The healing garden

2020 has been a slightly more challenging year than usual, not even counting the global health crisis that has curtailed many of our activities, made us a nation of gardeners and very much more conscious of nature and the effects of our lifestyles on the planet...for a short time anyway. Beyond that, I've found this year particularly difficult with personal losses including my horse of 17 years at the grand old age of 27 back in February, close friend's pet pooches and horses passing away and my own foster doggie crossing the rainbow bridge just a few weeks ago. Always when I take an emotional hit I turn to the garden.

This is going to be a slightly weird blog this time. Not because talking about mental health is awkward for me, to be honest it isn't at all, but I know some of the content seems slightly 'off the wall', so please bear with me...

When I came off depression medication a couple of years ago after 14 years of living in medicated fog, I came across a book called Depression - Lost Connections, by Johann Hari. Every page sounded like he was telling my story. I couldn't believe it, it seemed like it was word for word. I knew then I would never, ever reach for the blister pack of tablets again and the, let's not say cure, because I'm not 100% there yet, but control of this illness is very much in my hands. I have always believed that the mind is the most powerful tool there is and although I spent a good chunk of my early years studying various 'energetic' healing modalities, no amount of positive affirmations or mantras ever stopped my lack of energy and enthusiasm for life. Letting myself believe it was a physical problem with a chemical imbalance in the brain was the easiest solution and quietly comforting...so why after just a few months did the medication no longer work? Hari explained that the chemical imbalance theory was only ever just that, a theory that had never actually been proven. That shattered me, so it wasn't actually an uncontrollable physical problem then, I really was just a 'nut job'?

A short while after came across Esther Hicks and started to listen to, but not quite understand, the teachings of the entity she channels by the name of Abraham. The more I listened, the more I heard the same answers repeated to every questioner, regardless of their question. I heard a lot of what you need to experience, but not a route to get there, to actually experience that experience. Although I began to understand it on a theoretical level; You have to feel joy with what you have, get into a good feeling place and then the universe delivers your every wish...apparently. But what if you don't actually know what joy feels like?

A breakthrough came when I discovered another exponent of this theory, a guy called Joe Dispenza. He talked more in scientific terms, how brainwave scans had shown changing brainwave activity with workshop participants. He hypothesized that living under the hormones of stress, your thoughts can make you ill, and if they can make you ill then maybe they can also make you well too. Bit by bit elements of it began to sink in and make sense. He talked about over-coming yourself, breaking your habitual programming and creating a new you, being your own placebo. I got it, kind of, but I still needed a route to get there physically. One thing that is very difficult to do when you are in depression, is feel that there is anything beyond that, all the affirmations in the world won't change that feeling, but with a bit of work you can get control of your brain and get away from the programme which he describes as living in the past. Every morning, every single morning I start the day with meditation and at night I fall asleep listening to another guided meditation these are the two times when you are changing to different brainwave states, I guess it's a kind of hypnosis.

I know, you are wondering what on earth this has to do with gardening. I am getting to that part honestly...

I remember being told that energy flows where the mind goes, so if you wake up in the morning and the first thing you think about are yesterday's problems and pains, that's your focus for today and your life continues to be a repeat of the same old programme. This year many people had their programming thrown out of kilter by lockdown. Instead of getting up having a cuppa and a long commute to work, people found them self restricted where they could go and gardens up and down this island became sanctuaries where they reconnected with nature....interestingly one of the lost connections Hari refers to in his book.

Two of the biggest activation tools we have are gratitude and appreciation. Even if like for me, joy is hard to find anywhere, I can be grateful for aspects that gardening gives to me. Being out in the fresh air, creating something beautiful, learning about plants, according to Dispenza, every time you learn something new you brain makes new synaptic connections and you are moving away from reliving a programme to creating a new reality. I can appreciate the process of planting a seed in the soil, adding a bit of water and the excitement of seeing that first germination.

If I wake up in the morning and think about an issue from the day before, I get up with an aching back and sore fingers and that heavy feeling. If I think about where I am going to plant 200+ bulbs and the colours I want to combine, the planting schemes, the new plants I want to grow I can get out of bed and start my day with much reduced pain and a lighter feeling. It's not easy. You don't just erase a lifetime's programming and habits over-night. You start small and work from there, check yourself in the day. While I am weeding I sometimes get into a right conversation with myself in my head and I need to stop and break the habit, unless its a creative conversation of course. Any time I am feeling in a negative state, I go into the garden. It's not long before I start noticing things to do, changes to make, gaps to fill and ideas for the next season start to fill my thoughts. Gardens heal there is no doubt in my mind.

Incidentally I googled 'what does joy feel like' and the first answer came back saying - gratitude and appreciation....I guess it was there all along and just needed defining.