Our mind is a garden and we have been unintentionally nourishing it for decades. With awareness, compassion and intention we can cultivate a beautiful garden. One that we can sit in and feel peaceful, contended and loved.
The weeds in our garden often inhibit the growth of peace, love and joy. We tend to notice and focus on the weeds of anxiety, frustration and inadequacies much more than the blooms of peace, love and joy.
I invite you to begin to cultivate your garden by becoming aware of thoughts and feelings.
Listen to your Top Ten Tunes.
“The Top Ten Tunes, whether as words, images, or stories, will persist and return no matter how often they are noticed. They play like old records, repeating a theme over and over. At first, to gain perspective, we can number them one through ten. “Oh, that is three on the hit parade this week.” In that way, when we notice them, we don’t have to play the record all the way through each time and we can more easily let them go. Or we can use a variation of this technique and give them a humorous name or title. I have given names to many now familiar aspects of myself, such as “The Hungry Ghost,” “Mr. Achiever,” “Attila the Hun,” “The Frightened Child,” “The Impatient Lover.” In this way, the repeated stories and emotions of fear, sorrow, impatience, and loneliness become more familiar, and I can listen to their tales in a friendlier and openhearted way. “Hello, nice to see you again! What do you have to tell me today?”” Jack Kornfield https://jackkornfield.com/expand-field-attention/
Your Top Ten Tunes are a fantastic way to decide what you will nourish and nurture in your garden.
Cultivating Peace
If your Top Ten Tunes are associated with helplessness, anxiety, irritation, or immobilization
nurture and nourish inner strengths for safety.
We have been practicing the cultivation of peace with our mindfulness meditation, refuge meditation, belly breaths, self-compassion, gardening meditation, circle of friends meditation and loving-kindness meditation and yin and yang yoga practice.
Cultivating Contentment
If your Top Ten Tunes are associated with disappointment, frustration, loss, failure, addiction, stressful inner drive, or sluggishness nurture and nourish inner strengths for satisfaction.
We have been practicing the cultivation of contentment with our Path of Joy practice, self-compassion, inner resources meditation, gardening meditation, setting of intentions, loving-kindness meditation, gratitude practice, circle of friends meditation and just the simple awareness of accomplishments as our yin and yang yoga practice deepens.
Cultivating Love
If your Top Ten Tunes are associated with loneliness, depression, exclusion, agitation, insecure in relationships, inadequate, envious, jealous, or muzzled nurture and nourish inner strengths for connection.
We have been practicing the cultivation of love through our Path of Joy practice, befriending ourselves through self-compassion, Inner Resources meditation, Loving-Kindness Meditation, Circle of Friends meditation.
“As we cultivate our garden, the conditions become more conducive to growth” Pema Chodrun.
Pose of the week:
Bridge, Supported Bridge, Pontoon
