Inner gardening – food garden consciousness raising tips

Inner gardening is a pathway to improving your well being and one of the best places to start this journey is in your food garden.

Successful food growing in urban environments is a juggling act. There are so many factors to manage and its easy to think that growing food is purely about the materials you use and grow. How you are in the garden, not just what you do, has a profound affect on its success.

Why not devote some of your valuable time to cultivate a more beneficial state of mind when your are in the food garden, some inner gardening. In my experience, mastery of this inner gardening will not only reveal a green thumb, but also create a flow in the rest of your life.

The garden will then present you with a twofold opportunity: to grow healthy food and to raise your consciousness (inner gardening). There is a very subtle interplay between using the garden for inner gardening and what you receive back from the garden in healthy soil and plants and a beautiful energy that makes you want to give your time in exchange for its gifts.

Here are some tips on doing inner gardening and achieving a better outer garden at the same time:

• Observation –  Develop the discipline to check in on the garden each day and walk slowly around it, as if you were greeting friends. Look at what is changing, what needs help and attempt to appreciate the state of the whole garden environment before jumping to conclusions on specific issues. Move what you have observed in the garden around in your thinking without getting too emotional and then decide to act.
• Attitude – Be very careful with your attitude when you are working in the garden. A deep concentration on the beauty of the garden and the purpose of your physical work, rather than what you weren’t happy with at the office that day, will help you see things in the garden that you would not normally notice and act in more appropriate way
• Quiet time – Select a time in the day when you sit in the garden and either concentrate on its beauty or meditate. Try to maintain a very concentrated and quiet state of mind. You will be surprised at how energised you feel after this.
• Focus on purpose – Be clear on your purpose when entering the garden and concentrate your intentions on that purpose.

I am sure you will see from each of these tips that they could apply to virtually anything you do in life that is complex.

Its interesting in working with biodynamic food growing methods in the context of inner gardening. The impact of biodynamic (BD) soil and plant preparations (preps) is enhanced with a strong intention on their positive purpose when you are preparing and applying the preparations. This intention flows energetically into the BD preps. This series of articles from the 2018 International biodynamics conference has some very interesting research on the impact of the gardener or farmer intention when using BD preps.

Speaking of biodynamics, come along to one of our Workshops or talk to us about our Coaching service which includes biodynamic gardening

Happy inner gardening: Peter Kearney – www.beta.myfoodgarden.com.au