exercise

Goal: To quickly shift your energy and mood. This is especially helpful when really difficult situations arise. 

Put your awareness to the area of your heart. 

Mentally ask the question, what am I grateful for? Just ask the question and let it go. Allow any feelings, images, and sensations to come to you. What am I grateful for? Asking the question and letting it go. What am I grateful for? Allow any sensations, images, feelings, or thoughts to come to you. Now keeping your awareness to your heart saying to yourself, today, I will judge nothing that happens. 

Today I will judge nothing that happens. Today, I will judge nothing that happens. Let go and relax into your body and slowly open your eyes. 

Three Minute Nature Sitting Exercise

Goal: The goal of this 3-minute meditation is to make a connection with gratitude to the natural world around you. 

Go outside and find a spot by a tree, plant or part of your garden that is meaningful to you. 

Close your eyes

Put one hand on your heart and one hand on your belly and breathe deeply in and out through your nose like you are following a thread from the base of your spine to the top of your head. 

After a few breaths, start to tap into the area around your heart.

Just visualize that space around your heart. 

With each breath how can your gratitude grow for this natural world around you? 

With each breath, can you allow your heart to grow in size just a little bit more? 

Can you let it soften for what is right in front of you? 

Keep asking yourself as you breathe, What am I grateful for? And let the answers come naturally as you continue to focus on that area around your heart.  

Ten Minute Gratitude Meditation

Goal: A gratitude practice is often described as a magic bullet. Simply by focusing on the area of our heart we light up neurons in our brain that make new neural pathways- which enhances memory, focus, resilience, and joy. 

The goal of this meditation is to bring deeper levels of felt gratitude in your body. Ideally do this in a natural setting or even on a porch where you can feel the air, sun or rain around you. 

Your experience of gratitude can be for yourself or it can be a connection to that which is greater to yourself, higher power, whatever that is for yourself. 

When you activate gratitude by giving it to your intention, you create a whole new energy flow. The energy of gratitude knows no bounds and returns to you with goodness and something within you changes and everything around you changes– this is grace. 

I invite you to read through the description of the meditation and then practice it for yourself! This can be done as a whole or you can split up different parts of it to practice throughout your day.

Take some deep breaths. Let’s use today’s meditation to feel the warmth, the light and the transformative power of grace and gratitude within you. On one side is your thanks and devotion for the good things in your life, on the other side is the response which is to bring you more good things to be grateful for. 

So let’s begin the conversation. 

Think of three good things in your life. They don’t have to be the most important things, just whatever you feel in your heart. If it’s a beautiful morning and you have a rose sitting in a vase, that’s three things. Now take the first thing and visualize it in your mind, send thanks to it. 

Now comes a new element, imagine that whatever you are grateful for, a person, a memento, something in nature is aware of your thanks. See smiling back at you, shimmering with the same warm feeling, your thanks has been received and welcomed. After a moment go to the second thing and give thanks to it and see it receive your thanks, move onto the third thing and repeat again. You have successfully started the flow of grace. 

Grace when it is alive and flowing works like a feedback loop. You give something to the source and in return, something comes back to you. Each time you do this, you change the pathways in your brain, these new pathways change your perception and allow you to pay attention to the good things you are grateful for and in turn good things come back to you. 

Start paying attention in your day-to-day activity, feel the emotion, and don’t just have a passing thought. The best way to feel gratitude is in mind and body. Let the warmth of gratitude begin in your heart and spread outwards. Honoring how you are supported even in the smallest of ways connects you to the flow of life. Gratitude brings the support you need in life. This is how grace becomes real and practical. You are learning the Kripa, a term in hindu, which goes back thousands of years. 

Let’s take a moment to consider our centering thoughts. All good things bring gratitude. All good things bring gratitude.