4 ways gardening improves our mental health and spiritual growth
Gardening does not only benefit the environment, it also improves our mental health and happiness. Now more than ever, more and more people are realizing the benefits of gardening. Anyone can become a hobby farmer even without a 10-acre land. A quick research on Instagram, Pinterest or Youtube, you can find inspirations for small-space gardening. For example, container gardening, patio gardening, balcony gardening, backyard gardening, urban gardening, vertical gardening, etc. The garden is a place where we can learn about the way of life if we pay attention.
Here are 5 ways gardening can help improve your mental health and happiness. Keep these in mind and be conscious when you’re taking care of the plants.
Gardening Helps You Feel Grounded
The key to living a happy and joyful life is being present. We improve our spiritual strength by making sure we leave “spaces” as we go through our day. However, there are times when we fall into the habit of dwelling on the past or daydreaming about the future while present moment slips through us. When this happens, we feel ungrounded. Being ungrounded affects our mood, productivity and happiness. You are in a headspace of negative thoughts, resentment, feeling angry, bitter, etc. There are a few signs that might suggest that you’re not grounded:
Lack of passion or joy for activities you used to enjoy
Having a hard time focusing
Doing many things at once but nothing gets done
Not feeling connected to family or friends
Relying on external events/materials to get out of a bad mood - binge eating, going on a shopping spree
In layman’s terms, you’re in a rut!
We’re connected to Earth more than we realize. Living in cities and juggling between 1,000 tasks everyday blind our intuition so we don’t notice this connection. We spend our time staring at screens instead of being in nature. Our body needs to be connected with Earth yet we fail to recognize this need. As a result, we become unbalanced and we don’t know why. In some cultures, if a sick person wants to get out of bed and walk around all of a sudden, it’s a sign that the time is near. It’s a way for the body to ground itself while the energy (pranas) in the body starts to leave. When one feels ungrounded, it’s recommended to walk barefoot on grass to ground oneself. The skin contact with earth does wonders for our mental health. You feel alive and full of hope when you reach into the cold soil knowing that so many lives will spring out of it. Take your time to feel this connection with Mother Earth when you touch the soil and be grateful for the healing power it provides.
2. Gardening Teaches You to be Patient
The advancements in technology expedite many things in our life. We expect instant results and we want to feel instant gratification from things that we do. From flipping through the channels to tapping to go to the next story, our mind is always ready to get to the next thing and we want it right now. It is amazing how the technology advances and all the inventions that come with the advancement of technology. We live more comfortably at least physically. With the convenience brought by technology, we are supposed to have more freedom to explore our spirituality and develop our well-being. However, the reality most of us experience is quite the opposite of that. We have more and more commitments and roles to fulfill; we exchange our freedom and happiness for food, shelter and social status; and we are expected to always be on the go. Gardening helps you break free of the mentality that there’s all there is to life; it helps you learn about giving everything your best effort and letting go; it teaches you to accept the way of life and to trust in the way of life. Gardening is a tool for us to get a taste of freedom that we lost and have always longed for. The first thing gardening has taught me is how to be patient. I’ve grown accustomed to sitting in our garden and contemplating how flowers live, thrive and eventually return to nothingness. Flowers are the manifestation of the plant’s consciousness. I remember when I got my first flower for the garden, I spent months taking care of the plant, observing it everyday and watching the flower buds form slowly. It was taking its time to mature and I was the only impatient one. One morning, I walked into the garden and there was a light and delightful scent in the air. And there it was. The flower I had been waiting for. At that moment, something clicked in my head. My excitement, worry, impatience didn’t do anything during those couple months. I couldn’t control when or how life should happen. I can water it, fertilize it, make sure it gets sun. I can do anything that I think will contribute to the growth of this life but I have to let go of how this life happens and when this life happens. At the end of the day, this plant is an independent life of its own. Just like 99% of the events in our life are out of our control but we fight so hard to try to influence the outcome. This is not to say that we should sit around and let things happen on their own. It’s exactly the opposite. We should do our best to make the things we want happen in our life but we need to be able to accept whatever the outcome is as is; and we need to be able to accept that not everything can happen right away. It could never happen despite working so hard towards something. In gardening, sometimes you can do everything right but the plant just doesn’t make it. I’ll never forget the first flower I got and the lesson it taught me. It was like a flower sermon given by the way of life right in my backyard.
Sorbet Peony - this was the flower that I waited to blossom. The fragrance was divine and delightful. I’m forever grateful for the lesson this flower taught me in my garden.
3. Gardening Shows You How to be Humble
The garden shows us that we’re not special. We’re not more superior than plants, insects, worms or other lives. Watching how the garden forms its own ecosystem really puts things in perspective. As soon as you put down the soil and plant a seed, all kinds of life will blossom and start supporting each other. You can try your best to keep the worms out, the bees, butterflies and all kinds of bugs away because you don’t like them, you will never succeed. They are crucial for the formation of life and there’s no discrimination in nature. Every life has its own purpose to serve and it depends on other lives to survive as well. And it’s not so different for us human beings. We might seem like a giant and we can do whatever we want in a tiny garden. We feel like we are the center of the world and that we are special and important. Imagine looking down on yourself from the universe, that’s how small we are - a tiny micro spot. We are just here to do our part but our “mind” and “imagination” tell us that we’re special. When we think so highly of ourselves, we think things should go our way. When one small thing doesn’t go as planned, we feel like our whole world is ruined. This is how ego grows and takes over when we’re not paying attention.
4. Gardening Makes You Feel Grateful
Gardening taught me is that being able to grow my own food that I serve on the table is freedom. Nowadays, we rely on supermarkets or online grocery stores to provide us with endless sources of food. Processed foods are always available. It is convenient and it is a guarantee for us to always have food so we don’t starve. But at the same time, this convenience has disconnected us and desensitized us from the foods that we consume. Our lifestyle and the structure of our society makes growing our own food such a luxury. We don’t even know how to grow our own food even if we had the space. While I can’t live entirely on the crops we produce in the garden at this moment, just knowing that I will be able to if need be is such a liberation. Growing your own food is a very intimate experience because you spend time with the plants, you nurture them, they teach you things and you develop a special connection. When it comes to harvesting them for food, it is a sentimental moment. You really learn to appreciate the sacrifices other lives have to make in order to sustain our bodies. There will be plenty more wisdom that I’ll learn from gardening. It’s such a unique experience for every individual. Whatever you learn from gardening is tailored to your own purpose of life. It’s a bit mystical. The only requirement learn from nature is simply an open mind.
