THE INNER GARDEN
Creating the Ground - Rich Luscious Verdant Greens & Vibrant Florals
"Your Heart is a Garden."
- Dr. Anita Phillips -
SPENDING SACRED ME-TIME
WRITING PROMPTS
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THOUGHTS GROW FROM THE SOIL OF OUR HEART
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​The metaphor of thoughts growing from the 'soil of the heart' highlights the idea that our inner world, particularly our emotions and beliefs, shapes our thoughts and actions. This concept is used in both therapeutic and spiritual contexts to emphasise the importance of tending to one's inner landscape for personal growth and well-being.
These writing promps might help you clarify certain thoughts and patterns in your life and mirror gardening.
It is all an exercise, like a stream of consciousness flowing and growing. No pressure, it is not an artwork that needs to be ready for a show.
Art therapy ideas about "composting the heart" involve using art-making to process difficult emotions and experiences, transforming them into something positive and fertile, much like composting organic matter creates nutrient-rich soil. This can involve using natural materials, creating symbolic representations, or engaging in reflective writing to explore and integrate emotional experiences.
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Creative Cluster Composting the Heart: Draw a heart in the middle of a paper (or a form symbolizing your heart - or use the template below by printing it out or using it as reference; it's from the internet). Fill it with your thoughts and emotions that arise - nice or not, all thoughts are allowed and important. Creatively open focus on composting and tending - use for example nature related colours and forms for thoughts and emotions that need to be composted and other colors and forms for those that need tending to be able to grow and those who already are blooming.
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Gathering & Arranging: Collect natural materials like leaves, flowers, twigs, and stones that resonate with you. Arrange the materials so that they tell a story or represent different aspects of your emotional landscape - create an ALTAR of it and for it.
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Paint or draw your emotions using colors, shapes and lines to represent how you are feeling. Be gentle with yourself and allow your emotions to flow freely.
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Seeing your heart as a garden... there can grow so much... compassion, fear, resentment or love. What seeds will you plant there?
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"May I be given the appropriate difficulties so that my heart can truly open with compassion." (Jack Kornfield) - Imagine asking for that.... what opens up for you, within you?
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Difficulties are sometimes hard to grasp. Seeing them as opportunities is a high quality we can cultivate. Every obstacle holds the potential to strengthen the heart and helps to open it to new perspectives. What does your mind say? What does your heart say?
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In the present moment we are free. We are open to appreciation in the humblest and purest meaning. Cultivating gratitude supports your presence. What are you grateful for? Have you ever thought about a 'Gratefulness Jar'? Maybe you want to cultivate this.
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SPENDING TIME IN THE STUDIO
"I have a dream sometimes, not often.
I dream that I am in a house, and discover a door I didn't know was there. It opens into an unexpected garden, and for a weightless moment I find myself inhabiting new territory, flush with potential.
Maybe there are steps down to a pond, or a statue surrounded by fallen leaves. It is never tidy, always begulingly overgrown, with the corresponding sense of hidden riches.
What might grow here, what rare peonies, irises, roses will I find?
I wake with the sense that a too-tight joint has loosened, and that everything runs fluent with new life."
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- Olivia Laing -
MINDFUL EXERCISE
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TAKING CARE
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Taking care of yourself can lead to significant benefits, including reduced stress, anxiety, and depression, improved mood and energy levels, and enhanced overall mental resilience. Self-care also promotes better physical health and can improve sleep, boost the immune system, and encourage healthy habits like exercise.
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Create a visual representation of what makes your heart happy, using colors, shapes, and symbols. Start with an outline of a heart (or use the template). Fill it with things that bring you joy, things that make you feel good, and things that evoke positive emotions. Reflect on what you included in your heart map. How often do you experience those things? How can you incorporate more of them into your life? A Collage of your Heart would be a deeper expression. But even if you are ´just´colouring the heart is a meditative exercise that has beneficiant impact on your physical and mental well being.
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What are you doing to take care of yourself? Do you do this on a regular basis or have you neglected yourself? What might be good to revive, how could taking care of yourself be integrated into your life? Maybe you should try out something new to nurture yourself? Make a list of what you already do and what you could add to that list. Take time for yourself and mark those dates in your calender on a regular basis.
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A WELL WATERED SOUL
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Watering symbolizes well-being by embodying spiritual nourishment, physical health, and emotional balance through practices like prayer, meditation, and nurturing a garden.
The practice of watering can symbolize nurturing your inner self... the soul as a garden needs regular 'watering' through commitment to it - tapping into a source of 'living water' ensures your soul remains nourished and fruitful, helping you overcome feelings of drought, worry, and fear.
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Hildegard of Bingen used watering metaphorically to describe spiritual vitality and the life-giving power of God, often contrasting dryness with a state of being "wet, and moist, and green, and juicy" through spiritual connection. She encouraged keeping the "greening power which you have from God" from drying up by staying connected to divine power and wisdom, which she likened to being "drenched" and "watered" with spiritual dew. She described the soul, which is full of wisdom, as being "saturated with the spray of a bubbling fountain - God himself".
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Incorporate water into your routine through activities like baths or by simply drinking water with positive attitude and affirmations.
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Spend time by water bodies or visualize its calming presence to invoke its soothing and restorative energy.
- Use a variety of blue pencils and draw a pond or any water scene. What is in it? How does it relate to your inner water... your inner garden? You could enhance this exercise by using watercolours or collage work. You could also write about water... like a flow of consciousness and thereby using a blue pencil and writing without raising your hand, without separating the words that flow through you and from you out of you...
